thats interesting, i'm still waiting on --- you --- to provide examples of the factual evidence augustine used to verify his belief in christian dogma.
Why? I never made such a claim. I already answered this
here. Did you not read that post?
.......kind of odd to see you leveling that particular criticism against another poster
No it isn't. I'll level it wherever it's relevant. On this forum it is frequently relevant because people have a habit of making statements and then refusing to provide evidence for them.
sylla1 said:
OK, let see what you have.
Please quote your primary sources on the religions which were purportedly not state approved that the Romans supposedly likewise suppressed.
* The Bacchists (senate decree 'senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus', Livy)
* The druids (Pliny the Elder)
* The Jews, particularly under Hadrian (Josephus, Tacitus, Lucius Cassius Dio Cocceianus)
* Early Christians (Pliny the Younger, Pliny the Elder, Suetonius, Tacitus, Marcus Aurelius)
* Later Christians (Porphyry, Ammianus Marcellinus, Julian the Pagan)
And please quote your primary sources on the Julian's anti-Christian backlash that "we" all know about.
I'm surprised you didn't know about this. Did you try reading the article to which I linked? Primary sources include:
* Julian's own work 'Against the Galileans'
* The historical record of Ammianus Marcellinus, a Greek historian who served in the army under Julius
* The historical record of Libanius the Greek rhetor (funeral oration)
* The historical record of Claudius Mamertinus (panegyric)
For a well referenced secondary source (which uses a number of primary sources), see
here:
Soon, Julian became very hostile to Christianity, developing a three-fold strategy effectively to disenfranchise Christians. First, he used legislation to cut off Christians from contact with the mainstream community. Next, he attempted to establish a pagan church structure to rival that of Christianity. Finally, he mounted a philosophical assault on Christianity, trying to show that its belief system was novel and harmful, and also to portray Christians as apostates from Judaism, a much older, more established, and more accepted religion.
There is evidence of Julian's attempt to legally disenfranchise Christians both by taking away any special exemptions that they could claim due to their religious beliefs and by prosecuting them for actively advocating their beliefs. A law of the Theodosian Code prohibits decurions from avoiding their compulsory duties on the grounds that they are Christian, and Ammianus spoke of legislation barring Christians from teaching rhetoric and grammar.[[79]]
Julian's actual rescript regarding the latter is included amongst his collected letters, where he declared that Christians who taught the classics were impious, because they taught the traditional forms of worship but ridiculed the beliefs, which had been passed down from the forefathers.[[80]] In another example of Julian's legal assault upon Christianity, a law from 405 upholds his law banning the Donatist sect in Africa.[[81]] In a letter of 362 to the citizens of Bostra, Julian admonished the Christian citizens involved in factional strife there that if they sacrificed to the traditional deities, they could remain citizens in good standing. Otherwise they would be stripped of their citizenship.[[82]]
The second and third parts of Julian's strategy to discredit Christianity are better documented. Two letters show specifically the issues Julian wanted to address by structuring pagan leadership on the Christian model. Sometime in late 361 or early 362, Julian sent a letter to Theodorus making him high priest of the diocese of Asia with the power to appoint priests in all the cities in this region. Theodorus was to see that such priests were worthy of the office. Specifically, they were to be just towards their fellow citizens and treat the Gods with piety.
