mountainman

I'll probably go and catch a wave or two and think about things
from a different perspective. Maybe your right Ted, about the
width and the variegation of the documentary record.

But if it is simply an issue of width and variegation, are these things
as seen today, in the same quantity and extent as they were at
Nicaea in 325 CE, or have they been added to at all in the intervening
years.




Pete Brown

Toto

I think that Jay Raskin makes a good case that Eusebius shaped our views of Christian history and probably edited or added to a fair number of manuscripts. But it doesn't make sense to think that someone would invent a completely new religion when there were so many available to be adapted.

yummyfur

Well if he has Ecclesiastical History, and he hasn't been lobotomized, he would read:

"It was in the nineteenth year of the reign of Diocletian, in the month Dystrus, called March by the Romans, when the feast of the Saviour's passion was near at hand, that royal edicts were published everywhere, commanding that the churches be leveled to the ground and the Scriptures be destroyed by fire, and ordering that those who held places of honor be degraded, and that the household servants, if they persisted in the profession of Christianity, be deprived of freedom."

"Such was the first edict against us. But not long after, other decrees were issued, commanding that all the rulers of the churches in every place be first thrown into prison, and afterwards by every artifice be compelled to sacrifices."

also about Egypt, where Arius lived

"But we must admire those also who suffered martyrdom in their native land; where thousands of men, women, and children, despising the present life for the sake of the teaching of our Saviour, endured various deaths. Some of them, after scrapings and rackings and severest scourgings, and numberless other kinds of tortures, terrible even to hear of, were committed to the flames; some were drowned in the sea; some offered their heads bravely to those who cut them off; some died under their tortures, and others perished with hunger. And yet others were crucified; some according to the method commonly employed for malefactors; others yet more cruelly, being nailed to the cross with their heads downward, and being kept alive until they perished on the cross with hunger."

Then Eusebius devotes two whole chapters, one to the martyrs of Thebes and one to the martyrs of Alexandria(Arius's city) during Diocletian's persecution. He uses a Phileas as a witness, someone regarded highly in Alexandria for his secular knowledge, and his high rank.

Since he was alive and an adult in 303 CE, I'm guessing he would have personal memories of these events not happening(baring his memories being erased by the powerfull prose of Eusebius ), also I'm sure he had other adult human contact and interactoin, and so could readily ask if any one could actually remeber these very recent events. When you've just read multiple chapters of events which do not square with your own personal experience of that same time period, and even in your very own city, you probably know it's full of crap.

This doesn't just apply to Arius, it applies to everyone who read Eusebius during that time preiod.

mountainman

He took Rome in 312, so let's say he did what he pleased when in Rome
after that date. Prior to then, inter-libray loan requests to all libraries in the empire could have been easily "arranged" had Constantine so wished. The
books may not have been borrowed under his name.

I dont see the libraries getting anything before the 50 volumes
are ordered after Nicaea. But would anyone have noticed if all
the copies of Josephus started moving to the western empire?

The purpose for his new religion was revenue and control of new lands.
As a Roman ruler he understood all other nations must pay the Augusta
a tax and tribute. Moreover, the only thing standing between the total
domination of the other non-Roman tribes of man were their religions.

The Jews and the Britons were once strong because of their religion.
But after their religion was destroyed, the people were easy pickings
for the Roman governors. So it was that Constantine saw the
opportunity to provide the people of the empire with a new religion,
and at the same time destroy the ancient and traditional Hellenic
religious culture, which after all, was only Greek, and not Roman.

Constantine had his eldest son, and his wife, murdered.
They were not just pawns.

Say some monstrous imperial thug with a few hundred thousand
barbarian mercanery horsemen suddenly takes over your suburb
where you live, and work, etc. The next day you get a letter
from the imperial thug requesting your attendance at a Council
Meeting to decide the future running of your suburb.

When you get there, you are wined and dined for 4 months,
given presents, gifts. You are asked to sign the Creed of
the Suburb, to acknowledge that you do not subscribe to
any disclaimer on this creed. If you sign the creed, you'll be
safe, but if you refuse to sign the creed, you could get banished.
Perhaps worse. Dead.

What would you do? Would you belong to it?

And why did it survive his death?
It self perpetuated itself.


The council of Nicaea was supposed to last four months.
Thats alot of vino.

Good point. I believe that there may have been "massive and horrific
persecutions" in previous times, but unrelated to christianity. In another
thread I outlined an idea ....
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=165552

Essentially, (IMO) the persecutions arose due to some form of
"conscientous objection" to making sacrifice (as was
required by Roman law) of animals, by the followers
of the Pythagoraean/Essenic/Platonic philosophies
after the literature and teachings of Apollonius.

The reality of the persecutions would have became political
and its pathos may have been hijacked by the fabrication of
christianity, in which the latter assumed the role of a martyr
of a religious impulse, rather than a natural conscience.




Pete Brown
www.mountainman.com.au

mountainman

What if that someone was a supreme imperial mafia thug who thought
it was about time the Romans had a religion which was not Greek, and
to which Rome did not have to pay any tithing tributes? Better still, if
the Roman religion was the religion of the empire, then all other religions
may as well give up their treasures and sanctuaries and lands and temples
and literature and people and ideas to the new imperial Roman religion.

Why use an existing religion if you had to share the benefits?
Why not operate with 100% of the revenue and working capital?




Pete Brown

Julian

διαιρεσεις αληθειαi εισιν...γιγνοσκεις.

Julian

spin

Rick, where's that magic bullet? Someone who doesn't even appreciate Ockham needs it.

mountainman

You are taught to accept the fact that they are early church
fathers. You are taught to accept the inference that they represent
authors who are in fact writing earlier than the fourth century. However
you are not taught this as a hypothesis or a postulate, but rather as
an unspoken and unutterable postulate.

Essentially, what everyone is taught is this:
"Eusebius wrote history". That's what I meant.


The appeal to palaeography may be fair, but it is not critical
in the refutation of my hypothesis.

Carbon dating I accept as critical, but handwriting can
be forged to make it appear as if written in the past.



Pete Brown

Rick Sumner

Ockham used it to kill himself, he couldn't bear to watch anymore. Lucky bastard.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

spin

No. I'm taught to read texts as artefacts which need to be understood in all their aspects.

No, I am not. If you note other threads I have been involved in I have proposed very different datings for biblical texts. You don't know what I have been taught or how I approach texts. Stop projecting your desires onto other people.

Don't talk nonsense.

I wasn't.

Pleading ignorance is no recourse under the law.

Of course, if all these texts were fabricated in the fourth century by a massive conspiracy led by the not-too-bright Eusebius of Caesaria, written in both Greek and Latin, dealing with a pseudo-history of a religion which could easily have just been a new religion (but then reems of arcane literature written for the benefit of a vastly illiterate population makes sense, doesn't it?), of course they could forge handwriting from a century or two before and bury them along with other writings as mummy casings in towns slowly dying through loss of stable water supply in order for you to discover them 1500 years later.

Oh Rick, that was real selfish of him, right when we needed him.


spin