spamandham

I am one of the few "no" votes, because as I understand it, Pete's position is that Constantine created a new religion from pre-existing parts (Asclepius, Appolonius, etc.). I see nothing in the OP that contradicts that idea, but maybe I've misunderstood Pete's position.

So, while I do not see Pete's idea as the simplest explanation, I can't rule it out based on this evidence.

mountainman

Dear spin,

I disagree entirely with your crass assessment in playing the "conspiracy card".
What if things transpired something like this sometime after the 28th October 312 CE, Rome:

* Constantine to Chief-Lieutenant: Bring in another one of those scribes.

* ENTER Eusebius with Chief-Lieutenant

* Constantine to Eusebius: I have a new testament to the gods to be published.

* Eusebius to Constantine: Yes Boss.

* Constantine to Chief-Lieutenant: Get rid of the scribe.

* EXIT Eusebius (looking very concerned over that last comment from the boss) with Chief-Lieutenant.

Best wishes,


Pete

patcleaver

You do not have this imagery in Christianity until the 4th century.

Your wasting your time arguing about trivia.

We have messianism in the Jewish Scriptures and as long as those are considered sacred by anyone then we have the potential for messianism.

You do not know what a conspiracy is. A conspiracy is an illegal plan to commit a crime. A plan by a tyrannical government to distribute propaganda is not a conspiracy.

The term "conspiracy theory" is used by mainstream scholars and in popular culture to identify a type of folklore similar to an urban legend, especially an explanatory narrative which is constructed with particular methodological flaws.

You do not understand what a "conspiracy theory" is. People who believed that Watergate was a conspiracy are not conspiracy theorists as that term is commonly used.

We can't all be the next Charles Darwin.

Some areas of study are useful beyond themselves. For example, the evolution of whales is a good example of an area of knowledge that is not just useful in and of itself, but useful for demonstrating the general principle that animals evolved. There is nothing wrong at all in studying whale evolution for the sole purpose of being able to present a strong demonstration that animals evolved.

spin

Yup, that's what I said, "from the period immediately afterwards". What's immediately after the 3rd century?

If you want to call your intellectual laziness trivial, that's ok I guess.

Then you'll have difficulty with the rabbinical comment about Aqiba's claim that Shimeon was the messiah it was, "Akiba, grass will grow in your cheeks and still the son of David will not have come." Messianism was a dead letter for several centuries in Judaism.

Stop talking rubbish. The Watergate cover-up was both a conspiracy theory and one proven true, just like the fourth bullet fired in Dallas. That the Bush administration were involved in 911 is a conspiracy theory that hasn't been shown to have enough evidence for it and therefore remains on the level of conspiracy theory you understand. We tend not to trust conspiracy theories, as we shouldn't with mountainman's Constantine conspiracy.

It has nothing necessarily to do with scholars. (In fact, scholars can be great conspiracists.)

Before it was demonstrated they were.

It might be nice then if you lowered the hyperbole level.

What about "paranormal research"?


spin

Sheshbazzar

From post #36 in this thread;
Interesting.....if so, then just when did the previous Apostolic religion (Nazarene?) morph into being the so called "christian" religion? and that morph into The Christian religion of "Christianity" ?

Certainly the Messianic disciples living in Jerusalem and throughout that region did not identify themselves as being "christian" or "Christians".
Both the record of the NT, and history indicate that these original messianist continued faithful in the observances of The Law, and in Jewish praxis.
They did not "buy into" the Pauline (latter called "christian") line that through a "salvific" act of crucifixion, that the Law had been "done away with" or was abrogated by "faith". A basic tenet of the (much latter) Paulinian "Christian" Theology.
They never abandoned the observance of The Sabbath, something "Christianity" not only abandoned, but tortured and murdered those Believers who would not accept the innovative "Christian" Sunday substitute.
Much more can be mentioned, but the point is that the religion that was practiced by these original Messianic believers, although sharing similar tropes and sayings, was a distinctively different religion and theology than one that (latter) became identified with the term "Christian".
My observation here, would be that while it might be (marginally) acceptable to retroject the term "christian" as appropriate to Paul and to his form of Theology, to do so with regard to Peter and James, and to all of the other early believers is entirely inappropriate, as while these might also have believed in a crucified saviour, they did not, and never did, accept either the practices nor that contrived theology that identifies christians as being "Christians".
And of course never did in actuality call or identify themselves with that latter and foreign appellation.
In sum, they were not "christian" in their practices, and most certainly NOT "Christian" in their theology, nor in NAME, and were ultimately marginalised, rejected, and persecuted by those who did identify themselves as being The Christians.

eta
Relevence to this thread being that the Dura Europos site ("church"sic) could rather be a Nazarene beit knesset (synagogue) more "Jewish" in its original practices and theological teachings than anything now understood as being "christian" .

spin

You've gotta do better than this semantics stuff, Sheshbazzar. It's-thoisday,-they're-now-christians is not very useful. It's not a church, it's a nazarene synagogue. Make distinctions when they are meaningful, please. Create martyrdoms somewhere else.

You plainly don't accept the Constantine conspiracy. You are just jockeying for control over who the people who falsify the theory are.


spin

spin

Just the existence of the religion 60 years earlier.

Spammers, the notion of falsification is relatively easy. The religion 60 years before it started isn't kosher. Either it didn't start 60 years earlier or Eusebius didn't start it. Dura rules out the latter, ie it has been falsified. If there was christianity in some guise 60 years prior to Eusebius, no amount of explanation can change the fact that the theory has been falsified.


spin

Sheshbazzar

Honestly spin, it seems to me that if the practitioners of religion have such extreme differences that they keep different holidays, engage in different ritual practices, and teach widely variant theologies, and even resort to the extermination the other faction over those differences, then it is far more than just "semantics", it becomes one religion in opposition another religion.
"they're-now-christians" is not appropriate, THEY were NOT "christians" and they never became the christians, because they were killed off BY the Christians, and died out completely. The Christians of that day, and their descendants of today never were of The Nazarene religion;
They stomped it out, and utterly supplanted The Nazarene religion replacing it with their own syncretized paganistic religion, their own names, their own holidays, their own practices, and their own distinctive "Christian" theology.

"Constantine conspiracy" ? I have no recall of ever using such term, as I do not consider what transpired to be a "conspiracy".
The government "cooked the Books", and rewrote "history" in a fashion that was favorable to the then present political agenda, as has always been the case.
I was taught U.S. "History" during the '50s and '60s out of U.S.Government approved and authorised "History" books, but learned (and still am learning) true U.S. history over the course of a lifetime.
There was no "conspiracy" to deliberately misrepresent what had transpired, only extreme bias and a political mandate to conformity with popular and majority opinion.
So also Constantine accommodated the "orthodox" christians to the detriment of all religions unorthodox and in minority.
Not many politicians that do not find religion to be a most useful tool, and any politician that will not "play-the-game" that religionists demand of politicians, will never be a very successful politician.
Look at all the religious suck-ups our Presidential candidates engage in to get the votes of the religionists.
Is it all a conspiracy? Nah, just the plain ol business as usual.
As for mountainman, well, his theory may be nuts, but as mentioned by others, it is no more whacky than the crap that respected "Bible Scholars" have long been trying to feed to us.

andrewcriddle

Spin has already answered this.
Yes, Jesus (and God and crucifixion) occur in abbreviated forms.


Andrew Criddle

mountainman

Dear Andrew,

What remains to be explained is that because we are looking at the abbreviated form in the physical source text here, and because this abbreviated form is shared between both Jesus and Joshua, how can we be certain that in this instance the name of Jesus is being referred to, and not, for example, the name of Joshua?

And as a final note to Pat Cleaver, thanks for your post earlier about this subject. There you wrote this:
The thesis is actually dealing with the use of the nomina sacra form in the early fourth century, well before Jerome (and of course the translator of Origen Rufinus) contaminated the evidence, and in the era of the OP with a presumed 3rd century Dura Europa christian fragment. From this perspective, the useage of this same nomina sacra was reserved for the name of Joshua, a figure in the Hebrew bible. At some stage when Constantine took over, he must have ordered that the new name was to be Jesus --- probably because the abbreviated form of the new testament name (Jesus) had the same greek abbreviated form as the hebrew bible name of the hero (Joshua). Nowhere do we find the name of Jesus in full, before the fourth century, as far as I can tell, in the evidence. (I feel reasonably confident that if I am wrong on nthis call then someone will correct me) All we have, as is indicated by this example of the Dura fragment, is the occurrence of the abbreviated name of IH (iota eta).

Fully hooded and goggled by our christian space suit, we insist on the conjecture that this abbreviation refers to Constantine's hero Jesus, whereas the likelihood is the reference was always to the ancient Hebrew hero Joshua. Interested parties should also be aware that exactly the same situation exists in the coptic source documents. There is, as far as I know, no early reference to the full name of Jesus, only the abbreviated form. And in the Coptic, the abbreviations for Jesus and the Healer are the same.

Now Constantine, as Pontifex Maximus, probably had every right to alter the tradition of the holy name in the extant literature, but it appears that his advice was to select a new name which, when abbreviated, matched the extant abbreviations in a number of languages. I am not too sure that the greek academic custodial perpetuators of the ancient Hellenic culture of the fourth century would have been too overjoyed over this bold departure from tradition. And so there was resistance from the academic scribes of the eastern Roman empire c.324 CE and continuing until they were finally extinguished with the flames of Alexandria. But not before some of them had authored the new testament non canonical texts - as polemic, seditious parody and satire against the boss. The codex was the high technology of the day. Examine the Nag Hammadi codices C14 = 348 CE.


Best wishes,


Pete