Iskander

Source?

Toto

Mod note:

This forum is based on the idea of free exchange of ideas and does not ban so called hate speech. Most of the charges of "hate speech" are thinly veiled attempted to institute censorship.

Errors should be corrected with facts, not with suppression. You can see the evil that results from the suppression of error by studying history.

But please note that mountainman has no cheerleaders here.

If you find that the intellectual quality of a thread is dragging the forum down, you can report it and ask that it be moved to Elsewhere.

la70119

It's not book XII; it's book XIX, chapter XII. Mountainman found it at Tertullian.org and I found it at Perseus.tufts.edu where it's split into twenty sections, each and every one of them appalling and shows the facts behind mountainman's campaign. It's also at penelope.uchicago.edu, but that site's inaccessible for the moment.

Scythopolis may or may not have been turned into a concentration camp, but it was certainly turned into a centre of interrogation by torture, sometimes to the point of death. And Paulus, the mastermind behind this, also executed people of the Pagan faiths as Ammianus so sadly and bluntly states.

Sheshbazzar

I've reviewed every post in this thread, and fail to locate anywhere anyone has advocated 'hate' towards Christians.

'Stuff' happened back then. Documents were written, Reports were made.
This is the proper Forum to discuss their content and ramifications.

How does it become 'hate' simply to discuss the content of these ancient rulings and actions?

Is any discussion that does not consist of solely of praising everything that was done by the ancient church an expression of 'hate' towards the Christian religion?
Keeping in mind that the evidence also clearly shows that there originally were many CHRISTIANS that did not agree with or follow these Imperial dictates, until they were either 'persuaded' at the end of Roman sword, or eliminated.

I think I LOVE those old -CHRISTIANS- that had the guts to stand up against this tyrannical take over even to the point of giving up their lives rather than being bulldozed.

stephan huller

If you want to look at a parallel example look at the fate of Christians, Jews and Samaritans who lived under Islamic rule. The Muslims learned how to (mis)treat their minorities from the Byzantines. I remember my Samaritan friend telling me that there are now in Nablus many Muslim families who share his surname. The effect of seemingly endless subtle and no so subtle persecutions.

mountainman

What is the source for this claim, Eusebius? At the heart of this legend is the letter exchange between Big J and the King of Edessa. Eusebius also claims there are Christian bishops in the Persian capital city, and that Mani himself was a Christian heretic.

What are the sources for this claim?


Conversion of pagans via the "popularity" of Constantine

Eusebius reported that "In 324/5 the Phrygian settlement of Orcistus petitioned Constantine, referring to its totally christian population.” Gregory of Nazianzus reported how his father, a great landowner, was converted to Christianity by an opportune dream in the year 325: he had a christian wife already and ended his days as the powerful bishop of the family's home town.

That a rich landholder was prompted in a dream to become Christian c.325 indicates that Constantine was making an impact on the publicity stakes. His military supremacy was well regarded. Town councils and rich "pagans" were trying to get in on the ground floor. There were stampeding supporters in that year, especially in Phrygia. There were so many rich pagans trying to become tax-exempt bishops and clergy of Constantine's revolutionary new and strange religious cult, that Constantine had to legislate against them.

mountainman

This chapter seems to describe an internal war of intellectual respect between Constantius and the pagans and other unbelieving citizens of the Roman Empire, as a result of which he appointed a certain Paulus to an imperial tribunal by which the citizens of Antioch and Alexander might be tried for treason. Anything antithetical to the majesty of the emperor was a treasonable charge.



That's what it looks like. Paul is appointed by the Christian Emperor Constantius, as the head of a powerful tribunal that had the power to torture and execute anyone against whom charges were made in regard to matters of the imperial majesty.


Any one between Antioch and Alexandria who in any way lessens the majesty of the emperor's opinion on religious matters.

XII. Many are prosecuted for treason, and condemned.

I am reasonably confident that Rassias's source for the following is the above from Ammianus.

For those interested in Ammianus ..... Arnaldo Momigliano on Ammianus Marcellinus

mountainman

The same pagan motifs decorate the "Arch of Constantine".

I agree with Huon that "The problem is vast, and has only local solutions. And we are speaking only of the Roman empire, east and west."

The spread of Christianity was augmented by Constantine's personal appointment of Bishops throughout the many dioceses that Diocletian's reform had established throughout the empire. We may be reasonably assured Constantine did not appoint any female bishops. OTOH I suspect many bishops were appointed from his trusted barbarian chieftains who had accompanied him on his ambitious path of conquest for 20 years.



As such any trade with the Roman Empire after Constantine became supreme may have necessitated discussions with Constantine's appointed agents. The spread of christianity thus may have been very unexpected and sudden. It would be quite possible that most people did not have any idea what the new and strange religion was about, only that it was now a revolutionary new presence in the Roman Empire.

mountainman

Antioch was the city in which Constantine gave his inaugural speech about the new and strange religion of Christianity to the populace. It is often referred to as "Constantine's Oration to the Saints" and the saints are presumed to be Christian whereas they may have been pagan.

This oration as PR is full of novelties. In terms of politics and religion, the Christians were first advertised by the Roman Emperor at Antioch, who controlled the city with his army.

sotto voce

If what Constantine spread was Christianity, that might have been so. But Christianity was 'atheism', with no visible means of 'support', and could not be assimilated. So the new imperial religion was a caricature of Christianity, merely the old Roman social control formula, re-packaged.

Now the Romans would not have taken the trouble to re-package, at some considerable expense and inconvenience, had real Christianity not possessed considerable and very widespread influence. It is estimated that no more than one in fifty was Christian in the New Testament sense, but that proportion was evidently enough to cause concern, because Christians could not be bribed or threatened, as other citizens, led by official priests, could be. Emperors were very often nervous about keeping their status, having to keep patricians, plebeians and the army content, and honest men were not necessarily useful in their plots and intrigues.

One may sensibly suppose that Christianity, soon after it came into existence, had reached wherever there were sizeable Jewish communities; those stretched from Cadiz in the west to beyond the Roman border in the east, from the African seaboard in the south to Cologne in the north (using modern nomenclature, of course). Jews had made regular trips to Jerusalem for festivals, and Christianity, or at the least awareness of it, simply cannot have failed to reached the main centres of the diaspora within a few years of the beginning of apostolic preaching.

The 'conversion' of Constantine, the ban of paganism of Theodosius, were the victories of the attrition of the Roman machine over Christianity, that survived within the empire only in secret, or in parts less accessible to legions, if it survived there at all.