Archaeological Evidence of pre-Constantinian Christianity

[Leucius Charinus]

You have previously acknowledged the falseness of your hypothesis in the other forum when you recognized that the evidence at Dura Europos disproved your thesis.

This is not true at all. If you were to examine the argument what I did was to allow for, and then address, the possibility that the Dura Fragment 24 was "early". At that time I allowed a probability of 90% (which I have since revised in this forum to 70%) that the Dura Fragment 24 (which Clark Hopkins in his book admits "was found on the top of a bucket") is from the 3rd century. This is a probability and its converse - there is no certainty either way.

You must understand that probability is not certainty because on a number of occasions recently you yourself have stated that:

But probability isn't certainty.

[stephan happy huller]

no this is what you do everyday at these forums. you pull statements out of context. we can be virtually certain about the pre-Nicene of Christianity from Dura Europos alone. and then there are hundreds of other witnesses too.

It is not possible that Christianity was invented in the 4th century ... and you know it. When you are eventually banned from this forum you will also know it was justified because in your heart you know how dishonest you've been

[Leucius Charinus]

Nevertheless you have established the building blocks for a 'blood libel' argument at the heart of your theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel

On the modern use of 'blood libel' to mean 'the shedding of blood' rather than the specific use of blood in sacramental foods - http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011 ... ibel/?_r=0

WIKI quotes Encyclopaedia Britannica:

blood libel, also called blood accusation, the superstitious accusation that Jews ritually sacrifice the children of Christians at Passover to obtain blood for unleavened bread. It first emerged in medieval Europe in the 12th century and was revived sporadically in eastern and central Europe throughout the medieval and modern periods, often leading to the persecution of Jews.

Professor Israel Jacob Yuval of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem published an article in 1993 that argues that blood libel may have originated in the 12th century from Christian views of Jewish behaviour during the First Crusade.

So apart from shooting yourself in the foot again, at least you have moved from the 19th century back to the 12th century but you still have a almost a thousand years to go before you will understand that I am discussing the ancient history of the 4th century, and the evidence which underpins the universally accepted hypothesis that what Eusebius called "the nation of Christians" existed in the first three centuries of the common era. This is a valid academic question the answers to which point to what many academics refer to as a very "sparse" distribution.

The study of the history of Islam reveals the same problems of "early evidence". My arguments are not confined just to Christianity, but extend to Islam as well. The commonality is that they are the two most recent centralised monotheistic state religions, and that they were set in place during a barbaric and ruthless antiquity by the regimes which were spawned by supremely victorious warlords over their respective empires. Dont you understand this?

The fact is that the evidence itself is quite amenable to genuine and polite discussion but it is you yourself who continually resorts to emotional "hate speech" and vitriolic retorts, on the basis that you have claimed the high moral mainstream ground as your own ground of emotionally secure faith.

and then there are hundreds of other witnesses too.

Such as?

[stephan happy huller]

Ummm the writings of Christians, Jews and pagans to begin with

[Leucius Charinus]

Ummm the writings of Christians, Jews and pagans to begin with

One pagan called "Celsus" about whom Momigliano writes ....

Celsus' objections to Christianity being known to us only from Origen's replies to them, it is impossible to isolate Celsus' arguments from Origen's replies: it is indeed impossible to be certain that Celsus is fairly represented by the texts Origen quotes to refute him.

The Disadvantages of Monotheism for a Universal State
Author(s): Arnaldo Momigliano
Source: Classical Philology, Vol. 81, No. 4 (Oct., 1986), pp. 285-297
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/269977 .

One "Christian" source called "Eusebius" is responsible for the history of all the other sources, for the history of the persecutions and the martyrs.

We can continue to go blindly down that long and untrodden path called "IN-EUSEBIUS-WE-TRUST" or we can discuss as academics of history the theoretical implications that this source which we call "Eusebius", preserved by the Roman Church for the last 1600 years, has certain features which are very similar to "Pseudo-Isidore" who in the 9th century blatantly forged hundreds of letters in the names of popes and other Christian authors who supposedly lived in the first three centuries of the common era.

[stephan happy huller]

You are such a fucking cancer. The facts are that Celsus is a witness as his 'Jew' and Origen too for that matter for the existence of Christianity before Nicaea. This has nothing to do with Eusebius. The evidence comes down to us outside of Eusebius. Please go away. You will do everyone a service.

[beowulf]

.
Arnaldo Momigliano
On Pagans, Jews and Christians
Pages 18, 135, 136,137,148-149,152,153,157,158, 168,195
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown, Connecticut, 1987
ISBN 0819562181

Arnaldo Momigliano in his book: On Pagans Jews and Christians,in the index the following entries are found for “Celsus”: Pages 18, 135, 136,137,148-149,152,153,157,158, 168,195

In page 18 Momigliano says that Christianity existed, and Celsius said what he considered to be sufficient
Page 18
Christian-Pagan Polemics

...The pagans, on the other hand, did not have to explain their own existence: it was sufficient for them to defend the rationality of their beliefs, as Celsus did, for instance, by explaining the function of polytheism in a plurinational world...

I haven’t got the time to type the extensive coverage of Celsus in the book, but the little I have copied from page 18 shows what Momigliano really said.

[stephan happy huller]

Thanks Rey. I knew pete rapes all his quotes out of context

[Leucius Charinus]

I haven’t got the time to type the extensive coverage of Celsus in the book, but the little I have copied from page 18 shows what Momigliano really said.

The context is as follows:

It is therefore significant that the first time we come across some serious concern with the relation between Roman polytheism and the Roman Empire is in that man Celsus, who in about 180 polemized against the Christians and whom eighty years later Origen chose as his adversary in his devastating Contra Celsum. Celsus was mainly aiming at a double target. He wanted to prove that the Christians were rebels: first, rebels against the Jews; and second and worse, rebels against the emperor. The Christians, according to Celsus, abandoned the laws of the Jews in order to disobey the emperor and refuse military service. In pursuing this double argument, Celsus came to maintain (as far as we can see from the quotations in Origen Book 7) that the gods ruled the world under a supreme god more or less as the satraps governed the Persian Empire under a king of kings. Origen could make short shrift of all this by answering that Christians had been told to worship the creator and not his creatures (8. 65). Moreover, he could turn to the prophet Zephaniah 3:7-13, a locus classicus for the unity of mankind (at least in the Christian interpretation). Celsus' argument was obviously becoming more danger- ous when he invited the Christians to serve the country in which they lived. The reply, to which we shall soon have to return from another point of view, was that the Christians served the Church as the alternative to serving the State. Celsus' objections to Christianity being known to us only from Origen's replies to them, it is impossible to isolate Celsus' arguments from Origen's replies: it is indeed impossible to be certain that Celsus is fairly represented by the texts Origen quotes to refute him.

But my contention for discussion remains. One lone pagan (aside from Porphyry and Pseudo-Porphyry) is the only pagan attestation from the first three centuries of the common era for the presence of the "Nation of Christians", and it is Eusebius, commanding his source Origen, in disputation with Celsus, who ultimately provides this attestation. Why do we not have any independent attestation of the presence of the Christians and their totally weird "Holy Writ" that was characterised by the presence of the encryption of many "sacred names" to Greek code forms? The pagans do not mention the Christians. Diogenes Laertius in the 3rd century CE wrote voluminously about the "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers" but does not mention the Christians.

Although we have hundreds of references to Christians in the first three centuries, all of these references have physically passed across the desk of Eusebius, the editor of the Constantine Bibles of the 4th century. Do we have to trust "Eusebius"?

If you cannot understand my position then I suggest you view my position as a conscientious objector to (the historical integrity of) the source called "Eusebius".

I knew pete rapes all his quotes out of context

Can't you cut the emotional reaction to discuss the possibility that the source "Eusebius", from which all our knowledge of the "Early Christians" is derived, has already raped and fabricated his evidence, and we are examining the families of illegitimate historical assertions?

From an academic perspective, the historical method has within it, the provision to treat any given source as forged or corrupt. Obviously reasons need to be provided to substantiate the formal treatment of the source called "Eusebius" as a forged and/or corrupted source, but there are a number of reasons which can be put forward, not the least of which are political. Eusebius wrote at a time of newly found freedom - a massive religious and political and military revolution under Constantine, which completely altered the structure of the Roman Empire.

Hypothetically the source known as "Eusebius" - in the service of the newly created Constantinian regime, and/or its successors (who inherited that ruling centralised monotheistic state Christian regime and preserved that source) - may have fabricated for themselves a history, just like the Legends of King Arthur, or in the case paralleling some modern revisionist histories of Islam, the leaders of the expanded Islamic empire fabricated the legends of the Quran being revealed to Muhammad. The basis of this practice was that it made it easier for the rulers to control the people of a geographically dispersed empire by the imposition of a compulsory centralised monotheistic state religion.

[Leucius Charinus]

I've organized the links and added some more, for those interested in such things:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=129

Here are some links regarding paleography, epigraphy, and archaeology with respect to Christianity in the first four centuries AD

Let's start with this section:

3. Papyri from the persecutions of the mid-third century

http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/POxy/VEx ... stian.html ... Order to arrest a "CHRESIAN"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Oxyrhynchus_3035 .... Order to arrest a "CHRESIAN"
http://papyri.info/ddbdp/p.oxy;43;3119 ................... Χρηστιανῶν and Χ[ρ]ηστιανῶν "CHRESTIAN"?
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2 ... 3086054777 ... See above: Χρηστιανῶν and Χ[ρ]ηστιανῶν "CHRESTIAN"?
http://books.google.com/books?id=w59JAA ... li&f=false ... Libelli from Decius, none of which refer to Christians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POxy_1464 ................... a PAGAN libellus, one of four PAGAN libelli found at Oxyrhynchus
https://archive.org/stream/oxyrhynchusp ... 1/mode/2up ... a PAGAN libellus, one of four PAGAN libelli found at Oxyrhynchus


As you can see we have no references to "Christians", one to "Chresians", a couple to "Chrestians" and some pagan libelli.
I have dealt with all of these here

Tertullian (Ad Nationes 1.3.7) notes the fact that non-christians often mispronounce the name.

So also does Justin Martyr (Apology 1, ch. 4), Clement (Stromata IV) and Lactantius (Divine Institutes, Book IV Ch. VII).

The above examples are consistent with that fact.

So firstly, considering all of this, supposedly set down before he wrote, why did the scribe of Codex Sinaiticus fuck up so badly?

And secondly, why are all of the early sources in CONSISTENT agreement with χρηστιανος (Chrestian)?

Earlier thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=178

There is an alternative explanation which may better explain all this evidence. The name of "CHREST" and/or "CHRIST" were in the Greek Bibles written in a codified form and thus were not able to be distinguished. The alternative explanation is that χρηστιανος: (Chrestians) was historically and chronologically the first name, and the Chrestian Regime at some later date decided it was more prestigious or unique, or for some other reason, to call themselves "Christian" [χριστιανος].

At that later time, these sources Tertullian (Ad Nationes 1.3.7), Justin Martyr (Apology 1, ch. 4), Clement (Stromata IV) and Lactantius (Divine Institutes, Book IV Ch. VII) were edited and altered to confuse the history of the change.