Freethought & Rationalism Archive

avi · 12-14-2008, 04:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

....how then do you explain that Origen was called "the father of Arius" by Epiphanius and later condemned for "subordinationism"

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

After his removal to Caesarea, Origen wrote the works, still extant, On Prayer, On Martyrdom, and Against Celsus
...

Origen distinctly emphasised the independence of the Logos as well as the distinction from the being and substance of God. The term "of the same substance with the Father" was not employed. He is merely an image, a reflex not to be compared with God; as one among other "gods", of course first in rank.
....
Much later, Origen got into theological trouble with the Church because of some extreme views adopted by his followers, the Origenists, whose views were attributed to Origen. In the course of this controversy, some of his other teachings came up, which were not accepted by the general church consensus. Among these were the preexistence of souls, universal salvation and a hierarchical concept of the Trinity . These teachings, and some of his followers' more extreme views, were declared anathema by a local council in Constantinople 545, and then an ecumenical council (Fifth Ecumenical Council ) pronounced "15 anathemas" against Origen in 553
...
As a result of this condemnation, the writings of Origen supporting his teachings in these areas were destroyed. They were either outright destroyed, or they were translated with the appropriate adjustments to eliminate conflict with Orthodox Christianity (the "Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church" referred to in the council of 553, which at the time included both of what are now called the Catholic and Orthodox Churches). Therefore, little direct evidence remains to fully confirm or disprove Origen’s support of the nine points of anathema against him.

So, why am I confused? Well, how do we know anything about Origen, if his teachings were declared anathema? Could such an anathma be interpreted as suggesting that Epiphanius could/should be redacted?

Quote:

His best-known book is the Panarion which means "Medicine-chest" (also known as Adversus Haereses, "Against Heresies"), presented as a book of antidotes for those bitten by the serpent of heresy. Written between 374 and 377, it forms a handbook for dealing with the arguments of heretics.

How do we know that the extant earliest copies of his famous Panarion have not been forged?

I believe, without evidence or knowledge, but purely based on faith, that we have badly underestimated the extent to which both:
(1) numerous different sects, with very different theological views, competed for followers and money, in the first three centuries, i.e. before Constantine, AND
(2) the Roman, trinitarian version of Christianity, certainly no later than Constantine, actively sought out, and destroyed, or changed, any existing documents by "heretics".

I am skeptical of conclusions based on anyone's writings post Nicea in 325CE, regarding authors of the first three centuries.

Jeffrey Gibson · 12-14-2008, 05:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

You might want to know that, as his link demonstrates, Pete is incapable of determining or adducing correctly what is and is not a reference to, or a usage of, the adjective χρηστός ή, όν in ancient literature. Many of the instances he claims are such are most definitely not -- and he doesn't know, and couldn't tell you if you asked him, which are which.

Dear Jeffrey,

The reference was given as "a very rough collation of notes".

So rough means "at many points inaccurate"?

Quote:

I refer to such things as "stubs of information" or a first draft attempt at gathering together some related material.

Funny how you did not state this when you sent Shez to your site. And funny how there is nothing on the page itself that says or indicates that what you've posted there is a first draft, let alone one that has to be read with a grain of salt.

Quote:

You are an expert in this field. I am a student. These things I will admit. However a student must start with a first draft surely you must agree.

What I agree with is that you utterly lack the capacity to start even a first draft since you have no idea what you are looking for and since you haven't checked to see if the Greek text of any of your claimed instances of the use of χρηστός actually bear the weight you put upon them. And since you haven't even the slightest bit of the knowledge required to tell whether the data you claim are instances of the use of χρηστός really are, your first draft is worthless.

Quote:

Look at this as a first draft taking an hour or so. Constantinople was not built in a day.

You've had plenty of time to go back over your "draft" to revise it. But the problem remains that you still wouldn't know which of all your citations is and is not an instance of the use of the word χρηστός. So a second draft would be as worthless as the first.

Tell me, Pete. If you did get around to revising things, what criterion would you use to determine what is an instance of the use of χρηστός and what's not? And how would you check to see if the Greek texts of the instances you might decide were such instances, really were?

Jeffrey

mountainman · 12-14-2008, 07:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

Quote:

Before Arius was there was nobody like him (or his effects).

Umm ... how then do you explain that Origen was called "the father of Arius" by Epiphanius and later condemned for "subordinationism"

Dear Jeffrey,

IMO Eusebius forged additional works in the name of Origen --- all related to the "new testament" --- and presents Origen (falsely) as a christian in his "History". Every single greek academic in the eastern empire knew that the fabrication of the christians was a fiction. But what could they do?

Best wishes,

Pete

Jeffrey Gibson · 12-14-2008, 07:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

Umm ... how then do you explain that Origen was called "the father of Arius" by Epiphanius and later condemned for "subordinationism"

Dear Jeffrey,

IMO Eusebius forged additional works in the name of Origen --- all related to the "new testament" --- and presents Origen (falsely) as a christian in his "History".

Yes, we know. But your opinion is as worthless as it is uninformed and unbsubstantiated.

And the issue -- which you've dodged -- is what Epiphanius said.

Quote:

Every single greek academic in the eastern empire knew that the fabrication of the christians was a fiction.

And your actual evidence for this is what? And what about the Greek academics in the Western Empire?

Quote:

But what could they do?

They could say it plainly.

Jeffrey

mountainman · 12-14-2008, 07:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

The reference was given as "a very rough collation of notes".

So rough means "at many points inaccurate"? Tell me, Pete. If you did get around to revising things, what criterion would you use to determine what is an instance of the use of χρηστός and what's not? And how would you check to see if the Greek texts of the instances you might decide were such instances, really were?

Dear Jeffrey,

I would compare them to the equivalent greek in the extant catalogs of epigraphic citations and make no assumptions, since citations to interpolated christian gravestone epigraphy appear to exist.

Best wishes,

Pete

Jeffrey Gibson · 12-14-2008, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

So rough means "at many points inaccurate"? Tell me, Pete. If you did get around to revising things, what criterion would you use to determine what is an instance of the use of χρηστός and what's not? And how would you check to see if the Greek texts of the instances you might decide were such instances, really were?

Dear Jeffrey,

I would compare them to the equivalent greek in the extant catalogs of epigraphic citations and make no assumptions, since citations to interpolated christian gravestone epigraphy appear to exist.

But you can't read the inscriptions except in English translation. And as you've shown in your citations of alleged references to the use of the adjective χρηστός ή, όν, you don't know what the "equivalent Greek" is.

Jeffrey

mountainman · 12-14-2008, 07:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Every single greek academic in the eastern empire knew that the fabrication of the christians was a fiction.

And your actual evidence for this is what? And what about the Greek academics in the Western Empire?

Dear Jeffrey,

The academics in the western empire had the period 312 to 324 to get used to the new ideas of the new Pontifex Maximus. (Constantine burns Porphyry)

Quote:

But what could they do?

They could say it plainly.

Do you mean to say that should have said something like

It is, I think, expedient to set forth to all mankind
the reasons by which I was convinced that
the fabrication of the Galilaeans
is a fiction of men composed by wickedness
while Constantine holds a sword at my throat

Best wishes,

Pete

Jeffrey Gibson · 12-14-2008, 07:32 PM

[QUOTE=mountainman;5701722]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

Quote:

They could say it plainly.

Dear Jeffrey,

Do you mean to say that should have said something like
[indent]It is, I think, expedient to set forth to all mankind
the reasons by which I was convinced that
the fabrication of the Galilaeans
is a fiction of men composed by wickedness
while Constantine holds a sword at my throat

Perhaps, once you've produced evidence that shows definitively that Julian' words are a denial that there was an historical Jesus, you'd be kind enough to provide some evidence that Constantine ever held a sword to the throat of any pagan who did not recognize Christianity as true or proclaimed that it did not exist before Constantine.

Jeffrey

mountainman · 12-14-2008, 07:42 PM

[QUOTE=Jeffrey Gibson;5701730]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

Perhaps, once you've produced evidence that shows definitively that Julian' words are a denial that there was an historical Jesus, you'd be kind enough to provide some evidence that Constantine ever held a sword to the throat of any pagan who did not recognize Christianity as true or proclaimed that it did not exist before Constantine.

Dear Jeffrey,

As worthless as they may seem to you here are my notes (and pagenumbers) with [my editorial comments] from Robin Lane-Fox on Persecution of the Old Religions:

Quote:

p.666: "The postscript to his Oration at Antioch was to be rather more robust:
torture of pagans "in authority in the city" so that they admitted religious fraud.

p.671: The list of pagan sites to have suffered under Constantine:

Mambre: a site of great holiness in the Hebrew testament

Jerusalem: shrine of Aphrodite, stood on the site of the crucifixion and sepulchre.

Aphaca: an offensive Phoenician centre of sacred prostitution.

Didyma: Christians seized a prophet of Apollo and had him tortured.

Antioch: Christians seized a prophet of Apollo and had him tortured.

Aigai, in Cilicia: christians raised the shrine of Asclepius.

p.672: "In the early 340's, we find the first surviving Christian texts which asks for something more,
the total intolerance of pagan worship." [FN:25] - Firmicus, De Errore 16.4

[Editor: After the rule of Constantine things went from bad to worse.
See the list of citations from "Demolish Them!",
published in Greek, Athens, 1990, by Vlasis Rassias.]

FOX: "Why were these latter shrines singled out so promptly?

(1) At Aigai, the pagan wise man Apollonius was believed
to have "turned the temple into an Academy":
this temple, or a nearby shrine, had been honoured
with a fine pagan inscription
in honour of "godlike" Apollonius,
perhaps as recently as the reign of Diocletian.

[Editor: This is an intriguing citation.]

(2) Porphyry had compiled books of Philosophy from Oracles
which publicised texts from Didyma.

(3) At Antioch, prophets were duly tortured and obliged to confess "fraud".
These reprisals are the counterpart to two written works by Eusebius,
his polemic against the books on Apollonius and his "Demonstrations of the Gospel,"
which disproved Apollo's oracles by quoting them against themselves.

[Editor: Constantine puts a big scare into the opposition religions.]

p.673: "Constantine, said Eusebius, sent his emmisaries into
"every pagan temple's recess and every gloomy cave." [FN:28] - Eus., V.C. 3.57.4

"Intolerance had never been rooted in the long history of pagan and religious thought.
After Constantine, many pagans could still extend to the new worship
a tolerance which its exclusivity refused to extend to them."

"Eusebius tells how his [Constantine's] agents broke up divine statues
and exhibited their stuffing as mere rubbish." [FN:30] - Eus., V.C. 3.54.6

p.674: The age of Constantine has been aptly described as "age of hiatus":
we can carry this notion to our major theme, the "presence of the gods".

p.679: "In the early fourth century, two aging Christian authors
had shown possible ways of "defusing" the words of the pagan gods.
Eusebius had dismissed them as demonic and used them to refute their authors,
whereas Lactantius had quoted them with Christian improvements
and claimed them as proofs of the Christian faith ... In the first
flush of the "new empire", it must have been on the christians' initiative
that torture was applied to Apollo's prophet at Didyma and to others at Antioch,
"people taken from the magistrates of the city".
They were not humble, ignorant people, Eusebius asserted proudly:
they were people of "wonderful and noble philosophy",
at Antioch civic notables, at Didyma a "prophet and philosopher",
last of the long line of cultured voices who had kept philosophy
running in oracles, the voices of Polites, Theophilus, Macer and
the rest. [FN:48] - Eus. P. Ev. 4.135C-136A.

Philosophic oracles had begun when Apollo's wisdom
advanced with the culture of the prophets.
They ended when christians tortured the prophets.
who had recently helped to torture them too.

[Editor: That the "early" christians were actually persecuted (as described by Eusebius) is disputed.]

Best wishes,

Pete

Transient · 12-14-2008, 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

Perhaps, once you've produced evidence that shows definitively that Julian' words are a denial that there was an historical Jesus, you'd be kind enough to provide some evidence that Constantine ever held a sword to the throat of any pagan who did not recognize Christianity as true or proclaimed that it did not exist before Constantine.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey, could you start a thread that addresses the single biggest point or weakness in Mountainman's ideas about constantine?
If you can pick a simple one that is to the point and hard to dodge and weave out of because often I get the feeling that Mountainman IS dodging out of questions but I'm not quite sure.
I personally think that there were many variations of "christianity" before Constantine and he, for whatever reasons, put together the best congenial version that suited the most people and ran with it.
I just don't have a clear cut idea in my head of what exactly refutes Mountainman's hypothesis.

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