Doug Shaver

You reinforce my suspicion that you do not intend to answer my question. My opinion of whether Julian was an apostate cannot shed any light on what you think constitutes apostasy.

mountainman

Apostasy

mountainman

Here is an alternative explanation: the cessation of the church executing people for their antithetical beliefs in the 18th century, gave rise to the publications of such beliefs with more freedom of speech from the 18th century, thereby explaining Ehrman's claim.


How do we assess which of these two explanations best explains all the evidence?

mountainman

The "Index Librorum Prohibitorum" was maintained from Eusebius in the 4th century until Ratzinger in the 21st century, and had the purpose of censoring literary material that was generated within and without the direct control of the Vatican. There may have been discussions, and statements made that certain people believed that Jesus was more appropriately to be termed "fabulous" instead of "historical" for example. The inquisitions which commenced in the 4th century and lasted to the 18th 0r 19th century obviously made short work of such books and such authors.

However the above comment on source criticism describes the cultural atmosphere inside the church, and the education system that it sponsored in many countries until recent decades. The Bible was ASSUMED to be true by the student theologians, and this instruction has been passed on since at least the Council of Nicaea. Today, whether we like it or not, we are told that Jesus was historical, although the Bible may be at least partly forged.

Who are we told this by?

People trained in Bible college.


I wonder where they get their ideas from?




Such medieval texts (if authored then) would have been burnt by the Inquisitional Christian Church, and their authors executed, since the Church operated and in places still operates on the "One True Word". The holiness of various "Holy Writs" has been protected by an endless procession of executed heretics, who disgreed in its status.



People had to be careful in what they wrote before the 18th century.


I have noted the UNBELIEF of Arius, and others who recorded it, such as Nestorius in the 5th century. Everyone must be clear on the fact that the church of heresiology burnt books and executed their preservers.

The claim of Ehrman and the Mainstreamers - that the idea that Jesus did not exist is a modern (18th century) idea - is based on the evidence that we have no written sources before the 18th century in which Jesus is assumed otherwise.

But just think about it for a moment. In an age which has lasted from the 4th to the 18 century - 1500 years of despotic inquisitional control - where the publication of writings against the Church might clearly be known to invite a very swift and certain death, who in their right mind would widely publish major heretical ideas, such as Jesus was not historical, or that a personality they called Jesus (in the NT) was never born.


Can we therefore reasonably expect to find hand-written sources before the 18th century that present major heresies in their accounts and texts? We found the Nag Hammadi Codices, but how lucky was that?

The organisation which promoted the authentic Jesus was also conducting fascist destruction of texts that presented all other types of Jesus (including the mythical and Gnostic etc).


Do Ehrman and the Mainstreamers mention this little fact in passing?


People had to be careful in what they wrote before the 18th century.

Doug Shaver

Thank you. Now to your last question: Was Julian an apostate?

Answer: I don't know, because I have not examined the evidence that would enable me to answer the question.

Doug Shaver

I haven't figured out how you do such assessments, but I don't see how events from the 18th century onward can explain anything that happened or didn't happen before the 18th century.

Juma

A different way to treat old texts. (quellkritik)?
The french revolution?
the industrial revolution
The scientific revolution?

All this made people change their mindsets.

mountainman

I agree, and these all may be summarized as 'education'.

Armed with education the mindsets of the general person has expanded a great deal, with these revolutions, and it has enabled us to view the past in a more informed manner. Dogma is being questioned.

I see Ehrman's claim, as follows, is a typical example of dogma which should be critically questioned.

Ehrman and the Mainstreamers claim that they cannot find any manuscript, book, fragment of writing before the 18th century in which the historical jesus is not assumed, and from this hypothesize that nobody before the 18th century ever conceived of a mythical (i.e. non historical) jesus.

This is one explanation for the data. It may not be the most appropriate explanation. It appears to be a very superficial and self-serving explanation.


I have provided above an alternative explanation: the cessation of the church executing people for their antithetical beliefs in the 18th century, gave rise to the publications of such beliefs with more freedom of speech from the 18th century, thereby explaining Ehrman's claim.

How do we assess which of these two explanations best explains all the evidence?

I dont know atm.

But it seems rather obvious to me that if the church was actively prosecuting people who presented antithetical views of jesus before the 18th century, and that this prosecution implied that a written statement (or even a reported conversation) antithetical to the church would lead to a certain and painful death, then it would be reasonable that we are not likely to find such statements in the extant literature before the inquisition of the church was forced to stop. The utterly depraved inquisitions of the church are attested as early as the 4th century, and continued through 15 centuries to the 18th century.

Doug Shaver

Such events changed the minds of people who were alive when they occurred. They could not have affected the minds of people living before they occurred.

Doug Shaver

The kind of rank bigotry against religion expressed in this thread has become entirely too routine in this forum, and too few of the regulars seem to disapprove of it.

I've had enough. I'm out of here.