mountainman

The following is from the two articles at livius.org, Ancient anti-Semitism (Part One) and Ancient anti-Semitism (Part Two).

According to these articles, sources exists for many anti-Semitic actions and attitudes in antiquity, particulalry from the Greeks and Romans, and mass actions agains Jews by Roman Emperors.



Given that Roman and Greek anti-Semiticism appears to be already present in the sources of antiquity, it is not suprising that the New Roman Religion of the anti semitic Constantine, itself was anti semitic. The question whether the New Testament is based on Jewish documents or manuscripts is moot since no early Jewish manuscripts of the NT have been found. The New Anti Semitic Roman religion was based on Greek documents - particularly the Greek LXX, and its "Holy Writ" was fashioned in the Greek language not the Hebrew.

But the key and novel issue of the Roman Christian Religion is not the anti semiticism, but the political effect that the New Testament had in the hands of Constantine upon the culture, the religions, the politics, the architecture and the way of life of the Graeco-Roman world, particularly in the east c.324/325 CE.





The 4th century Christians obviously adopted neoplatonic thinking but only upon the object of the Bible and the New Testament. As far as anything else went, platonism and all that went with it was heresy. The late 4th century list of heresies prepared by Epiphanius makes this explicit ....

The First Seven Heresies in the Index of Eighty

In his introductory prelude, in speaking of the "sects" or "heresies" Epiphanius notes:

"For it was about these four sects ("heresies") that the apostle clearly said in reproof,
"In Christ Jesus there is neither Barbarian, Scythian, Hellene nor Jew, but a new creation" [5]

[Col 3:11]

Heresy 1 of 80 - Against Barbarism
Heresy 2 of 80 - Against Scythianism
Heresy 3 of 80 - Against Hellenism
Heresy 4 of 80 - Against Judaism
Heresy 5 of 80 - Against Stoics
Heresy 6 of 80 - Against Platonists
Heresy 7 of 80 - Against Pythagoreans

etc
etc
etc

Doug Shaver

I'm pretty sure Bill Craig says that, too.

Doug Shaver

The third is what I most clearly see in most of the more off-the-wall stuff posted here. For some people, Christianity can't be just a mistake that some people make. No, it has to be a fraud, a carefully premeditated fraud perpetrated by the evilest kind of evil people: rich people and politicians.

Toto

What !?! the Greek-lanugage LXX is a Jewish document. The anti-Semitism of the time was not a prejudice against the language that the document was written in.

Sheshbazzar

Christianity simply a mistake???

What then was the mistake?
and When was that mistake made?
Who are those 'some people' that made that mistake?

Did 'Paul's' contrived epistles come into being by some simple 'mistake', rather than to promote a certain theological agenda?

Were the Gospels composed by simple mistake, rather than to promote a certain theological agenda?

Were all of the writings of the Ante-Nicene Church Fathers composed by simple mistake, rather than to further and promote certain theological agendas?

Did Constantine force Christianity on the populace with sword, murder, and the disenfranchisement of all other religious and philosophical systems by simple mistake, rather than as a prepared theological plan designed to promote and further both the Church's, and the Imperial power's agendas?

Toto

I don't know if you will ever make any headway without comng clean as to your motivations and methods.

In 2009, Roger Pearse in this thread referenced this usenet thread to imply that you had invented the Eusebian postulate as malicious payback: So what are you prepared to do?

- abandon the discredited Eusebian hypothesis?
- admit that Arius believed in a historical Jesus and not a fictional one?
- admit that Julian believed in a historical Jesus and not a fictional one?
- admit that palaeography is a valid method of dating?
- admit that Dura Euopos was a Christian house church?

If you are just going to throw out another baseless claim that some other historical individual forged the Christian canon for some nefarious purpose, I must ask you to provide some rational basis to show that you are not just wasting our time.

stephan huller

The amazing thing of course is that we even take this nonsense seriously. Some clues that one is NOT dealing with a rational argument is that the person (a) has a highly unusual position (b) can only answer objections by going back and recycling dogma or tables of beliefs (c) never modifies or acknowledges compelling evidence to the contrary and (d) demonstrates that said person lives in an intellectual bubble ('intellectual' employed here somewhat loosely) - i.e. removed from human contact, usually on a mountain or at the fringe of the Caribbean.

avi

nonsense.

Our oldest extant copy of LXX is Codex Sinaticus. It has more evidence of forgery, as documented at this discussion board, than Bayer has pills.
Absolute rubbish.
Where's the data?

Yes, it MAY be accurate. MAY. In some special circumstance.
NO, you cannot pick up document xyz, of unknown origin, and then proclaim the date, based upon handwriting analysis.

ABSOLUTELY not. This is not science. This is utter faith based fantasy.

yes, I understand spin's point of view: LOTS and LOTS of ancient documents are available for comparison. Great. So what.

Toto: Do you somehow harbor the mistaken notion that forgery is some kind of unique craft that was only recently discovered by homo sapiens?

You have NO EVIDENCE, by paleography, that document xyz was written 1800 years ago, rather than 19 minutes ago.

You badly underestimate the willingness and ability of folks 2000 years ago to make history read any way they wanted. They controlled access to both Papyrus and ink.
Possession of a document expressing a view contrary to the official view led to death.

Dura Europos, under siege, could well have had some guy, some one person, painting on the last day, before the great destruction. Those scribbles on the wall don't translate into a "house church". Have you some data regarding the paint itself? Has anyone performed spectral analysis of the paint?
page 95 of Hopkins text.

avi

Toto

The Greek text incorporates the LXX as the "Old Testament." It is still a Jewish text, however inaccurate or subject to forgery. It was incorporated by Christians who both based their religion on Jewish prophecy and rejected the Jews, which is the problem for Pete's Eusebian forgery thesis.

aa5874

BY the way Arianism is not a doctrine that promotes the historical Jesus. The historical Jesus is a theory that the Jesus stories were based on a mere human.

Arianism is about a God/man, in effect, a MYTH, not a historical Jesus.

And Julian made this claim Julian claimed the Galilieans were FABRICATED of fiction, in effect, a fictional fabricated Jesus and his disciples.