Radorth

(Yawn)

Yes I do. It isn't true for starters, and for finishers, we all know they were written earlier and that you are asserting nothing of use, and proving even less.

HA! I just did. "James the Lord's brother." You know, the ref you just chose to ignore? Not that I blame you. I guess you know there is more where that came from and the discussion of specifics would be devastating to your cynical belief system. BTW, do you agree with Doherty that Paul does not "ever" mention the crucifixion or the historical Jesus? I hope so, otherwise your theories are bogus. You have to believe it at all costs.

Rad

Biff the unclean

Rad you may have noticed that I think the supernatural is a lot of bunk. I never have, nor would I ever, make any claims that I am psychic. Therefore you can repeat the phrase "James the Lord's brother" as many times as you want and I still won't know WTF you are talking about unless you tell me.
You will also notice that my name isn't Doherty. I am speaking from my own research and not anyone else's.
If there are things about the dates of the bible, or any other Christian artifact, that "we all know" I suggest that you find out just how we know them and stop assuming.

Tercel

The Eusebius who wrote the "Church History" of course: A quick search on the internet would have told you exactly.
It's Eusebius of Caesarea.

That looks like a paraphrase from the introduction to book 5 of Church History. I don't understand why you are quoting it.
I'd assume you think it somehow reflects badly on Eusebius, showing us he was a bad person or somebody whos entire writings we should disbelieve because of one quote. I'd assume that because I'd guess you've borrowed the quote from some atheist hate-website (along with the one from Eusebius of Nicomedia) which argues "look weren't all the early Christians evil lying b^%*#$s" and the fact that your quotation stops halfway through a sentence (doing the typical "yank from context as much as possible" trick) is another clue.
I'd assume that, except that I don't understand why you think the passage implies anything bad about Eusebius. He's saying that instead of covering political history, he's going to write about the history of the Church. (He is writing a "Church History", remember?) And he does just that: He largely ignores the political wars of the Roman Emperors except where relevant to the Church and he concentrates on examining the people, writings, and matyrs of the Church.
How is this a fault?

You've got him confused with the other Eusebius above. It was E of Cea that was into history and writing and who was Constantine's overseer. Personally, I find it's the biased athiests who do the "correcting" of history.

They both supported tolerance of Arianism. But yes, E of Nic was a committed Arian.

Ha, this cracks me up. Typical of "skeptics" who believe uncritically everything they read that agrees with their anti-Christian convictions...
Firstly: The Preparation for the Gospel is a work by Eusebius of Caesarea.

But quoting this passage is a common skeptic cock-up, so to roll off familiar answers:
Secondly: The writer is talking about parables and metaphors. ie things that aren't literally true. Not lies.

Here is the entire chapter (with heading in bold) from Gifford's translation:
Thirdly: The word translated here "falsehood" can equally mean "fiction".
Fourthly: What you are actually quoting from is a chapter heading which was likely added centuries later by another author.

The real liars as regards this passage are Richard Carrier (who in this amusingly biased article includes this hilariously atrocious footnote) and perhaps Gibbon (an anti-Christian 18th century historian) the original misinterpreter of this passage.

I don't question the judgement of archeologists in general when it is an established consensus that some bones are XXXX years old just because they didn't come with dates attached. They are scholars and know what they are doing, and they have their own methodology, eg radio-carbon dating, geological layer analysis etc which allows them to determine the date.

Similarly, why question the consensus of scholars when they give a date on ancient manuscripts? If there's a big controversy over one, with several scholars in disagreement, then okay. And sure, most scholars will say there's an inaccuracy to be had of about +- 50 years with their methods of dating. But if everyone knowledgeable on the subject (and I don't see why you put "scholars" in quotes) says the same thing, then why should you (in your comparative ignorance) think to declare what they say as unbelieveable?
And btw, handwriting analysis is only one of the methods used for dating manuscripts. I'm sure somebody in the BC&A forum could explain the methods used if you wanted.

Radorth

LOL!!!!

Oh my.

I dunno, but there must be a witch in there somewhere.

Rad

Biff the unclean

Ahh, my goodness, how many things are we supposed to ignore now?

We're supposed to ignore world famous historian Edward Gibbon because he isn't pro-Christian. Funny how studying it's origins will do that to you.

We're supposed to ignore that "[Eusebius] ( and yes you are quite right I did confuse the Eusebius of whom the Catholic Encyclepodiea says "More than this, it may be said that the world suffers to this day from the evil wrought by this worldly bishop." With the one who became one of the most powerful men on Earth by "correcting" history. The one who said that the War God Jesus showed Constantine a magic symbol in the sky that enabled him to slaughter thousands) indirectly confesses that he has related whatever might redound to the glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace, of religion"(Gibbon)

We are supposed to ignore that the only copies of Christian writings that supposedly pre-date this correction are colophon-less scraps whose dating is suspect at best. (There is no carbon dating done on these pieces. They are too small and too valuable to sacrifice a portion for the tests. They are not dated by geological layer, as you so snidely suggest. They are dated by looking at the style of the script done by one scribe and then comparing it to script styles done by completely different scribes who have dated works.)
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Side bar: Take for instance the dating on the Book of Kells (I know it is from much later but it serves the point) It was written by three scribes. Two of them shared the same ink well of oak gall ink so we know that they were probably working at the same time. Hand A did the beginning and most of the Gospel of St John. He had a very modern hand. While Hand C had a much higher hand and used "typefaces" from several hundred years earlier. He used a lot of majuscule forms and only a few conceits like superscribed letters. He had a much calmer hand. We can date the book easily enough by using "A"'s hand as a base. However if we only had a few pages of "C" we would think that the Book of Kells was hundreds of years older than it is. While you cannot write in a style that has yet to be invented it is common practice to write important documents in hands that date from the past.
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We are supposed to ignore that our current version of Christianity was chosen for it's political usefulness and not it's historic accuracy.

We are supposed to ignore the complete lack of evidence for a historic Jesus.

We are supposed to ignore that the myths that make up the Jesus story predate it, in some cases by hundreds of years. (Some, like "Easter," even retain their Hellenistic Pre-Christian names)

We are supposed to ignore that the Church Fathers proclaimed the original versions of the Jesus stories to be false and the work of the Devil.

And we are supposed to ignore everything we know about the world and accept tales of magical happenings as fact.

Phew! That's more ignoring than a person of my age can handle at one sitting. Was it The Red Queen who said " I try to believe at least six impossible things before breakfast"?

Well while I'm ignoring all of that maybe I can ignore the fact that Rad has ceased to be coherent too.

Tercel

All untrue things, and all utterly biased unevidenced/counter-evidenced assertions.

No, we question Gibbon where his anti-Christian bias is affecting his judgement. At the very least we consult for ourselves the sources he claims prove something bad about Christianity.

It's not really very nice to confuse a self-aggrandizing heretic with anyone!

Please stop with the utterly unevidenced assertions!!!
You can be entirely uncritical if you wish, and dream up whatever scenario you think "really" happened to your hearts content. Just don't waste your time asserting such rubbish to people who know it's crap, okay? You want me to believe it? Then provide at least some evidence! Or is even that asking too much?

Yeah, like anyone's going to trust what Gibbon says when he interprets an "indirect confess[ion]" in a way that makes a Christian look bad. If you want to be believed, you need the reference for what part of Eusebius' work Gibbon's referring to here.

By the way, can I suggest you might want to actually read the works of some of these early writers rather than reading what a biased centuries old historian interpreted them as saying? It might make you a bit less credulous of wacko assertions he makes, and a bit less willing to believe those writers were evil liars.

And furthermore, what the hell are you doing quoting a historian from 2 centuries ago? Or is there no modern scholar biased and stupid enough to agree with your position?

Let me see... You want me to believe that somehow, someway, the Emperor instigated a massive "correction" of Christianity. You want me to believe that somehow, someway, the Christians who had apparently been willing to die for their faith up to then accepted this correction without any fuss. You want me to believe that somehow, someway, all evidence of this correction was removed. Are you nuts? What do you think would happen if the UN voted tommorrow to "correct" Christianity? They'd probably be riots across the world. What makes you think Constantine would have had it any easier?

Given that the early Christians quibbled about things as trivial as the date of Easter, I think it's just a bit unlikely that any major "corrections" could have been made without us knowing all about it.

A nice example certainly. However I do not feel inclined to ignore an entire branch of science or the agreement of numerous scholars based on a possibly ficitious example from you. If you are really interested in discussing Textual Criticism, I suggest you start a new thread in BC&A. I promise to watch amusedly from the sidelines as CX and Polycarp tear your position to shreads.

As I said above, counter-evidenced biased assertions should be ignored.

How can you ignore a non-existent state of affairs?


No, no, you're supposed to believe biased skeptic writers when they find a story from hundreds of years after the birth of Jesus, retrofit it with Christian style language, improve it, and then claim Christianity was based on it... :banghead:

No, you're meant to recognise Christian Apologetics when you see it.

Of course.

Biff the unclean

No, no, you're supposed to believe biased skeptic writers when they find a story from hundreds of years after the birth of Jesus, retrofit it with Christian style language, improve it, and then claim Christianity was based on it...

I didn't need to read those nasty biased skeptical writers. I had independently come to the same conclusion years before I had heard about any of them just from reading the Hellenistic myths for myself. I mean when Acts lifts an entire story out of the Dionysian religion it's obvious enough. But when they have Jesus recite the famous "kicking at pricks" speech from Euripides Bacchae yikes. It's hard to claim that Euripides is the one who copied Christianity when he died in the fifth century BCE. The only truly biased writer I've read is Franz Cumont who wrote The Mysteries of Mithra which, in it's updated edition is still the mainstay of information on the Mithra myth. Cumont was a devout Catholic and completely biased in favor Christianity. He spends an inordinate portion of his book trying to explain away the duplications in the two religions many of which Fiach has already touched on.
But this business of yours of Hellenism coming hundreds of years after Christianity takes credulity to a new level

Let me see... You want me to believe that somehow, someway, the Emperor instigated a massive "correction" of Christianity. You want me to believe that somehow, someway, the Christians who had apparently been willing to die for their faith up to then accepted this correction without any fuss.
Who ever said that. In the self congratulatory writings of the Emperor Julian (the Apostate) he states that although he did not ban Christianity out right he was able to put a stop to the constant mass slaughter of Christians by opposing factions of Christians
You want me to believe that somehow, someway, all evidence of this correction was removed. Are you nuts?
Then why are there only copies of everything from before the Roman Catholic Church set up this office? Where are all the documents
What do you think would happen if the UN voted tommorrow to "correct" Christianity? They'd probably be riots across the world.
But we aren't talking about the UN are we? We are talking about a Dictator. The Emperor of all Rome who over threw not only the Imperial government but the entire form of that government taking all power onto himself. The first thing Dictators do is change history. We saw it in Germany and in the Soviet Union. Turn on your TV and you can watch Saddam's Information Minister change history as it's happening.

What makes you think Constantine would have had it any easier?
Because he was Emperor of the world and he had hit upon a religion to cement his power. You'll note he, himself, believed in Mithra. By the end of Constantine's century Theodosius the Great had banned Hellenism with a stroke of his stylus. Those that believed in the religions their families had had for countless generations and refused to convert were simply killed. Do you think these Emperors were worried about public opinion polls and the will of the people? Get real. This is who was being referred to when it was said that absolute power corrupted absolutely.

Radorth

4th Century Roman history according to Biff is above.

And from a more independent perspective:

What makes this argument convincing is that it is possible to compare the reasoning of Lactantius, who was active at the court of Constantine, with that of Porphyry, a philosopher at the court of the emperor Diocletian who had initiated the persecution. Porphyry, known to historians of philosophy as the disciple of the great Neoplatonist Plotinus, was the most astute and learned critic of Christianity in the first four centuries of the Church’s history. But unlike earlier critics he had the emperor’s ear, and provided philosophical and religious legitimation for an aggressive policy against the Christians early in the fourth century. Although Porphyry believed that there were many roads to the divine, and no one could claim to have found the true way, he thought the Christians were subversive. In his book dealing with Christians he asked: “How can men not be in every way impious who have apostatized from the customs of our fathers, through which every nation and city is sustained? . . . What else are they than fighters against God? What types of pardon will they be worthy of who have turned away from those recognized as gods from the earliest times?” Christians, in his view, should adjust their religious beliefs to traditional Roman practice. If not, they should be punished accordingly.

It is commonly assumed that because polytheism is not exclusive it must be tolerant. But the historical evidence will not bear this interpretation. Porphyry was the exponent of an inclusive religious outlook that held that there were many ways to God; he even attempted to find a way of integrating Christ into the pantheon of Roman gods by honoring him as a sage. But he had few takers among the Christians and he concluded that Christianity, at least in its orthodox form (because of its belief in the divinity of Christ), was harmful to Roman society. Consequently he was unwilling to grant forbearance to the Christians.

Christianity, on the other hand, is exclusive, for it claims not only that one can know the true God but that the way to God has been revealed in Christ. Hence it is often assumed that Christianity is inherently intolerant. But this confuses exclusivism with intolerance. Polytheism is not exclusive, but it can be intolerant as it was at the time of Diocletian’s persecution. Christianity is exclusive, but it can be tolerant (though of course it can also be intolerant, as later history will demonstrate). In the early fourth century there is no evidence that traditional pagans found Constantine’s religious policy favoring the Christians a threat to their beliefs and practices. Lactantius (and Constantine) believed all men should be granted freedom to follow whatever form of religion each wished. For this reason, Drake argues that the claim that Christianity in itself is intolerant is a modern prejudice: “The coercive Christian as normative is a modern construct—the worst sort of conceptual anachronism, one that has required every ounce of scholarly ingenuity to maintain.”

You can read more here:


http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/...es/wilken.html

And there are several other sites which put to rest cynical and simplistic theories that Constantine made an entirely political decision to embrace the Christianity of his personal choice, manipulate the Council at Nicea and later go around mercilessly persecuting pagans and disagreeable sects, forcing everybody to believe what he wanted. (Ironically one of his sons embraced Arianism). I'm no fan of Constantine. His "conversion" opened the doors of the church to the designer Christian. Kept fairly pure by persecution, the world flooded in with all it's avarice and greed. But for his time Constantine was a reasonably enlightened soul, and Biff is reduced to mind reading in order to bolster his absurd and escoteric theories.

Rad

Biff the unclean

Biff is reduced to mind reading in order to bolster his absurd and escoteric theories
The minds I'm reading are those of Gibbon and Campbell.
When do we get to the magic Chi-Rho in the sky part of the story? You know the miracle that allowed Constantine to realize his political ambitions at the cost of thousands of peoples lives.
And why are we looking at Constantine and saying 'see he didn't bother the pagans?' Nobody said that he did. It was Theodosius the Great who slaughtered the Hellenists in the name of Christ not Constantine. But you already knew that since several people have already mentioned it. Under Constantine Christians contented themself mostly with murdering other Christians. So why the red herring?
And all of this has just what to do with the Jesus story being lifted from the Hellenists?

Shake