gstafleu

Pete "Mountainman" Brown will occasionally () enter a thread to point out that whatever is being discussed there is a fiction by Eusebius. In this thread I'm not interested in whether that is correct or not. What I'm interested in is the impression I get from him that Eusebius is basically the only source about early Christianity we have. It just struck me, after reading another Pete entry, that I can't remember anyone actually contradicting that.

So is that just me being my inattentive self, or does Pete have a point in that Eusebius is indeed at least a very large percentage of all we know about early Christianity? (An author whom we only know through Eusebius will have to count as Eusebian, I'd say.)

And to avoid confusion, Early Christianity is for the purposes of this discussion defined as everything up to Eusebius.

Gerard Stafleu

mountainman

"None ventured to go over the same ground again,
but left him sole possessor of the field
which he held by right of discovery and of conquest.
The most bitter of his theological adversaries
were forced to confess their obligations to him,
and to speak of his work with respect.

It is only necessary to reflect for a moment
what a blank would be left in our knowledge
of this most important chapter in all human history,
if the narrative of Eusebius were blotted out,
and we shall appreciate the enormous debt
of gratitude which we owe to him.

The little light which glimmered over the earliest
history of Christianity in medieval times
came ultimately from Eusebius alone,
coloured and distorted in its passage
through various media.


-- J.B. Lightfoot, Eusebius of Caesarea, (article. pp. 324-5),
Dictionary of Christian Biography: Literature, Sects and Doctrines,
ed. by William Smith and Henry Wace, Vol II.

http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_007.htm

gstafleu

So how about Origen? Wikipedia has a whole entry about him. He was born here, did that, went there and so on. Does that all come from good old Euseby?

The Wiki entry says "According to Epiphanius (Haer., lxiv.63) Origen wrote about 6,000 works". Assuming that is this Epiphanius, do we know about Epiphanius only via Euseby?

Gerard

Toto

I recommend Jay Raskin's The Evolution of Christs and Christianities (or via: amazon.co.uk) for a different perspective. Eusebius is the source for most of our information on church history (other church fathers wrote more about theology and doctrine.) Raskin thinks that Eusebius was a master forger, but with the emphasis on master rather than forger.

mountainman

Absolutely, via Eusebius = EVERYTHING in the PRENICAEAN.
Your cited author Epiphanius was between 5 and 15 years
old when Constantine did his thing at Nicaea.

The works of Origen especially those towards the end of his
life were purported to have been assembled at the Caesarea
library under the management of Pamphilus, custodian by means
of the powers invested in him by the Roman law and ruling
Augustas, who preserved an studies this author's literature
(ie: Origen) specifically.

Eusebius was Pamphilus' "shall-we-say-pupil" who inherited the
originals of the works of the later part of Origen's life (purportedly).
What Origen says, and what following "harmonisers" of Origenistic
writings have to say, about the writings of Origen, is interesting.

Read Rufinus' account of the perversion of Origen.
Perhaps take in Origen's own letter quoted by Rufinus.

Eusebius used the works of Origen, but IMO "christianised"
them. I will grant that Origen studied the Old Testament,
and authored the Hexapla, but our thesis is that Eusebius
plaguerised Origen with respect to New testamanent materials,
and that the doctrines of Origen in the 3rd century, are
nothing more than the doctrines of Eusebius in the 4th.

Elsewhere ...

You will note that mainstream BC&H researchers maintain that the
inference that the Eusebian chronology is true should be unquestioned.
That Eusebian history and chronology is true, is an axiom, a postulate,
an hypothesis, and surely, can be questioned and tested for integrity.



Pete Brown

Johnny Skeptic

Joseph McCabe was a brilliant man. He wrote many books and articles, and he strongly opposed Christianity. He was very well-read, and he had an incredible gift for expressing himself in writing.

Consider the following:

http://www.infidels.org/library/hist...hapter_16.html

The "Conversion" of Constantine

Let us for a moment consider the dear old labarum: one of the most profitable miracles that the hand of God, or of his earthly representative, ever achieved.

It is Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea, who tells us of the miracle in his "Life of Constantine"; and you ought not to doubt it for a moment, because he says that he heard it from the Emperor's own lips! We will not, however, waste time in psychoanalytic research. I do not think that any ecclesiastical historian today believes in the vision, or even suggests an ocular illusion. All other historians smile at it. The labarum is as discredited as Catherine's wheel.

"The father of ecclesiastical history," as Eusebius of Caesarea is unhappily called, wrote his famous Ecclesiastical History some years before the death of Constantine; and it does not contain this very important miracle. When the emperor died, however, the bishop wrote a most untruthful and eulogistic "Life of Constantine," and in this he tells the story of the labarum. He tells us also that his chief business as a writer is to "edify"; which means, to advertise the Church. So modern historians are discreetly reticent about the zealous and courtly bishop. I will, as usual, supply the word which they leave unspoken. Eusebius was a liar. The other great Christian writer of the time, Lactantius, is by no means a model of veracity. But he merely says that Constantine saw the vision in a dream. The labarum appears on coins soon after the conversion of Constantine, but no one pretends that it was a reality except Eusebius.

Johnny: The article is too lengthy to quote extensively. I suggest that anyone who is interested in Eusebius visit the web site and read that entire section of the article. Even if Eusebius was not a liar, he was centuries removed from the supposed facts, which means that he had to rely exclusively on sources who were themselves removed from the supposed facts by well over a century. It seems to me that it all gets back to the ORIGINAL eyewitnesses who wrote about what they saw, who appear to be precious few, and the believability of their second hand and third hand sources. Much of Christian history is comprised of A quoting B, B quoting C, etc., leaving modern readers with the impossible task of figuring out which writings were facts, which were lies, and which were innocent but inaccurate revelations. Was Papias actually a hearer of John? Who knows?, certainly not anyone who is alive today, and certainly not anyone who was alive 100 years after Papias died. Long before the end of the next 1,000 years, Christianity will have faded into the obscurity that is so richly deserves. I mean really, folks, the Bible says "thou shalt not kill", but it also says that "God's Son MUST be killed or there will be no remission of sins."

Roger Pearse

The 9 volumes of the Ante-Nicene Fathers collection, some 5,000 pages, are all pre-Eusebian. This doesn't include most of Origen either, plus works that have come to light since then. But Eusebius is valuable for authors that have perished (he does quote lots of people who have not, but of course we go to the original for Clement of Alexandria, etc).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Much of our information about him does come from Eusebius.

No. The Panarion of Epiphanius (mid-late 4th century) is extant. The Holy Martyr Pamphilus wrote an apology for Origen ca. 300, of which only the first book is extant in a translation by Rufinus. Eusebius, Pamphilus' pupil, added a book to it (also lost) in which he listed all the works of Origen accessible to him in Origen's library at Caesarea. Epiphanius may have used this for his statement. But prior to 400 the works of Origen were in wide circulation anyway.

The loss of the majority of his works comes from the use of his name as the badge of the losing party in the 'Origenist' disputes in the Eastern Roman empire which start around 400 and wrap up around 550. One of the unpleasant features of that society was that political disputes were conducted under ideological guise, and the object was to silence your foe by manufacture an 'ism' of whatever views he held and getting it officially condemned. (Those familiar with attempts to invent the word 'Islamophobia'
may see a parallel or two here). The political dispute in this case accused their enemies of 'Origenism.'

One of Origen's lost works was recovered from the find of books at Toura near Cairo in 1941.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Johnny Skeptic

But upon what evidence did the Ante-Nicene Fathers and Eusebius base their conclusions about what supposedly happened in the first century?

Clivedurdle

p 181 following of Terry Jones Barbarians states:

Quote:
Shapur and the Messiah

Religious philosophy was the big issue in both Persia and Rome. the continuous military hammering between Rome and Parthia had not only brought about a crisis in Persia, it was also the major cause of the crisis that afflicted the Roman Empire in the third century. ...Trade between Rome and the Far East broke down....the cost of the Roman army sky rocketed, and sections of the Western Empire began to break free of central authority...This was the atmosphere in which Christianity began to take hold in the Roman world, and in the buzzing atmosphere of the Zoroastrian revolution in Persia, Christian spin off cults were attracting serious interest.

In Fars a cult called the Practitioners of Ablutions believed in the washing away of sins in baptisms. A messianic Jewish- Christian group called Elkesaites ...had their own version of the teachings of Christ and of Moses. In this rather fevered atmosphere a religious teacher appeared called Mani who claimed that he was the final prophet in a line that stretched from Zarathustra through Buddha to Jesus.


Shapur....proclaimed freedom of worship for Manichaens, Jews and Christians....There now even appeared a Christian bishop of Ctesiphon

http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch22.htm

( I am discussing Shapur I )

Quote:
A Christian bishop, Papa bar Aggai, at the capital, Ctesiphon, claimed patriarchal rights - as had the Bishop of Rome - and the bishop of Ctesiphon remained in rivalry for influence with the Christian leadership in Nisibis.