EXTERNAL PAPERS
Thesis in Ancient History: Constantine Invented Christianity
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External Papers Index

Background to Constantine's Roman Economy

• Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire
  Professor Joseph Peden, transcript of a 50-minute lecture given at the Seminar on Money and Government in Houston, Texas, on October 27, 1984.

  Monetary, fiscal, military, political, and economic issues are all very much intertwined. And they are all so intertwined because any state normally seeks to monopolize the supply of money within its own territory.... ...[...]..... The Roman monetary crisis therefore was closely connected with the Roman military problem. problems become solvable when a ruler decides that something can be done and must be done. Diocletian and Constantine clearly were willing to act to protect their own ruling-class interests, the military and the civil service. Monetary reforms were necessary to win the support of the troops and the bureaucrats, who composed the only real constituency of the Roman state, and the two-tier system was designed to this end. It brought about a stable monetary standard for the ruling group, who did not hesitate to secure it at the expense of the mass of the population. The Roman state survived. The liberty of the Roman people did not

Constantine

• Constantine and the Problem of Anti-Pagan Legislation in the Fourth Century
  Scott Bradbury, Classical Philology, Vol. 89, No. 2 (Apr., 1994), pp. 120-139
  Scholars have been unduly hesitant to accept the idea of a Constantinian ban on sacrifice for two reasons. First, the debate has focused too much on the evidence of Eusebius' Vita Constantini and has become a referendum on Eusebius' reliability. In the process other important evidence has not been given the prominence it deserves. Second, many skeptics have doubted the general ban on sacrifices because it would have been, in their view, provocative and politically unfeasible.

• Constantine's Prohibition of Pagan Sacrifice
  T. D. Barnes, The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 105, No. 1 (Spring, 1984), pp. 69-72
  On the assumption that Eusebius' report is reliable and accurate, it may be argued that in 324 Constantine established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and that he carried through a systematic and coherent reformation, at least in the eastern provinces which he conquered in 324 as a professed Christian in a Christian crusade against the last of the persecutor.

• Constantine's Porphyry Column: The Earliest Literary Allusion
  Garth Fowden The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 81, (1991), pp. 119-131
  Argues that the account of the emperor Elagabalus in the "Historia Augusta" consists in large part of a satire on Constantine I.

• Nicagoras of Athens and the Lateran Obelisk
  Garth Fowden, The Journal of Hellenic Studies. Vol. 107, (1987), pp. 51-57 , (article consists of 7 pages)

• Constantine and the Ancient Cults of Rome: The Legal Evidence
  John Curran

• Suggestions of Date in Constantine's Oration to the Saints
  H. A. Drake
  The oration "To the Assembly of the Saints" attributed to Constantine the great comes down to us appended to manuscripts of Eusebius of Caesarea's Life of that emperor. It purports to be a Greek translation of a speech made by the emperor in Latin. In twenty-six chapters of what is best described as a fourth century version of "pop philosophy", Constantine offers a defense of Christianity and an exhortation to the pious life, inplicitly and sometimes explicitly celebrating as well his own pious career.

• Constantine's Vision of the Cross - Oliver Nicholson
  Vigiliae Christianae Vol. 54, No. 3 (2000), pp. 309-323

Arius of Alexandria

• Arius: Twice a Heretic? Arius and the Human Soul of Jesus Christ - William P. Haugaard
  p,260 - Epiphanius about the arians ...

  "Not only this, but they also deny that he [Jesus] took a human soul, while they prepare the same thing as beforehand. For they profess that he has true flesh from Mary, and all things as much as are in man, without a soul."

  In these two passaged Epiphanius states that Lucian of Antioch and the lucianists, whose members included Arius, professed that Christ had no human soul.

  ....Bardy finds no trace of such a doctrine in Lucian.

Nag Hammadi

• Thesis on Pachomius - James M. Drayton, Sydney University, 2002
  Pachomius as Discovered in the Worlds of Fourth Century Christian Egypt, Pachomian Literature and Pachomian Monasticism: A Figure of History or Hagiography?

• Monasticism and Gnosis in Egypt - Armand Veilleux
  A review of the evidence and theories concerning the evidence of the Nag Hammadi codices.

• The Nag Hammadi Library and the Heresiologists - Frederik Wisse, Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Sep., 1971), pp. 205-223
  The author concludes ....
  "In the final stage Christian orthodoxy had become so well established and possessed so much political muscle that it could put the Gnostic groups in various areas on'the offensive and isolate them. The result was that the movement, now turned on itself, fell into self-destructive excesses, or was swallowed up by a new, Gnostic, world religion called Manichaeism.

• The Redeemer Figure in the Paraphrase of Shem
  Frederik Wisse, Novum Testamentum Vol. 12, Fasc. 2 (Apr., 1970), pp. 130-140

The Gnostics

• Two Gnostic Gospels
  Robert M. Grant, Journal of Biblical Literature > Vol. 79, No. 1, Mar., 1960

  On the Gospel of Thomas:

  "... a carefully selected announcement of basic Gnostic doctrines. His monotonous repetition of the phrase "Jesus said", does not prove that his gospel is Christian ....[...]... the environment in which Thomas did his work is almost certainly Gnostic. Indeed, if we make a point-by-point comparison between Thomas and the Naassenes described in the fifth book of Hippolytus's "Refutation", we may well conclude that his gospel not only was used by them but was also composed in support of their doctrines. ......It is important as a witness to the development of Gnostic Christology, not to the teaching of the historical Jesus.

• The Naming of the Naassenes: Hippolytus, Refutatio V. 6-10 as Hieros Logos
  Mark J. Edwards, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Bd. 112, (1996) (pp. 74-80)
  "Were Gnostics in antiquity ever pagan? It has generally been assumed that they do not belong to the history of Classical religion, but some at least belong to the history of its explanation. I shall argue here that a text, which in its present form can be treated as the earliest extant document of Gnostic Christianity, began as an exposition of the Eleusinian mysteries. I shall not infer that our author was a pagan; since, indeed, the gnosis he taught was not so much a revelation as an instrument for interpreting all previous revelations, I shall not attempt to show that he worshipped any gods at all.

  [Concludes ...]

  "The gnosis of the earliest Gnostics, therefore, would appear to be: not a mystery, but a studious collocation of the mysteries; a philological discipline which aims to be the master, not the servant, of philosophy; a parliament of symbols which does not proclaim a new code of belief."

• Thecla and the Church Fathers
  Léonie Hayne, Vigiliae Christianae Vol. 48, No. 3 (Sep., 1994), pp. 209-218

Pythagorean Influence in Early Christian Writings

• Pythagorean Symbolism and the Philosophic Paideia in the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria
  Eugene Afonasin, Novosibirsk State University. Discusses certain aspects of the philosophy of education developed by the second century Christian writer Clement of Alexandria. Special attention is given to the place of his philosophy in the context of both pagan and Christian philosophical and theological movements as they relate to the Neopythagorean tradition that was revived in the first century.

• FROM APOLLO AND ASCLEPIUS TO CHRIST - C. Dauphin
  Pilgrimage and Healing at the Temple and Episcopal Basilica of Dor.

Archaeology

• Alcestis and Hercules in the Catacomb of via Latina
  Beverly Berg, Vigiliae Christianae Vol. 48, No. 3 (Sep., 1994), pp. 219-234

  
  

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