Radcliffe Emerson

And in Paul's letters, the earliest Xtian stuff found, he mentions a resurrection, but it appears to be symbolic. In fact Paul indicates everyone will be resurrected when they die as Jesus was.
Paul's letters display absolutely no knowledge at all of a physical resurrection, virgin birth, stone being rolled away from a tomb, etc. Plus, he is very vocal about women remaining silent and being subject to their husbands, things I believe a real Jesus would have been against.

[ May 03, 2002: Message edited by: Tyr Anasazi ]</p>

godfry n. glad

al: "I grant most of what you say about Eusebius but I've read enough pagan and christian panegyric to treat him as pretty typical for his time. Hence my charge of anachronism - you are personalising on Eusebius your objections to his time."

godfry:
Well, I'm glad you grant most of what I said about Eusebius. He may, or may not, have been typical for his time, but it seems we have sufficient evidence that he stretched the truth, omitted embarrassing details, and accepted without question dubious materials if they supported his particular position, if not actually invented spurious evidence to that purpose. None of this is anachronistic and I have no "objection to his time" as you suggest. You have misapplied the term "anachronism". I suggest that you look it up.

al: "Ultimately, we were arguing about whether Eusebius explicitly condoned lying. Clearly, he didn't..."

godfry:
Please provide proof of this unsupported assertion. This is not clear at all.

al: "...but there is a widespread belief based on misattribution and mistranslation that he did."

godfry:
According to whom? You? And just why is it I should accept your opinion on this? You seem to have a confessional interest in exonerating Eusebius for his misrepresentations. For my part, I've seen more authoritative opinions rendered that negate yours completely. Please provide authoritative proof that Eusebius has been misattributed and mistranslated.

al: "Surely, we should want to correct that mistake regardless of the atheological propaganda that has been made of Eusebius's alleged admission."

godfry:
There is nothing to correct. No mistake. And, I'm fairly certain that it's not "atheological propaganda" that has rendered the opinion that Eusebius willfully misrepresented the facts in his works in order to advance his cause, but careful reading and interpretation by authoritative scholars of christian and/or indeterminate (and relatively unbiased) background. Repeatedly. The atheists have just trumpeted this to whomever would listen, while christian apologists have tried to sweep it under the rug or run the ol' "baffle 'em with bullshit" routine to attempt to counter the truth that Eusebius calculatedly misrepresented the facts of the early history of the church to advance himself....truly a "man of his time".

You're in denial.

godfry

Alexis Comnenus

godfry,

Actually, if you can find a scholar (not an athiest polemicist) who claims that Eusebius explicitly condoned lying I'd be fascinated. As the Pierce article showed, he has had quotes misattributed. This is a fact no one denies.

The only quote left in question is Mr Carrier's which, as I explained above, cannot be construed to mean Eusebius condoning lying as that would mean that he was saying there were lies in scripture. This is an idea so daft that anyone without their heads firmly thrust in the sand will reject it. We further find that Loeb in its translation of Plato does not use the words 'lie' or 'falsehood' which Mr Carrier uses in his translation. Still, he appears quite bright enough to realise his mistake now its been pointed out.

To impose your ideals of objectivity on the fourth century is anachronistic. Look it up.

Regards

Alex

Tristan Scott

I find the debate over Eusebius to be very interesting. The Christian religion does indeed seem to be a product of the Early Church contemporaries of Eusebius more so than anything that may have taken place during the first century. Eusebius remains a valuable source for researching the formation of the church in the 3rd c., but not of much value in determining the truth about Jesus.

I believe if we want to know who Jesus really was we stand a better chance of finding that out by taking the approach of Q research. In that we find a much different Jesus than that portrayed by the Early Church.

godfry n. glad

Alex:

I'd be more than happy to not only provide you a name of a scholar, I'll provide you a citation, so you can read his commentary at your leisure. Try:

Olson, Ken; "Eusebius and the 'Testimonium Flavium', _Catholic Biblical Quarterly_, 61(2):305-22, 1999.

Olson suggests that Eusebius is the fabricator of the "Testimonium Flavium". I'd say that was evidence of pious forgery...lying for his church. I've long been of the opinion that we could not discern whether Eusebius himself was responsible, or directed and supervised others, or opportunistically utilized an earlier fraud by an unknown author, but Ken Olson has presented an interesting and compelling argument supporting Eusbian fabrication. So far as I know, the _Catholic Biblical Quarterly_ is not in the habit of publishing atheist polemicists.

As for Pearce's article, it shows not much more that it's Pearce's opinion that Eusebius has been misattributed...in this case. I have no doubt that Eusebius has been misattributed (most likely by christian apologists, in their zeal to protect the faith), but here and on this topic, I doubt that's the case. All we have from you is your bald assertion that he couldn't have written that the scriptures included fictions. You have not provided _any_ evidence to support this bald assertion, in contradistinction to several others here who have provided ample evidence that Eusebius most certainly did suggest that there were allegorical (that is, "not literal truth", "fictive devices", "comfortable misrepresentations for the simple"....lies, untruths, prevarications, misrepresentations, frauds by other names) passages in the scriptures, as support for his position that such misrepresentations are acceptable tools for contemporary churchmen (like himself).

I have not imposed my ideals of objectivity upon the fourth century, but you certainly seem intent upon imposing your ideals of what a fourth century churchman would think and write...now that is not only anachronistic, but delusional as well.

godfry

Toto

Eusebius may have had a paraphrase misattributed as a quote, but that is all.

Mr. Carrier has responded to you and has not conceded a mistake. Since we agree he is quite bright, and this involves his profession, there probably was no mistake.

Haran

Were there rebuttals to the article, as many times there are in CBQ? I have a feeling that you read Olson's article from the JesusMysteries board and not directly from CBQ, or perhaps even knew of it only by the reference in Carrier's Formation of the NT Canon. Seriously though, I'd be interested to know if there were rebuttals. I'd also be interested to know how respected Olson's opinions are within the scholarly community at large.

I happen to agree with Pearse and Alexis. I think it is rather interesting that the respected Loeb edition of Plato does not use the word "lie" in their translation (though I have not actually checked this out for myself). If this is true, then I feel that we are not the ones making the information conform to our own ideas.

Reading the History of the Church, one comes away with the idea (or at least I did) that Eusebius is an honest and relatively critical person. As for the Life of Constantine, it was a work which was left unfinished because of Eusebius' death, so it is unfair to complain about what was written within a work that he was not even able to polish and then publish. I believe that I have also heard that it was possibly written after the death of Constantine and, therefore, contains much eulogizing that the work might not otherwise have contained.

Finally, I do not believe that Eusebius was an intentional liar. I do not believe that he created the Testimonium Flavianum. As a matter of fact, I find it a rather curious and severe accusation.

Haran

[ May 03, 2002: Message edited by: Haran ]</p>

Roger Pearse

I thought people would wish to know that I've uploaded a revised version of my notes on this, to include the manuscript witnesses to the PE, and generally tightened up the section on the chapter heading. I've also written a section on the idea that the *passage* supports the concept of Eusebius as liar, which wasn't addressed before. It doesn't say anything you've not seen before - just says it better, or so I hope. I've left a link to the old version as well. I generally write things a couple of times before I'm satisfied with them, so I expect I'll revise this new section again, once I can see it as others do.

Mr. Carrier made the interesting suggestion in this forum that chapter headings in ancient works are always authorial. I'd be interested to know on what this is based. My reading suggests the consensus is the contrary; unfortunately I can't give you any references for this at present (sorry), since I can't find more than casual allusions. Mind you, I don't understand why they should not be authorial. Manuscript copyists are very prone to copy everything dot and comma, blindly. But I understand they are usually not.

The comments about the chapter headings of the PE were interesting, but they did not seem convincing to me. The same arguments would explain why an editor would add them. I would think that the suggestion that they improve readability (which is true) would have to be considered against the background of a culture that abandoned punctuation in the 3rd century.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Alexis Comnenus

godfry,

Thanks for the Olsen article (now located on the net). I was intrigued that he thought that there was evidence of a Josephan core to the TF but then uses lots of pleading to get away from this. But he does appear to be a scholar who thinks Eusebius faked it, so they do indeed exist.

Actually, your use of 'allegorical' to describe what Eusebius and Plato mean is fine with me (I said 'figurative' above). But if you think this can be construed to mean 'lie' or 'fraud' in this context it appears English is not your first language.

Regards

Alex