The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> "When Jesus Became God"...

"When Jesus Became God"...
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Sunday, December 11 2011, 18:59:38 (UTC)
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I am more convinced than ever that Christianity was forced upon people by the Romans, that it was never adopted freely by the people of the Empire. Not only is that a fanciful impossibility, there is also no historical evidence of it, except in the Church's own propaganda, while there is plenty of evidence, from valid historians, that people were butchered into Christ and their resulting orphans "raised" Christian. Conversion to Christianity followed in the wake of the Roman armies, not at the approach of the priests.

Reading this book I got my eyes crossed following the path to religious orthodoxy and the curious battles between Arians and the rest. It is mildly important, I suppose, whether or not Jesus is totally divine or part human, part divine...especially if you claim the right and duty to murder nonconformists in his name. He had better be ALL god! We accept mass-murder and other forms of pathology from god, but condemn it in humans.

The one interesting thing I came away with was a window on "scholarship"...how authors back up their claims and how they slip things past us.

But back to this book:

On page 170 we find this innocuous statement ending in a footnote, a reference to the source material one can presumably go to for validation. That such a simple statement deserves a footnote makes you think the author is a determined scholar unwilling to play any sloppy games.

"He (Constantius, mine) welcomed to court the remarkable Ulfia, a Goth from the trans-Danubian region who had been converted to Christianity and then ordained bishop by Eusebius of Nicomedia. 174."

This statement doesn't seem to me to need a footnote. Where's the controversy...where's the big question or doubt crying out for evidence? Had there been no citation, no footnote, I hardly would have thought to challenge it. It's also curious that he uses the phrase.."had been converted to..." Seems to me if the conversion was voluntary one would simply say.."he converted"..."..been converted.."sounds like someone else did the converting for him, or to him.

Then follow a few sentences and claims that cry out for evidence, for sources, for some further validation before they can, or should, be swallowed whole...


"With Constantius's support, he promised he would win his huge tribe to the Christian faith. The emperor provided the aid, and Ulfia kept his promise. Not only did the Visigoths remain Arian Christians for the next two centuries, they converted additional tribes to the Arian faith, including the Ostrogoths, Burgundians, and Vandals."

...what kind of "support" and "aid" did the emperor lend? What kind WOULD he have provided...bibles, tea, a chariot, or his armies? How did the Arians "become" Christians? What methods were used? Are we to believe again the silly myths of the Church wherein entire nations are converted to Christianity by merely hearing the "miraculous" tale of a Jew, born to a tribe, in a land and a religion these others had never heard of? And how did they "convert" all those other people, those other tribes?

Why does the author/scholar feel compelled to provide me with a source for his statement that an emperor had welcomed a Christian to his court...but leave to stand alone a statement that whole tribes were converted to Christianity, without explaining HOW that mass-conversion was accomplished? isn't that the far more compelling and remarkable claim, then that a Christian was welcomed by an emperor? Reading the first statement, and finding a footnote at the end of it, distracts from the fact that the following and far more provocative statement has no validation at all and stands alone...even though the claim is fantastic beyond belief.



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