-Caveat Lector-
The Roman Church was simply following in the footsteps of the Caesars, who
rewrote many of the ancient texts Roman civic religion was based on, such as
the Sybilline Oracles. See Suetonius, inter alii, for a somewhat tabloid
account; Robert Graves drew heavily on Suetonius for *I, Claudius* and
*Claudius the God*, q.v. Yes, the Romans were meticulous record-keepers; but
as with the Prussians and their successors the Germans, records can be neat
and precise without necessarily being accurate.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Das GOAT [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, September 20, 1999 7:41 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [CTRL] Blaming the barbarians (fwd)
>
> -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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