Secret Alias wrote: ↑Sun May 07, 2023 11:27 am This should also be in your 275 CE to 325 CE thread. Imagine for a moment 325 CE in Nicaea and 350 CE in this far away country. How is this possible that Christianity was "invented" in 325 CE? Why would a far away kingdom have converted to a new religion THIS FAR AWAY from the alleged "starting point" of Christianity?
Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sun May 07, 2023 12:03 pmSure. I'm trying to get some more background information on it and its interpretation.
As far as I can ascertain, nobody in this forum believes that basic Xianity were invented in 325, not even LC.Secret Alias wrote: ↑Sun May 07, 2023 11:27 am How is this possible that Christianity was "invented" in 325 CE?
No.
Edited to add: On a careful reading, it's not completely clear whether he's saying that the NHL has no pre-325 sources. I mean, there is a fragment of Plato. It's just that I've noticed him to be particularly emphatic about the NHL (the texts, not just the codices) being post-325, thus clumping it together and associating other literature with it as also post-325. He seems to be unique in referring to "NTA/NHL" in this way.Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sun May 07, 2023 12:09 pm He talks about sources that preceded Constantine, but he has the idea of "True Christianity"(tm) to say that, sure, there are various sources that preceded Constantine, but they aren't "True Christianity."(tm) The emphasis on discovering a "True Christianity"(tm) is his own, although he attributes it to others and claims that they have failed to make their case if they do not demonstrate a "True Christianity"(tm) to the sources.
He also claims that a number of sources, according to his categorical scheme, are post-325, including all the NHL and all the sources that would discredit his idea that all the NHL came post-325.
For SA, here is LC's own summary.
There is much that is allowed under "there may be earlier sources."Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sun Apr 30, 2023 5:58 pm 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.
If you look at the way LC goes through inscriptions, you'll notice that they are frequently just marked as not being "True Christianity."(tm)