Flux Æon

mountainman, I clicked on your link and was quite impressed by the treatise. However....not to go off topic, but simply to attempt to verify....I was of the belief that Saul/Paul the Liar invented the religion that Constantine simply "solidified" and unified as "the" authentic Christianity.

I'm new to this site, but I have been lurking for some time. I hope I can "keep up" with some of you.

Toto

Welcome Flux Æon. :wave:

The idea that Saul/Paul invented Christianity was very popular at one time and still has some adherents. It was based on the idea that the original teachings of Jesus were good, but the disciples and the early church, including Paul, did not understand them and corrupted them into the morass of badness that the Christian church represented to these critics.

This is a theme in Christian history - people look around and see that the church is worldly and corrupt, and assume that there was some original goodness (either inspired by "God" or by a great humanistic sage,) and spend their time trying to find the original, good religion before all of the corruption of the world took over.

I suspect that things were more complicated and not so much a matter of good vs. evil.

mountainman

Alternatively, those who are free to consider the possibility
that we are dealing with a fabrication and fiction see the
presence of Docetists as evidence of a reaction to fiction.

The docetic view dont forget was a classification of Eusebius
in the fourth century, and it persisted in the reports at least
as far as the archbishop of the City of Constantine in the mid
fifth century. Arius of Alexandria's position has often been
described as "docetic".

Docetism is a christian euphemism for fiction.
If Jesus' physical body was an illusion then he
was not an historical person.

The fourth century christians dont forget persecuted
and destroyed their Hellenic opposition cults by the
fire and the sword, since the christian cult had its
presence in the court of the christian emperor.

The word docetism is a theological euphemism.
The early christians did not like to be told their
holy books were a fabrication and a fiction of
men composed by wickedness. Anyone who said
these sorts of things "was lying" according to the
Christological Bishop Cyril, in the early 5th CE.


Best wishes,


Pete Brown

mountainman

Hi Flux Æon,

Toto's provided some history on thought on Paul.

My position is that someone ought to make sure
that Constantine did not invent the religion that
is presented in the propaganda published in his
rule, inclusive of the whole Bible and its entire
ecclesiastical history.

The mainstream position and the position that the
supreme imperial thug called Constantine invented
the top-down-emperor cult called christianity needs
to be distinguished by the evidence alone.

We need to separate the emotional baggage
and the evidence IMO and follow the path of
the evidence.


Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Flux Æon

My thanx for the responses, Toto & mountainman.
However, I have always been under the impression that until Saul/Paul came along, there were numerous sects of Christianity.
However, (and this is admittedly jmho), when Saul/Paul "reinvented" Christanity, he went to Peter and James to convince them to affirm his version of Christianity and support his new, burgeoning Christianity and they rejected him.
I have been of the opinion that Saul/Paul "hijacked" Christianity to reflect his idea of what it should be, as evidenced by the preponderance of "his" writings in the NT. Which btw, fail to make any mention of the virgin birth, resurrecton, crucifixion, etc. of the biblical character, Jesus.

However, (and I will simply appreciate your response and not go off topic again) I thought that in 180 CE, the Bishop of Lyons, a man by the name of Irenaeus, was able to bring about a single, consolidated belief. He singularly ruled that there could be only one “true” church, having only one set of beliefs and rituals, any other beliefs were to be rejected as heresy. His canon was simple and manifest, there was no salvation outside the “true Church”. Followers of this “true Church” would be “orthodox” or “straight thinking” and the church would be “catholic”…meaning “universal”.
Then in...what(?)...367, or thereabouts, Constantine, thru the Council of Nicaea, brought about the "new" Christianity to politically unify the region.
But I could be wrong.

My apologies for going OT.
I will start a thread on this subject soon.

Thanx to all,

Illegitimas Non Carborundum

Toto

Both before and after. Paul rails against those who preach a different Christ. Every Christian through history seems to spend a lot of time hunting heretics.

He says that they gave him the right hand of friendship.

But it's more likely that he had a new version of a sect of Judaism. When they declined to join him, he decided to preach to the gentiles.

Paul does mention the crucifixion and resurrection, but he did not put the NT together. Someone else decided that his writings were part of the new scripture. It seems most likely that the earliest Christians knew nothing about a virgin birth.

Irenaeus probably did not have the power to enforce his version of orthodoxy. It took Constantine and the power of the Roman Empire to create Christian unity.

mountainman

This begs the question "Was Iranaeus ever an actual human being".

arnoldo

in the 2nd century the Roman historian Tacticus (Annals, 15.44) reference both the emperor Nero, Pontius Pilate, Tiberius and a certain person he calls Christus

aa5874

Was Christus crucified? Was Jesus called Christus before he was crucified? Where was Christus killed and in which year? And how old was Christus when he died?

You need to answer those question to make sure that Tacitus and you are refering to the same person.

mountainman

Does he though? That is the question.
There have been explanations of both
the Tacitus and the Suetonius "christian"
references as interpolations from a later
century, some of which go so far as to
consider the implication of Eusebius, such
as Philosopher Jay.

Here is an extract from The Evolution of Christs and
Christianities

Best wishes


Pete Brown