Toto

[staffwarn]Please cool it with the sexual imagery[/staffwarn]

show_no_mercy

Really? I've never heard of that before. I have heard of a pre-existent Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel though.

avi

Ok, maybe I was too terse.

Let me try again.

Twenty odd years ago, Fleishmann and Pons (weren't they university scholars?), presented DATA (what you call "physical evidence"), supporting the myth of room temperature fusion.

"Shouldn't we believe at least SOME of" what they wrote?

How does one separate Eusebius' accurate, honest, historical evidence from his fabricated fiction? I am not clairvoyant. I cannot determine, as I read Eusebius, which part is manufactured, and which part is honest.

Did Constantine's mother find the cross? Is the Turin shroud real?

For me, these are childish questions. If I continue regressing mentally, perhaps in a few more months, they will appear to me to be excellent topics for this forum.....

Eusebius was not the devil. He was not, I suppose, an evil man. Perhaps he was simply following orders. But, then, do you suppose, stephan, that Hitler was a monster, even when alone, with his wife Eva? Do you mean to write, here, that part of Mein Kampf is NOT wrong, because there exists some physical evidence to support some portion of Mein Kampf?

Maybe that is the difference between us. I have no interest to read Hitler, even if he has been improperly maligned as his many fascist admirers maintain. To me, he was a rogue, a scoundrel, a villain of the worst magnitude, and even if 99.9 % of what Hitler wrote was brilliant, accurate, honest, AND SUPPORTED BY "documented physical evidence", I wouldn't waste ten milliseconds on it.

I suppose you will cite, next, comrade Stalin, who did not murder millions, including 20k Polish officers, another popular myth, spread by evildoers like yours truly. To me, Stalin was a butcher. I would no more read one of his many tomes, than I would kiss a frog. Do you imagine that there is NOT embedded in Stalin's writings, at least SOME documented physical evidence, supporting his lies?

Eusebius is another guy, I will never read. I cannot forgive the Christians for their murders of so many innocents. Those folks, your heroes, stephan, the so-called "patristic" writers, didn't just write about folklore, and pottery. They wrote a call to arms, urging loyal followers to KILL those who declined to believe their own particular version of utter crap. Eusebius' writings served as documents authorizing execution. Heretics beware, Eusebius has explained the true doctrine, and if you don't follow it, and obey it, you will burn at the stake.

avi

stephan huller

Shesh, my wife's been called a lot of things in her life but I think that was inappropriate. :notworthy: I don't know how I get lumped together with the conservatives and the pious merely because I am not prepared to jump onto any attack against religion. If you are going to disprove Christianity you have to at least come up with something which is supported by the evidence.

I am the furthest thing from being a 'believer.' I only try and point out the weaknesses of these silly arguments because it is better that this takes place here - in a relatively friendly environment - than continuing to promote embarrassing and easily dismissed arguments 'out there' in the real world.

The fourth century conspiracy is an embarrassment because it doesn't work. What it has going for it is its simplicity. So sure, you can get lots of stupid people to buy into it. It is easy to imagine a fourth century 'factory' somewhere 'manufacturing' Irenaeus and Tertullian and the Bible from scratch. You could theoretically attract of mob of lemmings but they're all going off a cliff ultimately in the court of public opinion because the theory is so easily disproved.

I haven't even started yet. There is so much more out there.

shownomercy,

With regards to the Jesus as messiah cult (one which I don't think is at the heart of the original gospel of Mark) - it is entirely logical when you think about it. There is a strangeness about the fact that the Torah goes out of its way to record that Moses doesn't enter the Promised Land. Why not? Surely Ezra could have made something up if he wanted Moses to be at the heart of the Israel to come (i.e. the fully liberated nation state freed from being under the rule of a foreign power).

The idea that Moses announces that 'one like him' will appear in the future (i.e. one like Moses) and then Joshua ends up leading the nation into the Promised Land and takes over Moses's role in a powerful metaphor. Then there is the curious business in the LXX and the Masoretic text where Joshua's name changes from Hoshea or Oshea with the addition of a letters.

The interesting thing is that the Samaritan Pentateuch maintains the Joshua form in all places. How can that be? How could there have been a Joshua-messiah expectation referenced by Eulogius but the Samaritan Pentateuch doesn't witness the chief 'mystical' argument used by Christian writers (and Philo)? My guess is that the Samaritan Pentateuch was deliberately altered later.

It is worth noting that the Samaritans (who are usually described as ONLY having the Pentateuch) do preserve a version of the Book of Joshua. My friend Ruairidh Boid has published a well argued monograph that the Samaritan version despite being preserved only in Arabic is older than the Jewish recension. Most people think the Dositheans preserved the Book of Joshua in the Samaritan community.

In any event I will cite the Jewish Encyclopedia overview to help explain the role of Joshua in Judaism:

Toto

avi - this is not helpful.

Cold fusion was not a myth. It was a scientific hypothesis that did not pan out, as subsequent tests revealed.

Much of what Eusebius wrote was propaganda, or myth, and it was initially assumed that Abercius was also a myth, until archaeological evidence surfaced to provide some confirmation.

Any mention of Hitler or Stalin in this forum is unwelcome - it is usually inflammatory.

One would not read Mein Kampf for essentail truth, but historians would have to read it - critically of course - to construct a history of the Third Reich. One would need to read Eusebius the same way.

stephan huller

I have never heard it claimed that Eusebius was a murderer. I guess you mean 'following orders' in terms of 'falsifying a history' of the Church. Okay well take the example of Heidegger who flourished under Hitler. Does that mean that we shouldn't read Heidegger - or Nietzsche for that matter who was beloved by Hitler and whose sister 'falsified' a collection of his writings (or at least skewed them toward a certain point of view)? They even play Wagner in Israel now. Surely we can tolerate Eusebius after 1700 years.

stephan huller

There's more on the change of name of Joshua. It is all over the writing of the early Church Fathers but less well known is the rabbinic interpretation which again comes from the Jewish Encyclopedia:

avi

I am unaware that Wagner's music, glorifying the nordic phenotype, was ever intended, by his authorship, to consign to oblivion, those who disagreed with his musical tastes, or his silly view of human nature. (Toscanini, for example) Did Wagner ever write something, lyrics, or analysis, against various political or ethnic groups, AS EUSEBIUS DID?

avi

Transient

Well we all know who the person is that makes inflammatory remarks all the dam time and it is not Avi - it is Stephan Huller. He never gets called out because he is a pet here. I will not listen to calls of others being inflammatory - it is garbage.

Transient

No that's wrong - you have presented this as clear evidence - it is clearly not.
Your ability to inflate the value of stuff is getting very bad and shows that your work and theories are not to be trusted at all. You are undoing yourself.