mountainman

Nicaea 325 CE.

"That there is nothing more
honourable in my sight
than the fear of God,
I believe is manifest to every man.

Now, because the Synod of Bishops at Ancyra, of Galatia,
consented at first that it should be, it now seems on many
accounts that it would be well for a Synod to assemble at Nicea,
a city of Bithynia, both because the Bishops of Italy
and the rest of the countries of Europe are coming,
and also because of the excellent temperature of the air,
and also because I shall be present as a spectator
and participator of what is done.

Wherefore I signify to you, my beloved brethren,
that I earnestly wish all of you to assemble
at this city which is named, that is at Nicea.

Let every one of you therefore, considering that which is best,
as I before said, be diligent without any delay speedily to come,
that he may be present in his own person as a spectator of what is done.
God keep you, my beloved brethren."

-- Summons of Constantine to prospective Nicaean attendees.

Gamera

Why would you bother to correct something so unimportant as to only bother spin?

Gamera

I guess you haven't followed this thread which shows there is precious little evidence of Alexander's historicity. The mss that mention him are late and ambiguous; indeed the period of time between Alexander's purported existence and the writings is much longer than between Jesus and the Christian mss. The coins ambiguous. No contemporary mentions him. He claims a divine birth, and he supposedly took over the known world (and yet when people write about him later his empire is kaput)

In short, if you apply your Jesus standard to Alexander, Alexander disappears from history. Which is the point of this thread.

Gamera

Get back with us with the mss history of Aristophanes, Plato and Xenophon and we'll all have a laugh at your expense.

And of course, Xenophon was an Athenian exile and had an ax to grind with his former city. So he made up a story about a trial. And of course Aristophanes is a playwright. And playwrights write fiction, not history.

As to Plato, no serious historian believes he actually recorded anything that Socrates said.

Soooooo, again, applying the same standard you apply to Jesus, Socrates is effaced from history, which is the point of this thread.

spin

As I predicted several posts ago, you would change the topic. You don't seem to understand the difference between literary transmission and whether a text is anonymous, undated and unprovenanced.

I suppose that you'll consign Cleon, Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus to fiction because Aristophanes also puts them in a play. I thought you'd at least learnt something from post-modernism on the way through.

That is irrelevant. He attests firsthand knowledge of Socrates just as Xenophon does, while Aristophanes was a contemporary, who wrote a rather unflattering picture of him. You know who all of these people were, where they wrote and when. Complain about the transmission history as much as you like: it won't change the fact that you are trying to put anonymous, undated and unprovenanced texts on the same par. There is only one reason for you to do so. Apologetics.

As you've still got nothing to say, as you still can't deal with the coins and as you remain totally ignorant of the physical evidence for Alexander, you really have put in a poor performance. If you want to deal with something, Gamera, I'll be happy to look at it, otherwise I see no point in continuing to deal with the contentless belly-aching of your posts.


spin

Doug Shaver

My failure to agree that the thread had proved what you think it has proved does not mean I have not followed it. It means only that arguments that convince you don't convince me.

What a body of evidence proves is not simply a function of the quantity of that evidence.

Amaleq13

So that the link to the post being quoted actually works. The "greater than" symbol next to your screen name above isn't just a decoration but it won't work if you screw up the format.

Besides, it makes your posts look like crap.

Gamera

As I predicted, you don't know the mss history of any mss refering to Socrates. And so your conclusions are utterly unsupported.

I supposte I would using your standards to evaluate Jesus' historicity, which is the point of this thread.

What evidence do we have that Xenophone existed? And why would we beleive a guy who had an ax to grind with Athens, and then writes about a sensentional trial in which Athen looks bad.

And what evidence is there of Aristophanes, or that he wrote the works attributed to him.

Apply the "Jesus" standard, and Aristophanes disappears from history.

See yquirer below.

Julian

It's not just to spin it is annoying. It is annoying to me as a user (and as a moderator) especially because I can only see one of the following reasons for this:

1) You are deliberately trying to annoy people.
2) You don't understand a simple request.
3) You don't care what anyone else thinks.

None of those are very flattering so I am sure I must have missed a reason somewhere.

No need to answer this post as I don't want to derail this thread, I just wanted to point out that it wasn't just spin and Amaleq13 that are bothered by this.

Julian

Gamera

I think spin got this thread a little off topic with his usual personal attacks and the odd issue about some text info in the quote function that sometimes gets into my posts by mistake. I was unaware that the forum rules required good looking posts. I have to check that out. I'm amazed the moderators would worry about something so inconsequential, and even post insulting comments about it. Geesh.