After 20 Years Plus of Flogging His Theory How Many Here at the Forum Believe Mountainman?

[Leucius Charinus]

There is arguably no physical primary evidence from before the 3rd century to verify 1st or 2nd century origins.

• Meh. Based on present 'knowledge' you can't use "no physical primary evidence from before the 3rd century" to write off 1st or 2nd century origins for some of the concepts, especially wrt 2nd century origins

I am not writing it off. I am just skeptical that anything substantial actually existed as claimed in the EH of Eusebius. Especially the pseudo-historical diatribe of the Ante Nicene church fathers.

The Church Fathers aren't history.

The Church Fathers aren't history, but they made no special effort to make the heretics appear older than they were (much the opposite).

The heresiologists developed an apostolic lineage of heretics going back to Simon Magus and the SImonians.

[neilgodfrey]

A literary school hell bent on assembling theological literature based on an historical fiction set in the 1st century of the common era simply mimics the philosophical literature of 1st century Stoics. No big deal. I don't see any problem with replicating literary memes and tropes in centuries old extant texts.

Given the amount of literature so "mimicked", you don't think it would be very odd if there was not a slip up at and an anachronism slipped in?

It is arguable that Paul's letters are not first century works because of arguable anachronisms from the second century. Are there any from the fourth?

There's the infamous Seneca-Paul letter exchange which from the 4th century for more than a thousand years was passed off as genuine by the Nicene and Post Fathers. In fact it prefaced the literature of Seneca as circulated by the Christian education system. So the point is that forgery and fraud of "Ecclesiastical history" seem to have been common place in the 4th century. It is not necessary to explore the fraud of the Holy Relic Trade. A rich and influential Nicene church had accreted between 324-360 CE.

I get the impression that you are proposing what is in fact a "perfect crime" that was so cleverly and so comprehensively organized that not a single clue was left to be found that would lead to doubts. Is that a fair description?

If various authors were manufactured to appear to have witten in early times and to have thereby corroborated one another, would we not have expected to find some kind of friendly or hostile reference to the Seneca-Paul correspondence prior to the fourth century -- to remove the risk that they were really late documents?

[Peter Kirby]

Do you now recognize that was there at least one Χρειστιανος sometime in the 3rd century?

I think that this is yet to be determined. You have cited an inscription above with Χρειστιανος. Can you find a picture of this with the iota?

Fair enough. There's supposed to be a photo in Elsa Gibson's 1978 "Christians for Christians" book. I'll look it up.

[Secret Alias]

Χρειστιανος

I am pretty sure Irenaeus spells "Christ" with ει. Who cares?

[Peter Kirby]

Do you now recognize that was there at least one Χρειστιανος sometime in the 3rd century?

I think that this is yet to be determined. You have cited an inscription above with Χρειστιανος. Can you find a picture of this with the iota?

I looked it up. Here's that data.

T.D. Barnes, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia, p. 242

In the year 363, the tenth of the month Pereitios. Eutyches son of Eutyches, (prepared this tomb) for Tatia his wife and for his father, in memory; Christans [Χρειστιανοι]; and for himself. Phellinas. From Temenothyrai.

Based on the first line, Barnes dates this inscription to 278-279 CE.

For comparison, T. D. Barnes presents the figure below. Elsa Gibson has the photos (The "Christians for Christians" Inscriptions of Phrygia, p. 193).

[Leucius Charinus]

There's the infamous Seneca-Paul letter exchange which from the 4th century for more than a thousand years was passed off as genuine by the Nicene and Post Fathers. In fact it prefaced the literature of Seneca as circulated by the Christian education system. So the point is that forgery and fraud of "Ecclesiastical history" seem to have been common place in the 4th century. It is not necessary to explore the fraud of the Holy Relic Trade. A rich and influential Nicene church had accreted between 324-360 CE.

I get the impression that you are proposing what is in fact a "perfect crime" that was so cleverly and so comprehensively organized that not a single clue was left to be found that would lead to doubts. Is that a fair description?

There is sufficient evidence IMO that irrespective of any earlier provenance of the canonical Greek NT codices (such as Oxy papyri) there was an imperial circulation of these during the rules of Constantine and Constantius (325-360 CE). In the second half of the 4th century we lose focus on the NT codices for over a thousand years because of the emergence of the holy relic trade. We must be mindful of this enormous fact.

There are three potential clues from that early period which may be interpreted as "whistle blowers" that the NT canonical writings were pseudo-historical fabrications:

1) The immediate appearance of a massive and many-century controversy written up by the church records as the "Arian controversy" and which may be reduced to the five sophisms of Arius of Alexandria. One of which was that Jesus was made out of nothing existing. If these five sophisms are capable of being interpreted as the commentary of Arius on the historicity of Jesus then this is a problem.

2) The second potential whistle-blower to this is the opening paragraph of Emperor Julian's three books "Against the Christians". He opens with the charge that the fabrication of the Christians is a fiction of men composed by wickedness.

3) The third potential exposure of doubts about the NT canonical literature as historical material from the 1st century may be evident by means of certain interpretations of some of the material in the Nag Hammadi Library. The only reason that modern scholarship follows the heresiological paradigm for the chronology of the NT apocryphal corpus is that these sources are treated as authorities. Irrespective of the provenance of the NT canonical literature an argument can be made that the best explanation for the NT apocryphal literature is that it represents an avalanche of literary reaction to the rise of the Nicene Christian state and the central authority of the NT canonical codices. In this explanation the ante Nicene heresiological literature may be viewed as forgeries designed to ameliorate the post Nicene literary controversy over which books were the authority.

If various authors were manufactured to appear to have written in early times and to have thereby corroborated one another, would we not have expected to find some kind of friendly or hostile reference to the Seneca-Paul correspondence prior to the fourth century -- to remove the risk that they were really late documents?

Such references may have appeared in earlier versions of Eusebius' "Church History" but were removed at some later date. We know that Eusebius' church history was listed along with other apocryphal books in the 5th century. Perhaps the later church authorities wanted to recall earlier historical records and recast them? IDK. But the Seneca-Paul correspondence was central to the Christian education system for over a thousand years. The historicity of Paul was fraudulently piggy-backed off the historicity of Seneca.

Answers to these sorts of questions can only be evaluated with an open mind untainted by the old paradigms of church history. A "perfect crime" has no whistle-blowers. The church has had almost 1700 years to get its story in order. Above I have listed three potential problems with the historical integrity of the church story in terms of 4th century whistle-blowers.

[Leucius Charinus]

Do you now recognize that was there at least one Χρειστιανος sometime in the 3rd century?

I think that this is yet to be determined. You have cited an inscription above with Χρειστιανος. Can you find a picture of this with the iota?

I looked it up. Here's that data.

T.D. Barnes, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia, p. 242

In the year 363, the tenth of the month Pereitios. Eutyches son of Eutyches, (prepared this tomb) for Tatia his wife and for his father, in memory; Christans [Χρειστιανοι]; and for himself. Phellinas. From Temenothyrai.

Based on the first line, Barnes dates this inscription to 278-279 CE.

For comparison, T. D. Barnes presents the figure below. Elsa Gibson has the photos (The "Christians for Christians" Inscriptions of Phrygia, p. 193).

Thanks for the data. It appears that Phrygia has always been right up there with the earliest claims for Christian communities.

Robin Lane Fox writes (p.587 Pagans and Christians):

• "In 324/5 the Phrygian settlement of Orcistus petitoned Constantine,
  referring to its totally Christian population."

Orcistus

Originally an independent city of Galatia, it was annexed to Nacolea in Phrygia in the late 3rd century AD but was restored to independence by Emperor Constantine the Great,[1] to whom the inhabitants of Orcistus appealed in 325. Constantine granted their request in 331. He speaks of them as "supporters of the most holy religion", an ambiguous term that may perhaps refer to Christianity.[2]

[2] Jonathan Bardill, Constantine, Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age (Cambridge University Press 2011 ISBN 978-0-52176423-0), p. 289

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orcistus

[Peter Kirby]

Do you now recognize that was there at least one Χρειστιανος sometime in the 3rd century?

I think that this is yet to be determined. You have cited an inscription above with Χρειστιανος. Can you find a picture of this with the iota?

I looked it up. Here's that data.

T.D. Barnes, Montanist Inscriptions and Testimonia, p. 242

In the year 363, the tenth of the month Pereitios. Eutyches son of Eutyches, (prepared this tomb) for Tatia his wife and for his father, in memory; Christans [Χρειστιανοι]; and for himself. Phellinas. From Temenothyrai.

Based on the first line, Barnes dates this inscription to 278-279 CE.

For comparison, T. D. Barnes presents the figure below. Elsa Gibson has the photos (The "Christians for Christians" Inscriptions of Phrygia, p. 193).

Thanks for the data.

So what do you make of it?

[neilgodfrey]

There's the infamous Seneca-Paul letter exchange which from the 4th century for more than a thousand years was passed off as genuine by the Nicene and Post Fathers. In fact it prefaced the literature of Seneca as circulated by the Christian education system. So the point is that forgery and fraud of "Ecclesiastical history" seem to have been common place in the 4th century. It is not necessary to explore the fraud of the Holy Relic Trade. A rich and influential Nicene church had accreted between 324-360 CE.

I get the impression that you are proposing what is in fact a "perfect crime" that was so cleverly and so comprehensively organized that not a single clue was left to be found that would lead to doubts. Is that a fair description?

There is sufficient evidence IMO that irrespective of any earlier provenance of the canonical Greek NT codices (such as Oxy papyri) there was an imperial circulation of these during the rules of Constantine and Constantius (325-360 CE). In the second half of the 4th century we lose focus on the NT codices for over a thousand years because of the emergence of the holy relic trade. We must be mindful of this enormous fact.

There are three potential clues from that early period which may be interpreted as "whistle blowers" that the NT canonical writings were pseudo-historical fabrications:

1) The immediate appearance of a massive and many-century controversy written up by the church records as the "Arian controversy" and which may be reduced to the five sophisms of Arius of Alexandria. One of which was that Jesus was made out of nothing existing. If these five sophisms are capable of being interpreted as the commentary of Arius on the historicity of Jesus then this is a problem.

2) The second potential whistle-blower to this is the opening paragraph of Emperor Julian's three books "Against the Christians". He opens with the charge that the fabrication of the Christians is a fiction of men composed by wickedness.

3) The third potential exposure of doubts about the NT canonical literature as historical material from the 1st century may be evident by means of certain interpretations of some of the material in the Nag Hammadi Library. The only reason that modern scholarship follows the heresiological paradigm for the chronology of the NT apocryphal corpus is that these sources are treated as authorities. Irrespective of the provenance of the NT canonical literature an argument can be made that the best explanation for the NT apocryphal literature is that it represents an avalanche of literary reaction to the rise of the Nicene Christian state and the central authority of the NT canonical codices. In this explanation the ante Nicene heresiological literature may be viewed as forgeries designed to ameliorate the post Nicene literary controversy over which books were the authority.

If various authors were manufactured to appear to have written in early times and to have thereby corroborated one another, would we not have expected to find some kind of friendly or hostile reference to the Seneca-Paul correspondence prior to the fourth century -- to remove the risk that they were really late documents?

Such references may have appeared in earlier versions of Eusebius' "Church History" but were removed at some later date. We know that Eusebius' church history was listed along with other apocryphal books in the 5th century. Perhaps the later church authorities wanted to recall earlier historical records and recast them? IDK. But the Seneca-Paul correspondence was central to the Christian education system for over a thousand years. The historicity of Paul was fraudulently piggy-backed off the historicity of Seneca.

Answers to these sorts of questions can only be evaluated with an open mind untainted by the old paradigms of church history. A "perfect crime" has no whistle-blowers. The church has had almost 1700 years to get its story in order. Above I have listed three potential problems with the historical integrity of the church story in terms of 4th century whistle-blowers.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Unfortunately I have to confess that I have major difficulties with your "whistleblowers". (e.g. the Arian controversy is predicated on the "fact" of the historical appearance of Jesus on both sides of the debate. But this comment is not about those specific whistleblower objections. Maybe a later post.)

Imagine Socrates was a fictional person invented by Plato. No historical Socrates. Our later manuscripts include a play, The Clouds, by Aristophanes that pokes fun at Socrates. Another manuscript collection contains very different philosophical discussions from those of Plato, these by one claiming to be Xenophon. Is it likely that a later authority for some political agenda would have been responsible for forging the Aristophanes and Xenophon literature just to try to establish the fact that Socrates was historical? Surely there would be much easier ways to undertake such a program if there were such a program to establish the historicity of Socrates.

Would that analogy be a fair comparison with what you are proposing re Jesus and the time of Constantine?

[MrMacSon]

There is sufficient evidence IMO that, irrespective of any earlier provenance of the canonical Greek NT codices (such as Oxy papyri), there was an imperial circulation of these during the rules of Constantine and Constantius (325-360 CE).

What evidence is there for that?