mountainman

Would you please restate what you perceive
to be the right question.

J-D

What reason is there to think that your explanation of the origins of Christianity is a better explanation than the alternatives?

jgibson000

What reason do you have for asserting, as you have done, that Aurelius Victor to be trusted unreservedly in the things he says about Constantine and that he was a non tendentious, un biased, and objective historian?

JG

mountainman

As a theory of ancient history for the first four centuries,
it has a greater degree of consistency with respect to
all the available objective scientific and/or archeological
evidence. From a theoretical perspective, the theory of
history may be based on one postulate: "Eusebius was
sponsored to write fiction during the rise of Constantine".

mountainman

You must understand that I am operating with the single
hypothesis that Eusebius was sponsored to write fiction.
For this reason, I must view all of the Constantine-sponsored
ecclesiastical writers with a certain degree of circumspect.

Eusebius for example provides us with a bit of text in his Life
of Constantine, but how is it to be regarded. Not highly by
many historians, neither by me.

In a relative sense therefore, I will accept what Victor has
to say of Constantine before Eusebius, with a greater degree
of authenticity. Especially considering that the position being
explored is that Constantine invented and then published the
new testament literature.

jgibson000

I take it, since they aren't online, that you haven't read H.W. Bird's commentary on De Caesaribus or his Sextus Aurelius Victor: A Historiographical Study.

It might be nice for you for once to base your conclusions about the objectivity and lack of tendentiousness of SVG on the work of historians and classicists who have taken the time to engage in, and who have the expertise to produce, critical studies and informed evaluations of SVG's (sponsored) writings instead of on some questionable and historically uninformed postulates which are themselves based in apriori assumptions that are designed to produce the conclusions you want to come to.

JG

mountainman

Am I to infer from this that it is your opinion that the
conclusions of other historians and classicists who have
taken the time to engage in, and who have the expertise
to produce, critical studies and informed evaluations of SVG's
(sponsored) writings are based on unquestionable
and historically informed postulates that are both
objectively attested and immutable?

And if so, what are these postulates,
that you are happy working with?

jgibson000

What? I don't know nothin' 'bout no postulates. But it is clear that their conclusions are based on expertise in primary texts and first hand and well honed knowledge of the times in which SVG wrote as well as close inspection and careful analysis of his relationship with his patrons Constantius and Julian, his own intellectual, cultural, social, and ideological background, his relationships with other historians of his time, his use of sources, and his own direct and indirect statements of why he wrote what he wrote -- none of which you can say you have or that you have done.

In any case, what you are to take away from this is that when it comes to your claims about (even the relative) reliability of SVG, no one should pay you any heed since you haven't done any, let alone enough, study of the man or in the critical scholarship on the man or on the historiography of his time to know whether he is or is not "reliable" and/ors without bias or tendenz, and that the main reason you proclaim that he is reliable and objective is that he seems to say what you want to hear about Constantine.

Now since I have answered your question, will you please answer mine? Have you or have you not read anything scholarly on SVG -- and more specifically have you read (hell, did you even know before I mentioned them) H.W. Bird's commentary on De Caesaribus or his Sextus Aurelius Victor: A Historiographical Study?

JG

J-D

Until you compare it systematically with alternatives, you have given no reason to think that is has a 'greater' degree of consistency with the available evidence.

mountainman

Over one year ago I researched and made reference to the
Epitome de Caesaribus (41:16) - assistance with the Latin?

H.W. Bird's commentary was referenced there, so I knew about it.
I have read fragmentary quotes only of this work, it was not
online last March.