jgoodguy

I was thinking it was before that with the explosion of different Christian groups. Nicaea is more of one of those 'extinction events' where only a few 'species' survive.

mountainman

I think there is general agreement that Nicaea can be considered to be the first impact of an extinction event.

The general disagreement occurs in how far back one wants to hypothecize the earlier existence of Christian groups. Some will want to take it back 300 years, others want to see later groups appearing 150 years before. My own view is that we only need to go back 12 years (as far as 312 CE).

All these are only ideas - estimates - supposedly based on evidence. How are they to be separated? So far the only method has been an appeal to the authority of the "Received Tradition", and various mixtures of "faith".

Toto

Pete: this is why people have you on ignore. You continually accuse everyone who disagrees with your theory as relying on faith, or trusting in Eusebius. It's getting old. You are not making any progress.

mountainman

How old is the HJ theory? Is the HJ theory making any progress?

There are no accusations in my above response. I am dealing in ideas Toto, and in the evidence that is able to be presented as images or translations of ancient texts using the net. I am interested and concerned about the method by which these ideas can be compared and tested and evaluated against all the evidence for their respective merits (or otherwise), and I have genuinely associated my own ideas to a given and known spectrum of ideas. (RG Price Myth Spectrum). The spectrum of ideas includes an entry for pious forgery. The investigation of forgery as a common practice in Christian origens has been popularised by Robert Price. It's no big deal.

I can understand that some sensitive souls need to innoculate themselves from entertaining such ideas by using the ignore function.

Toto

Pete, it's not about being sensitive. That's just another personal insult. Your ideas have been entertained and found wanting, but you won't accept that.

mountainman

I am sure that some people considered Remberg's ideas to be an insult to their intelligence. (Some obviously still do) The only thing that separates Remsberg's Silence of the First Century from a more general Silence of the First Three Centuries is perceived evidence, and the dominant single item of perceived evidence resolves itself to the source known as "Eusebius". All this should be obvious.

Toto

You already lost that argument, Pete. You have to discount Dura Europas, amulets, paleaography, and any explanation that makes sense of the evidence we have. You have to assume a vast fogery mill that churned out inconsistent and heretical works.

Please stop.