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

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
Secret Alias
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Re: After 20 Years Plus of Flogging His Theory How Many Here at the Forum Believe Mountainman?

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Furrthermore, Mountainman/Peter/Leucius Charinus, unlike Secret Alias, is polite
Secret Alias can also spell unlike ABuddhist.
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Re: After 20 Years Plus of Flogging His Theory How Many Here at the Forum Believe Mountainman?

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Skill in speed typing can be overrated.
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Re: After 20 Years Plus of Flogging His Theory How Many Here at the Forum Believe Mountainman?

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I have to take solace in something
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Re: After 20 Years Plus of Flogging His Theory How Many Here at the Forum Believe Mountainman?

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For what it's worth, I'm rather looking forward to developing this thread further and getting back to the respectful discussion of what happened in the tetrarchy and earlier time periods here. Right now I'd rather have given every opportunity for that discussion than allow the appearance that the proposals have been dismissed out of hand.
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Re: After 20 Years Plus of Flogging His Theory How Many Here at the Forum Believe Mountainman?

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Chrestos/Christos

Etacism/itacism
Last edited by Secret Alias on Sun Apr 30, 2023 2:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: After 20 Years Plus of Flogging His Theory How Many Here at the Forum Believe Mountainman?

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Secret Alias wrote: Sun Apr 30, 2023 2:41 pm Chrestos/Christos

Etacism
It's a valid point and one we'll have to discuss, certainly! :cheers:
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Re: After 20 Years Plus of Flogging His Theory How Many Here at the Forum Believe Mountainman?

Post by Leucius Charinus »

mlinssen wrote: Sun Apr 30, 2023 8:34 am
Denying reality.
There was Chrestianity before Constantine, such is for sure.

///

Pete's theory in concept is not so strange: Christianity is much later than assumed. But to assert that the NT, the NHL and the FF were all fabricated at one and the same time is untenable given all the Chrestian attestations in them
I appreciate the respectful dialogue ML but you're misrepresenting my claims. The hypothesis / theory does not assert that the NT, the NHL and the FF were all fabricated at one and the same time. I don't claim that. I have not yet made any claims about the Chrestian / Christian paradox but am interested in solving it. For the moment the major claim is that the NT, the NHL and the FF were written at different times, by different groups with different motivations and agendas.


SUMMARY

1) The NTC was written in the 4th century (there may be earlier sources)
2) The NTA and NHL were written 325-340 CE (there may be earlier sources)
3) EH (featuring the FF) was first written 325 but modified for a thousand years.


Some further details:

1) New Testament Canon (NTC)

1) The NTC was designed and fabricated as late as the 4th century (312-324 CE) to serve as a "Holy Writ" of the Graeco-Roman civilisation. It's suggested that it was prepared as part of Constantine's strategy to unite the Roman empire with a centralised monotheistic religion. By 312 CE he had just taken Rome and looked east to the City of Alexander. The blueprint for such a strategy may have been inspired by the demonstrated successful implementation of the "Avesta" as the One true canonised holy writ of the Persian empire by Ardashir less that a century earlier. Constantine (perhaps c.312 CE) commissioned a scriptorium or scriptoria with a lavishly appointed team of professional scribes, some of whom were well educated elites, and appointed Eusebius as the editor-in-chief of the "literary school".

The question about what literary sources available to the project can be left for later. One thing's for sure - they had a specifically revised Greek LXX on their bookshelf. They knew their Seneca very well and the libraries of functioning philosophical schools. They were well aware of Philostratus' "Life of Apollonius of Tyana". Mani loomed over the recent political memory in the empire. Diocletian had savagely persecuted the Manichaeans. It may be that there was a very similar narrative (singular) Gospel featuring a holy man, healer, educator, god-like figure in existence. Dura Parchment 24 could be from the 3rd century. These earlier sources may have included lists of sayings. But the claim is that they did not include the four gospels, the epistles and the NTC as we have received it.

Once he obtain complete military control of Alexandria 324/325 CE he revealed the NTC and openly announced and advertised his doctrine at the Council of Antioch. All this sparked a massive controversy. The Hellenistic civilisation reacted to Constantine's new doctrines expressed in codex technology. They wrote their own Jesus Story Books.


2) The Nag Hammadi Library (NHL) and the New testament apocrypha (NTA)

The new idea is that all this stuff was composed by pagans in reaction to the NTC and LXX being circulated by the emperor. These other Jesus Story Books and other Adam and Eve Story Books were of different genres. Some were pulp fiction. Some were highly philosophical adaptations of the NTC+LXX. Some of the authors of the NTA/NHL knew their Plato and their Plotinus. Some were sayings lists. Sayings from whom? IDK atm. The NHL and NTA certainly preserve a number of ante-Nicene sources. But the over-rider is that the NTA/NHL was not written by the emperor's agents. It represents grass roots pagan (Egypto-Graeco-Roman) responses to the meteoric rise of the Emperor's New Codex. Orthodoxy was horrified.

There were no heretics before Arius of Alexandria, himself a pagan. The Sethians, the Valentinians and other "groups" identified by modern scholarship within the NHL are different classes of literary responses. The Sethian writings instead I suggest are pagans rewriting the LXX and the creation stories and other themes involving the Platonic philosophical "god" recently described in the Enneads of Plotinus. Where biblical scholarship identifies Valentinian tracts within the NHL they are identifying 4th century pagan commentary on the NTC Jesus Story. The NHL seems to be a monastic product. It may not have been conducive to produce all these books as Greek literature in Alexandria.

In the 20th century Greek and Hebrew biblical scholarship is sidelined by the first generations of Coptic "scholars" (the inverted commas are for ML) to have the opportunity of translating a Coptic time-capsule from the mid 4th century. A trove of "banned books"?


(3) Ecclesiastical History (EH) and the FF

This was first prepared within the nascent Nicene church. This was not written in a short time span like (1) and (2). It claims to preserve all forms of literature by the "Fathers" and "Bishops" et al from the ante Nicene, Nicene and post Nicene epochs. It may have started with Eusebius but Eusebius' literature may have been added to, modified or deleted in part over the centuries by those who preserved these "Church Histories" and the "collections" within them. It is layered over the centuries. One day the full story may be able to be reconstructed. But for now...

The History of Eusebius appears on a list of prohibited and "anathematized" books in the 5th century for example. Perhaps the 5th century church wished to recall some of the earlier versions for some reason that we may never know. Why would you ban a book? Perhaps it didn't serve the times?

We can say for sure that the literature of Justin Martyr for example must have existed as late as his earliest extant physical manuscript of the 14th century. Ditto for each of the separate literary works of all these "fathers". They're all very late. Did Justin actually write in the 2nd century what is found in a 14th century manuscript? Did Hippolytus write in antiquity what is presented in a 14th century manuscript? Did Irenaeus write in the Greek language in the 2nd/3rd century what we find only in Latin manuscripts of the 10/11th century? IDK. We don't know. Do we? So much for the FF and EH.
What I don't understand is why you want him or his material banned
Not sure myself. Authoritarianism? Paradigm hubris?
Irish has suggested Odium theologicum

Had to look that up thanks Irish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odium_theologicum

And a gentle reminder: even if something like reality exists, I doubt that there are more than a handful interacting with it. We all live inside our own bubble, define our own truths, assume our own reality. Everything we believe that we are, know, our rules, virtues, morals: it's all a figment of our own imagination
  • “Two men looked out from prison bars,
    One saw the mud, the other saw stars.”


    ― Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living
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Re: After 20 Years Plus of Flogging His Theory How Many Here at the Forum Believe Mountainman?

Post by Leucius Charinus »

Peter Kirby wrote: Sun Apr 30, 2023 2:42 pm
Secret Alias wrote: Sun Apr 30, 2023 2:41 pm Chrestos/Christos

Etacism
It's a valid point and one we'll have to discuss, certainly! :cheers:
Make sure you check Martijn's analysis of the NHL Gospel of Phillip.
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10143
viewtopic.php?p=129136#p129136

The two distinct terms Chrestian and Christian are explicitly used by the author. Etacism would have great difficulty in explaining that.
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Re: After 20 Years Plus of Flogging His Theory How Many Here at the Forum Believe Mountainman?

Post by Peter Kirby »

Leucius Charinus wrote: Sun Apr 30, 2023 5:58 pm 1) The NTC was written in the 4th century (there may be earlier sources)
2) The NTA and NHL were written 325-340 CE (there may be earlier sources)
3) EH (featuring the FF) was first written 325 but modified for a thousand years.
I appreciate the summary. I will not be paying special mind to your categories and will consider each source separately.
Leucius Charinus wrote: Sun Apr 30, 2023 5:58 pmIDK. We don't know. Do we? So much for the FF and EH.
Maybe we could try to look into it... ? Is that impossible, in your view?
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Re: After 20 Years Plus of Flogging His Theory How Many Here at the Forum Believe Mountainman?

Post by Leucius Charinus »

Peter Kirby wrote: Sun Apr 30, 2023 6:24 pm
Leucius Charinus wrote: Sun Apr 30, 2023 5:58 pm 1) The NTC was written in the 4th century (there may be earlier sources)
2) The NTA and NHL were written 325-340 CE (there may be earlier sources)
3) EH (featuring the FF) was first written 325 but modified for a thousand years.
I appreciate the summary.
You're welcome but as the saying goes the devil's in the details.
Leucius Charinus wrote: Sun Apr 30, 2023 5:58 pmIDK. We don't know. Do we? So much for the FF and EH.
Maybe we could try to look into it... ? Is that impossible, in your view?[/quote]

Of course we could look into it. I have stated up front that I am super skeptical of the material furnished by the Nicene (and subsequent) church. I want to see some physical evidence as proof of the claims made by the church in its "historical records". This should not be surprising or regarded as fringe. It is standard investigatory practice.
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