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John Carter's avatar

Sorry for the long read. I thought about breaking this in two but the topic seemed like it should be treated as a whole.

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Paolo Giusti's avatar

GM: i feel i must break a lance in favor of Carotta "accidental" hypotesis.

One of the most virulent heresy in the Third Century was Donatism, that invented the word "traitor" i.e. a Christian who gave (tradére) the holy books to the Romans. By itself, it looks like fanaticsm, but we must remind that literacy and mass accessibility to written text is a very recent development: back in the days, there were very few books and few people that can read and understand them.

So, what if Donatists were not against the traitors but against their reconstruction of the holy books?

Even if you dismiss earlier persecution as bogus and slender aginst populist (Nero, that debased the currency to help the debtors) emperor, we must accept that Christianity (in both Divus Iulius and Pauline flavour) were not beloved by the authority, so it really takes an execution of a priest or the burning of a copy of the Gospel to compleately muddle the content of a belief - I mean, according to Lucio Russo (a polymath capable of writing calculus in Koiné Greek, one of you Anglos should translate him) we lost a whole scientific revolution during the Third Century BEFORE Christ, missing the right spelling of Corfinium looks a lot more plausible!

There is also another explanation why Pauline Christianity won over "Roman" one: immigration. "all suggest that Roman urban populations in the 1st through 3rd centuries AD were largely of Anatolian and Levantine origin - though with minorities from northern Europe, northwestern Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa" (https://open.substack.com/pub/nemets/p/peoples-of-rome?r=1m606h&selection=1e55b26f-7889-46c6-8300-4df106f8c975&utm_campaign=post-share-selection&utm_medium=web): were those levantine greeks and aggregated asians going to read about Corfinium or Cafarnaum?

The last point can also explain why Christianity, although a "Make Rome Great Again" religion, was persecuted since Decius. Contrary to popular belief, Augustus was not Cesar's heir: Mark Anthony was. Augustus was Roman Marco Rubio, the one that fused Cesar method with senatorial aims. I doubt Augustus and his successors loved a cult that divinized a man that would have despised his Sullian restauration.

Lastly, are you familiar with the "Mark's Gospel as a Thragedy" thesy? Upon that a guy in a now lost blog built a thesis according who Mark is Marcion (litterally "big Mark" as an affectionate), they guy beloved by Rurik NAFOwalker.

According that guy, Marcion was the Paul "Father of All Heresy" of Tarsus, a diaspora, lapsed Jew (a rich shipowner, no less) that invented Christianity as a consolatio philosophiae for beaten diaspora Jews: the most compelling argument is that Jesus' prophecies match with Josephus description of the War (e.g. the unveiling of the Temple is literally Titus having his good time with an onager). Marcionism was adoptionist and that is the reason why Matthew (the judizing Gospel par eccellence) added the genealogy of Jesus and interpolated Mark with his death.

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