mountainman

There are thought to have been three different "Acts of Pilate":

(1) The very early christian "Acts of Pilate"
(2) The early fourth century pagan "Acts of Pilate"
(3) The late fourth century christian "Acts of Pilate"

Only one has survived. We currently think that the author of the surviving tractate who presents the narrative as being written in exact duplicate by two scribes Karinus and Leucius who vanish in a blinding flash of light before all witnesses is a "christian author" because he deals in a narrative concerning Jesus. But this same author puts into the mouth of Pontius Pilate the admission that "Jesus heals by the power of Ascelpius".

Could the author have been a non-christian?
The Three Acts of Pilate

Eusebius' admission concerning the "pagan" Acts of Pilate is:

This would be standard resistance tactics for the leaders of the Hellenistic traditions who had just had their temples destroyed, and who had been prohibited from their use. The grass roots education system was not yet in the hands of Constantine, and they resisted the canon as authoritative.

Eusebius reports this as happening c.311 CE but perhaps he was out by 14 years, and all this action surrounded the aftermath of the Council of Nicaea. It was Eusebius' task to report the harmonious acceptance of the new and strange religion. But if the new religion was being implemented by a malevolent despot by means of his armies' destruction of competing religious architecture any harmony is falsely presented.

mountainman

Are we dealing with a YES or NO answer?
Could a fourth century christian have written the assertion that Jesus heals by the power of Asclepius?
Could a 21st century christian write the assertion that Jesus heals by the power of Asclepius?
I find it difficult to answer these questions with a YES.
Is there anyone reading this who would answer differently?

spamandham

...a very interesting point, and one that I wonder ...does it have anything to do with the whole blasphemy of the holy spirit?

Was the 'demon' they were attributing Jesus' powers to originally Asclepius?

mountainman

Well here is the full context of the text .....

How I read this is in a straightforward chronological sense:

1) Constantine backs the new testament canon officially with the military c.324 CE culminating with the councils of Antioch and Nicaea.

2) Blashemous UNOFFICIAL additional acts and gospels were published as a resistance and popularisation of the ONE TRUE CANON.

3) These new stories were banned and deemed illegal and heretical to the canon for the obvious reason. The death penalty awaited anyone hiding these writings. They were blasphemous against the holy spirit of the canon because they invented wild and outrageously impossible events to be collected into "The Travels of the Apostles". It was the Hellenistic resistance to "christianity" and the canon and the official state religion.


It was essentially a popular "Homerization" of the canon. In these additional tractates the Hellenistic author (whom I think was Arius of Alexandria and aka Leucius Charinus after Arius memory was damned by Constantine) makes explicit reference to the old healing god of the Roman empire, the one who existed according to the archaeological reports 500 BCE to 500 CE.

The context was the period 324 to 336 CE during which time Arius lived and wrote with a poisonous pen against the most holy state church.

Arius was not a christian --- he was simply a gnostic Hellenist - perhaps one of the theraputae of Ascelpius - the public hospital system of the Roman empire extant BCE and supported by all Roman emperors until Constantine, who utterly destroyed it.


You see I dont think the "christians" understand the "heretical apocrypha".
It is a non-christian Hellenistic romantic version of the canon.

It adds to the canon.
It weaves different permutations of the canon together.
It weaves difference combinations of the canon together.
It mimics the canon, but need not have been written by a christian.


Hope this makes for food for thought.

We only have the "pagan" Acts of Pilate.
There is no "christian" acts of pilate.
What we presume to be christian is in fact the blasphemous "pagan" Acts
which were probably taken around to be read and orated at schools
as part of the grass roots resistance to the new testament canon.

Highly illegal and blasphemous (says Eusebius!)

Be of good cheer!
Asclepius is still alive and well
even though that robber and brigand
Constantine destroyed his ancient temples.

mountainman

Anyone who was not the canonical Jesus was 'the demon'.
Such was the nature of the new and strange religion which
cut across the grain of all precedent and tradition.

But it should be perceived by analysts that the history of the canonical tractates and the history of the non canonical tractates needs to be carefully distilled and separated, and that it is possible to do this. The exercise itself does not concern itself as to when the canon was originally authored. With respect to my arguments that the apocrypha were authored as a reaction to the prominence of the NT canon, I am happy to view that the canon was authored in any earlier century - even the first - because the witnessess to the existence of the canonical tractates and the witnesses to the existence of the non-canonical tractates are a different line-up.

With the apocrypha we are dealing with an remnant attitude problem. The traditional attitude is that the apocrypha are so conflated with reference to the canon (in mimicry) that everyone assumes the author(s) are "just another christian waffling on with very very strange and outrageously unbelievable narratives about the Apostles being BEAMED UP BY BRIGHT CLOUDS, and travelling to mountain tops; Jesus as the Captain of a water taxi (Welcome Aboard !!!!), etc, etc, etc.

A clever Hellenistic and gnostic academic simply took a leaf out of Constantine's book and perverted the authority of the canonical new testament (whenever it may have been authored!!!) in the fourth century as an attempt to resist and subvert the unpopular non Hellenistic (in fact anti-Hellenistic) Roman state monotheism.

Surely the story about Paul and the Lion in the apocryphal "Acts of Paul" has been taken from Aesop's fables. Remember the mouse who took the thorn from the lion's paw? Well that was St. Paul. The Hellenistic gnostic apocryphal author took the mickey out of the canon.

Lighten up folks. The status and authority of the NT has been under attack since it was first introduced.

spamandham

...maybe that then became the thorn in his side?

mountainman

We have lost the actual ancient historical context in which the authorship and popularisation of the new testament apocryphal tractates became a serious thorn in the side of the supporters of the orthodox canonical new testament literature (which had only just been widely published). Yet I think this is the way events transpired. Hence the invectives against the apocrypha by the entire host of orthodox christians from Constantine and Eusebius through the next few centuries. In the end, nobody remembered the political situation in which the apocrypha were authored. The texts (even at the end of the 4th century) were embraced by the orthodox preservers as "curios" of a by-gone era -- relics of "early christian origins". It was big business in the 4th and subsequent centuries.

The Nag Hammadi codices are an example of a relic apocryphal (Hellenistic gnostic) tractates which were preserved against the politics of that epoch by burial underground. Two hundred miles from the "recently christianised" cit of Alexandria (c.324 CE) was 200 miles out of the action. An explosion of refugees sought the remote deserts instead of the cities of the Constantinian Roman empire. Why? Malevolent despotism and excessive taxation (see the The Chrysargyron (Poll tax associated with a "Domesday Book"), and the history of Ammianus Marcellinus ("The highways were covered with galloping bishops"..))