Constantine invented christianity - a thesis in the field of ancient history

[mountainman]

A thesis in the field of ancient history has been prepared in which Constantine is presented as the priority inventor of the new testament literature which he had fabricated between the years of 312 and 324 CE immediately after he had liberated the city of Rome, and in preparation for his military supremacy over the eastern empire.

For the thesis.pdf and a host of related and supportive informational articles pleasse see this web address: www.mountainman.com.au/essenes (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes)


I am happy to answer any questions anyone may have in regard to this thesis in ancient history, however I must point out that the thesis is based upon an examination of all the evidence which has been (and is currently being cited in various contemporary publications) as contributory to the traditional and very authoritative and supposedly rational belief that there were christians on the planet prior to the rise of Constantine.

Best wishes,


Pete

[Rathpig]

You haven't corrected the citation and footnote problems from when this was posted last time. Good writing is rewriting, and the form of a piece is as important as the content. The second paragraph of the paper begins a bad trend that only becomes worse. You really need to correct this hyper-footnote issue for the piece to be even mildly readable. I would also question the use of an introductory index on such a short paper. It isn't needed.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/
http://www.library.cornell.edu/newhelp/res_strategy/citing/apa.html

An increasing trend in history is the use of journalistic introduction to sources. This really helps a piece to flow, but it requires that you don't hyper-quote. As a stylistic concern is the use of footnotes at all. Information in a 24 page paper really shouldn't be footnoted unless this is absolutely necessary. In-text citation for a source page, per MLA or APA, is the proper form. Some professors may allow something such as a footnoted chart, but in my experience the majority of those trained in the last three decades would prefer all this information to be in-text and documented.

This isn't my field, so I really have no desire to trace the source material since you didn't include a bibliography or a citation page.

What is the focus of your current university program and has this been graded?

[mountainman]

This isn't my field, so I really have no desire to trace the source material since you didn't include a bibliography or a citation page.

Dear Rathpig,

Since this forum has been created to discuss history, and thus ancient history, my posts are so placed to draw critical commentary from those who have at least some understanding of the basic preliminaries, and a desire to know ancient historical truth whatever that may turn out to be. For those who are so placed, the material that I have available in addition to the thesis at the address above, provides ample opportunity for discussion of the evidence in the field of ancient history, by the standards of that field which is inclusive of archaeological citations (which I have listed and discussed).

Start with this page on The Early Christian "Epigraphic Habit" (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/epigraphic_habit.htm) for example.

What is the focus of your current university program and has this been graded?

I ask that you attempt to rationally address the evidence and consider that all I am in a messenger with a message. Therefore I ask you to examine the message, and both critically examine and rationally discuss the evidence that has been assembled.

For your information my major academic related field is that of relational database systems, and have contributed to the extent of having patented technology represented in a number of countries. My academic interest in the field of ancient history and specifically the period of the first five centuries although only a few years in depth has been exhaustive and I have used my database training to track all the authors of antiquity for the period in question. Obviously no research project can be deemed complete, since new discoveries are happening as we speak.

I ask you to treat me as a messenger with a rational message. Other than the mass propaganda lavishly published by this military supremacist (ie: Eusebian literature), we have absolutely no evidence whatsoever (other than known forgeries), for the existence of this universal (inside the hubble limit) christian religion prior to the arrival of the Boss (nb: students of history, please read this as malevolent despot) and his armies.

325 CE We have Arius saying .... fiction!
363 CE We have Julian saying .... fiction!
4th CE We have mass destruction (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_062.htm) by the christian emperors!
4th CE WE have the citations from Codex Theodosianus (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/codex_theodosianus.htm) and those via Vlasis Rassias (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_060.htm)
430 CE We have Nestorius saying ... fiction!
433 CE We have Cyril refuting ... lies!
433 CE We have Cyril admitting .. the conspiracy of the greeks (academics)

etc, etc, etc until ......

1966 CE The Librorum Prohibitorum gives up the Ghost !!! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum)


The thesis offers a political explanation for the evidence in our possession. Namely that the Arian controversy was the controversy over the known and outlandish Constantinian fiction of the new testament - that it was fiction.

The extended thesis (since the one available is now 12 months old) offers political explanation for the entire NT corpus of literature as follows: 325 CE Constantine profers the Canon. 325-400 CE the greek academic (pagan, non-christians) became seditious, and wrote polemical and satirical stories against the characters in the canon (: ie jesus and the 12) which are now extant as the apochryphal new testament literature. Also be sure to do some research on the Nag Hammadi codices.

Deal rationally with the message, not the messenger.

Best wishes,


Pete

[Rathpig]

Deal rationally with the message, not the messenger.

Were you just posting on a message forum, this would be a valid request. You again, and this isn't the first time, started a thread pointing to an off-site "thesis" in a specific academic field. Within that academic field the format and presentation of information is a valid area for the criticism of a "thesis". It doesn't really matter what you present if the format is non-standard for the field and the information is not defined and cited properly within the paper.

Nothing personal, but you didn't just write a laymen paper on the topic and say "hey guys, check this out". You are making the pretension to an academic field, and that requires certain formating and citation methodology.

This is the exact same thing many people have been trying to explain to "Rook Hawkins" of the poorly named "Rational" Response Squad for over the past several years. Ironically on the same basic topic, he too assumes you can write poorly formated laymen papers on a historical subject, presume the trappings of the field of History, and not have those actually in the field question your methodology.

All the elements of an academic paper are a package. The messenger is every bit as important as the message when the message cannot be traced through proper citation within the work.

I don't know why you seem so hesitant to actually rewrite this with proper form and notation so that it can be approached as a scholarly work. It isn't that difficult. Expecting people to read off-site footnote shuffle is a bit rude. You've obviously put a huge amount of time into this project. Take a few minutes and apply standard formating and you may have something of interest in the field.

[seebs]

Mountainman, if you want people to care what you say, you have to say it well enough for them to not be too annoyed by the presentation for them to even bother processing it.

I do not think you are facing a priori rejection of your thesis here, but rather, constructive criticism which you could use as guidance in presenting your thesis effectively. And, as Rathpig points out... If you are gonna claim to be an academic (and "a thesis ... has been prepared" sure sounds like a claim of academic nature to me), you'd better be at least halfway competent at it.

[mountainman]

Mountainman, if you want people to care what you say, you have to say it well enough for them to not be too annoyed by the presentation for them to even bother processing it.

I do not think you are facing a priori rejection of your thesis here, but rather, constructive criticism which you could use as guidance in presenting your thesis effectively. And, as Rathpig points out... If you are gonna claim to be an academic (and "a thesis ... has been prepared" sure sounds like a claim of academic nature to me), you'd better be at least halfway competent at it.

Dear seebs,

On the matter of competency here is the referee's report from the Journal of Hellenic Studies which was my first and primary choice for publication.



Dear Dr Brown,
I have now had the referee's report on your article, which I attach.
As you will see, they are unable to recommend publication in JHS, so I am afraid that we will not be able to publish the piece.
I hope the reports are self-explanatory and helpful.
I am sorry the outcome has not been happier, but I am grateful to you for thinking of JHS as a place to publish.
Yours sincerely,
Angus Bowie
________________________________________
Dr A.M. Bowie,
Lobel Praelector in Classics.
Editor of the Journal of Hellenic Studies.
The Queen's College, Oxford, OX1 4AW.
Tel. + 44 (0)1865 279172 (personal)
+ 44 (0)1865 279120 (switchboard)
+ 44 (0)1865 790819 (fax)


REFEREE'S REPORT on THESIS


BROWN ON CONSTANTINE’S INVENTION OF CHRISTIANITY

This is a revival of the theses of Athanasius Kircher and the AbbÈ Hardouin, who (in the hope of disarming the protestant appeal to primitive Christianity) argued that the whole corpus of ancient literature, including the Fathers, up to about 900 A.D. is a forgery. The reasoning of Kircher was based on the absence of numismatic corroboration for the written testimonies. The argument has never been regarded as anything more than a curiosity, since it presupposes a quite stupendous power of obliteration which the rulers of ancient empires could not have possessed. Furthermore, the argument is based almost entirely on the absence of substantiating evidence rather than on positive contradiction of the scribal record in the archaeological remains. Even if such positive contradiction were discovered, it would not of course be decisive, as inscriptions and coins can be at least as duplicitous as books – more so, perhaps, since the very production of them is an indication that the author is in a position of power and means to retain it.

The present work improves on Hardouin and Kircher, of course, in its knowledge of epigraphic sources, and some of these, for all I know, may be handled here with originality. The paucity of epigraphic evidence for early Christianity is, of course, commonly admitted, but this has not led most scholars to argue that the entire corpus of Christian literature before 325 is a fabrication. If it were, one would have expected the forgers to carry out the enterprise with some doctrinal consistency: why fabricate heretical writings in the name of Origen, for example, while continuing to appeal to his authority? Why compose the gospels in a homely and obscure idiom which could not fail to bring the authors into disrepute among cultivated readers? Why were “orthodox” writers after Nicaea repeatedly embarrassed by the discovery of tenets contradictory to their own in venerable predecessors?

Archaeological data are never self-interpreting, and since they are generally fortuitous survivals they are even less likely to be representative than the literary texts that have been handed down to us by a deliberate process of canonisation. The assumption that they can be used to construct a history independent of literary sources is surely fallacious. The fundamental fallacies are compounded in this book by wilful embellishment of such textual evidence as the author deigns to adduce in support of his case. Julian is accusing the evangelists of fiction, rather than imputing a wholesale forgery to Constantine (whom he would have incriminated if he could); Constantine’s admission that the Sibylline oracles were accused of forgery is hardly proof that the authenticity of all other texts had been impugned. The scholarship is certainly superior to that of The Da Vinci Code, and the boldness of the argument will guarantee it a hearing, but not any distinguished organ of academic research.




Now I have not yet assembled my arguments against this referee's report, but intend to do so in the near future. In the interim period the purpose of my appearance here on this history forum is to attract discussion on the idea that since we have no hard archaeological evidence, and two C14 citations stamped together as 4th century, the chronology of christian origins, from the perspective of the field of ancient history may indeed not be earier than the appearance of Constantine.

It's really quite simple, and an issue of discussion. Evidence is highly regarded. Thanks for your time, and best wishes,


Pete

[Preno]

The scholarship is certainly superior to that of The Da Vinci Code, and the boldness of the argument will guarantee it a hearing, but not any distinguished organ of academic research.lol well done

[Rathpig]

The scholarship is certainly superior to that of The Da Vinci Code...

I think someone is pulling someone's leg here.


This all appears to be Rook Hawkins revisited. I will have to step aside since I have made my statement on the presentation of the piece. This review response obviously makes a statement on the scholarship.

[Nialler]

Mountainman, you should really head over to www.rationalresponders.com and hook with their resident historian and expert in ancient texts, Rook Hawkins. You should compare notes.

[SteveF]

Mountainman, you should really head over to www.rationalresponders.com and hook with their resident historian and expert in ancient texts, Rook Hawkins. You should compare notes.

Actually he isn't an historian and expert in ancient texts. He's an Ancient Texts Expert and Historian.

So get it right.

[Nialler]

Mountainman, you should really head over to www.rationalresponders.com and hook with their resident historian and expert in ancient texts, Rook Hawkins. You should compare notes.

Actually he isn't an historian and expert in ancient texts. He's an Ancient Texts Expert and Historian.

So get it right.

I can't deny that my scolarship is very sloppy in this instance. Kudos on catching me out! :D

[muon]

Dear mountainman,

I will give this the time of day as soon as you convince a serious academic journal with expert peer review to publish it. Until then I can't justify the time investment to consider this rather unlikely proposal, and neither should anyone else.

[Rathpig]

Dear mountainman,

I will give this the time of day as soon as you convince a serious academic journal with expert peer review to publish it. Until then I can't justify the time investment to consider this rather unlikely proposal, and neither should anyone else.

I actually don't take even this of an extreme view. I would gladly read it and follow the sources if it was in a standard academic format. I read too many Freshman papers, sometimes with great interest, to demand publishable content.

It would be nice if Mountainman would outline his ideas in-thread rather than an off-site work.

[Dlx2]

Not this shit again.

[Gooch's dad]

Yep, it's this shit again. Except this thread is one of the more entertaining ones I've read, in dealing with this "thesis". :D

[Rathpig]

Has this ever been rewritten?

[umop apisdn w,I]

As the former "BC&H Admin Overlord" over at IIDB, can I just say that I love you guys...

[Nialler]

...


Dear Dr Brown,
I have now had the referee's report on your article, which I attach.
As you will see, they are unable to recommend publication in JHS, so I am afraid that we will not be able to publish the piece.
I hope the reports are self-explanatory and helpful.
I am sorry the outcome has not been happier, but I am grateful to you for thinking of JHS as a place to publish.
Yours sincerely,
Angus Bowie
...

(Emphasis mine)

Where did the doctorate come from, mountainman?

[seebs]

I seriously love that response. I think it should be used as the dictionary example of damning with faint praise.

[Nialler]

The Dan Brown reference is the killer punch.

[Wordy]

Would it not be more likely that Constantine saw a niche that could work politically and
he and advice people around him reasoned that they could make a revised version of something that existed locally and they made a version that deleted the real history so
in a sense they took over or hijacked something that did exists but rewrote the history of it?

[Preno]

Not that I'm any expert in ancient history, but how exactly would shifting from a popular religion of which he is the supreme leader to an egalitarian one be politically advantageous for him?

[Wordy]

I suggest that he or those who gave him advice realized that
to be successful in wars demand loyalty, willingness to get recruited
willingness to die for a cause, willingness to abide to a hierarchy,
willingness to sacrifice oneself or the group. christian faith allow for this

If Roman faith had been more successful in this then that faith had won instead.

William Irons suggest that religion make use of "Hard to Fake Signs of Commitment"
and that is what political leader and a military leader would benefit from.

Suggestion number two comes from Pascal Boyer. To be effective a religion
need to be "mildly counter-intuitive" and Christian faith is more so
than what Roman pantheon are. They managed to make it much more
ruthless than what the older religion was. More effective politically.

[Brother Daniel]

I don't think 4th-century Christianity was egalitarian.

One of the themes of 2nd- and 3rd-century proto-Orthodox Christianity was: You must obey your bishop in all matters as you would obey God. The fear of hell made it work. This totalitarian streak was (as far as I know) unprecedented -- and I imagine Constantine would have been very impressed by it.

I don't think the (Christianized) Roman empire had the same division between secular and ecclesiatical authorities (along with king-vs-bishop rivalries) that mediaeval Catholic Europe had. The office of Emperor was on both sides of that fence. The Emperor had a significant share of the church's totalitarian power.

At least, those are my impressions. I'm no expert, and I would be happy to be corrected.

[Rathpig]

The major change in this era is obviously the birth of a hierarchical Christian church. This is why I've never understood the "Constantine invented Christianity" thesis as meaningful. Constantine helped to create the hierarchical church, but various forms of Christianity clearly predate his rule. Widespread illiteracy among the "faithful" in addition to the cloistered and aloof nature of the hierarchy allowed the contradiction between the actual ideas of Christ, as we now know them anyway, and The Church to evolve unquestioned by the masses. It isn't as if egalitarianism is viable concept in the 4th century political world.

I really wish mountainman would clean up this essay so that it could be examined systematically for content and thesis.

[Intelligitimate]

I like the Robert Price essay, The Quest for the Mythical Jesus (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_005.htm).

[Anti]

LOL, what's with the anal-authoritarian style-sticklers?

"I won't read it until you make it pretty."

I could smear a turd on a plate and write the truth in it with my finger. It wouldn't become more true if I baked it at 1500°F for 8 hours, glazed it, painted it with watercolors, framed it, wrapped it, tied a fucking ribbon around it and presented it to you as a Christmas gift. It was already true when it was just raw, wet shit.

(I'm not vouching for this "thesis," which I haven't read and don't intend to -- because I don't care, not because I have a stick up my ass.)

[Rathpig]

"I won't read it until you make it pretty."

It really isn't a case of "pretty". I've read it. Standard academic formating exists for a reason. This "thesis" is just a mess and needs content help, but why would anyone help the content when you have to wade through footnote hell just to make it through the first paragraph.

[muon]

I don't care about "pretty". I'd accept "published in peer-reviewed journal". Why should we, who generally are not experts, give the time of day to something that real experts haven't at least judged credible enough to put into print?

[mountainman]

Dear All,

I have taken on board the issues of reformatting and representation of the thesis in a formal sense, however in the meantime if anyone wishes they may make comment on the following external article:

Humour and Play-Fullness - Essential integrative processes in governance, religion and transdisciplinarity (http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/musings/humour.php#seri), and specifically the section on Seriousness and humourlessness


The argument here is, if humour is so significant to parliamentary debate, why does none of this humour translate, in any way, into the legislation produced by such bodies? Why is the product of such debates so humourless -- inherently boring to many?

This argument is supported from an unsuspected source, namely copyright law. As recorded by Patti Waldmeir (Parody in humourless jeopardy, Financial Times, 27 April 2005):


If the point of law is to tame the state of nature, the point of copyright law, surely, is to make it fun to live there. Copyright law is not just about money -- it is about creating the things that make life worth living. One of those things is parody, a known antidote to modern life. But now US copyright owners seem intent on creating a vast new humour-free zone in America, by pursuing parodists through the courts. Each of the last two presidential elections spawned a big anti-parody lawsuit, but the phenomenon is not just limited to political jokesters: the sense of humour failure on the part of copyright owners has hit literary parodists as well.


During the "Velvet Revolution" in Czechoslovakia in 1989 humour was used to attack the Communist party leadership. Commenting on the humourless British elections of 2005, Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov (Is it time for a British revolution? Guardian, 26 April 2005) argues, in the light of the Ukrainian "Orange Revolution" in 2004-5, that:

The Germans never laughed at Hitler and neither did the Soviet people laugh at Stalin... More recently all Ukraine laughed at outgoing president Leonid Kuchma. It was precisely humour that won the day in the Ukrainian presidential elections last year. Political satire, hard-hitting, witty leaflets and computer animations which parodied Ukrainian political life played a role in the eventual outcome that has yet to be properly evaluated.


Did Crispus laugh at his father? In fact is anyone aware of anyone who laughed at Constantine and got away with it (except - briefly of course before he was poisoned - Arius of Alexandria)? Why is the new testament taken so seriously? Why has the apochryphal new testment corpus been described as a textual critics nightmare? Is the NT apochrypha actually pagan satire?

Form WIKI:

Satire is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form; although, in practice, it is also found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, ideally with the intent to bring about improvement.[1] Although satire is usually meant to be funny, the purpose of satire is not primarily humour in itself so much as an attack on something of which the author strongly disapproves, using the weapon of wit.

A very common, almost defining feature of satire is its strong vein of irony or sarcasm, but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing. The essential point, however, is that "in satire, irony is militant".[2] This "militant irony" (or sarcasm) often professes to approve the very things the satirist actually wishes to attack.




Best wishes,


Pete

[Nialler]

Ahah!

So your thesis was satirical? That makes sense.

[Gooch's dad]

Yeah, I was laughing at it all along.

[Rathpig]

Humor or not, at least he didn't come back and say "I was just trollin' u guys!". Laughing at you and laughing with you is a deep divide in the world of comedy.

[mountainman]

Ahah!

So your thesis was satirical? That makes sense.

Dear All,

It is a well known fact that the Emperor Julian wrote the following satire against both Constantine and Jesus, called The Caesars (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/Julian_Caesares_Symposium_Kronia.htm), where he writes:


As for Constantine, he could not discover among the gods
the model of his own career, but when he caught sight of
Pleasure, who was not far off, he ran to her. She received
him tenderly and embraced him, then after dressing him in
raiment of many colours and otherwise making him beautiful,
she led him away to Incontinence.

There too he found Jesus, who had taken up his abode with
her and cried aloud to all comers:

"He that is a seducer, he that is a murderer,
he that is sacrilegious and infamous,
let him approach without fear!
For with this water will I wash him
and will straightway make him clean.

And though he should be guilty
of those same sins a second time,
let him but smite his breast and beat his head
and I will make him clean again."

To him Constantine came gladly, when he had conducted his
sons forth from the assembly of the gods. But the avenging
deities none the less punished both him and them for their
impiety, and extracted the penalty for the shedding of the
blood of their kindred, [96] until Zeus granted them a respite
for the sake of Claudius and Constantius. [97]

Two questions:

1) Is there anyone in the house in who's opinion the emperor Julian here is no being satirical against both Constantine and Jesus?, and

2) If the Roman Emperor Julian could write satire against christianity then do you think it possible that others may in fact have done the same thing?

Besr wishes,



Pete

[Dlx2]

The major change in this era is obviously the birth of a hierarchical Christian church. This is why I've never understood the "Constantine invented Christianity" thesis as meaningful. Constantine helped to create the hierarchical church, but various forms of Christianity clearly predate his rule. Widespread illiteracy among the "faithful" in addition to the cloistered and aloof nature of the hierarchy allowed the contradiction between the actual ideas of Christ, as we now know them anyway, and The Church to evolve unquestioned by the masses. It isn't as if egalitarianism is viable concept in the 4th century political world.

I really wish mountainman would clean up this essay so that it could be examined systematically for content and thesis.

This one.

[Pavlov's Dog]

"I won't read it until you make it pretty."

It really isn't a case of "pretty". I've read it. Standard academic formating exists for a reason.

And it sure as fuck isn't because it is pretty.

[mountainman]

I don't think 4th-century Christianity was egalitarian.

At least, those are my impressions. I'm no expert, and I would be happy to be corrected.

Dear Brother Daniel,

What do you make of the following:

1) Extracts from the Codex Theodosianus (313 to 453 CE) (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/codex_theodosianus.htm)

2) Vlasis Rassias, Demolish Them! (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_060.htm) - Published in Greek, Athens 1994

3) Knowledge Burning by the 4th Century Christians (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_062.htm)

Best wishes,


Pete

[Brother Daniel]

If you're responding in some way to my comments about Christianity being (not) egalitarian (where I was responding to a question from Preno), then based upon a quick skimming of those links, I'm missing your point.

If you're asking my what I think of your radical thesis in general ... then I must confess (a) that it does not "ring true" to me (mostly because the "apparently" pre-4th-century Christian documentation is far too messy -- in the sense of lacking unification -- to have been invented by a conspiracy), but also that (b) I haven't pursued your arguments in any detail, and (c) even if I did, I think have far too little expertise for anyone to attach any weight to my opinion.

[Rathpig]

(c) even if I did, I think have far too little expertise for anyone to attach any weight to my opinion.

With proper documentation this shouldn't be a problem. You wouldn't necessarily need expertise in the specific field to follow the source material to it's conclusion. You may encounter something in the source material which requires knowledge or further research beyond your level of interest, but on the vast majority of historical topics, a laymen should be able to read an essay and at least state that according to the source material the case was supported.

This is why it is necessary for standard formats to be used in the field. History isn't an esoteric discipline where the information is beyond the grasp of a literate general public. It damn well better not be, or the audience and the funding will be severely limited to continue doing the work. History programs stress the ability to make audience connections and spur further interest among the general population. Unlike many disciplines in the Humanities, History is not a secret society.

[mountainman]

Pagan and Christian Historiography
in the Fourth Century A.D.

A. Momigliano


The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century,
The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, pp. 79—99 (1)


On 28 October 312 the Christians suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves victorious (2). The victory was a miracle — though opinions differed as to the nature of the sign vouchsafed to Constantine. The winners became conscious of their victory in a mood of resentment and vengeance. A voice shrill with implacable hatred announced to the world the victory of the Milvian Bridge: Lactantius’ De mortibus persecutorum (3). In this horrible pamphlet by the author of de ira dei there is something of the violence of the prophets without the redeeming sense of tragedy that inspires Nahum’s song for the fall of Nineveh. ‘His fury is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken asunder by him. The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble’: this at least has an elementary simplicity which is very remote from the complacent and sophisticated prose of the fourth-century rhetorician. Lactantius was not alone. More soberly, but no less ruthlessly, Eusebius recounted the divine vengeance against those who had persecuted the Church. To us it naturally appears that there is something in common between the Jews who died in defending the old Jerusalem and the Christians who died in building up the new Jerusalem against the same Roman empire. Modern scholars have found it easy to prove that in form and substance the Jewish martyr is the prototype of the Christian martyr. Such scholarly discoveries have little relevance to the realities of the fourth century. The pupils hated their masters, and were hated in their turn. With a cry of joy Eusebius, possibly a man of Jewish descent, retells from Josephus the story of the siege and capture of Jerusalem: thus may perish the enemies of Christ. Perhaps it is no chance that personally neither Lactantius nor Eusebius had suffered much from Diocletian’s persecution. Like Tacitus in relation to Domitian, they voiced the resentment of the majority who had survived in fear rather than in physical pain. Eusebius had been near his master Pamphilus who had carried on his work on the Bible in prison while awaiting death (4).


If there were men who recommended tolerance and peaceful coexistence of Christians and pagans, they were rapidly crowded out. The Christians were ready to take over the Roman empire, as Eusebius made clear in the introduction of the Praeparatio evangelica where he emphasizes the correlation between pax romana and the Christian message: the thought indeed was not even new. The Christians were also determined to make impossible a return to conditions of inferiority and persecution for the Church. The problems and the conflicts inside the Church which all this implied may be left aside for the moment.


The revolution of the fourth century, carrying with it a new historiography, will not be understood if we underrate the determination, almost the fierceness, with which the Christians appreciated and exploited the miracle that had transformed Constantine into a supporter, a protector and later a legislator of the Christian Church.

One fact is eloquent enough. All the pioneer works in the field of Christian historiography are earlier than what we may call their opposite numbers in pagan historiography. De mortibus persecutorum was written by Lactantius about 316. Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History probably appeared in a first edition about 312 (5). His life of Constantine — the authenticity of which can hardly be doubted — was written not long after 337 (6). Athanasius’ life of St Anthony belongs to the years around 360. Among the pagan works none can be dated with absolute certainty before the death of Constantine. The Historia Augusta purports to have been written under Diocletian and Constantine, but the majority of modern scholars prefer — rightly or wrongly — a date later than 360 (7). The characteristic trilogy, to which the Caesares by Aurelius Victor belong, was put together later than 360 (8). The lives of the Sophists by Eunapius — which are pagan hagiography — were published about 395 (9). Ammianus Marcellinus, too, finished his work about 395 (10). On the whole, the Christians come before the pagans in their creative writing. The Christians attack. The pagans are on the defensive.

Towards the end of the century the situation changed. Theodosius’ death precipitated a political crisis, and the barbarians were soon taking advantage of it with invasions on an unprecedented scale. The intervention of the state in theological matters appeared less attractive to people who had witnessed the trials of the Priscillianists and the cruel executions that concluded them. Many Christians became less certain of themselves and went back to paganism. Many pagans became more aggressive and dared to say openly that the new religion was responsible for the collapse of the empire. In the pagan field resignation yielded to fury, and in the Christian field aggressiveness had to be turned into self-defence. This incidentally brought about a revival of pagan historical writing in Greek: pagan Greek historiography had been conspicuously absent from the ideological struggles of the fourth century. It thus becomes clear that the years between 395 and 410 saw new developments in historiography which are beyond the scope of this lecture. Though we shall not disregard them altogether, we shall confine our analysis to the years 312-95. The clear-sighted determination of the Christians, which became suddenly apparent about 312, was the result of centuries of discipline and thought. In times of persecution and of uneasy tolerance the Church had developed its idea of orthodoxy and its conception of the providential economy of history. It emerged victorious to reassert with enhanced authority the unmistakable pattern of divine intervention in history, the ruthless elimination of deviations. The foundations of Christian historiography had been laid long before the time of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

We all know the story of the man who went into a London bookshop and asked for a New Testament in Greek. The assistant retired to a back room and after ten minutes came back with a grave look: ‘Strange, sir, but Greek seems to be the only language into which the New Testament has not yet been translated.’ The story may remind us of two facts. The first is that there was a time in which the New Testament was only available in Greek. The second and more important is that at that time it was as difficult as it is now to find a bookshop with a New, or for that matter an Old, Testament in Greek. About A.D. 180 a man like Galen could walk into a bookshop only to discover that they were selling an unauthorized edition of his own lectures. But though he was interested in the Christians, Galen would hardly have found a Bible. The Bible was no literature for the pagan. Its Greek was not elegant enough. Lactantius noted: ‘apud sapientes et doctos et principes huius saeculi scriptura sancta fide care(a)t (Inst.v.1.15). If we find a pagan who had a slight acquaintance with the Bible, such as the anonymous author of On the Sublime, we suspect direct Jewish influence: justifiedly so, because the author of the Sublime was a student of Caecilius of Calacte, who, to all appearances was a Jew (11). Normally the educated pagans of the Roman empire knew nothing about either Jewish or Christian history. If they wanted some information about the Jews, they picked up second-hand distortions such as we read in Tacitus. The consequence was that a direct acquaintance with Jewish or Christian history normally came together with conversion to Judaism or to Christianity. People learnt a new history because they acquired a new religion. Conversion meant literally the discovery of a new history from Adam and Eve to contemporary events (12).

The new history could not suppress the old. Adam and Eve and what follows had in some way to be presented in a world populated by Deucalion, Cadmus, Romulus and Alexander the Great. This created all sorts of new problems. First, the pagans had to be introduced to the Jewish version of history. Secondly, the Christian historians were expected to silence the objection that Christianity was new, and therefore not respectable. Thirdly, the pagan facts of life had to get into the Jewish-Christian scheme of redemption. It soon became imperative for the Christians to produce a chronology which would satisfy both the needs of elementary teaching and the purposes of higher historical interpretation. The Christian chronographers had to summarize the history which the converts were now supposed to consider their own; they had also to show the antiquity of the Jewish-Christian doctrine, and they had to present a model of providential history. The result was that, unlike pagan chronology, Christian chronology was also a philosophy of history. Unlike pagan elementary teaching, Christian elementary teaching of history could not avoid touching upon the essentials of the destiny of man. The convert, in abandoning paganism, was compelled to enlarge his historical horizon: he was likely to think for the first time in terms of universal history.

The spade-work in Christian chronology was done long before the fourth century (13). The greatest names involved in this work, Clemens Alexandrinus, Julius Africanus and Hippolytus of Rome, belong to the second and third centuries. They created the frame for the divine administration of the world; they transformed Hellenistic chronography into a Christian science and added the lists of the bishops of the most important sees to the lists of kings and magistrates of the pagan world. They presented history in such a way that the scheme of redemption was easy to perceive. They showed with particular care the priority of the Jews over the pagans — in which point their debt to Jewish apologetic is obvious. They established criteria of orthodoxy by the simple device of introducing lists of bishops who represented the apostolic succession. Calculations about the return of Christ amid the ultimate end had never been extraneous to the Church. Since the Apocalypse attributed to St John had established itself as authoritative in the Church, millennial reckonings had multiplied. Universal chronology in the Christian sense was bound to take into account not only the beginning, hut also the end; it had either to accept or else to fight the belief in the millennium. Chronology and eschatology were conflated. Both Julius Africanus and Hippolytus were firm believers in the millennium, without, however, believing in its imminence. But the higher purpose of philosophy of history was never separated from the immediate task of informing and edifying the faithful. Hippolytus’ introduction to his Chronicon is explicit. To quote a sentence from one of its Latin translations (another was incorporated in the Chronographer of 354), it was his purpose to show ‘quae divisio et quae perditio facta sit, quo autem modo generatio seminis Israel de patribus in Christo completa sit.’

At the beginning of the fourth century Christian chronology had already passed its creative stage. What Eusebius did was to correct and to improve the work of his predecessors, among whom he relied especially on Julius Africanus (14). He corrected details which seemed to him wrong even to the extent of reducing the priority of the Biblical heroes over the pagan ones. Moses, a contemporary of Ogyges according to Julius Africanus, was made a contemporary of Kekrops with a loss of 300 years. Eusebius was not afraid of attacking St Paul’s guesses about the chronology of the Book of Judges. He freely used Jewish and anti-Christian sources such as Porphyrios. He introduced a reckoning from Abraham which allowed him to avoid the pitfalls of a chronology according to the first chapters of Genesis. He seems to have been the first to use the convenient method of presenting the chronology of the various nations in parallel columns. None of the earlier chronographers seems to have used this scheme, though it has often been attributed to Castor or to Julius Africanus. He made many mistakes, but they do not surprise us any longer. Fifty years ago Eduard Schwartz, to save Eusebius’ reputation as a competent chronographer, conjectured that the two extant representatives of the lost original of Eusebius’ Chronicon — the Latin adaptation by St Jerome and the anonymous Armenian translation — were based on an interpolated text which passed for pure Eusebius. This conjecture is perhaps unnecessary; nor are we certain that the Armenian version is closer to the original than St Jerome’s Latin translation. Both versions reflect the inevitable vagaries of Eusebius’ mind to whom chronology was something between an exact science and an instrument of propaganda.

But we recognize the shrewd and worldly adviser of the Emperor Constantine in the absence of millenarian dreams. Eusebius, and St Jerome who followed him, had an essential part in discrediting them. Of course, they did not stamp them out. Millenarian reckonings reappear in the De cursu temporum which Bishop Hilarian wrote at the end of the fourth century (15). They also played a part in the thought of Sulpicius Severus about that time(16). As we have already said, the disasters of the end of the century made a difference to dreams, as they made a difference to the other realities.

Thanks to Eusebius, chronography remained the typical form of Christian instruction in the fourth century. It showed concern with the pattern of history rather than with the detail.

The Christians indeed were not alone in having a problem of historical education. The pagans had their own problem. But we can state immediately the difference between pagans and Christians in the teaching of history. The pagans were not concerned with ultimate values in their elementary teaching. Their main concern was to keep alive a knowledge of the Roman past. After the social and political earthquakes of the third century a new leading class had emerged which clearly had some difficulty in remembering the simple facts of Roman history (17). This explains why Eutropius and (Rufius?) Festus were both commissioned by the Emperor Valens to prepare a brief summary of Roman history. Eutropius was the first to obey the royal command. But the seventy-seven pages of his Teubner text must have proved too many for Valens. Festus, who followed, restricted himself to about twenty pages. He was not modest, but literal, when he commended his work to the gloriosissimus princeps as being even shorter than a summary — a mere enumeration of facts. The new men who, coming from the provincial armies or from Germany, acquired power and wealth, wanted some knowledge of the Roman past. They had to mix with the surviving members of the senatorial aristocracy in which knowledge of Roman history and antiquities was de rigueur. The establishment of a new senate in Constantinople, by adding another privileged class, complicated this educational problem. The senators of Constantinople, picked as they were from the municipal upper class of the East, were not likely to be uneducated, but they were not particularly strong either in the Latin language or in Roman, history. These people too needed breviaria. Eutropius was soon translated into Greek by a friend of Libanius and began his momentous career in the Byzantine world. There can be few other Latin authors able to boast of at least three successive translations into Greek.

In their characteristic neutrality, the pagan breviaria presented no danger to the Christians. They were so devoid of religious content that they could not give offence. On the contrary, the Christians could easily exploit them for their own purposes. Eutropius was very successful in Constantinople where the aristocracy soon became predominantly Christian. The Christian compiler known as the Chronographer of 354 incorporated in his own work a pagan recapitulation of the history of Rome — the so-called Chronica urbis Romae (18). When St Jerome decided to continue Eusebius’ Chronicon to 378 he used pagan writers such as Aurelius Victor and Eutropius, not to mention the Chronica urbis Romae which he probably knew as a part of the Christian chronography of 354. All this, however, only emphasized the fact that the Christians had no compilation, comparable to Eutropius and Festus. If breviaria were not needed during the fourth century when the Christians felt very sure of themselves, they appeared less superfluous towards the end of the century when the pagan version of Roman history gained in authority. Sulpicius Severus, who had absorbed pagan culture in Gaul, was the first to realize the deficiency and to fill the gap just about A.D. 400. He combined Christian chronographers and the Bible with historici mundiales, the pagan historians. His purpose was still the dual one of the earlier Christian chronography: ‘ut et imperitos docerem et litteratos convincerem’. Later, about 417, Orosius followed his example when he was requested by St Augustine to produce a summary of the history of Rome in support of his Civitas dei. Orosius gave what from a medieval point of view can be called the final Christian twist to the pagan epitome of Roman history (19).

*

Epitomes are only on the threshold of history. So far we have considered books which were meant to remind the reader of the events rather than to tell them afresh. But an important fact has already emerged. Whether in the form of chronographies or, later, in the form of breviaria, the Christian compilations were explicit in conveying a message: one can doubt whether the majority of the pagan compilations conveyed any message at all. Sulpicius Severus and Orosius fought for a cause, and it is to be remembered that Sulpicius Severus expressed the indignation felt by Ambrosius and Martin of Tours against the appeal to the secular arm in the Priscillianist controversy. Consequently, it was very easy to transform a pagan handbook into a Christian one, but almost impossible to make pagan what had been Christian. Later on we shall consider one possible exception to the rule that the Christians assimilate pagan ideas, while the Pagans do not appropriate Christian ones. The rule, however, stands: it is enough to indicate the trend of the century — and, incidentally, to explain why the Christians were so easily victorious. Just because the trend is so clear, we can perhaps conjecturally add yet another case of the easy transformation of pagan historical breviaria into Christian ones. All is in doubt about the first part of the Anonymus Valesianus —which is a brief life of Constantine under the name of Origo Constantini imperatoris. But a fourth-century date seen highly probable; and it also seems clear that the few Christian passages are later interpolations from Orosius. If so, the Origo Constantini imperatoris is a beautiful example of a short pagan work which, was made Christian by the simple addition of a few passages (20). The Christians could easily take it over because of the relatively neutral character of the original text. The pagans for their part kept away from Christian explosives.

Christian initiative was such that it did not hesitate to appropriate Jewish goods also. Pseudo-Philo’s Liber antiquitatum Biblicarum was originally a Jewish handbook of Biblical history. It seems to have been written its Hebrew for Jews in the first century A.D., it was later done into Greek, and, to all appearances, in, the fourth century, it was changed into a Christian handbook and translated into Latin (21).

The question then arises whether the Christians became the masters of the field also on the higher level of original historical writing and whether here, too, they confirmed their capacity for assimilating without being assimilated.

If the question were simply to be answered by a yes, it would not be worth asking. The traditional forms of higher historiography did not attract the Christians. They invented new ones. These inventions are the most important contributions made to historiography after the fifth- century B.C., and before the sixteenth century A.D. Yet the pagans are allowed by the Christians to remain the masters of traditional historiographical forms. To put it briefly, the Christians invented ecclesiastical history and the biography of the saints, but did not try to Christianize ordinary political history; and they influenced ordinary biography less than we would expect. In the fourth century A.D. there was no serious attempt to provide a Christian version of say, Thucydides or Tacitus — to mention two writers who were still being seriously studied. A reinterpretation of ordinary military, political or diplomatic history in Christian terms was neither achieved nor even attempted. Lactantius in the De Mortibus persecutorum is perhaps the only Christian writer to touch upon social and political events. He does so in a conservative and senatorial spirit which must be embarrassing to those who identify the Christians with, the lower middle class, but he never seriously develops his political interpretation: he is not to be compared as an analyst with, Ammianus Marcellinus or even with the Scriptores Historiae Augusta.

The consequence is plain. No real Christian historiography founded upon the political experience of Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus was transmitted to the Middle Ages. This is already apparent in the sixth century when a military and political historian like Procopius was basically pagan in outlook and technique. When in the fifteenth, and sixteenth, centuries the humanists rediscovered their Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus, they rediscovered something for which, there was no plain Christian alternative. It is not for me to say whether an alternative was possible: whether an earlier Tacitus christianus would have been less foolish, than the post-Reformation One. What I must point out is that the conditions which made Machiavelli and Guicciardini possible originated in the fourth century AD. The models for political and military history remained irretrievably pagan. In the higher historiography there was nothing comparable with the easy Christianizing of the pagan breviaria.

Here again Eusebius was the decisive influence. How much he owed to predecessors, and especially to the shadowy Hegesippus. we shall never know, unless new evidence is discovered (22). But it is fairly clear that Hegesippus wrote apologetic, not history. Apart from him, there is no other name that can seriously compete with Eusebius’ for the invention of ecclesiastical history. He was not vainly boasting when he asserted that he was the ‘first to enter on this Undertaking as travellers do on some desolate and untrodden way’ (23).

Eusebius, like any other educated man, knew what proper history was. He knew that it was a rhetorical work with a maximum of invented speeches and a minimum of authentic documents. Since he chose to give plenty of documents and refrained from inventing speeches, he must have intended to produce something different from ordinary history. Did he then intend to produce a preparatory work to history, hypomnema? This is hardly credible. First of all, historical hypomnemata were normally confined to contemporary events. Secondly, Eusebius speaks as if he were writing history, and not collecting materials for a future history.

It was Eduard Schwartz who in one of his most whimsical moments suggested that German professors of Kirchengeschichte had been the victims of their poor Greek. They had not understood that Ekklesiiastike historia did not mean Kirchengeschichte, but Materialen zur Kirchengeschichte. Eduard Schwartz, of course was fighting his great battle against the isolation of ecclesiastical history in German universities, and we who share his beliefs can hardly blame him for this paradox. But a paradox it was (24).

Eusebius knew only too well that he was writing a new kind of history. The Christians were a nation in his view. Thus he was writing national history. But his nation had a transcendental origin. Though it had appeared on earth in Augustus’ time, it was born in heaven ‘with the first dispensation concerning the Christ himself’ (1.1.8). Such, a nation was not fighting ordinary wars. Its struggles were persecutions and heresies. Behind the Christian nation there was Christ, just as the devil was behind its enemies. The ecclesiastical history was bound to be different from ordinary history because it was a history of the struggle against the devil, who tried to pollute the purity of the Christian Church as guaranteed by the apostolic succession.

Having started to collect his materials during Diocletian’s persecutions, Eusebius never forgot his original purpose which was to produce factual evidence about the past and about the character of the persecuted Church. He piled up his evidence of quotations from reputable authorities and records in the form that was natural to any ancient controversialist. As he was dealing with a Church that represented a school of thought there was much he could learn, in the matter of presentation from the histories of philosophic schools which, he knew well. These dealt with doctrinal controversies, questions of authenticity, successions of scholarchs. But he did away with all that was anecdotal and worldly in the pagan biographies of philosophers. This is why we shall never know whether Clemens Alexandrinus was fond of eating green figs and of basking in the sun — which are established points in the biography of Zeno the Stoic. At the same time Eusebius certainly had in mind Jewish-Hellenistic historiography, as exemplified for him and for us by Flavius Josephus. In Josephus he found the emphasis on the past, the apologetic tone, the doctrinal digression, the display (though not so lavish) of documents: above all there was the idea of a nation which is different from ordinary pagan nations. Jewish historiography emphatically underlined the importance of the remote past in comparison with recent times and the importance of cult in comparison with, politics.

The suggestion that Eusebius combined the methods of philosophic historiography with the approach, of Jewish-Hellenistic historiography has at least the merit of being a guide to the sources of his thought. Yet it is far from accounting for all the main features of his work. There were obvious differences between the history of the Church and that of any other institution. Persecution had been an all-pervading factor of Christianity. Heresy was a new conception which (whatever its origins) had hardly the same importance in any other school of thought, even in Judaism. An account of the Christian Church based on the notion of orthodoxy and on its relations with a persecuting power was bound to be something different from any other historical account. The new type of exposition chosen by Eusebius proved to be adequate to the new type of institution represented by the Christian Church. It was founded upon authority and not upon the free judgement of which the pagan historians were proud. His contemporaries felt that he had made a new start. Continuators, imitators and translators multiplied. Some of them (most particularly Sozomen) tried to be more conventional in their historiographical style, more obedient to rhetorical traditions. None departed from the main structure of Eusebius’ creation with its emphasis on the struggle against persecutors and heretics and therefore on the purity and continuity of the doctrinal tradition.

Eusebius introduced a new type of historical exposition which was characterized by the importance attributed to the more remote past, by the central position of doctrinal controversies and by the lavish use of documents.

I am not yet able to answer two questions which are very much on my mind: whether in the Middle Ages there was a school of pure ecclesiastical history from Cassiodorus to Bede, to Adam of Bremen and to John of Salisbury; and whether this school, if any, was characterized by a special interest in documents. What is certain is that from the sixteenth, to the eighteenth, century ecclesiastical history (especially of the early Church) was treated with a much, greater display of erudition, with much more care for minute analysis of the evidence than any other type of history. There is no work in profane history comparable with the Magdeburg Centuriators and with Baronius. Naturally this is the expression of the fiercely controversial character which ecclesiastical history assumed with the Reformation. But we may well wonder whether the ecclesiastical historians of the Renaissance would have entered upon this path of erudition and documentation — and incidentally of illegibility — without the powerful precedent of Eusehius and his immediate pupils. Conversely, we may well wonder whether modern political historiography would ever have emerged from rhetoric and pragmatism to footnotes and appendixes without the example of ecclesiastical history. The first man who applied careful scrutiny of the evidence to the history of the Roman empire was Le Nain de Tillemont, who came from ecclesiastical history and worked in both fields. Among the Maurists of St Germaim-des-Prés erudition spread from ecclesiastical to profane, even to literary history. Perhaps we have all underestimated the impact of ecclesiastical history on the development of historical method. A new chapter of historiography begins with Eusebius not only because he invented ecclesiastical history, but because he wrote it with a documentation which is utterly different from that of the pagan historians (25).

Thus we are brought back to our main point. Eusebius made history positively and negatively by creating ecclesiastical history and by leaving political history alone. In a comparable manner another Christian invented the biography of the saints and left the biography of generals and politicians to the pagans. The inventor was Athanasius, whose life of St Anthony was promptly made available in Latin by Euagrius. The complicated pattern of suggestions which, lies behind the rise of hagiography - exitus illustrium virorum, Jewish legends, lives of philosophers, ‘aretalogies’, etc. — cannot detain us here. The studies by K. Holl amid R. Reitzenstein seem to have established that Athanasius was more directly inspired by the Pythagorean type of the theios aner, such as we find in the life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus and in the life of Pythagoras himself by Iamblichus (26). Athanasius intended to oppose the Christian saint who works his way to God with the help of God to the pagan philosopher who is practically a god himself. By imparting a mortal blow to the ideal of the pagan philosopher, he managed to produce an ideal type which became extremely popular among ordinary Christians. Only small groups of pagans believed that Pythagoras or Diogenes was the best possible man. The great majority of pagans was more interested in Hercules, Achilles and Alexander the Great. But in Christian society the saint was soon recognized as the only perfect type of man. This gives hagiography, as begun by Athanasius, its unique place. It outclassed all other types of biography because all the other types of men became inferior to that of the saint. In comparison, the ordinary biography of kings and politicians became insignificant. One of the most important features of the lives of saints is to give a new dimension to historiography by registering the activity of devils in the plural. It is no exaggeration to say that a mass invasion of devils into historiography preceded and accompanied the mass invasion of barbarians into the Roman empire. A full treatment of ‘Devils in historiography’ must be reserved for a future course at the Warburg Institute on ‘Devils and the Classical Tradition’. But so much can be said here: the devils seem to have respected the classical distinction of literary genres. They established themselves in biography, but made only occasional irruptions into the field of annals.

The difficulty of writing a Christian, biography of a king as distinct from the life of a saint is already apparent in the life of Constantine by Eusebius, though it was produced perhaps twenty years before the composition of the life of St Anthony by Athanasius. Eusebius had no other choice but to present the life of Constantine as a model of a pious life — paradeigma theosebous biou, as he himself says. The task was certainly not beyond Eusebius’ ingenuity, but it flouted anybody’s respect for truth. Moreover, it inspired neglect of all that counts in a life of a general and a politician: military glory, political success, concern for ordinary human affairs, and the rest of the passions power carries with it. No wonder that this life of Constantine was never a success, had hardly any influence on later biographies, and found some modern scholars ready to deny the Eusebian authorship even at the risk of being contradicted by papyrological evidence. It continued to be easier for a Christian to work on the life of a saint than to write the life of an emperor. We may sympathize with Eginhard when he decided to go back to Suetonius for his life of Charlemagne.

We can thus see that a direct conflict between Christians and pagans is not to be expected on the higher level of the hsistoriography of the fourth century. The Christians, with all their aggressiveness, kept to their own new types of history and biography. Eusebius’ life of Constantine was an experiment not to be repeated — historiographically a blind alley. The pagans were left to cultivate their own fields. This perhaps reinforced their tendency to avoid any direct discussion with their formidable neighbours in the field of historiography, The opposition to Christianity can be guessed rather than demonstrated in the majority of the pagan students of history. It shows itself in the care with which pagan historians of the past — such as Sallust, Livy and Tacitus — were read and imitated. It is also apparent in the implicit rejection of the most characteristic Christian values, such as humility and poverty. But it seldom takes the form of direct critical remarks. There are two or three sentences in the Historia Augusta which sound like a criticism of the Christians. One is the good-humoured remark that in Egypt ‘those who worship Serapis are, in fact, Christians and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are in fact devotees of Serapis’ (Firmus, 8, 2). In the last sentence of Aurelius Victor’s De Caesaribus there is perhaps a criticism of Constantius II’s Christian ministers : ‘ut imperatore ipso praeclarius, ita apparitorum plerisque magis atrox nihil’. But notice with what care the emperor is declared blameless. Finally, there are the well-known criticisms of Ammianus Marcellinus against the Roman clergy and other bishops, such as Bishop George of Alexandria. But here again notice that the same Ammianus praises Christian martyrdom, and respects the blameless life of provincial bishops. The pagans were bound to be prudent —and their mood was altogether that of a generous and like-minded liberalism. The Historia Augusta is by no means the big anti-Christian pamphlet which some scholars have seen in it. On the contrary, the ideal emperor Severus Alexander worships Jesus with Abraham in his private chapel. Ammianus Marcellinus makes an effort to disentangle what is absoluta and simplex religio and what is anilis superstitio in Christianity (xxi, 16, 18). According to him what matters is virtus, not paganism or Christianity. As we all know, this attitude is also to be found in Symmachus, in some of the pagan correspondents of St Augustine and in the Panegyricus by Nazarius (IV, 7, 3). Rufius Festus, who was an unbeliever but whose pagan sympathies are shown by the disproportionate amount of space he devotes to Julian is full of deference towards the Christian God of his master Valens: ‘Maneat modo concessa dei nutu et ab amico cui credis et creditus es numine indulta felicitas’. ‘May long last the happiness that was granted to you by the friendly god whom you trust and to whom you are entrusted.’ This is a very decent way of saving one’s conscience without offending one’s master.

The only exception is Eunapius, whose history of the fourth century was so anti-Christian that, according to Photius, it had to be re-edited in a less offensive form. The greater part of this history is lost, but Eunapius’ attitude is clear enough from the extant fragments and even more so from his lives of the Sophists, where Julian is the hero and the apology for Neoplatonic paganism is unbridled. If Julian won victories it was because the right gods helped him. We can still read in the margins of the Codex Laurentianus of Eunapius’ lives of the Sophists the indignant remarks of one of his Byzanitine readers. Eunapius clearly meant his lives of the Sophists to compete with, the lives of the Christian saints whose cult he despised (Vit.Soph. 472). But Eunapius reflects the changed mood of the end of the century when even the most optimistic pagan could no longer nurture illusions about Christian tolerance (27). Furthermore, his particular type of reaction is that of a professor who wrote for Greek literati rather than for the pagan aristocracy of the West. As we observed, the Greek pagans of the East seem to have become vocal only at the end of the century. During the century itself Latin was the main language of pagan historiography.

In the West, among the Latin historians, the resistance to Christianity showed itself in a mixture of silence amid condescension; Christianity is rarely mentioned. If it is mentioned, kindness and good humour prevail. What counts is the vast zone of silence, the ambiguity which gives Latin pagan historiography of the fourth century its strange imprint of reticence and mystery. Seldom are historians of historiography faced by works so difficult to date, to analyse in their composite nature and to attribute to a definite background. For the first time we come across historical work done in collaboration, — which adds to its elusiveness.

The Historia Augusta is the classic example of historiographic mystery. The work purports to have been written by six authors at various moments of the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine. Some at least of the alleged authors claim to have written in collaboration. This very claim of team-work is baffling: cooperative ‘Cambridge histories were not common in antiquity. The writing is sensational and unscrupulous, and the forged documents included in this work serve no obvious purpose. One or two passages may point to a post-Constantinian date either for the whole collection or at least for the passages themselves. But the date and the purpose of the Scriptores Historiae Augustae remain au unsolved problem.

A less famous, but no less remarkable, mystery is the tripartite corpus under the tithe Origo gentis Romanae — a title which incidentally must be translated as History of the Roman people. It includes a history of Roman origins from Saturnus to the murder of Remus, a collection of short biographies from Romulus to Augustus (the so-called De viris illustribus), and, finally, short and accomplished biographies of Roman emperors to AD. 360. The imperial biographies were written by Aurelius Victor whom we know to have been a friend of Julian and a praefectus urbi under Theodosius. The other two sections of the trilogy are anonymous: they were written by two different authors, neither of whom can be identical with Aurelius Victor. A fourth man acted as editor and put together the three pamphlets to form the present trilogy. All these people were pagan. I have elsewhere suggested that the editor of the trilogy may have tried to produce a complete pagan history of Rome at the time of the Emperor Julian. But this is a pure guess, though not an unreasonable one, I trust. The compiler himself does not say anything about the precise meaning and date of his compilation. He may have known the Christian Chronographer of 354: he has certainly adopted a compositional scheme which reminds us of the Chronica urbis Romae included in the Chronographer of 354. What is extraordinary and to my mind, important in this trilogy is the absence of any direct allusion to Christianity. The author is pagan: there is no reference to the Christians.

Ammianus Marcellinus is not a mystery in the sense in which the Historia Augusta and the tripartite Origo gentis Romanae are mysteries (28). He speaks about himself more than the majority of the ancient historians ever did. His keen eye is constantly on the lookout for individual features. He is a man full of delightful curiosity. Yet what do we ultimately know about Ammianus? He does not even tell us why he, a Greek from Antioch, chose Latin, as his literary language. He says very little about the theological controversies of his time and almost nothing about the religious feelings of the people he must have known best. Magic seems to interest him more than theology. Yet theology counted most. He was a soldier. Yet he is apparently not interested in military organizations. He has an uncanny ability to describe a character without defining a situation. He never gives himself away. His histories might have for motto his own words: ‘quisquis igitur dicta considerat, perpendat etiam cetera quae tacentur’ (XXIX.3.1). It is symbolic that the greatest feat of his military career was to escape unnoticed from besieged Amida while the Persians were breaking into the city. He may have become more reticent about religion in the Books xxvi—xxxi which he wrote after 392 when Theodosius hardened against the pagans. But even the earlier books, written as they were in more tolerant years, are not much more explicit. He dislikes the Germans, yet his unwillingness to analyse the causes of the barbarian successes is notorious. He deplores the greed and avarice of some Roman aristocrats, especially of the Anicii who were just then turning to Christianity. But he cannot have had any general objection against the senatorial class among which he had his pagan friends, Praetextatus, Eupraxius and Symmachus. An acute and passionate judge of individuals, he avoids our direct questions and leaves us wondering. His master Tacitus is a paragon of directness by comparison.

If reticence, love of the pagan past, moderation and erudition were the prominent features of these Latin historians, the Christians did not have much to fear from their work. Historians of this kind could please other historians. Ammianus Marcellinus, the Historia Augusta and the now lost histories by Nicomachus Flavianus were read in the sixth century in the circle of Symmachus and Cassiodorus, when there was a revival of interest in Roman history (29). But Ammianus, the Historia Augusta, and Aurelius Victor were never popular for all we know. The fact that at least one of these historical works, the Historia Aurusta, is guilty of professional dishonesty is not a sign of strength, for historiography of this kind. It would be unfair to generalize since so much of the fourth-century historical production is lost. Within the limits of our knowledge we are constantly reminded of the fact that the true pagans of the fourth century found their most profound satisfaction, not in writing new history, but in copying existing histories, trying to solve problem of antiquarianism, commenting on Virgil and other classics, reading and writing poetry in a pagan spirit. The real passion was in those who tried to revive the past by direct religious worship, by discussion of ancient custom, by the study of ancient writers. Our instinct is right, I think, when we consider Macrobius, Symmachus, Servius and Donatus more typically pagan than Ammianus Marcellinus Festus who wrote the historical breviarium has sometimes been identified with Festus Avienus, the translator of Aratus. The identification is not to be maintained. The historian Festus was even accused of atheism by Eunapius (p. 481). The poet Festus Avienus, a friend of the Nicomachi Flaviani, was warmly devoted to Jupiter and to the Etruscan goddess Nortia of his native country (30). When he died, his son wrote on his tomb that Jupiter was opening the skies to him — the son echoing in his lines his father’s lines:

Nam Iuppiter aethram
Pandit, Feste, tibi candidus ut venias
Iamque venis ( I.L.S. 2944)

This seems to have been the driving spirit of dying paganism in the West. Therefore, St Augustine, who knew where to look for the real enemy, was not worried by contemporary pagan historians in the Latin tongue, such as Ammianus Marcellinus. Greek historians, such as Eunapius, worried him even less because he probably did not know them: his command of Greek was modest. But he was disturbed by the idealization of the Roman past which he found in fourth-century Latin antiquarians, poets and commentators of poets. He saw in them the roots of the new resistance against Christianity which became evident towards the end of the century. He went back to the sources of their antiquarianism, and primarily to Varro, in order to undermine the foundations of their work. He fought the antiquarians, the sentimental and emotional pagans, of his time — not the contemporary historians. The latter might be left to die from natural causes. But the former had to be fought. The result is to be seen in the De civitate dei. It is also to be seen in the work of St Augustine’s pupil Orosius who was induced by him to write against the readers of Livy, not against the readers of the Historia Augusta or of Ammianus. All went according to plan, except that the pagan historians of the fourth century were not really going to die. They were only going to sleep for some centuries. They belonged to that classical tradition in historiography for which ecclesiastical history, whatever its merits, was no substitute. Though we may have learnt to check our references from Eusebius — and this was no small gain — we are still the disciples of Herodotus and Thucydides: we still learn our history of the late empire from Ammianus Marcellinus (31).


References
1. The notes to this lecture are meant to provide no more than an introduction to the recent literature. Cf. my later paper in Riv. St. Ital., lxxxi, 1969, pp. 286—303.

2. Cf., however, P. Bruun, ‘The Battle of the Milvian Bridge: The Date Reconsidered’, Hcnncs, lxxxviii, 1960, pp. 361-70, which puts the battle in 311.
NB: I have removed footnotes due to length restrictions in posting. The original article with footnotes may be located here (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/Arnaldo%20Momigliano%20post.htm).

[Lucretius III]

These from your long quoted post however Mountainman hardly support your premise though (my emphasis)

The spade-work in Christian chronology was done long before the fourth century (13). The greatest names involved in this work, Clemens Alexandrinus, Julius Africanus and Hippolytus of Rome, belong to the second and third centuries.

and

At the beginning of the fourth century Christian chronology had already passed its creative stage.

[mountainman]

These from your long quoted post however Mountainman hardly support your premise though (my emphasis)

The spade-work in Christian chronology was done long before the fourth century (13). The greatest names involved in this work, Clemens Alexandrinus, Julius Africanus and Hippolytus of Rome, belong to the second and third centuries.

and

At the beginning of the fourth century Christian chronology had already passed its creative stage.

Dear Lucretius,

Why does Momogliano use the term spade-work (my emphasis)? You need to be aware that this author is renown for his very heavy irony.

For example, have a long hard look at the following ...

Eusebius knew only too well that he was writing a new kind of history. The Christians were a nation in his view. Thus he was writing national history. But his nation had a transcendental origin.


If you cannot read irony in the above exposition by Arnaldo Momigliano, then IMO readers, you are missing entirely the point this ancient historian is trying to articulate. Why is Eusebius presented as a spade-worker? AM has a dark and ironic sense of humour.

Why for example does AM descibed christian origins as transcendental? Are we aware of the meaning of this word with respect to the field of ancient history? Hello? Transcendental? Imaginary? Fictional? Constantinian?




Best wishes,



Pete

[Rathpig]

Is this thread a Rook Hawkins parody?

[SteveF]

This episode has resulted in much jocularity.

[gamera]

The irony (lost on mountainman) is that if God could start Christianity by sending his son, who was himself, to be crucified and resurrected, then surely God could start Christianity by having Constantine make it all up.

One is as unplausible as the next, and just as possible if you assume God.

[Nialler]

Mountainman,

Debate Rook Hawkins of the RRS. I've given you the link.

[Rathpig]

Mountainman,

Debate Rook Hawkins of the RRS. I've given you the link.

At the very least they seem in agreement about thumbing their noses to academic convention.

[mountainman]

The irony (lost on mountainman) is that if God could start Christianity by sending his son, who was himself, to be crucified and resurrected, then surely God could start Christianity by having Constantine make it all up.

One is as unplausible as the next, and just as possible if you assume God.

Dear Gamera,

What would Crispus's (Constantine's son whom he had executed) answer be to this question? Or Sopater? Or Constantine's wife ... all of whom Constantine had executed? Did Crispus laugh at Consantine's canon? Heaven forbid.


best wishes,

Pete

[mountainman]

Mountainman,

Debate Rook Hawkins of the RRS. I've given you the link.

Thanks very much Nialler,

But the contact form there informs me that my email is one of hundreds etc etc etc. Do you know a quick way to get the attention of this bloke, who ever Rook Hawkins may turn out to be, to have a serious look at the serious research that I have conducted?
I would appreciate any efforts here. FWIW I have sent a second and a third email.

I have always maintained that my thesis can be refuted in whole or in part with the provision of the appropriate ancient historical evidence. So far, although I have indexed all citations thrown against the thesis, it appears to remain sound. For interested parties the detail citations I have dealt with are indexed at this page entitled Early Christian "Epigraphic Habit" (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/epigraphic_habit.htm). Comments are welcome.


You dont have to be experienced to read a list of archaeological citations and discuss one or two. So who is game? Is this a history discussion forum or some sort of other type of exchange bureau? Who wants to discuss the Prosenes inscription, presumed christian, located in Rome, visited by thousands of pilgrims. etc, etc. Or perhaps C14 analysis of the catacombs?



best wishes,


Pete

[Fish and Bread]

No offense to the original poster intended personally, but this actual theory itself, divorced of any association with anyone in particular, is basically a wing-nut conspiracy theory right up there with "Aliens shot Kennedy to keep him from publicly revealing their existence using evidence from Roswell".

I don't think it's possible, in such a primitive era as the one we're discussing, to successfully basically create over 300 years of history out of whole cloth and not have it be really obvious to later observers.

If we're arguing from a completely objective standpoint, it might be possible to make a case that Constantine invented or changed some portions of Christianity. But saying that he invented the whole thing just isn't a historically viable thesis, in my opinion.

[mountainman]

No offense to the original poster intended personally, but this actual theory itself, divorced of any association with anyone in particular, is basically a wing-nut conspiracy theory right up there with "Aliens shot Kennedy to keep him from publicly revealing their existence using evidence from Roswell".

I don't think it's possible, in such a primitive era as the one we're discussing, to successfully basically create over 300 years of history out of whole cloth and not have it be really obvious to later observers.

If we're arguing from a completely objective standpoint, it might be possible to make a case that Constantine invented or changed some portions of Christianity. But saying that he invented the whole thing just isn't a historically viable thesis, in my opinion.

Dear Fish and Bread,

Thankyou for the disclaimer but really this is a history forum and the question is thus how is it possible to see that a Roman emperor with complete military supremacy does not require any conspiracy to bend the literature to his will. Constantine is perceived by this thesis as a malevolent despot, who destroyed the ancient traditions which at that time were custodially being transmitted by the greek speaking academics of the eastern empire, and particularly Alexandria, and its libraries before the christians burnt them at the end of the fourth century.

The high technology of the epoch was the hand presrved codex. Scriptorums of a collegiate nature apparently were quite popular under Constantine if we are to examine the scholarship on other documents of antiquity, such as one called the Historia Augusta. Fabrication centers. Lavish fraud by a despot. This is not the same thing as publication via a conspiracy.

The word conspiracy FWIW is mentioned in a very critical fashion by the tax exempt bishop of Alexandria Cyril, who is compelled to inform us that any knowledge that the new testament was a fiction, he looked upon as a conspiracy of the Greeks (ie: the Greek academics of the eastern empire) and the formost of course being emperor Julian who in no uncertain terms tells us that the new testament is a fabrication and fiction of wicked men.

Julian also writes satire against Constantine and jesus. Have you happened yet to have read his work called The Caesars (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/Julian_Caesares_Symposium_Kronia.htm)?

Here is a quote.


As for Constantine, he could not discover among the gods
the model of his own career, but when he caught sight of
Pleasure, who was not far off, he ran to her. She received
him tenderly and embraced him, then after dressing him in
raiment of many colours and otherwise making him beautiful,
she led him away to Incontinence.

There too he found Jesus, who had taken up his abode with
her and cried aloud to all comers:

"He that is a seducer, he that is a murderer,
he that is sacrilegious and infamous,
let him approach without fear!
For with this water will I wash him
and will straightway make him clean.

And though he should be guilty
of those same sins a second time,
let him but smite his breast and beat his head
and I will make him clean again."

To him Constantine came gladly, when he had conducted his
sons forth from the assembly of the gods. But the avenging
deities none the less punished both him and them for their
impiety, and extracted the penalty for the shedding of the
blood of their kindred, [96] until Zeus granted them a respite
for the sake of Claudius and Constantius. [97]

Attendees at the council of Nicaea were required to walk through a wall of drawn swords. Constantine owned the swords. Whatever conspiracy Constantine entertained, he had the manifest power to engineer with his army. His prohibition of temple services c.324 CE implied that the ascetic academic greek speaking temple priests all across the empire were out of business. They were also out of homes since the Boss shut the temples down. They fled to desert refuges. They wrote the non canonical new testament literature as seditious satirical polemic against the characters featured in the Constantinian canon. Nag Hammadi c.348 CE via C14.

These apochryphal writings - being treated as sedition by the imperial christian regime -were sought out to be destroyed. Have a long hard look at the Decretum Gelasianum (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/Decretum%20Gelasianum.htm), and the list of Apocrypha c.491 CE and the political status (genre) of these writings.

IMO Arius of Alexandria may have written some of the apochryphal acts. Constantine was very mad at Arius, He wrote Arius a very very nasty letter (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/constantine_to_ARIUS.htm).


A political analysis of a letter composed about 333 CE by Constantine, addressed to Arius and the Arians. Constantine would very much like to publically execute Arius, but he does not know exactly where Arius is - perhaps Syria. Arius is revealed as someone who had previously been conspicuous by his silence and unobtrusive character. He is described in the manner of an ascetic priest. Constantine is stung by the anti-christian polemic in the writings of Arius; Arius is the focus of belief in unbelief of Constantine's new political and religious initiatives. Constantine reveals that Arius "reproaches, grieves, wounds and pains the Church". A very nasty letter by a very nasty despot. Eventually Constantine manages to poison Arius, but before that time when Arius was no longer, he had composed a number of texts against the Pontifex Maximus' preferred and sponsored cult. These heretical writings were sought out by the authodox.





I await any questions of an historical nature from members of this forum.



Best wishes,


Pete

[Fish and Bread]

Dear Fish and Bread,

Thankyou for the disclaimer but really this is a history forum and the question is thus how is it possible to see that a Roman emperor with complete military supremacy does not require any conspiracy to bend the literature to his will. Constantine is perceived by this thesis as a malevolent despot, who destroyed the ancient traditions which at that time were custodially being transmitted by the greek speaking academics of the eastern empire, and particularly Alexandria, and its libraries before the christians burnt them at the end of the fourth century.

The high technology of the epoch was the hand presrved codex. Scriptorums of a collegiate nature apparently were quite popular under Constantine if we are to examine the scholarship on other documents of antiquity, such as one called the Historia Augusta. Fabrication centers. Lavish fraud by a despot. This is not the same thing as publication via a conspiracy.

The word conspiracy FWIW is mentioned in a very critical fashion by the tax exempt bishop of Alexandria Cyril, who is compelled to inform us that any knowledge that the new testament was a fiction, he looked upon as a conspiracy of the Greeks (ie: the Greek academics of the eastern empire) and the formost of course being emperor Julian who in no uncertain terms tells us that the new testament is a fabrication and fiction of wicked men.

[...]Attendees at the council of Nicaea were required to walk through a wall of drawn swords. Constantine owned the swords. Whatever conspiracy Constantine entertained, he had the manifest power to engineer with his army. His prohibition of temple services c.324 CE implied that the ascetic academic greek speaking temple priests all across the empire were out of business. They were also out of homes since the Boss shut the temples down. They fled to desert refuges. They wrote the non canonical new testament literature as seditious satirical polemic against the characters featured in the Constantinian canon. Nag Hammadi c.348 CE via C14.

I await any questions of an historical nature from members of this forum.



Best wishes,


Pete

Whether Constantine could have engineered events in his own time using an invented New Testament is not the crux of what we're discussing, though. The question is whether he could shield the fact that he had done so everyone in the 1700 years that followed? At the time, people could have buried more authentic scriptures or histories, stored in them in other places untouched by the hand of the government, or transmitted them to foreign lands where Rome had limited influence and they could have been preserved.

I don't really see any evidence that any of that happened. What I see is that Christianity had a few critics and skeptics in that area. All religions have critics and skeptics in all times and places, for the most part. Folks criticized the old Roman pagan religion that preceded Christianity. Folks criticized formally secular governments like old Soviet Union for it's atheism. There are always critics and skeptics of all forms of belief somewhere in any given area.

[Dlx2]

The irony (lost on mountainman) is that if God could start Christianity by sending his son, who was himself, to be crucified and resurrected, then surely God could start Christianity by having Constantine make it all up.

One is as unplausible as the next, and just as possible if you assume God.

Thar be Irony in this here thread.

[Ray Moscow]

The irony (lost on mountainman) is that if God could start Christianity by sending his son, who was himself, to be crucified and resurrected, then surely God could start Christianity by having Constantine make it all up.

One is as unplausible as the next, and just as possible if you assume God.

Thar be Irony in this here thread.

Really, God could have created Christianity last Thursday, along with the illusory memories of it being slightly older. :)

[Dlx2]

The devil created Christianity to distract us from Islam.

[mountainman]

Dear Fish and Bread,

Thankyou for the disclaimer but really this is a history forum and the question is thus how is it possible to see that a Roman emperor with complete military supremacy does not require any conspiracy to bend the literature to his will. Constantine is perceived by this thesis as a malevolent despot, who destroyed the ancient traditions which at that time were custodially being transmitted by the greek speaking academics of the eastern empire, and particularly Alexandria, and its libraries before the christians burnt them at the end of the fourth century.

The high technology of the epoch was the hand presrved codex. Scriptorums of a collegiate nature apparently were quite popular under Constantine if we are to examine the scholarship on other documents of antiquity, such as one called the Historia Augusta. Fabrication centers. Lavish fraud by a despot. This is not the same thing as publication via a conspiracy.

The word conspiracy FWIW is mentioned in a very critical fashion by the tax exempt bishop of Alexandria Cyril, who is compelled to inform us that any knowledge that the new testament was a fiction, he looked upon as a conspiracy of the Greeks (ie: the Greek academics of the eastern empire) and the formost of course being emperor Julian who in no uncertain terms tells us that the new testament is a fabrication and fiction of wicked men.

[...]Attendees at the council of Nicaea were required to walk through a wall of drawn swords. Constantine owned the swords. Whatever conspiracy Constantine entertained, he had the manifest power to engineer with his army. His prohibition of temple services c.324 CE implied that the ascetic academic greek speaking temple priests all across the empire were out of business. They were also out of homes since the Boss shut the temples down. They fled to desert refuges. They wrote the non canonical new testament literature as seditious satirical polemic against the characters featured in the Constantinian canon. Nag Hammadi c.348 CE via C14.

I await any questions of an historical nature from members of this forum.



Best wishes,


Pete

Whether Constantine could have engineered events in his own time using an invented New Testament is not the crux of what we're discussing, though. The question is whether he could shield the fact that he had done so everyone in the 1700 years that followed?

Thankyou for another valuable question fishandbread,

This question is very important to understand. We can break it down into a few components however, as follows:

PERIOD 1 - 312 to 337
whether he could shield the fact that he had done so from everyone in the 12 years that followed Nicaea.

The answer to this question is provided by his description by Aurelius Victor of Constantine ....


"[Constantine] was a mocker rather than a flatterer.
From this he was called after Trachala in the folktale,
for ten years a most excellent man, [ Ed: the decade 306-315]

for the following second ten a brigand, [ Ed: the decade 316-325]
for the last, on account of his unrestrained prodigality,
a ward irresponsible for his own actions." [ Ed: the period 326-337]

--- Sextus Aurelius Victor

Constantine would have liked everyone to accept the new testament as a rendition of ancient history, but he had this problem with Arius of Alexandria as I see it. Arius was expelled from the council of Nicaea for saying some gnostic deep and meaningful comments about our man Jesus Henry which were not deemed appropriate by Constantine.

The question is whether the Greek academics of the time period (1) accepted it. What was happening in suburbia in the Roman empire? Well, as everyone knows, anybody who was anybody was of course heatedly discussing that deep and meaningful gnostic controversy over the subtle meanings of what Arius meant when he said those dogmatic fixed phrases which were appended by christian ecclesiatical historians to the record of the council of Nicaea, and the holy flaming oath to the boss. (Under duress).


PERIOD 2 - 337 to 360
IMO it was public knowledge that the NT was a fiction, however we have no knowledge of the period other than the assertions of Eusebius and his ecclesiastical continuators. No profane histiorians survive from the epoch of Constantine, and Ammianus history is lost on Constantine (Ammianus starts about 350?). In this period we have the Nag Hammadi codices being written (348 CE = C14)


PERIOD 3 - 360 to 363
Emperor Julian declares the NT is a fiction of wicked men.


PERIOD 4 - 363 to 444 (ENDGAME)

Julian's books are burnt. The library of Alexandria goes up in smoke. The christian emperors complete the destruction ofn the pagan temples. Have you read Vlasis Rassias, Demolish Them! (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/article_060.htm) - Published in Greek, Athens 1994?

The tax exempt bishop and notorious murderer Cyril undertakes a massive ten book refutation of the and - additionally the various [b]heresies of Nestorius. The power was then totally in the hands of the christian imperial regime - politically and militarily. They destroyed the evidence by fire and death.


PERIOD 5 - 445 to 1966 (Librorum Prohiborum is active)

The power of the church was strong until 1966 when the list of banned books which had been active from the time of Eusebius and Constantine was finally discontinued by the Vatican. Have a look at this list around the end of the 5th century in the document known as Decretum Gelasianum (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/Decretum%20Gelasianum.htm) - An Index of Apocrypha c.491 CE .


My thesis has it that the main censor of the fiction of the new testament was the tax exempt bishop Cyril, in his refutation of the work of he Roman emperor Julian "Against the Galilaeans".

IMO it was then common knowledge amidst the greek academics that the NT was fiction, but what could they do? They had no power. So what they did was to take up the pen and write what is now perceived to be the non canonical new testament corpus, a collection of gnostic hellenistic narratives, some of which feature Jesus and the apostles doing very strange things. Again the Nag Hammadi codices are part of this collection. Especially the NHC 6.1 - "The Acts of Peter and the 12 Aps". These I see as satire and parody against the characters Constantine published in the canon. Polemic and seditious with respect to the authodox emperor cult, these works were sought out to be destroyed.



At the time, people could have buried more authentic scriptures or histories, stored in them in other places untouched by the hand of the government, or transmitted them to foreign lands where Rome had limited influence and they could have been preserved.

I don't really see any evidence that any of that happened.


See Nag Hammadi and the non canonical acts and gospels.



What I see is that Christianity had a few critics and skeptics in that area. All religions have critics and skeptics in all times and places, for the most part. Folks criticized the old Roman pagan religion that preceded Christianity. Folks criticized formally secular governments like old Soviet Union for it's atheism. There are always critics and skeptics of all forms of belief somewhere in any given area.

Arius was a critic - he was eventually poisoned. Please take the time to read a very nasty letter from the Boss the Arius (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/constantine_to_ARIUS.htm).

A political analysis of a letter composed about 333 CE by Constantine, addressed to Arius and the Arians. Constantine would very much like to publically execute Arius, but he does not know exactly where Arius is - perhaps Syria. Arius is revealed as someone who had previously been conspicuous by his silence and unobtrusive character. He is described in the manner of an ascetic priest. Constantine is stung by the anti-christian polemic in the writings of Arius; Arius is the focus of belief in unbelief of Constantine's new political and religious initiatives. Constantine reveals that Arius "reproaches, grieves, wounds and pains the Church". A very nasty letter by a very nasty despot. Eventually Constantine manages to poison Arius, but before that time when Arius was no longer, he had composed a number of texts against the Pontifex Maximus' preferred and sponsored cult. These heretical writings were sought out by the authodox.

Best wishes,



Pete

[mountainman]

Dear All,

Was Jesus created out of DNA or was Jesus created out of INK.
And if INK, then in which century?

Best wishes,

Pete.

PS: My vote is INK (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/)
and the century (substantitated by the C14) is the fourth.

[Rathpig]

Was Jesus created out of DNA or was Jesus created out of INK.
And if INK, then in which century?


The problem with this question and the assumption that underlies it would be the admission of no other position.

Perhaps Jesus was a creature of DNA created out of myth. This removes both the metaphysical aspect of the question and the known falsity of the 4th century creation hypothesis. A first century historical Jesus, as either an individual or composite, makes perfect common sense. It is easy to point to known historical figures in the past 200 years who have become more myth than reality. To think that 400 years in a preliterate didn't create the basis for Constantine is to deny much of the known dynamics of human socio-psychological interaction.

[mountainman]

Was Jesus created out of DNA or was Jesus created out of INK.
And if INK, then in which century?


The problem with this question and the assumption that underlies it would be the admission of no other position.

Perhaps Jesus was a creature of DNA created out of myth. This removes both the metaphysical aspect of the question and the known falsity of the 4th century creation hypothesis. A first century historical Jesus, as either an individual or composite, makes perfect common sense. It is easy to point to known historical figures in the past 200 years who have become more myth than reality. To think that 400 years in a preliterate didn't create the basis for Constantine is to deny much of the known dynamics of human socio-psychological interaction.

Dear Rathpig,

The 123 literary letters of 'Alciphron' were written in the 2nd century AD as an example of historical fiction and purport to be from the 4th century BC. This only serves to indicate that the notion that Eusebius wrote historical fiction set backwards a few hundred years in the past cannot be considered novel or unprecedented. We have Philostratus commissioned to write an account of the Life of Apollonius of Tyana about 216 CE -- perhaps a hundred years after his lifetime.

Quite independently, the evidence available to and admissable to the field of ancient history concerning the very existence of christians prior to the rise of Constantine is embarrassingly silent. Do we have here a case of Hans Eusebius Anderson being sponsored by Constantine to fabricate a story of some form of transcendental Galilaeans in the fourth century? Emperor Julian c.362 CE seemed to be convinced that Jesus and Constantine together should be the subject of satire. What does this tell us?


Best wishes,



Pete

[Rathpig]

Gore Vidal wrote a novel about Aaron Burr. Does this call into question the existence of Burr? No serious historian believes the Bible is much more than Jewish fiction anyway.

The evidence of Christianity exists prior to the fourth century CE. It is well known that Constantine codified numerous cults into a central religion. But neither of these points have any meaning to my point. Jesus could have existed as either a specific individual or a composite of various "prophet-messiahs" and it doesn't mean anything to either the validity of Christianity or the fact that Constantine codified Christianity.

If you are making the claim that no form of Christ-cult existed prior to the codification in the fourth century then you had better brush up on your scholarship both in research and technique. Tom "Rook Hawkins" has been trying to prove this thesis and posing as a scholar for the past few years. Every time he finds himself in a meaningful debate, he runs away. And his scholarship is actually better than yours. You have steep burden which you haven't met. You have conjecture and assumed correlation. This isn't a case.



But the funny thing about the thesis is that even if you can prove the meaningful aspects of "Christianity" as we know it in the modern sense date to only the fourth century CE, you still have not disproven the existence of earlier messiah cults. The best you can say is that modern Christians have some details amiss. That means absolutely nothing to actual historical scholarship.

To me it looks like you are trying hard to prove something to yourself. Take a Historical Methodology and Research class. It will help you more than inane internet chatter.

[mountainman]

No serious historian believes the Bible is much more than Jewish fiction anyway.

Dear Rathpig,

The bible is a composite book consistent of two parts commonly known as the new and the old. The old part was available in the greek c.250 BCE and is better termed the Hebrew Bible. The Fabulous New Testament was written in Greek for a Greek speaking audience and is Roman literature.

The question of course to be asked is who was the first Roman known to have bound together (religion) the greek of the LXX and the Greek of the Fabulous New Testement, and when did this occur. Do you happen to know the answer to this question?


The evidence of Christianity exists prior to the fourth century CE.

Seeing that this is a history forum I am calling you out to post just one such citation for public discussion. Over to you Rathpig, or anyone else for that matter. The year is 2008 and we are able to point at citations with links and pictures. Please provide one citation to this evidence by which you assert christianity predated Constantine. Thankyou.

Best wishes


Pete

[Rathpig]

post just one such citation for public discussion.

BBC special on Christian persecution in the Roman Empire:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/christianityromanempire_article_01.shtml

Dr Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe at Cambridge
http://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/academic_staff/further_details/lunn-rockliffe.html


Obviously a secondary source, but I would think a Fellow and Director of Studies at Cambridge to be a rather solid secondary source. As I said previously, the thesis that somehow Constantine "invented" Christianity and forged a past for the religion is ludicrous with a caveat. Yes, Constantine did create modern codified Christianity, but he didn't "invent" the worship of a Christ-figure. Was this an individual Jesus or a composite messiah-prophet? That is a question which may never be answered, but the all-or-nothing thesis which you are presenting is a non-starter.

[mountainman]

post just one such citation for public discussion.

BBC special on Christian persecution in the Roman Empire:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/christianityromanempire_article_01.shtml


What do we find here?


Christians were first, and horribly, targeted for persecution as a group by the emperor Nero in 64 AD. A colossal fire broke out at Rome, and destroyed much of the city. Rumours abounded that Nero himself was responsible. He certainly took advantage of the resulting devastation of the city, building a lavish private palace on part of the site of the fire.

Perhaps to divert attention from the rumours, Nero ordered that Christians should be rounded up and killed. Some were torn apart by dogs, others burnt alive as human torches.

Dear Rathpig,

It is quite obvious that the BBC New Reporter is simply repeating folklore which is by no means regarded as historical in the field of ancient history for almost a century, such as with the work of Drews.

In Witnesses to the Historicity of Jesus (http://www.mountainman.com.au/essenes/Witnesses_to_the_historicity_of%20Jesus_AUTHUR_DRE WS_1912.htm) Arthur Drews (1912) the author dismisses the above. Read the section entitled The ROMAN WITNESSES. You will have to excuse the lack of formatting (this from gettengurg)

The belief that the Neronian persecution of the Chris-
tians belongs to the realm of fable is further confirmed by
the fact that the other witnesses that are quoted for it are
just as vague and indecisive. What propagandist material
would not the details of this first persecution of their faith
have furnished to the early Christians ! Yet what trace
of it do we find in them ? Let us take the evidence of
Melito of Sardis. In his writing to the Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, in which he endeavours to explain to the
Emperor how beneficial Christianity had been to Roman
power, we read : " The only emperors who, seduced by
evil-minded men, sought to bring our religion into evil
repute, were Nero and Domitian, and from their time the
mendacious calumny of the Christians has continued,
according to the habit of people to believe imputations
without proof." In these words, which, moreover, are
only known to us from Eusebius, 1 there is no question of
a general persecution of the Christians under Nero ; it is
merely stated that Nero tried to bring the Christians into
bad repute. Dionysius of Corinth (about 170) also, and
the presbyter Caius, who lived in the time of the Roman
bishop Zephyrinus (about 200), affirm only, according to
the same Eusebius, 2 that Peter and Paul died the death
of martyrs " about the same time " at Rome, 3 which does

sources, the persecution goes far beyond Rome, as, according to Hegesippus,
the grandsons of Judas, being relatives of Christ, were brought from
Palestine to Rome and condemned, and, according to Eusebius and,
possibly, Irenseus, the apostle John was then banished to Patmos. In this
case it cannot be said that Rome alone was affected by the persecution,
and so there is no analogy with the description given in the letter " (Steck,
work quoted, p. 297). It seems, then, that it was the imagination of the
apologists and fathers of the Church, who wanted to make the sufferings
of Christianity begin as early as possible, that deduced from the letter this
persecution of the Christians as such. (Br. Bauer, work quoted, p. 238 ;
also see Joel, work quoted, II, 45.)

1 Ecclesiastical History, VI, 33. 2 Ibid. II, 28.

8 In this connection it may be observed that all these references
in Eusebius must be regarded with the greatest suspicion. This man,
whom Jakob Burckhardt has called " the first thoroughly dishonest
historian of antiquity," acts so deliberately in the interest of the power of
the Church and the creation and strengthening of tradition that far too
much notice is taken of his historical statements. "After the many
falsifications, suppressions, and fictions which have been proved in his



33

not necessarily mean on the same day or the same
occasion, or that the " trophies of their victory " are to
be seen on the Vatican and the road to Ostia. Of the
Neronian persecution they tell us nothing. In Tertullian's
Apologeticum 1 we read that Nero, cruel to all, was the
first to draw the imperial sword against the Christian sect
which then flourished at Borne. He thinks it an honour
to himself and his co-religionists to have been condemned
by such a prince, since everyone who knows him will see
that nothing was condemned by Nero that was not
especially good. But there is nothing in his words to
show that he was thinking of anything besides the death
of the apostles Peter and Paul. Indeed, he says expressly
that the apostles, scattered over the world at the master's
command, after many sufferings at length shed their
blood at Home through the cruelty of Nero, and he urges
the pagans to read the proofs of this in their own
"Commentaries"; which is much the same as when
Tertullian refers to the Roman archives those who doubt
the gospel narrative of the execution of Jesus. 2 We read
much the same in the same writer's Scorp., ch. xv:
" Nero was the first to stain the early faith with blood.
Then was Peter (according to the word of Christ) girded
by another, as he was fixed to the cross. Then did Paul
obtain the Roman right of citizenship in a higher sense,
as he was born again there by his noble martyrdom." !

There remains only the witness of Eusebius and of
Revelation. Eusebius, however, merely re