spamandham

Although possible, in this case it's not a public statue.

After further consideration, I think I agree.

mountainman

Is there anything uniquely "christian" about any of the three separate inscriptions that are cited above under Inscription "Evidence"
?

mountainman

Critical examination must remain the “cornerstone” of any discipline of scholarship

mountainman

From another thread ....

It purports to present "evidence" to the reader in support of the traditionally accepted history of "early Christian origins" in the epoch "ante pacem" -- literally before the peace of Constantine. The book is considered a bit of a reference point for those who have been convinced by the claims of the traditional belief - christians before Constantine.


The author's term appears to cover archaeological evidence for all things "christian".


The author presents evidence aand asserts that the evidence presented is christian. My position is that I have examined each and every one of Snyder's citations and found them very wanting. (See above for some sarcohagus art). I have made notes of all the major discrepancies.

See my notes.



On the other hand also, if there is not (any evidence), the question may also become "could Constantine have fabricated the christian religion for political power and financial gain".

Doug Shaver

Give me some time, and I can probably imagine hundreds of things he could have done for those reasons.

However, the notion that every extant Christian document that seems to be of pre-Constantinian provenance is a forgery strikes me as preposterous.

mountainman

Such a retrojection of pseudo-history is of course a preposterous thing to come to terms with, however my entire point here is that it may be justifiably argued that we do not have any non-literary corroboration of the existence of either Jesus, or the society of christians or the new testament itself outside of the literature which was complied during the rule of Constantine.

We do however have a great deal of "handwaving" such as the image of Jesus as the child above.

I will preempt your reply to say that this does not automatically imply that every extant Christian document that seems to be of pre-Constantinian provenance is a forgery. However it does allow the question to be tabled on an objective basis, as preposterous as it may seem to our "traditional belief system". One must understand two things ....

(1) that our "traditional belief system" is actually sourced from the council of Nicaea and Constantine's rule, when Eusebius' history was written and when the bible was first widely published to the "gentile" Greeks, and

(2) it has never been (allowed to be) questioned over the last 1600+ years. It was delivered with the sword. It was delivered with the ultimatum of "Believe this or perish"!!!!! Ever since, it has been despotically dogmatized by first the Catholic Church (in which Constantine personally appointed his "Bishops") and then all other denominations of "christianity" which have been split out in the interim centuries. The tradition has been authoritatively supported as dogma and has not been open to simple questioning. Do you not see that this is the case?

Toto

Please dismount from your hobby horse. Christian dogma has been questioned since the Enlightenment, and no one accepts Eusebius as the final word. We all agree.

You still have not constructed a case for Constantine and Eusebius inventing Christianity out of whole cloth in the 4th century.

If you want to say that Constantine signficantly changed or shaped Christianity, almost everyone would agree with you. Similarly, if you want to call Eusebius a spin doctor, there would not be much disagreement. But the idea of making up an illogical, contradictory religion like Christianity just doesn't make any sense.

This constant repetition of your few key talking points is not persuasive.

mountainman

Please dismount from you erroneous misrepresentation of what I have written above, prefacing my quoted comments, which you failed to cite, namely this:

Do you understand that I am tabling a question on an objective basis? I have explicitly disclaimed that my findings do not automatically imply that every extant Christian document that seems to be of pre-Constantinian provenance is a forgery.


You are also remarkably silent on the OP - my analysis of the evidence presented in the often cited work "Ante pacem: archaeological evidence of church life before Constantine". Do you have anything to say at all about the OP and/or the relevance and/or value of this critical review of the "Ante Pacem" evidence?

Doug Shaver

I don't have any idea what that means.

Traditional beliefs have nothing to do with my assessment of your hypothesis.

Toto

I do not know what you mean by "tabling."

I accept the possibility that a lot of early artifacts have been misidentified as Christian. But I notice on your webpage that your primary response to the evidence, including frescoes from the catacombs depicting the baptism of Jesus, is "The bulk of these motifs are derived from the Hebrew Bible. Summary: Totally unconvincing." You fail to explain why references to the Hebrew Scriptures combined with the baptism of Jesus would not be Christian. Or why you are still clinging to your hypothesis that Constantine invented Christianity.