youkrst wrote:

DWill wrote:Have you ever wondered what a Gnostic orthodoxy would have been like?

it's probably more that i've wondered what a society where people don't have to deal with a list of edicts like the one above would be like.

cue the John Lennon song "imagine"

DWill wrote:If institutional control was a noose, I would at least think you'd see it as having loosened quite a bit in recent times, for much of the world, anyway. We don't even have to mount the scaffold now.

give it time NDAA, NSA, Patriot act etc etc etc

Here's a more radical idea, but not that crazy: Christianity is the Gnostic orthodoxy. We get so used to thinking of the literal facts claimed for the beliefs that we lose sight of the strangeness of them. Back in the day, what happened is that all the various currents were influencing each other, with gnosticism being a player in the game. It's easy to see that influence in Paul. Then, when it became clear that the beliefs would continue on in the time-honored way of theocracy, there was a purge of all the dissenting beliefs. This was monotheism, so no more loosey-goosey about local gods being okay as long as you worshiped the kingdom's as well.
It's difficult to make this sound like a good thing, but it might have been right for the times.

I do think you're a bit too gloomy on the political side. There is no Soviet Union now; perhaps China will even liberalize. Wouldn't that be something. You and I can say what we want. But our democracy here in the U.S. may be in trouble. Good and bad, as usual.

youkrst wrote:the following list of roman imperial laws reveals an agenda, it seems obvious.

http://www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/ ... -laws-364/

313CE Oct 31

Certain catholic clerics are being harassed by heretics so that compulsory public services are
too much for them to bear. They should be relieved of their civic duties, and replacements found,
and in the future, clerics should not be forced to fulfill compulsory public services.

ETC.
O.K. The victors,the elite Romans and Christians wrote this history. Why? To inform us that they had this agenda and conspired together to suppress pagan and heretical writings and practices and to promote orthodox Christianity.
If they wanted to "rewrite" history why would they give us this version of history?
We can conclude on the conspiratorial "victors write history thesis" that they actually conspired to fabricate this history to promote some other agenda entirely.
In fact no one, least of all mythicists question this history.
They just reject that history which refutes their thesis as being fabricated history.
So all history prior to Constantine is revisionist and unreliable accounts by these same revisionists, who we must believe did not revise history re Constantine's edicts etc.
So how to explain Christianity prior to Constantine? See Atwill,Freke and Gandy for details.

Flann wrote:They just reject that history which refutes their thesis as being fabricated history.

sorry, which historical items are being rejected, just start with one, then after we've established whether it's being rejected or not and by whom, we can then move on to the next.

Flann wrote:So how to explain Christianity prior to Constantine?

well we could start with Marcion

Marcion of Sinope (/ˈmɑrʃən, -ʃiən, -siən/; Greek: Μαρκίων[1] Σινώπης; c. 85 – c. 160) was an important leader in early Christianity. His theology rejected the deity described in the Hebrew Scriptures

then maybe docetism

"the doctrine according to which the phenomenon of Christ, his historical and bodily existence, and thus above all the human form of Jesus, was altogether mere semblance without any true reality."

or possibly the stories in the NT gospels that are also found in non jewish/christian material that predates it.