mountainman

With a straight face Julian legally renamed the "Christians" c.361-363 CE as "Galilaeans". I would not call Emperor Julian an arian. But you're right about the straight faces. Satire and parody often require a straight face.




The British Labour Party did not promulgate a history of its prior activities for the preceeding 300 years, neither did they put forward a transcendental patron for their movement who lived 300 years or so early. e.g. Shakespeare.


Sacred history poses no problems which are not those of profane history.


The Constantinian forgery mill published a 300 year history which it today still held to be true. The Christian emperor and those who followed in his jackboots kicked the living daylights out of the Greek intellectual tradition.

And yet most people here refuse to seriously question the historical integrity of the manuscripts manufactured during the epoch in which the Constantinian forgery mill was commissioned. Why is this?

sotto voce

I think he probably looked somewhat vexed, actually.

But you wouldn't call him a democrat, either. I hope.

I really wouldn't know.



Well no, because it believed in democracy, not in dictatorship, and re-writing history, as dictators are wont to do. Though of course the Labour Party looked back to a long tradition of activity that has often been said to have originated in Methodism, and might well be said to have originated before that, with Lollards, resourceful, perceptive and eloquent. That's a long history, one of which one may not be in the least ashamed. What it didn't do is claim to have existed before it existed, which is the claim of the appalling, sly, crooked jokers shamefully hiding in the Vatican, 'the which began in Rome feigned of a power higher than angels'.

Oh, there's evidence that Shakespeare of Stratford existed. Like that vexatious Jesus of Nazareth.

But what is sacred? Most history was written by the profane, who being profane, didn't write what actually happened. History does not equal what happened, something that we all tend to forget.

So, one must needs fall back on theology, even philosophy, supposing that the true history of the church will either be written at the end of the world, or not at all.

It still holds that to be true, but nobody believes it, other than small children, and water carriers in Peru.

Very well put, once the joke word is taken out. The Greek intellectual and indeed political traditions were almost certainly much influenced by the culture and history of Israel, that of course also defined the New Testament. Both of those traditions, that were each founded on freedom of expression, were re-awoken centuries after the dictators. It is to those universally agreed 27 documents, that provide the only respectable and reliable means of identifying the church, that historians of the church can use as reference. Over-dressed, sword-wielding buffoons are not for them. Theology is, whether they like it or not.

Playfulness. Or perhaps politics?

mountainman

That's debateable. Even Bullneck was awake to the skeptics.

"Our people have compared the chronologies with great accuracy,
and the 'age' of the Sibyl's verses excludes the view
that they are a post-christian fake."

- Constantine's Oration, Antioch, 325 CE,
- to the (captive and non-christian) Saints

Certainly not history.



If nobody believes the Eusebian history to be true, why does anyone believe anything the source called "Eusebius" states? Expediency? It sounds like Eusebius is a carpet layed over the pre-Nicaean epoch, and everyone sweeps their hypotheses under it.


OK, He was pagan. But he legislated, sponsored, fought very valliantly and published on behalf of the so-called Christians.

sotto voce

Not in a forum based on the Bible.

They don't. People say what they do not believe. It's not just politicians.

Protestants don't, not real ones. As I say, skip everything after Acts and start again with the Renaissance. 'Most everything between is gibberish, sound and fury, signifying nothing. Discussion of the history of Christianity entails doing theology, because otherwise one has no compass, no guide except the biggest dinosaur.

So called. By calling them Christians, he 'immunised' them from Christianity.

Duvduv

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/novel146.asp

The regulation in the form of a letter from Justinian to Areobindus about the Jews in Aerobindus's realm in the second decade of the 6th century makes no sense because Justinian did not become Emperor until a decade or more after Aerobindus had died.

Furthermore, the restrictions on studying the Mishna indicated make absolutely no sense either. Roman law had accepted the Jews and their religion, and the Mishnah had already been redacted at the end of the second century. No Theodosian code regulations ever affected the books used by the Jews in the two hundred years before Justinian. And this letter does not sound like a general law of the Empire anyway.

I have a feeling the Greek word is mistranslated as "Mishnah." As I mentioned, the mishnah had been around for several hundred years undisturbed. In fact this was in the period of the redaction of the Talmud Gemara, and nothing in Jewish tradition recounts any problems. And why would Justinian say that the Hebrews should disregard "the commentaries" when the Christians themselves such as Jerome and Augustine were very familiar with and used the "commentaries" on the Torah (which is not even the same thing as the mishnah)?

And the Emperor himself is responding positively to the Jews who wanted to expel heretics from their own communities in the context of discussing whether the Jews in Aerobindus's realm should study the Scriptures in languages other than Hebrew.

In fact the following part of the Letter seems to interrupt the flow of what precedes and follows it and doesn't even make sense since it goes beyond the issue of the languages involved and permission for it, but has the Emperor interfering in what people actually read:

But the Mishnah, or as they call it the second tradition, we prohibit entirely. For it is not part of the sacred books, nor is it handed down by divine inspiration through the prophets, but the handiwork of man, speaking only of earthly things, and having nothing of the divine in it. But let them read the holy words themselves, rejecting the commentaries, and not concealing what is said in the sacred writings, and disregarding the vain writings which do not form a part of them, which have been devised by them themselves for the destruction of the simple

Duvduv

Then there is the matter of the complaints of the canons and John Chrysostom about gentiles using the phylacteries and going to the Jewish baths. Louis Feldman seems to interpret this as referring to the mikveh. But no non-Jews would go there unless they were in the process of conversion, nor would they use the phylacteries (tefillin) or eat matzah. Certainly any regular Christian knew that "the Law" was obsolete and as a believing Christian would have no reason to adopt such Jewish practices as part of "judaizing Christianity" unless such "Christians" rejected Pauline Christianity altogether, about which is not what the canons or Chrysostom accuse any of them.

DCHindley

Corpus Juris Civilis, Novella 146.I.ii

But the Mishnah, or as they call it the second tradition, we prohibit entirely. For it is not part of the sacred books, nor is it handed down by divine inspiration through the prophets, but the handiwork of man, speaking only of earthly things, and having nothing of the divine in it.

CAPUT I.2

Eam vero quae ab eis dicitur secunda editio interdicimus, utpote sacris non coniunctam libris neque desuper traditam de prophetis, sed inventionem constitutam virorum , ex sola loquentibus terra et divinum in ipsis habentibus nihil.

[What is called the second edition is prohibited wholly, since it is not connected with the sacred books or from traditions of the prophets, but was invented by men, who speak only of the earth and nothing divine is in it.]

THN DE PAR' AUTOIS LEGOMENHN DEUTERWSIN APAGOREUOMEN PANTELWS, hWS TAIS MEN IERAIS OU SUNANEILHMMENEN BIBLOIS AUDE ANWQEN PARADEDOMENHN EK TWN PROFHTWN, EXEURSSIN DE OUSAN ANDRWN EK MONHS LALOUNTWN THS GHS KAI QEION EN AUTOIS ECONTWN OUDEN.

[But that according to what they call secondary it is prohibited completely. …]

Corpus juris civilis; vol 3 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1888)

I guess the word "Mishna" is not there in any form, just "secondary" or "second edition" referring to the now-written oral tradition. I suppose that could refer to the development of the talmud, but I don't know why the English translators think this must have meant the Mishna. I think the emperor thought that if Jews simply read the scriptures in a language they understood, then the prophets would plainly show that the culmination of God's plan was achieved by means of Jesus Christ (duh).

DCH

Duvduv

Thanks, David. Unfortunately the whole thing makes no sense if it is even authentic. It's not a general law, and it contradicts the intents of the letter itself, which was to be helpful to Jews and Areobindus. Not to mention that the mishnaic tradition was not addressed ever before. Something doesn't make sense here.

DCHindley

Well, here is what G R S Mead says of the Justinian Novella in Did Jesus Live 100 BC? page 86-87:

"FROM Justinian, who, as early as 553 A.D., honoured it [the Talmud] by a special interdictory Novella, down to Clement VIII., and later a space of over a thousand years both the secular and the spiritual powers, kings and emperors, popes and anti-popes, vied with each other in hurling anathemas and bulls and edicts of wholesale confiscation and conflagration against this luckless book."

So writes Immanuel Deutsch, and truly, in his graphic and romantic panegyric, which for the first time gave the English-reading public a reasonable account of the Talmud and its history. [Deutsch (I.)., art. "What is the Talmud?"; in "The Quarterly Review"; (London), Oct. 1867, pp. 417-464.]

Although it has been lately disputed whether it is the Talmud expressly to which Justinian referred in his edict "Concerning the Jews," of February 13, 553, it seems highly probable that Deutsch is correct. By this outrageous Novella the wretched Hebrews were permitted to use only a Greek or Latin translation of the Torah in their synagogues. They were strictly for bidden to read the Law in Hebrew, and, above all things, they were prohibited from using what is called the "second edition" (secunda editio), which was evidently also written in Hebrew or Aramic. This "second edition" can hardly mean anything else than the Mishna and its completions, for the Greek equivalent of mishna was deuterwsis, generally taken by those imperfectly acquainted with Hebrew to signify some "second rank" or form of the Law, instead of "learning" in the secondary sense of "repetition."

DCH

Duvduv

Well, that little piece does seem to interrupt the flow of the other issues. I don't see it like Deutsch at all.