mountainman

That's a fascinating comment. If there is nothing written about the "question" how do we really know that its taken for granted that its authentic? Let me see ..... We put on the "Christian Glasses" and Lo and Behold ... anything at all that we find on the internet about "Christian History" becomes a wonderful TRUTH.

What a steaming pile of uncritical belief-driven nonsense.

stephan huller

I would love to hear from Pete what evidence he acknowledges is out there which contradicts his theory about a fourth century origin to the Church. 'There is none,' is undoubtedly the boiled down synthesis of his response.

mountainman

There are at least three major problems with this.

(1) In the reference I supplied from the PHILOSOPHUMENA the author accuses Callistus of leaning towards the heresy of Noetus who refused to admit any difference between the First and Second Persons of the Trinity. The political existence of heretics required the political existence of orthodoxy, and the massive arguments in the public arena about the trinity and its various heretical views only exploded after Nicaea.

(2) The NT and its history involve in the first instance Greek and not Latin. The discussion about the trinity in Greek is not witnessed until Nicaea at which time it explodes in the literature. Even if Tertullian wrote in Latin about the Latin trinity from North Africa, which of the Greek authors paid attention to him?

(3) The manuscript tradition for the Latin Adversus Praxean is woefully late. Roger's site documents an extremely detailed and exhaustively complete summary of Tertullian's manuscripts of the text Adversus Praxean


I would like to remind everyone that the earliest Latin manuscript is from the 11th century, two hundred years after the massive Latin "Pseudo-Isidore" forgery and we have absolutely no guarantee, except the blessings of the faithful, a wing and a nice prayer, that these manuscripts were any earlier. It may have been important for the church to "find" some documentation that would allow them to "retroject" various mentions of the trinity prior to the post-Nicaean epoch.

But Tertullian cannot serve to address the vital discussions in the Greek language about the trinity which, to all intents and purposes, evolved after Nicaea due to the arguments of the Platonists using the philosophy of Plotinus which had already an inbuilt "trinity", namely "ONE SPIRIT SOUL"

mountainman

The OP is about whether the Christians are mentioned by the hand of Cassius Dio in his surviving books of "Roman History". Perhaps you would like to start another thread?

stephan huller

My point only underscores how ludicrous this 'inquiry' is. You haven't presented a scrap of evidence to raise doubt on this particular passage. Only your will to destroy evidence for your silly theory makes you think you have made progress towards this end.

mountainman

I have pointed out that this particular passage is derived from a Christianised epitome of the 11th century. This particular passage is not found in any of the original recovered books of Cassius Dio.

What more do I have to say?

Toto

You have to say a lot more. You have to provide some coherent reason for someone to insert an off hand reference to an imperial concubine favoring Christians. You have to interact with all of the criticisms of your view that admit that such an interpolation is possible but not especially likely. If you think this is an accidentally inserted marginal note, you would need to locate the source of the idea that Marcia favored Christians in some other document available to the scribe.

You do have a record of trying to deny any reference to Christianity before Constantine, and for most of us, you blew your credibility when you refused to admit the Christian influences on the remains of the house church at Dura Europas. It appears that you will deny anything.

As I have said before, if you took the position that Constantine was an imperial thug who took over Christianity and changed it to something that barely resembled what it was before, you would find some support. If you tried to claim that Christianity was invented in the second century, you would find support. If you just tried to say that Christians invented most of their history, you would find support.

But you seem to be stuck on a highly improbable conspiracy theory that Christianity was invented under Constantine, and you act as if you will not give this up until someone finds evidence that it existed before Nicaea that you can't figure out some way to deny.

This is a massive waste of time.

mountainman

Some time back I stated the following ....


Did you miss this? We already know that the writer had access to Eusebius and to the "Thundering Legion" legend (Tertullian?).

The PHILOSOPHUMENA mentions Marcia in Book 9 as follows:

mountainman

Well?

The extract from Book 73 is clearly derived from an 11th century Christian epitome of Cassius Dio. In books 70 and 72 the epitome compiler freely added other Christian legends and traditions. To do this he must have had both Eusebius and Tertullian before him in the 11th century. What is there to prevent this epitome writer to also have the legend of Marcia, concubine of Commodus, freeing Christians from theSardinian mines, in this same text, before him?

Nothing.

Between the 4th century forgery mill and the 11th century we have the 9th century "Pseudo-Isidore" forgery mill. I don't know what can be said about when the original version of the "Refutation of All Heresies" was authored (Origen? Hippolytus? Tertullian?). By a reading of the introduction, in order for both Greek and Latin authors to be considered as the author of the PHILOSOPHUMENA , and because it is described as a Greek translation of Latin, how do we know what the language of authorship was?

What has this got to do with any 4th century origins discussion?

Nothing at all.


Andrew and Huller have not stated any critical logic behind the value of the PHILOSOPHUMENA as positive evidence for the hypothesis that Cassius Dio mentioned the Christians. (Or was it "Chrestians"?) or negative evidence against the antithetical hypothesis.

What is this logic?

While Huller has been providing photos, Andrew has provided this.

And to my point (irrespective of century of authorship) in regard to the likelihood that the epitome writer, not Cassius Dio, included a bit of it in the 11th century.



Witnesses?

Who is the first to witness this/these Cassius Dio references to Christians?

The text is from the 15th century. Who mentions that Cassius Dio mentions Christians between the 15th and 21st century?

stephan huller

I think there is something wrong with someone when all they do is bring up terrible arguments over and over and over again and think they 'win' when people get bored and stop responding.