mountainman

Try THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, BY SOCRATES SCHOLASTICUS

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Roger Pearse

Evidence?

Lucretius

Reading the Murdoch book (I would recommend it by the way ) I found this one reference to one of Julian's own letter (Ep 17) in which he refers to himself as Pontifex Maximus ,the letter itself concerns the punishment for a town where a (pagan) priest had been assaulted (My emphasis)

The Last Pagan ,Adrian Murdoch, Chapter 7 page 137 footnote 25

Sadly I have not as yet been able to find an online reference .

Roger Pearse

Nice to see that. Thank you Lucretius.

Given Julian's antiquarianism, he was pretty certain to have used the title.

mountainman

There is no evidence outside of Eusebius before the fourth
century which can be used to literally check Eusebius in a
fully critical and unambiguous sense.

Anyone who approaches this question with a certain degree
of objectivity will admit as much. The problem of course is
that the objectivity required to pursue this question is not
usually to be found in people who have been "brought up"
to assume the belief of the universal church of Jesus C.


The hypothesis that he literally invented materials for his
ecclesiastical history is commensurate with a political theory
of ancient history in which the rise of christianity in the fourth
century is simply explained by the intolerant politics of the
emperor Constantine, and the absolute power that he held,
over all lives in the empire at that time.

The relative consistency of evidence supporting the Eusebian
truthfulness paradigm, and the Eusebian fiction paradigm has
yet to be examined by scholarship.

People today are not compelled to believe (without evidence)
in that universal church to which Eusebius alone holds
the keys. We only have his word, as the deliverer of the gospels,
the Acts and the History to his emperor Coinstantine, who indeed
retained Eusebius at his right hand in such matters, that what he
presented was not simply a fabulous account, a monstrous tale,
or indeed a fabrication and a fiction of men, which was composed
by wickedness and the desire to control the captive and subjugated
populations of the (particulalry Eastern) empire c.324 CE.

Noone want to contemplate Constantine was a despot.
And noone wants to admit in the possibility that their
cherished belief system is in fact not divine, but man
made, quite some time back now.

The 21st century is an age of growing up and maturing.
Perhaps the most erudite ancient historian of the 20th
century needs to be studied with a little more respect?



Best wishes,


Pete Brown

patcleaver

I like your stuff, but some minor points.

There is no evidence at all that Mark and Matthew were not simply anonymous. In fact ancient works of fiction were often anonymous. They were probably first attributed to Mark and Matthew long after the actual authors were gone. Nobody knows who wrote the gospels. There was so much fraud and interpolation and fictionalizing that I even doubt that Luke was written by a guy named Luke.

Some of the so called letters of Paul are just fraud but some of them are probably psuedographia. We do not know if there was a Paul, but there was certainly a legend of Paul.

Psuedographia is a type of fraud. It is perfectly reasonable to call any "psuedographia" a fraudulent document despite Christian whining about it.

There is no evidence that the original authors of the oral tails or scribes of the Pentateuch claimed that the works were by Moses.

Its possible that Rowling is under the imperious curse and taking dictation at night from Harry or God for that matter.

Yea, in ancient times paper cost about today's equivalent of $30 per page. By the time the stories were written down around 400 to 500 BC Jewish Priests were probably already telling them in a temple as absolute truth

I like your story. "The blessed Pocahontas" very funny. Ben Franklin and Gorge Washington would be proud.

patcleaver

I looked at your site for a few minutes - great site - I will spend some more time there later.

Some comments / minor criticisms:

I think your are way too conservative. I do not think anything special happened during Constantan's reign. He seems to be just another Emperor pope in a line stretching back to Caesar and forward into the 5th century.

The only evidence that Constantine or anyone else at that time even thought that the Jesus of Nazareth myth might be true are the fictions and outright forgeries of Eusebius the forger.

How do we know that Eusebius has not been revised. After all the Catholic Church had control of all the religious documents until the enlightenment. No document before that time is reliable unless it is Carbon dated or we can find copies that were not in control of the Christians.

We know that the Nicean creed was not revised to include anything related to the Jesus of Nazareth story until at least the counsel of Constantinople 381. We have the Gospel of Judas, but no evidence that it was anyting but fiction that nobody believed anyway.

Is there any significant store of literature written between 325 and 381 that unambiguously refers to anyone believing in Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus of Judea.

We have lots of reasons to think that the God of Sol Invictus was sometimes referred to as anointed savior (i.e. Jesus Christ). That is what Paul seems to have called Mithra (before Mithra was combined into Sol Invictus).

I think there were groups called Christian for thousands of years before Eusebius - it would be like a cult calling itself "the chosen" today. We know that there were thousands of cults and that the followers of some of the cults that called themselves Christians had nothing to do with any Jesus of Nazareth.

"Egypt, which you commended to me, my dearest Servianus, I have found to be wholly fickle and inconsistent, and continually wafted about by every breath of fame. The worshipers of Serapis (here) are called Christians, and those who are devoted to the god Serapis (I find), call themselves Bishops of Christ." – Hadrian to Servianus, 134A.D. (Quoted by Giles, ii p86)

Chrestus (Christus) was another name for the Egyptian god, Serapis. The name could be translated into Hebrew as messiah. It is possible that Christianity may have started as a heresy of the worshipers of Serapis in Alexandria.

Alexandria was the center of the worship of Serapis. There was also a large community of Jews in Alexandria and there was some relationship between the Jews and the worshipers of Serapis. The followers of Serapis were also expelled from Rome when, in 19 AD, Tiberius expelled the Jews.

"Nero procured others to be accused, and inflicted exquisite punishment upon those people, who were in abhorrence for their crimes, and were commonly known by the name of Christians. They had their denomination from Christus, who in the reign of Tibertius was put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate. . . . .At first they were only apprehended who confessed themselves of that sect; afterwards a vast multitude discovered by them, all of which were condemned, not so much for the crime of burning the city, as for their enmity to mankind. . . ." (Tacitus, Annals, 15, 44).

There is no reliable evidence that that anyone worshiped any crucified criminal from Judea before at least 381. This is clearly about the worshiper's of Serapis but "who in the reign of Tibertius was put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate " is an obvious Christian interpolation.

The Medieval Christians had complete control over all the religious literature until the enlightenment and they tampered with it extensively. That material is completely incompetent to prove anything that the Catholic Church believed before the enlightenment.

patcleaver

Please state exactly what statemetns you need a source for. Much of what I say is well known, some of it has sources, some of it is common sense or arguemetns from common sense and sources.

Roger Pearse

You need specific references for each specific assertion that you makes, and these must be references to scholarly sources or (better) ancient sources.

If you attempt to obtain these -- much is online -- you will quickly find that much of what the stuff above is hogwash. Much of it is stuff that we've all seen n-times before, you see. I doubt that I was the only one who groaned to see that 'Serapis=Christ' crap yet again -- I thought we'd really seen the end of it. Slightly more careful reading of the Historia Augusta letter of Hadrian -- the supposed source for this one -- shows this.

At the moment all your posts are merely embarassing the educated atheists in here, you know.

Why not list the books and sites from which you're getting this, and hear what they say?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Does anyone fancy scanning Julian's letters? The Loeb volume is out of copyright in the US.

I don't fancy it because I hate putting on my site stuff on which Loeb are still making money, and so where they might sue me. It's still in copyright in the UK for another 15 years.