J-D

Where do we place the fulcrum on Eusebius? Where do we place the fulcrum on Eusebius? Where do we place the fulcrum on Eusebius? Where do we place the fulcrum on Eusebius?

Has anybody ever placed a fulcrum on a historical figure?

If we placed a fulcrum on Eusebius, would Constantine be upset?

mountainman

Dear Spin,

You need to take a read of the ancient historian Robin Lane-Fox who appears to share my position that the "Council" of Antioch was a military related council that would have been standard procedure after Constantine's army defeated the crap out of Lucinius' army. Fox takes over 60 pages to go through this specific time epoch (between supremacy in battle and Nicaea) and spends considerable time on the council of Antioch. This is where Constantine makes his "Oration". Fox tells us makes outrageous claims about the Sybilline oracle predicting the birth of Jesus in the period BCE, and then produces two proofs for his claim which Fox states are totally fraudulent. Here are my notes from Fox.


In the first instance we have two choices: to think of Antioch as a "military council" or to think of Antioch as some form of "theological council". Let's see what other events happened around that time, prior to the (military) council of Nicaea ....

1) Constantine orders the utter destruction the ancient and highly revered temples to Asclepius in Aegae, Cilicia etc)
2) Constantine orders destruction of the Hellenic temple of Venus at Heliopolis
3) Constantine orders destruction of the Hellenic Sanctuary to Ascelpius at Pergamon
4) Constantine orders destruction of the Hellenic Sanctuary to Ascelpius at Antioch
5) Constantine orders destruction of the Hellenic temple of Venus at Heliopolis
6) Constantine orders that the 1800 year standing Obelisk (from Karnack/Heliopolis) be ripped from its base
7) Constantine orders the public execution of certain "head priests" of some these temples
8) Constantine orders for the Prohibition of Temple Services. (This was tantamount to shutting down the public hospital system of antiquity)

9) Pachomius in a vision heads out into the wilderness to form remote monasticism.
10) Constantine marks out the boundaries for "The City of Constantine"
11) Phrygian settlement of Orcistus petitoned Constantine, referring to its totally christian population
12) Gregory of Nazianzus' father, a great landowner, was converted to christianity by an opportune dream

Yes, all looks to be totally theological issues.
Nothing above could have political overtones.


Eusebius of Caesarea appears to have sat at Constantine's right hand at the following major (military) "council" of Nicaea, and according to most historical commentators was well looked-after by Constantine. We know that Constantine had his opposition executed. Constantine even had family members executed. Is this theology?

The politics of the situation will not be clarified by appealing to the theological claims which the winning political party is madly touting. We need to see past what is being touted as a time of great theological significance in order to understand the underlying ancient historical reality.

A modern analogy would be to ask when Hitler invaded Poland, does the correspondence of any meetings held between religious groups in Poland at that time tell us anything about Hitler's theological stance on the academic field of Hebrew theological philosophy? Here I am casting Constantine as a Hitler. Constantine invades the eastern greek speaking empire and commences to execute the leading Hellenic priests and utterly tearing down the largest, the most reverences, the most ancient and renown Hellenic temples and shrines; Hitler invades Poland and starts executing people of the Jewish faith. What has theology got to do with a malevolent invasion where people are being killed for political motives?

Do we have any documents from Tibet indicating that Mao supported Buddha? We have a mass exodus of Tibetan religious leaders
out of Tibet in the 1950's. In ancient history, in the eastern Roman empire c.324 for decades, why did so many people seek refuge in the deserts from the year c.324 onwards, rich landowners leaving all their property and possessions behind? Rich Romans taking their possessions and travelling to the deserts, or to remote Briton for example (See that Roman treasure haul found in Britain).


Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Dear Huon,

I could be wrong. However unlike many here I am quite prepared to be demonstrated to be wrong in this assertion concerning the equivalence of the two authors of antiquity on the one hand Arius of Alexandria and on the other hand the pseudonymous Leucius Charinus. It does appear on the face of things I do agree to be quite a remarkable and astonishing assertion. But it is an assertion which can be either be shown to be consistent or inconconsistent with the evidence available.


In 2009 I will be organising a world-first archaeological project to determine whether in fact the holy apostle Thomas, after he had converted the Hindus and Buddhists to the new Roman state monotheistic canon of scripture, travelled down to Australia and converted any Australian native peoples from their Dreamtime religion. We have some big bets down here saying that he did make it to Australia after serving time for christianity in India, and that he brought with him some of the original pre-Constantinian new testament canonical texts, which we hope to be able to locate in the outback somewhere. Naturally I shall allow the samples to be carbon dated so as to allow those skeptics amongst you to rest a little easier. We have a bevvy of greek speaking chip-shop owners (thanks Steve) to do any translations on the fly, and to double as cooks for tha large team expected to be assembled.

The project is being sponsored by Catholic church, but I am not sure whether the Pope knows anything about it. It's really an exciting time. I am expecting to find my own refutation out there in the deep outback under the stars of the southern cross. Thomas? Where are you?



Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Dear J-D,

Astronomers and astrophysicists are able to gain a depth perspective on distant stars by a process involving parallax.

Ancient historians do not appear to have any such luxury with the claims made in the ecclesiatical history of the christians written by Eusebius since the history appears very one dimensional. The history of Eusebius has zero calibration to anything known by archaeologists of the 21st century, and for as much as I have tried, I do not seem to be able to find one single archaeological citation by which I can unequivocably say the Eusebius is here corroborated in his claims about the existence of prenicene christians.

We have a one dimensional christian fiction.
How to expose it?

Somewhere in his false romantic and sponsored accounts, one or more of the reports of the non canonical texts (ie: the NT apochrypha) will imply a chronology which can n o longer be supported. The fulcrum on Eusebius is to be placed in the field of the chronology of ancient history.


Deep-throat. Nixon?

No but the Pope might be.

Best wishes,


Pete

Toto

I'm not clear how this supports you. Did Hitler need to invent a new religion? The Jews were not a military threat to Hitler - his attempted destruction of European Jewry was based on his theological and pseudo-scientific ideas about purity of blood.

Indeed, we know Mao's (and Marx's) ideas about religion - that it was the opium of the masses and the instrument of keeping Tibetans in a feudalistic and unproductive economy, spinning prayer wheels instead of engaging in commerce.

What does this have to do with Constantine inventing Christianity, or Arius as a non-Christian?

mountainman

Dear Toto,

The issue here is the time period between Constantine's supreme military over Lucinius and the Council of Nicaea, and what is issuing forth from that period, specifically from the preliminary "war-council" of Antioch from which spin is introducing the citation of documents which are supposed to have some deep theological significance.

My response has been to underline the fact that we had a war going on. Constantine was at war with the eastern forces, and his war did not appear to be satisfied by the strangulation of Lucinius in captivity. The war included the despotic actions of the utter destruction of the ancient eastern architecture (did the eastern empire have a "Status of Liberty"?), the execution of chief priests of the local Hellenic religions, and the prohibition of the standard day-to-day temples practices which had operated in the eastern empire for centuries and centuries, hitherto unimpeded.

Constantine was not a christian. His religion on the surface might be called anti-Hellenism and was outwardly extremely fascist. He was at war during the decade leading up to Antioch and Nicaea. For ten years he was at war. These holy "christian" councils of Antioch and Nicaea are better perceived as "anti-Hellenic" military councils, where the victor dictates the terms of peace to the captives, and everything is at the discretion of the victor. People were being executed. A brand new state religion was being touted by Constantine at Antioch in his most famous "Oration to the Eastern Empire". Most importantly the victors preserve the history of the time (which I am of course questioning).

We are taught to make the presumption that Arius of Alexandria was already enrolled in the new official canonical ROman state monotheistic religion, but the political situation allows us also to question this assumption. Was Arius a pagan? Have the christian historians simply glorified their history by writing out of history any and all political resistance to the new official state monotheistic religion? Of course, the authodox say everyone was joyously happy and overjoyed that Constantine had at last liberated the true religious people from their underground sojourn, and that there was no misery when this happened. Eusebius gloats as he recounts the utter destruction of the pagan temples and their priests by Constantine's army.


Best wishes,


Pete

Toto

I repeat - how does any of this indicate that Constantine invented Christianity, as opposed to co-opting an existing religion?

J-D

I understand that it's standard procedure to hold war councils before fighting. I can't see why it would be standard procedure to hold one after the fighting is over. I've never heard of any such.Temples are typically buildings of no military significance. The destruction of temples is typically ideologically motivated, not militarily motivated. The Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan for ideological reasons, not for military ones.Executions for religious and other ideological reasons are a common historical phenomenon. As a matter of fact, I don't expect that Constantine's executions of family members were religiously motivated, but in any case the point is irrelevant. Essentially, you are committing a fallacy of faulty generalisation by reasoning: 'Some of Constantine's actions were not motivated by theology: therefore, all of Constantine's actions were not motivated by theology.' This does not follow.There is no ground for making a general assumption that religious opinions did not have a significant effect on historical events.That is not a correct analogy. A correct analogy would be to ask whether Hitler, or the Nazis generally, ever held meetings to deal with ideological issues, and the answer is that they did.The Nazis' motives for killing Jews were not political. There was no political advantage in it. Quite the reverse. The motives were ideological.Of course not. The Chinese Communists were ideologically opposed to all religions.Yes, we do. In this instance the motives were both political and ideological.I would guess probably for the reasons explained here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decurion_(administrative)

J-D

I don't know why you think that. What it seems to me to be is a wild fantasy wholly unsupported by evidence. You do seem to enjoy your fantasies.You do seem to enjoy your fantasies.

mountainman

Dear Toto,

The absence of archaeological evidence for canonical christianity (depite Eusebius) in the period prior to rise of Constantine can give rise to two distinct postulates: (1) That the co-opted existing christian religion had an extemely small archaeological footprint which has yet to be detected by the archaeologist, or (2) There was in fact no canonical christian religion prior to Constantine. If there was no canonical christianity prior to Constantine and yet he implemented a state monotheistic religion and supported it, and protected it, and legislated for it, and actively promoted subscription to it, then it is logical that he must have created it, or fabricated it when he rose to power. (ie: since it did not exist earlier).

While the mainstream position essentially relies upon the former hypothesis being representative of the true and historical account, my position examines the possibility that the second postulate is in fact the true historical account. At present, because there is no evidence, we have no means by which to distinguish whether the first or second hypothesis is the correct one.

Best wishes,


Pete