mountainman

The original thread concerned the issue of the question:
"Was Julian Lying", as reported by the bishop Cyril.


Discussions there lead to the separate question
as yet unanswered as to whether Julian has copyright
in the term "Galilaeans" (which then was a pejorative
for "lawless brigands") when applied to Christians,
in antiquity.

Can anyone answer the second question?
Thanks for the attention.


Pete Brown

Roger Pearse

Done long since, but it doesn't deal with the trick of initiating endless threads.

Thank you Toto for merging it back in.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

VoxRat

Are you speculating here? Or do you actually have any evidence for this?

Possibly. And who could blame him? But (a) that doesn't mean he didn't have other, perfectly good, reasons to reject it, and (b) it only supports my point that his primary motivation in rejecting Christianity didn't follow from a power mania. You also have not given me any reason to believe he was particularly "paranoid".

Toto

You are trying the patience of this Board. You never made any sense of your oriignal question of whether Julian was "lying." The idea that Julian would have a "copyright" on the use of the term "Galilaeans" to refer to Christians is incoherent - Julian certainly knew the gospels, which located the first Christians in Galilea. Are you asking if Julian was the first to think of insulting Christians this way? What sort of data would bear on this? What research have you done on the question? Why do you think it is important?

figuer

Is there any Jewish record claiming Christianity to be the invention of Constantine?

If there is none, then there is no merit in discussing such a fanciful conception.

The idea that the Jews would fail to keep records about a Roman emperor taking their scriptures, adding a whole new section while claiming that it is 300 years old, making one of their own an incarnate god etc. is beyond reasonable.

J-D

Yes, I can answer that question.

The answer is no, Julian did not have copyright, because copyright long postdates Julian

mountainman

In regard to which question?
If it is in regard to the second question
please see the quote from Gibbon below.


I think it should be obvious that the term used in the gospels
and the term used by Julian are used in entirely different ways,
and that Julian does not call Christians "Galilaeans" because of
the use of that term in the gospels.


Yes -- that is what I am asking.

A study of the useage of the term in the sources.


Only a brief survey via google to-date which has yielded the
following references ....


From here on Josephus about Zealots:

Josephus often uses the word “robber”
as equivalent to “zealot”.
For Josephus, Zealots became gangsters,
killing for personal gain,
killing Jews rather than gentiles
and fighting amongst each other.

It transposed, like the Mafia,
from a liberation movement into gangs of criminals.
Zealots became robbers.
John describes Barabbas as a robber.

We have Jospephus on the sect of Judas the Galilean,
that distinctly links up with Epictetus usage.

"They also do not value dying any kinds of death, nor indeed do they heed the deaths of their relations and friends, nor can any such fear make them call any man lord. And since this immovable resolution of theirs is well known to a great many, I shall speak no further about that matter; nor am I afraid that any thing I have said of them should be disbelieved, but rather fear, that what I have said is beneath the resolution they show when they undergo pain."

Josephus Antiquities of the Jews,Whiston 18:1:1

Yet was there one Judas, a Gaulonite, of a city whose name was Gamala, who, taking with him Sadduc, a Pharisee, became zealous to draw them to a revolt, who both said that this taxation was no better than an introduction to slavery, and exhorted the nation to assert their liberty

and again, elsewhere:

"The Galilaeans are warlike from infancy, and always numerous".

From here

Letters written by Bar Kosiba in 135 AD found at Murabba'at, about 12 miles from Qumran, complain about the lack of support he is getting from the Galilaeans and yet he warns one of his generals: "Not to wrong any of the Galilaeans who are with you."

and ...

Judas the Galilaean and his followers were called barjonim—we would say guerrillas. Judas the Galilaean was explicitly called Judas Barjona.

Other sources I have not yet checked include ...

3) Hegesippus says the Galileans are a Jewish sect that are against Christians

4) Hyppolytus, writing about 230 AD, confirms that the Zealots were indeed a branch of the Essenes. The Galilaeans of the gospels were members of the same sect, not just people from Galilee.

5) Justus of Tiberias ?


Historical Commentary and Notes

1) Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)

Galilæans, a fanatical sect, followers of one Judas of Galilee,
who fiercely resented the taxation of the Romans,
and whose violence contributed to induce the latter
to vow the extermination of the whole race.

2) Source: http://www.askwhy.co.uk/christianity...rsecution.html

The common factor between Galilaeans, meaning men from Galilee, and Galilaeans, meaning men that did not recognize any authority but God’s and therefore rejected Roman rule, was that Galilee was a Jewish state not subject to the Sanhedrin. So from the time of Judas of Gamala, rebels who refused to accept the Romans and their puppets in Judaea were called Galilaeans. Since Galilee literally means a region, implying provincial, it also denotes them as barjonim, outlaws—men that live on the outside, in the provinces.

3) The word Galilaean became for the Romans a synonym for Jewish rebel.


4) http://www.searchgodsword.org/com/ts...er=13&verse=33

The Galilaeans are frequently mentioned by Josephus as the most turbulent and seditious people, being upon all occasions ready to disturb the Roman authority. It is uncertain to what event our Lord refers; but is probable that they were the followers of Judas Gaulonitis, who opposed paying tribute to Caesar and submitting to the Roman

and finally to

5) The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
By Edward Gibbon

Chapter XVI: Conduct Towards The Christians,
From Nero To Constantine. Part II.

"Under the appellation of Galilaeans,
two distinctions of men were confounded,
the most opposite to each other in their manners and principles;

the disciples who had embraced the faith of Jesus of Nazareth,
and the zealots who followed the standard of Judas the Gaulonite.

The former were the friends, the latter were the enemies, of human kind,
and the only resemblance between them consisted in the same inflexible constancy,
which, in the defence of their cause, rendered them insensible of death and tortures."

Because I think its quite possible that Julian was telling
the plain and simple historical truth, and that this plain
and simple political truth, known to the Greek speaking
eastern empire from 325 until the end of the century
until it was destroyed and censored by Cyril. .

I think that it is important to treat the academic emperor
Julian with a little more respect.

He thought that it was expedient to take the time out
of his short life (less than the FJ) to write down his
convictions about the fabrication of lawless brigands.

He may well be right.




Best wishes,


Pete Brown


PS: The following is from Gregory Nazianzen,
"Julian the Emperor" (1888).
Oration 4: First Invective Against Julian.

It is included to show Gregory Nazianzen description of the
use of the term "Galilaeans" by Julian, and to show it that
the term "Galileans" was made a legal appellation

74. But in spite of this, he slighted all these things, and was bent on one object alone, namely, how to gratify the demons who had often possessed him, as he well deserved. Before settling any other of the affairs of state he rushes upon the Christians,55 and these two objects engrossed his whole attention, namely the "Galilaeans" (as he insultingly used to call us), and the Persians, who |44 obstinately continued the war,56 but our affair is much greater and more important, that he considered the war with the Persians a mere trifle and child's play. And this he did not indeed proclaim openly, yet he did not conceal it; and such was the excess of his infatuation that he never ceased avowing it to all parties; neither was this most excellent and sagacious of all sovereigns aware that by the former persecutions it was but a little thing that was troubled and upset, inasmuch as our system of religion had not yet spread over many people, and the Truth was established in only a few, and stood in need of illustration; but now that the Word of Salvation was spread abroad, and prevailed the most in our parts of the world, the attempt to change or upset the status of the Christians was no other than to toss about 57 the Roman empire, and endanger the whole commonwealth, and to suffer at our own hands what not even our enemies would wish us worse; and this too from that new-fangled philosophy and government through which we were made so happy, and had returned once more to that Grolden Age and way of life so free from all fighting and discord!

75. The government administered with moderation, 58 the lowering of the taxes, the judicious choice of magistrates, the punishment of peculators, and all the other marks of a transient and momentary prosperity and illusion were, forsooth, likely to produce great benefit to the public, and our ears must needs be dinned with their praises; but populations and cities torn by faction, families torn asunder, |45 households set at variance, marriages dissolved., and all else that it was natural should follow that mischievous step, and which really did follow it to a great extent 59----were these things conducive either to that man's glory, or to the benefit of the public? and yet who is there either so warm a partisan of impiety (paganism), or so destitute of common sense, that he would assent to this? For, as in the case of the body, if one or two members are diseased, the rest may possibly endure it without harm, and the blessing of health be maintained in the entire person through which even the parts affected may again be set to rights; but when the greater part is at strife, and full of bitterness, there is no possibility for the whole to be well, and such a state of things is manifest danger; in the same manner in governments it happens that single infirmities are covered over by the well-being of the mass; but when the majority are in a rotten state, there is danger to the whole.60 And this I think anyone else, even of those who hate us most, would have perceived; his bad temper, however, had darkened his reason, and he goes on weaving the snares of persecution for small and great alike.

76. That measure of his was very childish and silly; so far from being that of a prince, as not even to be worthy of a person moderately sound of understanding, and this was his fancying that our subversion would follow upon his changing of our name, or that he shamed us as though called by the most opprobrious of titles. He immediately |46 makes a change in our appellation, naming us Galilaeans instead of Christians, and making it law we should so be styled; proving by the act that the being called after Christ is a very great thing to one's glory,61 and highly honourable, by the very fact that he plotted how to deprive us of the same; being perhaps afraid of that Name, as are the devils, and for that reason changing it to another name, something neither customary nor generally known.

....

[93] ..... For the will of a prince is an unwritten law, being backed by might, and one of far greater force than the written laws that be not supported by authority.

INDEX NOTE
"Galileans" made a legal appellation, |46.

mountainman

Was it a reasonable thing that the Bishop Cyril did
when he evicted all the Jews from Alexandria?
Do Hebrew manuscripts burn as well as Greek?
Was christian intolerance restricted to non-Jews?
Do you know any history of the mid to late fourth
century, or do you get that from Photius' wrap-up?

Were the Jews really worried about the destiny of the Greek LXX?
That destiny was over 500 years old before Constantine appeared.
Your "reason" here is quite a hypothetical and unrealistic.

The Jews were under the political and military dominion
of the Romans, and with effect from 325 CE, irrespective
of any prior history, with the exception of Julian, the Roman
rulership embraced the intolerance and persecution that
was chacteristic of the fourth century christian emperors,
and their minions.

They got hit as hard as the "Greek" Non-Christians.
The only reason Julian's record survives (and dont forget
his Three Books are destroyed) is because he -- being
a Roman Emperor (and Greek speaking) was educated,
and his words were influential and were causing a great
and terrible credibility problem for the christians, and
he attracted a formal refutation (of his "lies" by Cyril).

Can you imagine Cyril writing a refutation in Hebrew?
Cyril simply expelled all the Jews from Alexandria.
Carl Sagan theorises Cyril torched the library.


Best wishes,



Pete Brown

Toto

In regard to your habit of continually starting new threads on the same topic, without learning from replies to the previous threads.

Why is that obvious? There are two related uses of Galilean - a person from a certain geographical-political area, and a rural, uncouth, rebellious person. Perhaps Julian meant to include both meanings?

Gibbon writes well after the fact, and wants to separate Christians from the other bad Galileans. This has nothing to do with the use of the term by Julian.

But you have not made the connection between these fabrications and your claim that Constantine invented the entire gospel story. You keep repeating the word "fabrications" as if this has something to do with your point. Read in context, Julian considered the Christian religion to be a fabrication, in particular the Christian view of the nature of God. You have yet to produce one scintilla of evidence that Julian thought that the person of Jesus was a fabrication, much less that Constantine (who was not a Galilean) was the author of this fabrication.

J-D

What fatal infirmity is it, Pete, that forces you to use ten words where one would do?