Doug Shaver

No one is disputing that some documents were forged. But you are trying to pin all of them on Eusebius. You are furthermore claiming that his purpose was to invent the entire history of Christianity because Christianity had not even existed before his time.

And by the way, your hypothesis depends on showing that extant documents were made to look as if they -- the extant copies themselves -- had been produced prior to Eusebius' time. It adds no support to your hypothesis if we have a copy, paleographically dated to the fourth century or later, of something allegedly written during the first, second, or third century.

I don't know whom you're calling a mainstream historian of Christianity, but none to my knowledge believes that Paul and Seneca ever exchanged any correspondence, or that Pilate ever had any second thoughts about having ordered Jesus' execution.

It says that the true pre-Nicene history of Christianity was different from what Christians have always said it was. It does not say that there was no pre-Nicene history.

When I see the evidence on which they base their thinking, then I'll tell you what I think of their thinking.

mountainman

We now may know that Paul and Seneca never exchanged
any correspondence, but that is a priveliged position of the
21st century. Certainly, I think it is reasonable to assume
that people of the fourth century, were believing differently.

Look for example, how they got stuck into the books of Lucian
because he had written inflamatory stuff against the christians
in a number of his books. (nb: my thesis is that Eusebius inserted
the christian references into Lucian.)

So whereas we know that all the things listed on the above
list in the first century are fraudulent, you can bet your bottom
dollar that many believers for hundreds of years were under
the impression that they were gospel "history".

And so we turn our attention to the citations listed in the
2nd and 3rd centuries. Sooner or later someone has to ask
the question: "Well, maybe we are looking at a pseudo-history".


Yet that option is quite real. Eusebius has given us a lonely and
untrodden path to follow, he admits this. We are entitled, from
the perspective of an ancient historian, to assess his worth and
either accept all the writings that he tendered (and this includes
the new testament writings, and all the purported pre-nicene
authors) or not.


Well here is a page where Philosopher Jay discusses the
Tacitus and Suetonius Interpolation, and finds that a solution
appears which implicates Eusebius.

Best wishes,


Pete

Doug Shaver

Oh, hell, Pete, give me enough time and I'll find you some Christians nowadays who think those letters were genuine. That doesn't have a thing to do with what they prove about your thesis.

Yes, fraud happened. So what? People have produced fraudulent documents since the day writing was invented, and the people doing it have not always been Christians.

And by the way, of all those documents that have been proven inauthentic, can you cite one -- just one -- of which the paleography was proved to have been faked? In other words, is there even a single known instance of an ancient scribe faking his handwriting to make the document look like it had been written a century or two before his own time?

That is a proposition, not a question. The question would be: "Are we looking at 300 years of forged history?"

What he "admits" is that no one before him had undertaken to write a comprehensive history of the church. That implies nothing about the sources he might or might not have had at his disposal.

We are entitled to question whether his sources were as reliable or authentic as he apparently thought they were. We are not entitled, absent very strong evidence, to infer that he must have invented all those sources.

I'll have a look.

mountainman

Doug, the ancients used whatever deception was available to them,
in the same manner as us moderns. There are many instances of
ancient forgers: and forgery of ancient scripts was part and parcel.

1) Diphantus: mentioned by Josephus, in Chapter 4, JW.

"Alexander protested that this letter
was forged by Diophantus, the king's secretary,
a man without scruples and very clever
at imitating any hand" ..[later we learn he was]..
. "executed for forgery"

2) The "Pythagoraean literature" forgeries of the centuries
between 150 BCE and 150 CE, brought about by the renewed
interest in many parties, some of them exceedingly wealthy
and willing to pay good gold, such as King Juba.


We are able to explore conceptually any possibilities which
are not excluded by evidentiary considerations, unless one
is compelled to restrict oneself to common belief systems.

We are entitled --- in the field of ancient history --- to apportion
a fair and reasonable bias on the sources of antiquity in a political
sense which is reasonable and above all consistent.

We are entitled to examine postulates, and theories based upon
postulates, that do not conflict with the available evidence,
including the postulate that Eusebius tendered fiction.

There is a growing collection of scholarship that pointedly suggests
that his integrity as an historian is wanting.

This of course (I agree) says nothing (of itself) about whether
or not he invented perhaps hundreds of prenicene sources, but
it puts the issue on the table for discussion, where I believe it
should be.

Doug Shaver

Without evidence, there is nothing to discuss except your speculations about could-have-beens. I don't have time for that.

Doug Shaver

OK, I've looked. I do not agree that any facts presented on that page imply that Eusebius committed the alleged forgery.