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  • From: Mike.Conley AT t-online.de (Mike Conley)
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Ignatius and all that! (Part Two)
  • Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2001 15:18:52 +0200


There were multiple, highly dissimilar gospel as well! The fact that
the NT contains four of them suggest of itself that the battle between
contending factions must have been enormous. The contending parties
were confronted with an ultimate: Either you include my version or I'll
cut
out on my own and take my thousands of followers with me! Robert J.
Miller ("The Complete Gospels," HarperSanFrancisco,1994) counts
twenty-one gospel, but we know there were still more of them! And to
keep matters in equanimity, we can replace the muslim general Hudaifa
and his wars against Byzantium with the Emperor's Legions at war with
Bar Khockba 132-135, in Palestine.

It not as if I'm holding back, keeping the goodies for myself though it
cost you, David and Robert enlightenment. Detective work is
indispensable. Perhaps the most significant activities of Roman
Catholicism in the third to the six centuries C.E. - that is to say,
following the disappearance of their religious opponents - were 1) the
liquidation of their opponents records and 2) the fabrication of
alternatives where they sensed a meaningful lacuna. The clerical
falsification of documents is a leitmotif up into our own times. Early
Islam can't hold a match to the exploits of the clerics. I can think of
but a single display of equivalent efficacy.

Regarding the conflict between the Sunni and the Schia - both alive and
vigorous to this very day - we are, for this fact, well informed. As
for the Kharigits, however, yet another Islamic faction pursuing its
independent course in the first centuries after the death of Mohammad,
we know next to nothing. In full accord with one another the Sunni and
the Schia - after the fashion of that fraction within the Roman Church
which bested its rivals - saw to it that not one shred of information
remained for later, objective scholars to examine, save, perhaps, their
nickname, `the wailers.'

What independent authorities attest to the [dynamics of the contending,
parallel hierarchy] as universal "psycho-organizational patterns?" you
ask me David. A history of this tactic does not exist and I'll not
write it, for my interests, late in life, lead me elsewhere. But that a
continuity has remained in place over two millennium follows verily
from your assertion that "I think that the tactics you describe better
fit the "holy war" tactics of Islamic fundamentalists." Indeed, they
got the word!

Why attempt to take over the state - your question, David - "It would
make more sense if Christianity was a form of apocalyptic messianism,
on which a better world (and kingdom) was expected to come *in place of
the
existing system.* Initially, the proto-christians, the non-orthodox, if
you will, the anti-Establishment elements within the Palestinian
population did think this way. In this context, you may speak of
groups
labeling themselves as `The Way,' `the Sons of Zadok, the Poor, the
Simple, the Meek, the Perfect, the Sons of Light, the Holy Ones. Or the
terms may be employed in combinations such as the Zealots for
Righteousness, the Perfect of the Way. Christian Church heresiologists
of the third to the fifth centuries C.E. write of Naassenes,
Nazoraeans, Sampsaeans or Sabaeans the Nazirites and Elchasaites. And
we dare not forget Marcion with his seat in all probability at
Hieropolis and other contenders.

But the anticipated `Coming' did not occur. Others sought quite
different goals and that's the sense in read into St. Ignatius and the
horrendous pragmatism of the episkopoi of Rome.

With Cosmic greetings,

Mike Conley





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