Was "IS XS" a "consistent code name" like 007?

[Leucius Charinus]

Whether you could, if they let you, talk to MI6, but you cannot speak with ancient Christians, so?
They knew who it referred to.
If you have a different, alternate, reading, what is that?

The whole thing is simply popular fiction. The "Church", IC, the letters, the Apostles... all of it. Fiction.

That's all. Simple, really.

A simple yet elegant solution to Christian origins.

Not satisfied with the invention of all the above the church, with imperial sponsorship, went on to invent fiction stories about the lives and deaths of thousands of saints and martyrs. The elite bishops and doctors of the church dreamt dreams and, as a result discovered the location of their holy bones and relics.

The ancient Christians speak to us from the archeology of their holy relic trade; a business model that persisted for more than a thousand years. In many places the turnstiles are $till turning. Today in the tertiary education sector of the church industry fiction speaks loudest from the field of patristics and the medieval manuscripts of the fabricated fathers, many a thousand years or more removed from being primary evidence. It's a crime scene. The crime is historical fraud by way of pious forgery. For the glory of the cult.

"Principles of Historical research need not be different
from criteria of common sense. And common sense teaches
us that outsiders must not tell insiders what they should
do. I shall therefore not discuss directly what biblical
scholars are doing. They are the insiders" (p.3)

///

"You may have as much rhetorical analysis as you consider
necessary, provided it leads to the establishment of the
truth - or to the admission that truth is regretfully
out of reach in a given case.

But it must be clear once for all that Judges and Acts,
Heroditus and Tacitus are historical texts to be examined
with the purpose of recovering the truth of the past.

Hence the interesting conclusion that the notion of forgery
has a different meaning in historiography than it has in
other branches of literature or of art. A creative writer
or artist perpetuates a forgery every time he intends
to mislead his public about the date and authorship
of his own work.

But only a historian can be guilty of forging evidence
or of knowingly used forged evidence in order to
support his own historical discourse. One is never
simple-minded enough about the condemnation of
forgeries. Pious frauds are frauds, for which one
must show no piety - and no pity." (p.7)


ON PAGANS, JEWS, and CHRISTIANS, Arnaldo Momigliano, 1987
Chapter 1:
Biblical Studies and Classical Studies
Simple Reflections upon Historical Method
http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/arnal ... STIANS.htm

[StephenGoranson]

Christianity imo did not begin "with imperial sponsorship."

[Leucius Charinus]

Whether you could, if they let you, talk to MI6, but you cannot speak with ancient Christians, so?
They knew who it referred to.
If you have a different, alternate, reading, what is that?

The whole thing is simply popular fiction. The "Church", IC, the letters, the Apostles... all of it. Fiction.

That's all. Simple, really.

A simple yet elegant solution to Christian origins.

Not satisfied with the invention of all the above the church, with imperial sponsorship, went on to invent fiction stories about the lives and deaths of thousands of saints and martyrs. The elite bishops and doctors of the church dreamt dreams and, as a result discovered the location of their holy bones and relics.

Christianity imo did not begin "with imperial sponsorship."

ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY WHICH BEGAN WITH (OR DURING) IMPERIAL SPONSORSHIP

• Christianity includes the study of the history of the Christian church which began with Eusebius who attracted imperial sponsorship.

• Christianity includes the massive and lavish building program for Christian basilicas and other monumental Christian architecture which began with imperial sponsorship.

• Christianity includes the widespread circulation and publication of the NT Bible codices in the Roman empire which began "with imperial sponsorship."

• The destruction of pagan temples (and thus removal of opposition to the Christian cult) began "with imperial sponsorship."

• The enforced proscriptions against the so-called "Apocryphal" and other heretical writings" began "with imperial sponsorship."

• Christianity includes the legal support of Christianity in the Roman law codes which began "with imperial sponsorship."

• Christianity includes the invention of the Christian saints and martyrs (along with the invention of hagiography and martyrology) which occurred in the 4th century which received imperial sponsorship.

• Christianity includes the invention of the cult of the saints and martyrs which occurred in the 4th century when the Nicene church received imperial sponsorship.

• Christianity includes the invention of the holy relic trade which occurred in the 4th century when the Nicene church received imperial sponsorship.

• Christianity includes the study of the history of the Christian church during the 4th and 5th centuries conducted by further "church historians" - the continuators of Eusebius - who continued to receive imperial sponsorship.

• Christianity also includes (supposedly) independent references associated with it in the writings of non-Christians in the Ante Nicene epoch. However various studies suggest that many of these (supposedly) independent references (such as those found in the writings of Josephus, Seneca, Abgar et al) are pious forgeries of the Nicene church (or later) which received imperial sponsorship.

• Christianity also includes the writings of the so-called "Ante Nicene Church Fathers" but a study of the manuscripts for these so-called "Ante Nicene Church Fathers" indicates that the earliest dates of these manuscripts are from the middle ages. Well after imperial sponsorship.

WHAT OTHER ASPECTS OF CHRISTIANITY ARE LEFT?
ONLY THE NT

What aspects of Christianity does that leave which did not begin "with imperial sponsorship."? Only the invention of the NT canonical literature. Biblical scholarship claims that the NT literature was invented in the 1st and/or 2nd centuries.

But what evidence is provided by Biblical Scholarship to support this claim? Specifically --- in the first approximation --- what primary evidence is provided to support this claim?

• Primary evidence is defined as evidence from the time period being studied."In contexts such as historical writing, it is almost always advisable to use primary sources and that "if none are available, it is only with great caution that [the author] may proceed to make use of secondary sources."[Cipolla, Carlo M. (1992). Between Two Cultures: An Introduction to Economic History. W. W. Norton & Co. p. 27]

What primary evidence do Biblical scholars adduce for their claim that the NT canonical writings originated from the 1st and/or 2nd centuries?

With a few extremely dubious exceptions such as the "Christianos Graffito" discovered in Pompeii (1862) or the James Ossuary (and other frauds) a BIG FAT ZERO for Archeology.

ETA: Aside from the above Biblical scholarship might cite the fragmentary papyri manuscripts from the rubbish dumps of Oxyrhynchus which have paleographically dated lower bounds in the 2nd century. There are about a handful:

Papyri with 2nd century lower bounds
100-200 P. Oxy. 3523
100-200 P. Oxy. 4404
100-300 P. Oxy. 2683 and 4405
125-175 Gr. P. 457
150-250 P. IFAO inv. 237b
150-250 P.Oxy. 5345

AFAIK there is no other primary evidence and everything else is secondary.

Therefore, the option that --- the "Early Universal Church", IC XC, the letters, the Apostles --- all of it best represents a later 3rd or 4th century historical fiction --- in the absence of primary evidence from the 1st / 2nd century --- must remain on the table.