Serapis-Christian links overlays??

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

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What about Vita Saturnini 8? and Vita Hadriani. Scriptorium historiae Augustae (ed Lips)?

Are these part of Historia Augusta?
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

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AFAIK YES. It's supposed to have had six authors (eg one of whom you have Acharya S citing above) but some people think only one.


LC
A "cobbler of fables" [Augustine]; "Leucius is the disciple of the devil" [Decretum Gelasianum]; and his books "should be utterly swept away and burned" [Pope Leo I]; they are the "source and mother of all heresy" [Photius]
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Blood
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

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Leucius Charinus wrote:
The following is sourced from the editor at http://www.livius.org/hi-hn/ha/hist_aug.html

Among the many games that are played in the Historia Augusta is the invention of no less than 130 fake documents, most charmingly introduced in the introduction of the Life of Aurelian. Fake sources were not a new practice (cf. the invented letters in Plutarch's Life of Alexander). What is new, however, is that the author the Historia Augusta invents sources to disagree with them. This is, to the best knowledge of the author of this article, unique in ancient literature; the only possible (but unlikely) exception is, again, the source "Damis" that is used by Philostratus in his vie romance of Apollonius of Tyana.
You mean to tell me that ancient writers could actually invent fake letters, fake sources, and fake sources to disagree with the fake sources that agree with them ? That cannot possibly be true, because we are constantly told by New Testament scholars that this could never happen; at least, not with their sources, i.e. the NT, Josephus, Tacitus, Eusebius, et al.
“The only sensible response to fragmented, slowly but randomly accruing evidence is radical open-mindedness. A single, simple explanation for a historical event is generally a failure of imagination, not a triumph of induction.” William H.C. Propp
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MrMacSon
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

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DM Murdock/Acharya S makes mention of The Hadrian letter to Servianus being forgery or 'malicious satire'; original satire ridiculing the Egyptians and Serapian-Christians, as proposed by Bishop Dr J G Lightfoot - Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection, via Google Books.

Archaeologist(?)/amateur-historian(?), John Bartram, has made reference to various examples of parodying in those times: Christians, pre-Christian sects, and likely pre- or concurrent- other sects, being termed
  • 'The Poor';
  • “the Ebionim" in the Hebrew of the Scrolls, and very probably equivalent to "the Ebionites" of Early Church History about whom Eusebius in the 4th Century is so contemptuous and scathing of; or
  • Nazarenes (as a parody of Nazarites) ...

    https://sites.google.com/site/originsof ... y/the-poor
The enemy of The Poor takes the title for itself; this is the stuff of parody and black propaganda. An early start to this fraudulent process is
Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine

Chapter XXVII.—The Heresy of the Ebionites.
1. The evil demon, however, being unable to tear certain others from their allegiance to the Christ of God, yet found them susceptible in a different direction, and so brought them over to his own purposes. The ancients quite properly called these men Ebionites, because they held poor and mean opinions concerning Christ.

2. For they considered him a plain and common man, who was justified only because of his superior virtue, and who was the fruit of the intercourse of a man with Mary. In their opinion the observance of the ceremonial law was altogether necessary, on the ground that they could not be saved by faith in Christ alone and by a corresponding life.

3. There were others, however, besides them, that were of the same name, but avoided the strange and absurd beliefs of the former, and did not deny that the Lord was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit. But nevertheless, inasmuch as they also refused to acknowledge that he pre-existed, being God, Word, and Wisdom, they turned aside into the impiety of the former, especially when they, like them, endeavored to observe strictly the bodily worship of the law.

https://sites.google.com/site/originsof ... y/the-poor
Last edited by MrMacSon on Mon Jan 05, 2015 2:10 pm, edited 11 times in total.
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MrMacSon
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

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Bartram goes on
Having seen how The Poor - of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls - have been parodied by the textual tradition, including and especially in the New Testament (the original of which is pre-Christian), another term used by these Observant Jews to describe their approach of their faith is The Way and that, too and of course, has also been parodied.

The parody is not obvious to all:
  • In the Scrolls, the sectarians of the ‘New Testament’ usually refer to themselves as ‘The Way’, ‘The Poor’, and the ‘Church of God’.

    The first of these terms, the ‘Way’ is exactly as that used in Acts in a half dozen examples, the first of which is at 9:2. Within the NT, only in Acts do we see this sobriquet used for what we are invited to believe are early Jewish Christians. The Scrolls use the term in an unqualified or absolute sense, exactly as in Acts[7].
    • [7] For example, 'Those who have chosen the Way...' 1QS 9:17-18. See Fitzmyer, 1997, p. 282 for other examples of the absolute use of 'Way'.

      - Qumran and Early Christianity, A sort of detective story, and a personal view of Christian origins. by Sid Green (Revised October 23, 2001)
The relevant passage:
  • Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. (Acts of the Apostles 9:1-2)
This character Saul is still, at this point, presented as the Herodian thug persecuting insurrectionists (the followers of James at Qumran):
  • 63 CE
    Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews - Book XX, Chapter 9. Concerning Albinus under whose Procuratorship James was slain; as also what edifices were built by Agrippa.
    Costobarus also, and Saulus, did themselves get together a multitude of wicked wretches, and this because they were of the royal family; and so they obtained favor among them, because of their kindred to Agrippa; but still they used violence with the people, and were very ready to plunder those that were weaker than themselves. And from that time it principally came to pass that our city was greatly disordered, and that all things grew worse and worse among us.
66 CE
Josephus, The Wars Of The Jews, Or The History Of The Destruction Of Jerusalem, Book II, Chapter 17. How the war of the Jews with the Romans began, and concerning Manahem.
So the men of power perceiving that the sedition was too hard for them to subdue, and that the danger which would arise from the Romans would come upon them first of all, endeavored to save themselves, and sent ambassadors, some to Florus, the chief of which was Simon the son of Ananias; and others to Agrippa, among whom the most eminent were Saul, and Antipas, and Costobarus, who were of the king's kindred; and they desired of them both that they would come with an army to the city, and cut off the seditious before it should be too hard to be subdued.
...<snip>...
As the Saul of the New Testament is this same Saul, there is little or no need for parody: he really is the bully-boy working for the Herodians as he is portrayed. When he becomes Paul, his role becomes covert, pretending to have converted to The Way and whilst roaming the Levant supposedly gathering support for the insurrectionists, actually recruiting his own Greco-Roman/Chrestian following.

Though the words "the way" appears many times in the New Testament, some of these seem to refer more obviously to the Jewish religious expression:
  • This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah: "A voice of one calling in the desert, 'Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.' " (Matthew 3:3 NIV)
  • For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him. (Matthew 21:32 NIV)
  • They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. (Matthew 22:16 NIV)
https://sites.google.com/site/originsof ... or/the-way
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

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Parody

Black propaganda is false information and material that purports to be from a source on one side of a conflict, but is actually from the opposing side. It is typically used to vilify, embarrass or misrepresent the enemy.

The gospels are not history, but parody, using as their subjects the enemies of the Chrestians: Messianic Judaism, the community at Qumran (the Poor), its leadership and associated groups such as Zealots/Sicarii. Modern scholarship as exemplified by Eisenman and Price, show in detail how this worked.
  • Herod Agrippa, also known as Herod or Agrippa I (10 BC – 44 AD), was a Judean monarchduring the 1st century AD. The grandson of Herod the Great and son of Aristobulus IV and Berenice. He was born Marcus Julius Agrippa, so named in honour of Roman statesman Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. He is the king named Herod in the Acts of the Apostles, in the Bible, "Herod (Agrippa)" (Ἡρώδης Ἀγρίππας). He was, according to Josephus, known in his time as "Agrippa the Great". Christian and Jewish historiography take different views of this king; with the Christians largely opposing Agrippa, and the Jews largely favoring Agrippa.
Why the parody is a natural question and perhaps the facts will help provide an answer. The time frame in the parody is moved from Herod Agrippa II to that of Herod Agrippa and this perhaps, is most significant, for the king in the parody is hated in the sacred texts:
  • On the appointed day Herod, wearing his royal robes, sat on his throne and delivered a public address to the people. They shouted, “This is the voice of a god, not of a man.” Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died. (Acts 12)
He was hated because the Chrestians regarded him as a traitor: raised as one of the child hostages (so he would be Romanised, probably as a Chrestian). Yet he supported the Jewish cause, so that if he were to have been assassinated, as Chrestians killed other leaders (such as the emperors Nero and Domitian), then this would not surprise.

With the time shifted back, then the Roman responsible for the death also had to change, from Albinus to Pilate.

https://sites.google.com/site/originsof ... s-iu-ic-is
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MrMacSon
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

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There is also allusion to parody in the NT in this review of Robert Eisenman's The New Testament Code by Dr. Andrew P Gould, Ohio State U.
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

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Blood wrote:
Leucius Charinus wrote:
The following is sourced from the editor at http://www.livius.org/hi-hn/ha/hist_aug.html

Among the many games that are played in the Historia Augusta is the invention of no less than 130 fake documents, most charmingly introduced in the introduction of the Life of Aurelian. Fake sources were not a new practice (cf. the invented letters in Plutarch's Life of Alexander). What is new, however, is that the author the Historia Augusta invents sources to disagree with them. This is, to the best knowledge of the author of this article, unique in ancient literature; the only possible (but unlikely) exception is, again, the source "Damis" that is used by Philostratus in his vie romance of Apollonius of Tyana.
You mean to tell me that ancient writers could actually invent fake letters, fake sources, and fake sources to disagree with the fake sources that agree with them ? That cannot possibly be true, because we are constantly told by New Testament scholars that this could never happen; at least, not with their sources, i.e. the NT, Josephus, Tacitus, Eusebius, et al.
Thanks Blood. Sorry mac. It's not 160 forged documents at all, it is only 130 forged documents.

NT scholars are really only interested in looking for the lost keys to Christian origins under the streetlights on First and Second Avenue. Even Carrier uses a cut-off date for background evidence a little way up Second Avenue. By the time one trundles out past Third Avenue to Fourth Avenue the first thing one notices is that the Nicaean streetlights themselves have been imported from Fifth Avenue, and there are very few (if any) Fourth Avenue streetlights especially during the epoch between 325 and 353 CE. During this stretch it is really dark - almost like being inside a black hole. I wonder why. The Nag Hammadi Codices began shining brightly out of this dark zone, which is rather fortuitous. Anyway, the major illumination on Fourth Avenue are from the streetlights fashioned by Ammianus Marcellinus. No NT scholar is really interested in being so far from the real action on First and Second Avenue. It's just not kosher.

For this reason and this reason alone the NT scholars (including Richard Carrier it would seem) leave the "Historia Augusta" alone and pretend it is not relevant to either their background knowledge or "Quest". As far as I am concerned this is a big mistake.

If Carrier would tune up his Bayesian equation to accept 4th Avenue background evidence for and against the historicity of Jesus, the "Historia Augusta" might be able to tell us a few things about "schools of scribes" who indulged in "collegiate cooperation" under the auspices of a Roman Emperor in antiquity. We'd also get to see some sort of explanation why the Paul-Seneca correspondence was regarded as genuine Pauline material, and was circulated as genuine by the church organisation.


"The scanty and suspicious materials of ecclesiastical history seldom enable us
to dispel the dark cloud that hangs over the first age of the church.
[Gibbon]

The Historia Augusta is key background evidence for the historians' Bayesian hypotheses testing.
The mystery of Christian origins isn't really much of a mystery when the "Historia Augusta" is examined.

Back towards the OP. I don't know too much about any Serapis-Christian links overlays apart from the HA, dedicated to Constantine [a mocker, not a flatterer]

I am aware of a number of Asclepius-Christian links overlays, but this is probably a diversion.



LC
A "cobbler of fables" [Augustine]; "Leucius is the disciple of the devil" [Decretum Gelasianum]; and his books "should be utterly swept away and burned" [Pope Leo I]; they are the "source and mother of all heresy" [Photius]
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

Post by Roger Pearse »

Gents ... you would be well advised to read the HA text in context before writing about it. I think the full translation is online at LacusCurtius.
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: Serapis-Christian links overlays??

Post by Leucius Charinus »

I have read the English translation. I have also read a number of academic analyses on the claims that the HA contains more than one hundred fake documents, on the claims surrounding its authorship, and on other features of this "mockumentary" which are noted above. It was apparently written sometime in the 4th century for the amusement of the aristocratic class. (Who else could afford (or even read) Latin codices? Certainly not the working class.)



LC
A "cobbler of fables" [Augustine]; "Leucius is the disciple of the devil" [Decretum Gelasianum]; and his books "should be utterly swept away and burned" [Pope Leo I]; they are the "source and mother of all heresy" [Photius]
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