spamandham

Perhaps I'm just dense, but I don't see anything in the Dura evidence that could not have been part of pre-christian ideas incorporated into Christianity by "the boss" (as Pete would call him). Again though, I don't think Pete's position is the simplest.

jeffevnz

Then it boils down to semantics. We have a pretty rock solid case that an important part of the Gospel story existed before 257 AD. It was clearly part of a larger story, and given the textual dependency, it's a reasonable inference that that story resembled the synoptic Gospel narrative at least in part. Even if the stories weren't called Christian, and Constantine just hijacked them for his new religion, it's still the case that the stories existed beforehand. Much of the set of core beliefs we now call Christianity was around.

And if someone wants to argue that it wasn't 'really' Christianity because Constantine hadn't made some key changes or additions yet, then that's going down a slippery slope, because many key changes in the beliefs continued to be made all through the Middle Ages, and right down to today. The point is that the root stories were apparently already around in 257.

Toto

Pete - we're not getting through.

When the LXX was translated into Greek, the Jewish hero Joshua was translated as IHSOUS which was much later translated to the English Jesus.

One version of the mythicist hypothesis speculates that the mythical hero was named Jesus/Joshua after the mythical Joshua of the Exodus story.

Or, if you are a historicist, you know that the name Jesus was a common one, and there is nothing unusual about someone named Jesus in first century Palestine.

But in any case, Jesus is just the Greek translation of Joshua. They are the same name, whether written out in full or abbreviated.

Clivedurdle

But these allegedly xian ideas can be tracked back well before Jesus!

Messiah - Daniel
Love your neighbour - numbers
walking on water - splitting the red sea

xians in fact are proud that Jesus is foretold in the Hebrew Bible!

So it is not just semantics but a serious problem - when does it become recognisably xian - and interestingly Constantine is an important point, but Ambrose may be more important!

mountainman

Dear Toto,

Who was the hero Joshua and when did he live?

This is not the case at hand. We are dealing with a specific bit of text which spin is citing as one of the components to be used to refute my thesis that the christianity that we all know (ie: the canon of Constantine) was a fourth century fabrication of older materials.

My detractors are saying things like "We have a pretty rock solid case that an important part of the Gospel story existed before 257 AD.". What we have is he appearance of the abbreviation for Joshua appearing on this document. Who is to argue otherwise. Here is my reasoning.

Let's use Ben's introductory summary (which btw I find well done) as follows:

As readers can themselves perceive, it is absolutely not a fragment of the canonical new testament. Neither may it be said to mention the name of Jesus, since it does not mention the name of jesus. What it does cite, thanks very much mr. spin for bringing this citation up, is the abbreviated form of a name, of a hero in hebrew tradition, who probably lived well before the time in question. That's it. Anything further is plain conjecture.

Since the fragment is not the canon, and since it does not mention Jesus by name in the sense of the canonical narratives, then it cannot be regarded as anyway dependent upon canonical christianity.

Consequently I find that at least this "Dura fragment" part of the evidence which is here being used in an attempt to refute the existence of the appearance of Jesus as a literary fiction of the fourth century, is insufficient for the purpose.

Dont give up hope however, Maybe there is some more evidence spin (or others - everyone can feel free to join in the great hunt for evidence) which can be used to refute the thesis. Does anyone want to discuss the Prosenes inscription or the Basilides inscription in Rome. The latter is also securely dated to around about the year 250 CE, and thus has a slight chronological priority over the Dura artefact. The inscription is openly declared and presumed by some commentators to be christian on the basis of the epitaph "He sleeps".

Best wishes,



Pete

Toto

The Hebrew mythic hero Joshua lived in ancient times. If there were any evidence for his existence, you could say that he lived about 1200 BCE. He was Moses' lieutenant, who conquered the land of Canaan and established the nation of Isreal. There are no stories about him being crucified, women did not come to his cross, and he had no connection to Joseph of Arimathea. There is no way that this fragment concerns the earlier Joshua.

Clivedurdle

P 10 of this pdf file notes possible xian pagan gnostic evidence from the 270's.

thehumanjourney.net/pdf_store/sthames/iow%20Roman.pdf


I cannot copy and paste the three paragraphs starting perhaps and noting Bachus, buried cockerels, a cockerel headed man and xian symbiols in close proximity...

jeffevnz

We're not just talking about a fragment with themes that we see in Christianity. We're talking about something that clearly has some kind of textual dependence relationship with the Gospels. The two share a common source. And I think it's fair to say that the Gospel stories, even if in a different form, are recognizably Christian. Wherever you draw the line between Christian and non-Christian literature, something sharing a source with the Gospels belongs in the Christian column, even if it needs an asterisk.

EDIT: On a tangent, your post prompted me to read about Ambrose, and I learned some cool, if morbid, trivia. His remains are on display in a church in Milan, where they have been continuously venerated since antiquity. According to Wiki, his is "one of the oldest extant bodies of historical personages outside of Egypt."

mountainman

Dear jeffevnz,

The two must also share some mutual chronological framework so that we can easily perceive which came first, and which came second.

Yes, I would agree that the canonical gospel stories, which we know for certain were published in the fourth century at the latest, represent what we all today recognise as the christian new testament. The problem is, however, that we have no evidence that this literature predated Constantine other than the bold assertions of Constantine's propagandists.

Mutual to all spreadsheets is the column that says Century. Since I cannot find any evidence for jesus, or the thirteen apostles, or the existence of any christian churches, or church-houses (Setting aside for the moment any issue with suspected christian house-churches at Dura), or christian art, or christian epigraphy, or christian archaeological relics, etc, etc, etc in centuries one, two and three, I have written four in this column.

I understand that this appears as entirely couter-intuitive to practically every reader here. It is contrary to our tradition. It is contrary to the what we were been told by our fathers and what they were told by their fathers and so forth, and so on, all the way back to the fourth century and Constanine, who weilded the very first christian authority, and who told us what we should believe. Sorry, but I dont buy the fabrication of the Galilaean Constantine, and I insist that it is a fiction of Eusebius created out of extant literature at the disposal of the Pontifex Maximus with effect from the 28th October in the year 312 CE.

The Greek academics of the eastern empire were aware of this, but what could they do? They had no power to object (other than, IMO, to author the NT apochryphal literature). Special notice should be taken that for the duration of the period of Constantine's rule 305-337 CE we do not have any other "historical reports" other than those who are either directly perceived to be Constantine's propagandists (ie: christian ecclesiatical historians) or the later continuators of Eusebius. We do not possess anything anti-Constantine from someone in the era of Constantine, other than the simple words of Arius of Alexandria, whatever these words may mean (to you). The pattern of similar facts suggests that Constantine is best viewed politically as a malevolent despot who established an anti-Hellenic emperor cults which, in the course of a century, took the Hellenic civilisation down a very dark and oppressive road, at the end of which, after the library of Alexandria was shed of its conflicting historical and literature accounts, the tax-exempt christian bishop Cyril took up the pen to develop the phyla of christian christologies, and to soundly refute those lies of Emperor Julian.


Best wishes,


Pete

J-D

The 'Creed of Ulfilas', as recorded by Auxentius, is post-Eusebian evidence for the doctrines of the post-Constantinian Arian church, and is fundamentally incompatible with Pete's version.But Constantine did not create a monolithic Christianity. Divergent forms of Christianity continued to exist after Constantine, just as they had before. Obviously the Constantinian achievement was an important development in the history of Christianity. Nobody disputes this. The standard conventional accounts recognise its importance. It is not necessary to accept Pete's interpretation to acknowledge this.Now, whether you realise it or not, and whether you are prepared to admit it or not, you are siding with standard history and against Pete's version. Standard history accepts that Constantine imposed a new orthodoxy, but also affirms that there were pre-Constantinian versions of Christianity. Pete denies that there was any pre-Constantinian Christianity and insists that Constantine's imposition of orthodoxy was the very beginning of Christianity.I have seen no evidence for this.