^ Where did jeebus' get his beard from?
The case of the missing persecutions.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"Popular understanding of history is no less unsophisticated. For example, its idea of the persecutions under the Roman empire. No distinction is made between the emperors who ordered or those who allowed proceedings against Christians; there is but one epithet for them, they are all impiissimus [(provisional) "wicked, abandoned men" (A Latin Dict., Oxford, 1962 (1879))], whether it be Nero, Decius or Diocletian, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius or Alexander Severus. All are equally inspired by the same insane hatred of Christianity, none has any concern but to destroy it. Often it is the emperor in person who presides at the trial of Christians, involving long journeys for himself WHICH HISTORY DOES NOT RECORDâand for good reason.
It was obvious that the head of state could not be everywhere at once, but that is no obstacle to his rage; he is worthily represented by emissaries, who scour the whole empire. Christians are outlawed everywhere, searched out and dragged before ferocious judges, who contrive to invent frightful tortures, THAT IN FACT WERE NEVER INFLICTED ON EVEN THE WORST CRIMINALS. The intervention from on high which prevents these ingenious torments from harming the martyrs throws their persecutors' cruelty into higher relief, and at the same time provides an adequate and perceptible explanation of the numerous conversions which atrocious cruelty could do nothing to stop.16
That is a miniature sketch of the persecutions as seen in popular legend. Variations in legislation and in enforcement of the laws, the very marked individuality of the great enemies of Christianity, the local character of some outbreaks in which Christians suffered, such things do not touch the mind of the people at all; THEY WOULD MUCH RATHER HAVE A SIMPLE PICTURE THAT IS BRIGHTLY COLOURED AND STRONGLY DRAWN THAN A PRODUCT OF ALL THESE COMPLICATED FACTORS. " [17-18]. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Le chretien dit "Marcus Aurelius persecuted me!" Mais bien sur, nous vous croyons. Really.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->When FORGERY became ECCLESIASTICAL, it touched the infinite. The greatness of the interests at stake, the rivalries of doctrines and churches, produced for an insatiable demand A BOUNDLESS SUPPLY OF FALSE DOCUMENTS. False epistles and false martyrdoms entered so widely into the history of the Christian Church as to HAVE RENDERED THAT [CHURCH] HISTORY MAINLY HYPOTHETICAL.
Even into the earliest and most honest attempt at such a history, that of Eusebius in the fourth century, much that is fabulous has found its way. The correspondence between Christ and Agbar, King of Edessa, has long been relegated to the realm of fiction, though accepted as genuine by Eusebius; and it may be suspected that as little credit is due to such an episode as that of the Martyrs of Lyons [see 1798-1800] which he [Eusebius] relates in his fifth book as illustrative of a world-wide persecution under Marcus Aurelius in the year 177. For no writer, pagan or Christian, before him makes the least allusion to such an event, and Eusebius lived about a century and a half after its alleged occurrence. It is incredible that contemporaries like Tertullian (about 150-240), Clement of Alexandria (150-220), Athenagoras, Origen (185-234), or other intermediate writers like Cyprian or Lactantius, all six of whom wrote specifically on the subject of persecutions, should have conspired to make not the smallest allusion to any persecution of the sort, had such a persecution been an historical reality.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Eusebios wrote first that the martyrdom took place i, 167 under Antonin the Pius dead in 161. He later changed to 177, under Marcus Aurelius. His history, written 125 years after the supposed event and in Bithynia, 2000 km East of Lyon, as the crow flies or 60 days of sea travel, is obviously forged.
COMPLETE RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE RULED IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. IN ITS 4 MILLION SQUARE KILOMETER, 100 MILLION PEOPLE REVERED 1200 GODS. In Rome and Italy, people revered Egyptian deities (Isis, Serapis) the Anatolian Cybele
(p. ) In the provinces some Roman soldiers and even tribunes revered the Iranian Mithra or local gods.
Only municipal dignitaries had, at fixed feasts, to honor the official Olympian gods and the deified emperor, excluding those murdered for glaring crimes and vices as Caligula or dethroned as Nero.
CHRISTIANISM, IF AT ALL NOTICED, WAS CONSIDERED AS A VARIANT OF JUDAISM [see 1504-1518], WHICH WAS NOT ONLY A RELIGIO LICITA [(provisional) permitted religion] BUT IT ENJOYED SPECIAL CIVIC PRIVILEGES as the religion Jews declared in c. 170 "allied of the Roman People" in the war against Antiochos IV Epiphanes. CHRISTIANISM had the added advantage that it did not practice circumcision, equaled by Roman law to castration, rated as a crime, when practiced upon non-Jewish males. The difference between CHRISTIANISM and Judaism were in Pagan eyes minimal, "as a fight about the shadow of an ass" (contra Cels. III:1)
The massive silence described on pages 69 to 73 of Christian writers down to 1470 on the martyrs of Nero in 64 aD includes the Lyon martyrs of 177 aD;
Worse: in his Apologeticum, Tertullian in North Africa in c. 192, 15 years after the Lyon executions of 177, praises Marc Aurel [Marcus Aurelius], as protector of Christians, this very wise Emperor.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Le chretien dit "But at least Nero persecuted me!"
Nero took it out on the poor Stoics and Cynics. The christians merely inserted themselves into the list of real victims, replacing the originals (philosophers). Apparently at an attempt to push their presence in Rome to an earlier time/hike up their numbers in Rome at that time (see excerpts in next post).
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"Nero was now setting out for Greece (A.D. 66), and just before he departed he published an edict expelling the philosophers (stoics) from Rome. Of all the undertakings of Nero, the one he set himself most determinedly about, was to sweep from the face of the earth the two sects, <b>stoics and cynics.</b>1 [see footnote, below]" [164-165].
[footnote] "<b>1This decree ["edict"], according to Olearius [see 1192], was made before the month of November, A.D. 66, and has been used by Christian evidence-mongers, says Robert Taylor [probably, Robert Bruce Taylor D.D. 1869 - ], D.D., as a decree against the Christians; Christian being interpolated where the word philosopher occurred, </b>and indeed, on pages 21, 22, and 23 of Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, Ancient and Modern (the Blackie and Son edition of 1839), one may discover on inspection what slight perversion of the text would be affected were the word Christian stricken out and the word philosopher inserted, rendering it much more in conformity with facts as we have them handed down to us in any reliable form. <b>CHRISTIANITY, no matter how, nevertheless did become the great and implacable foe of paganism; a foe which DISDAINED ALL COMPROMISE, AND REJECTED ALL ALLIANCE. IT CLAIMED THE RIGHT OF INVASION; OUTSIDE OF ITS PALE THERE WAS NO SECURITY IN THIS LIFE, AND NO SALVATION IN THE NEXT. ALL WERE INVITED TO ITS COMMUNIONS, AND THOSE WHO REJECTED THE INVITATION WERE BROUGHT IN BY FORCE.</b> Had Marcus Aurelius [Emperor 161 - 180 (121 - 180)] resorted to the same villainies to establish stoicism that Constantine [Emperor 306 (312) - 337 (280? - 337)] and Eusebius [c. 260 - c. 339)] did in the establishment of Christianity, the name even of Christianity would not have reached our day." [165].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Still the same old christianism I see.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->'THE BELIEF THAT THE NERONIAN PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS 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!<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"NOT CONTENT WITH REPRESENTING [MARCUS] AURELIUS AS A PERSECUTOR OF THE CHRISTIANS, THE MONKS HAVE BORROWED FROM HIM, AS FROM EPICTETUS, IN THE COMPOSITION OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.1" [457]. [See: Addition 34, 1496-1644].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->2Centuries later, when Pope Gregory the Great, on reading how Trajan halted his army to do justice to a poor widow, was moved to pray that this one heathen [Trajan] might be delivered from the hell which held all of the rest." [50]. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Gregory the Grape of Wrath needn't have bothered about non-existent hell. Trajan is in Elysium.
The case of the missing persecutions.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"Popular understanding of history is no less unsophisticated. For example, its idea of the persecutions under the Roman empire. No distinction is made between the emperors who ordered or those who allowed proceedings against Christians; there is but one epithet for them, they are all impiissimus [(provisional) "wicked, abandoned men" (A Latin Dict., Oxford, 1962 (1879))], whether it be Nero, Decius or Diocletian, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius or Alexander Severus. All are equally inspired by the same insane hatred of Christianity, none has any concern but to destroy it. Often it is the emperor in person who presides at the trial of Christians, involving long journeys for himself WHICH HISTORY DOES NOT RECORDâand for good reason.
It was obvious that the head of state could not be everywhere at once, but that is no obstacle to his rage; he is worthily represented by emissaries, who scour the whole empire. Christians are outlawed everywhere, searched out and dragged before ferocious judges, who contrive to invent frightful tortures, THAT IN FACT WERE NEVER INFLICTED ON EVEN THE WORST CRIMINALS. The intervention from on high which prevents these ingenious torments from harming the martyrs throws their persecutors' cruelty into higher relief, and at the same time provides an adequate and perceptible explanation of the numerous conversions which atrocious cruelty could do nothing to stop.16
That is a miniature sketch of the persecutions as seen in popular legend. Variations in legislation and in enforcement of the laws, the very marked individuality of the great enemies of Christianity, the local character of some outbreaks in which Christians suffered, such things do not touch the mind of the people at all; THEY WOULD MUCH RATHER HAVE A SIMPLE PICTURE THAT IS BRIGHTLY COLOURED AND STRONGLY DRAWN THAN A PRODUCT OF ALL THESE COMPLICATED FACTORS. " [17-18]. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Le chretien dit "Marcus Aurelius persecuted me!" Mais bien sur, nous vous croyons. Really.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->When FORGERY became ECCLESIASTICAL, it touched the infinite. The greatness of the interests at stake, the rivalries of doctrines and churches, produced for an insatiable demand A BOUNDLESS SUPPLY OF FALSE DOCUMENTS. False epistles and false martyrdoms entered so widely into the history of the Christian Church as to HAVE RENDERED THAT [CHURCH] HISTORY MAINLY HYPOTHETICAL.
Even into the earliest and most honest attempt at such a history, that of Eusebius in the fourth century, much that is fabulous has found its way. The correspondence between Christ and Agbar, King of Edessa, has long been relegated to the realm of fiction, though accepted as genuine by Eusebius; and it may be suspected that as little credit is due to such an episode as that of the Martyrs of Lyons [see 1798-1800] which he [Eusebius] relates in his fifth book as illustrative of a world-wide persecution under Marcus Aurelius in the year 177. For no writer, pagan or Christian, before him makes the least allusion to such an event, and Eusebius lived about a century and a half after its alleged occurrence. It is incredible that contemporaries like Tertullian (about 150-240), Clement of Alexandria (150-220), Athenagoras, Origen (185-234), or other intermediate writers like Cyprian or Lactantius, all six of whom wrote specifically on the subject of persecutions, should have conspired to make not the smallest allusion to any persecution of the sort, had such a persecution been an historical reality.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Eusebios wrote first that the martyrdom took place i, 167 under Antonin the Pius dead in 161. He later changed to 177, under Marcus Aurelius. His history, written 125 years after the supposed event and in Bithynia, 2000 km East of Lyon, as the crow flies or 60 days of sea travel, is obviously forged.
COMPLETE RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE RULED IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. IN ITS 4 MILLION SQUARE KILOMETER, 100 MILLION PEOPLE REVERED 1200 GODS. In Rome and Italy, people revered Egyptian deities (Isis, Serapis) the Anatolian Cybele
(p. ) In the provinces some Roman soldiers and even tribunes revered the Iranian Mithra or local gods.
Only municipal dignitaries had, at fixed feasts, to honor the official Olympian gods and the deified emperor, excluding those murdered for glaring crimes and vices as Caligula or dethroned as Nero.
CHRISTIANISM, IF AT ALL NOTICED, WAS CONSIDERED AS A VARIANT OF JUDAISM [see 1504-1518], WHICH WAS NOT ONLY A RELIGIO LICITA [(provisional) permitted religion] BUT IT ENJOYED SPECIAL CIVIC PRIVILEGES as the religion Jews declared in c. 170 "allied of the Roman People" in the war against Antiochos IV Epiphanes. CHRISTIANISM had the added advantage that it did not practice circumcision, equaled by Roman law to castration, rated as a crime, when practiced upon non-Jewish males. The difference between CHRISTIANISM and Judaism were in Pagan eyes minimal, "as a fight about the shadow of an ass" (contra Cels. III:1)
The massive silence described on pages 69 to 73 of Christian writers down to 1470 on the martyrs of Nero in 64 aD includes the Lyon martyrs of 177 aD;
Worse: in his Apologeticum, Tertullian in North Africa in c. 192, 15 years after the Lyon executions of 177, praises Marc Aurel [Marcus Aurelius], as protector of Christians, this very wise Emperor.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Le chretien dit "But at least Nero persecuted me!"
Nero took it out on the poor Stoics and Cynics. The christians merely inserted themselves into the list of real victims, replacing the originals (philosophers). Apparently at an attempt to push their presence in Rome to an earlier time/hike up their numbers in Rome at that time (see excerpts in next post).
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"Nero was now setting out for Greece (A.D. 66), and just before he departed he published an edict expelling the philosophers (stoics) from Rome. Of all the undertakings of Nero, the one he set himself most determinedly about, was to sweep from the face of the earth the two sects, <b>stoics and cynics.</b>1 [see footnote, below]" [164-165].
[footnote] "<b>1This decree ["edict"], according to Olearius [see 1192], was made before the month of November, A.D. 66, and has been used by Christian evidence-mongers, says Robert Taylor [probably, Robert Bruce Taylor D.D. 1869 - ], D.D., as a decree against the Christians; Christian being interpolated where the word philosopher occurred, </b>and indeed, on pages 21, 22, and 23 of Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, Ancient and Modern (the Blackie and Son edition of 1839), one may discover on inspection what slight perversion of the text would be affected were the word Christian stricken out and the word philosopher inserted, rendering it much more in conformity with facts as we have them handed down to us in any reliable form. <b>CHRISTIANITY, no matter how, nevertheless did become the great and implacable foe of paganism; a foe which DISDAINED ALL COMPROMISE, AND REJECTED ALL ALLIANCE. IT CLAIMED THE RIGHT OF INVASION; OUTSIDE OF ITS PALE THERE WAS NO SECURITY IN THIS LIFE, AND NO SALVATION IN THE NEXT. ALL WERE INVITED TO ITS COMMUNIONS, AND THOSE WHO REJECTED THE INVITATION WERE BROUGHT IN BY FORCE.</b> Had Marcus Aurelius [Emperor 161 - 180 (121 - 180)] resorted to the same villainies to establish stoicism that Constantine [Emperor 306 (312) - 337 (280? - 337)] and Eusebius [c. 260 - c. 339)] did in the establishment of Christianity, the name even of Christianity would not have reached our day." [165].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Still the same old christianism I see.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->'THE BELIEF THAT THE NERONIAN PERSECUTION OF THE CHRISTIANS 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!<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->"NOT CONTENT WITH REPRESENTING [MARCUS] AURELIUS AS A PERSECUTOR OF THE CHRISTIANS, THE MONKS HAVE BORROWED FROM HIM, AS FROM EPICTETUS, IN THE COMPOSITION OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.1" [457]. [See: Addition 34, 1496-1644].<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->2Centuries later, when Pope Gregory the Great, on reading how Trajan halted his army to do justice to a poor widow, was moved to pray that this one heathen [Trajan] might be delivered from the hell which held all of the rest." [50]. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Gregory the Grape of Wrath needn't have bothered about non-existent hell. Trajan is in Elysium.