-Caveat Lector-
In a message dated 99-09-19 22:39:31 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> Furthermore, decades before the northern tribes descended upon Rome, the
>church itself had burned all the critiques of Christianity written by
>prominent non-Christian scholars, such as Porphyry and Celsus. By the late
>fourth century, church censorship had extended into just about every area of
>learning.
And so, by the early 4th Century, every inestimably priceless record of the
first three centuries of Christianity (particularly in the Holy Land) had
been destroyed -- by the Church itself, now centralized in Rome under a
secular Emperor. The only surviving "history" is that written by Bishop
Eusebius, Constantine the Great's own PR man -- Eusebius, maddeningly,
selectively quotes the works of older scholars as Epiphanius, who, back in
the early 2nd Century, could still thumb through the archives of Jesus' own
disciples in Jerusalem. Just "coincidentally," by the early 4th Century, all
the ROMAN records of the Imperial State's contact with the Christians in
Jerusalem --for example, Pontius Pilate's report on Jesus' trial and
crucifixion-- had "vanished" as well -- despite the fact that Rome's
bureaucracy was meticulous in its record-keeping and just about everything
else from the same period was intact. Even more "coincidentally," all the
texts of the Gospels and Epistles that make up our New Testament today date
from no later than the 4th Century, when Constantine and his "censors"
destroyed everything but the version HE approved, which was icongruously
flattering to the Romans (even in the Savior's time) and quite antagonistic
toward the Jews. [Yes, I'm aware that the "oldest" MSS. of the Gospels go
back further, to about 70-150 AD (John's the latest), but on closer
inspection, these are only FRAGMENTS, i.e., not COMPLETE texts.]
Why am I reminded of the mad Chinese Emperor who ordered destroyed all
existing records of the eras preceding him, in order to have the privilege of
writing his OWN version of Chinese history? Forever afterward, his history
would be all we could rely on, so we'll just have to take him at his word --
he being, of course, a "scrupulous" sort ....
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