Vincent Guilbaud

Camio said that Serge Bardet
But he surely didn't read:
JOSEPHUS ON THE ROCKS
Or even:
JOSEPHUS UNBOUND
and there are many others...

"Between the academy in which our clergy are trained and the pews in which our church members sit is a gap in knowledge of enormous proportions. Indeed, that gap might better be described as a void."
John Shelby Spong Liberating the Gospels p.235

Very few books have been translated in French, including academic ones.
Serge Bardet might be a doctor in history, but his arguments are non sense.

jgreen44

Jeremiah 8:8
"How can you say, 'We are wise, And the law of the LORD is with us'? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes Has made it into a lie."

Bishop Eusebius, the official propagandist for Constantine, entitles the 32nd Chapter of his 12th Book of Evangelical Preparation:

"How it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived."

yalla

Is this correct?
I have seen it asserted that authors may not be the writers of the chapter headings and that Eusebius may not have written the above.
On what authority this is said I have no idea.
I suspect we have been down this path before.

Can anyone settle this isssue?

spamandham

...or it proves that the interpolater was later than Origen and wished to discredit his claims. ...or it proves that Origen was aware that Josephus had not mentioned Jesus and wished to explain that absence away. ...or it proves that Origen had no idea what he was talking about. ... or it proves that the works of Origen were interpolated as well.

...or Christianity was insignificant or nonexistent when Josephus wrote and he was thus unaware of it. ...or Josephus actually is the author of Mark and didn't want to tip his hand.

...another explanation being, that it is not authentic.

...these arguments are exceedingly week, requiring a bit of question begging to accept.

Vincent Guilbaud

Second argument of Serge Bardet is:
But if these Christians of the first Century in Rome were worshipping only a mythical Christ,
Josephus could hardly be aware of an historical Jesus!!!

Bardet, Pierre Geoltrain and Camio on this forum have no idea of what they are talking about.

Toto

This was settled in an old thread here.

In many ancient documents, the chapter headings were added by later copyists, but that chapter heading is from Eusebius.

The sort of unresolved question was whether Eusebius meant falsehood or fiction (i.e. a story that everyone knew was just a story.)

Clivedurdle

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=205276

Clivedurdle

We have a reasonably clear timeline.

Marathon

Alexander conquers Judea

Rubicon.

Caesars and Cleopatra.

Augustus

Imperial Cult

Judaic messianism

Very detailed and long term interactions between Judaism and Rome. Judea major Roman foreign policy issue for a long time, probably related to position between Rome and Persia.

Josephus conjoins Judaism and Rome.

Various oriental cults - including a christ one - develop because of these complex interactions.

200 years later an emperor conjoins one oriental/new Judaism/true god cult with the Imperial cult.

Roger Pearse

Apparently not, since this bogus version of the material continues to circulate.

The "quotation" given is misleading. It was invented by Gibbon in his Vindication in order to justify his own earlier fraudulent comments in the Decline and Fall. There is only one English translation of the Praeparatio Evangelica, and it doesn't give that text.

(I'd give the real text, but I'm too full of cold to do much. It's on the web).

As far as I know, we don't have any certain grounds to pronounce either way.

The "chapter heading" was not placed there by Eusebius. The book has a summary at the front, which contains this sentence, and the summary was broken up into chapter headings later. The author of the summary certainly had this passage in mind, tho.

The difficulty is the lack of proper studies on the whole question of chapter titles and book summaries in ancient books. All pronouncements on the subject seem to be subjective. Certainly some summaries were authorial -- Richard Carrier pointed out that those of Pliny the Elder must be. But since several circulate for Livy, clearly some were just the work of clerks.

My own preference is that we shouldn't say something in a book is not authorial without good reason. I merely highlight the uncertainty.

Since in that section of the book he is discussing the use of stories and parables in the bible for people too stupid to understand philosophy, and language such as "God getting angry", it seems fairly clear that he means "fiction" (i.e. stories). The alternative we are supposed to believe -- that Eusebius is calling the bible a "falsehood" -- requires rather more evidence than one interpretation of a dodgy heading in the middle of a very long book about how Greek teaching parallels that of the bible. The phrase "quote-mining" comes to mind.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

No, they didn't.

None of these authors' extant works "describe Christianity in detail" -- they are apologetic works.

And those whom the apostles appointed tossed them straight out of the church as people telling lies they made up themselves. I don't quite see how the claims of people whom the early Christians rejected, as not sharing their religion, can be evidence.

Well, you'd need to list some, and this will be hard because none of them did. And no, we can't use as evidence people whom the early Christians rejected as liars.

All the best,

Roger Pearse