(March 12, 2013 at 2:35 am)EGross Wrote: So Eusebius believed and reported a hand written letter from Jesus, which he lost or his dog ate it, had the original copy of Matthew in the "language of the Jews", and lost that, and this guy has doubts that Second Clement was authentic? I dunno. There had to be a lot of proof, like a big sign "I AM A FAKE" stuck to the front of it for this guy to have any doubts!

It wasn't just Eusebius who doubted Second Clement according to the History. It's not only a case of what information he presented but how he phrased things in books which were available for others to read around 323/324 AD.

I found something interesting when taking the approach that Kenneth Humphries wants people to do their own investigations. The Shadowy Clement

Quote:His epistle is usually dated to 95 AD but the earliest extant copy (in the Codex Alexandrinus) dates from the 5th century and the earliest reference to 1 Clement is made in the 4th century history of Eusebius, a notorious fabricator (Hist. Eccl. 3,16,38; 4,22).

I decided to see what Eusebius had to say about Clement in Hist. Eccl.3. Clement And The Epistle

Quote:Clement also, who was appointed third bishop of the church at Rome, was, as Paul testifies, his co-laborer and fellow-soldier.

There is extant an epistle of this Clement which is acknowledged to be genuine and is of considerable length and of remarkable merit. He wrote it in the name of the church of Rome to the church of Corinth, when a sedition had arisen in the latter church. We know that this epistle also has been publicly used in a great many churches both in former times and in our own. And of the fact that a sedition did take place in the church of Corinth at the time referred to Hegesippus is a trustworthy witness

1: Was First Clement actually forged in the 5th century because that's the date of the earliest known copy? If so, a 4th century historian couldn't have mentioned it. Did somebody forge the Eusebius passage as well or is it more likely that we can't be sure what was in the very first copy of the letter?

2: If the passage is genuine, Eusebius could have got away with saying "There is a newly discovered epistle from Clement, the third bishop of Rome, which is now being read out in a great many churches." It would be difficult for him to get away with what he did say, though, when his book was out. Readers - "What do you mean by this letter was read out in former times? Nobody had heard of it until a few years ago." Eusebius -"Oh, well I just happened to find a letter from Dionysis, the bishop of Corinth who lived at the end of the second century, and he said it was read out in his time." Maybe it would work if that was the only bit of mystery but it wasn't.

3: Hegesippus (c. 110 — c. April 7, 180 AD) was one of those chroniclers whose works didn't survive but Eusebius is writing as if people knew what Hegesippus had said and were using this reference to confirm the authenticity of First Clement. He mentions Hegesippus again in History Book 4

Quote:1. Hegesippus in the five books of Memoirs which have come down to us has left a most complete record of his own views.

Readers -"What five books of Memoirs are you talking about?" Eusebius- "I found them in a little used section of the Caesarea Library." Readers - "Can we see them? Eusebius - "Um ... they went missing after I'd looked through them."

He also quotes from a lost (to us) work of Tertullian (c. 160 – c. 225 AD). Readers -" We've never heard of that Tertullian passage." Eusebius would then need another excuse for how he managed to quote this bit from a Tertullian text which nobody had heard of.

4: If Clement of Rome didn't exist, Eusebius would have needed to forge some kind of record to say he did. He would then have to add the bit about Paul knowing Clement to the Philippians epistle.

5: In Eusebius's Book Two he talks about Paul and Peter being martyred but I haven't tracked down where this is supposed to be recorded yet.

Quote:5. Thus publicly announcing himself as the first among God's chief enemies, he was led on to the slaughter of the apostles. It is, therefore, recorded that Paul was beheaded in Rome itself, and that Peter likewise was crucified under Nero. This account of Peter and Paul is substantiated by the fact that their names are preserved in the cemeteries of that place even to the present day.

He's now all set to forge First Clement but forgets to mention that Paul was beheaded and Peter was crucified. (There's more than one translation of First Clement on Early Christian Writings - Lightfoot's and Hoole's translations suggest that martyrdom could have been referred to while Roberts-Donaldson's actually uses the word martyrdom.)

There's a lot more that Eusebius said which would have needed him to fake extra texts as well and the question is why would he go to all that trouble. Was he trying to alter Marcion's forged Pauline letters so they were 'orthodox theology'? He was a bit late for that because Tertullian's Book 5 against Marcion reveals that the Roman faction had already done it. Did Eusebius forge Tertullian's books against Marcion too? "I found these books in the Caesarea Library but they didn't go missing like the Hegesippus chronicles."

I finally decided that Eusebius forging everything had reached the realms of the absurd. Something else must have been going on and it had started long before Eusebius's time.

@Confused Ape

If you think that's weird about St. Peter, it has often been told that Simon Peter gave up on Christianity, returned to his jewish roots, and is the authoer of nishmat col chai (it is incumbant on the soul of every living thing [to bless their lord]) that is said in every Synagogue.

Now, I had heard this in more than one Yeshivah, but then I finally tacked down a more extended source for this.

So was he beheaded, or did he just walk away?

(March 12, 2013 at 8:08 am)EGross Wrote: Now, I had heard this in more than one Yeshivah, but then I finally tacked down a more extended source for this.

So was he beheaded, or did he just walk away?

It could have been both if the legend of Saint Winifred is anything to go by.

Quote:Her suitor, Caradog, was enraged when she decided to become a nun, and decapitated her. In one version of the tale, her head rolled downhill, and, where it stopped, a healing spring appeared. Winifred's head was subsequently rejoined to her body due to the efforts of her maternal uncle, Saint Beuno, and she was restored to life.

I don't know who could have stuck Peter's head back on, though, because he wasn't friends with Simon Magus in the Pseudo-Clementine novel.

Seriously, though, it's an interesting story. Maybe the original idea that Peter had returned to his Jewish roots is something to do with ideas in the Pseudo-Clemintine novel about Peter and Simon Magus. There are theories which say that Peter represents the original Jewish sect about Messiah Jesus while Simon Magus represents Pauline Christianity. (It gets even more complicated when other theories see elements of Gnosticism retained in the epistles forged by Marcion even after the 'orthodox faction' had been adapting them.)

Whatever it's all about, it seems that some factions were determined to promote the idea that Peter had something to do with Judaism and Christianity was a false religion.

Back to Eusebius. The quote from the (lost to us) Tertullian work is -

Quote:

Quote:4. The Roman Tertullian is likewise a witness of this. He writes as follows: "Examine your records. There you will find that Nero was the first that persecuted this doctrine, particularly then when after subduing all the east, he exercised his cruelty against all at Rome. We glory in having such a man the leader in our punishment. For whoever knows him can understand that nothing was condemned by Nero unless it was something of great excellence."

Eusebius was one of the chroniclers promoting the idea that Christians had been horribly persecuted since the beginning. One of his own works is the Martyrs Of Palestine where he reveals an unhealthy obsession with describing torture.

He could have been working with a team who were out to forge records, including the details that Paul was beheaded and Peter crucified. After an horrendous amount of forging, however, the result was a fake letter from a fake pope making somewhat vague suggestions that Peter, Paul and an unspecified number of women had been martyred. Eusebius couldn't have provided gory details about Peter and Paul without giving the game away but he's the kind of man who would have noticed that the word's 'beheaded' and 'crucified' had been left out.

Why go to all the trouble of forging letters from Clement and Dionysus etc. when all you had to do was 'find' a letter written by somebody who had supposedly lived through Nero's persecution? For example, a poor woman somewhere outside Italy had written to a cousin who was also outside Italy. She said she had barely escaped with her life while her husband and brother (or whatever) had been captured and tortured to death. The 'finder' could have said that the letter had been 'discovered' amongst some old family records because the cousin was his ancestress. Something like this wouldn't require anyone in the past to remember it and mention it in a letter or book.

Let's say that you are one of the faithful. You are a true believer. You finally are recognized and get a promotion to work with the important people.

You are now told to forge stuff to make people believe.

One would think that somebody would have gone running back to their community, stood on a soap box and cried "Hey, everyone. They're just screwing with us!". But we don't seem to find any tattlers. Perhaps they only promoted the wicked among them who were in it for the power. Dunno.

(March 12, 2013 at 9:58 am)EGross Wrote: Let's say that you are one of the faithful. You are a true believer. You finally are recognized and get a promotion to work with the important people.

You are now told to forge stuff to make people believe.

One would think that somebody would have gone running back to their community, stood on a soap box and cried "Hey, everyone. They're just screwing with us!". But we don't seem to find any tattlers. Perhaps they only promoted the wicked among them who were in it for the power. Dunno.

It would also mean that only the important people in Eusebius's faction were allowed to read his Church History. There's still the problem of motive, though. Why go to so much trouble for so little gain? The faction would have been better off forging the Tacitus passage about Nero's spectacle after making sure they had the only copy of Annals Book XV.

If Humphreys really is wanting his visitors to look into things his motive regarding phantom Clement and Eusebius could be to ask us - "Eusebius was a notorious fabricator but does that automatically mean he fabricated everything he wrote about in his books?"

Two points you both need to consider are:

1- At a time when barely 10% of the population could read at all there was probably 1% that could read/comprehend advanced philosophical/historical/theological texts at all. The audience for what they were writing was limited. The vast bulk of the people were told what to do - and what to believe - orally.

2- On the morning of Oct. 27, 312 xtianity was a suspect doctrine recently the victim of Diocletian's persecution. By that afternoon they had backed the winning horse at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and were duly rewarded for their support by Constantine. All of this crap about Constantine seeing signs in the sky and having his troops write xtian bullshit slogans on their shields came from two xtian writers, Lactantius and the ubiquitous Eusebius.

The paperwork explosion of xtianity begins after 312. Whether or not Eusebius actually forged documents ( why bother?) or merely took oral traditions, edited them to suit his current need, and wrote down what he wished, is unknown and will probably never be known. But the idea that the earliest church was based on written documents founders on point #1. Few people could read, fewer still could write, and even fewer could read and write Greek AND Latin.

How much better for the world had Maxentius won the battle and gone on to exterminate those xtian fucks!

(March 12, 2013 at 12:03 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Two points you both need to consider are:

1- At a time when barely 10% of the population could read at all there was probably 1% that could read/comprehend advanced philosophical/historical/theological texts at all. The audience for what they were writing was limited. The vast bulk of the people were told what to do - and what to believe - orally.

We are considering the fact that there was a specialised audience for the books and talking about the people who could read. 1% of everyone in the area covered by the Roman Empire was still a lot of people and there were a number of competing factions. If Faction A was trying to fool everyone else it's members would have to operate on the assumption that the other factions had men with the same level of expertise as themselves.

(March 12, 2013 at 12:03 pm)Minimalist Wrote: 2- On the morning of Oct. 27, 312 xtianity was a suspect doctrine recently the victim of Diocletian's persecution. By that afternoon they had backed the winning horse at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge and were duly rewarded for their support by Constantine.All of this crap about Constantine seeing signs in the sky and having his troops write xtian bullshit slogans on their shields came from two xtian writers, Lactantius and the ubiquitous Eusebius.

Which is just the kind of thing that an emperor sympathetic to Christianity would want to hear. Everyone loved stories about signs and wonders etc so he wouldn't have been very pleased if accounts of the battle hadn't assigned any to him.

(March 12, 2013 at 12:03 pm)Minimalist Wrote: The paperwork explosion of xtianity begins after 312.

Does that mean more people were able to read and write advanced stuff then or the 1% were extra busy?

(March 12, 2013 at 12:03 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Whether or not Eusebius actually forged documents ( why bother?) or merely took oral traditions, edited them to suit his current need, and wrote down what he wished, is unknown and will probably never be known.

Forging a few documents would be useful for fooling some of the 1% who could read if his faction was going to fool others. There's still the question of why Eusebius's faction should invent a bishop etc.,though, just to produce First Clement which doesn't say that Paul was beheaded and Peter crucified when Eusebius recorded this as being known in his time. What would be the point?

Somebody wrote First Clement at some time but it would be for a reason which had a point to it.

(March 12, 2013 at 12:03 pm)Minimalist Wrote: How much better for the world had Maxentius won the battle and gone on to exterminate those xtian fucks!

What became the Christian world would have remained pagan but the pagan Romans weren't exactly gentle hippie types. It could also have led to modern atheists being unable to believe in all the pagan deities and religions which the majority of the population still believe in.

The claim that 1 percent of the Romans could read is not a supportable number. The number is likely to be at least 5 percent and may be closer to 10 percent of the Roman population.

This is supported by at least two things

1 - In the Roman Empire - religion was not the only source of writings - there were literary works, philosophy, and other casual writings mentioned

2 - The Roman Empire had a large network of Libraries - for the public to use. No reason to have them if no one could read.

Reading did fall off during the dark ages again in the world - down to below 5% of the population - but it was higher than that in the Golden age of Rome.

(March 12, 2013 at 5:04 pm)ThomM Wrote: The claim that 1 percent of the Romans could read is not a supportable number. The number is likely to be at least 5 percent and may be closer to 10 percent of the Roman population.

This is supported by at least two things

1 - In the Roman Empire - religion was not the only source of writings - there were literary works, philosophy, and other casual writings mentioned

2 - The Roman Empire had a large network of Libraries - for the public to use. No reason to have them if no one could read.

Reading did fall off during the dark ages again in the world - down to below 5% of the population - but it was higher than that in the Golden age of Rome.

I've been looking into the level of literacy in the Roman empire at the time. I've read various estimates that it was around 10% but 9% just had the basic skills. They could read official inscriptions, manage casual texts and even scrawl graffiti on walls. When it came to advanced works on theology and philosophy, only the 1% with higher education would be able to read well enough follow them.

This doesn't automatically mean that someone without higher education couldn't follow them if they were read out, however. Make your way in the world, become rich and you, too, could own an educated slave to keep the accounts, act as a scribe and read out texts you couldn't manage yourself.

Quote:Besides manual labor, slaves performed many domestic services, and might be employed at highly skilled jobs and professions. Teachers, accountants, and physicians were often slaves. Greek slaves in particular might be highly educated.

There are theories that Christianity appealed to the poor, women and slaves but that doesn't mean that no church communities had a rich member. A rich Christian could have an educated slave who was given the task of reading advanced texts borrowed from a library to church elders.