Joe Atwill, our new Constantine

I'd alluded to Joseph Atwill early this month, from a summary reaction by Laurent Guyénot. I'd noted that I hadn't read any Atwill so was holding my fire. "Yesterday", "Joe" raised a post at, uh, Unz.

What Atwill provides here (if not elsewhere) of use to Constantinian historians (I consider myself a postJustinian historian, centuries later) is the knowledge that Constantine I tied his house with that of the Flavians. We've seen the Severans like Caracalla tie themselves with the Antonines. All the emperors were we-wuzzers of some stripe or other. Guyénot is aware of some of this, but downplays it. Atwill argues to lean harder into it.

I do wonder if Atwill is wasting time on this one though. What Constantine says two centuries too late isn't much better than what Guyénot or Atwill might say sixteen centuries (or more) too late. Atwill is sounding like Andrew Wilson. Tip for debaters: when your opponent has scored small points, even points on a foul: don't run out the clock. 'Abd Qays could have told y'all that it doesn't much help to unscore those points.

What matters more for Atwill is this: Constantine choose the bizarre pseudo-Judaism because he knew that its scripture had been designed to cryptically worship Caesar. I dispute Constantine could know that, even if true. What Constantine could know, is the canon NT text: of the gospel ascribed to Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. There, many reputable scholars - not me, not Atwill, not Guyénot - agree that the Luke-Acts project exists as a biography (if the word can apply) of the Holy Spirit: until its descent upon Rome. For Constantine at Milan, Luke-Acts served perfectly.

(And then Constantine moved to Byzantium and, a Eusebian might suppose, brought the Spirit thither.)

Where I'm running into obstacles is that I don't think Luke-Acts ... worked. I think Luke-Acts ended in Marcion. Atwill should expect the second-century Emperors, Flavian or Antonine, implicated in Marcion or at least in Luke. But I don't see that: not in contemporary histories, which are still good up to Cassius Dio and maybe even Herodian; and not in the Church writings, which start getting good in the late second-century AD. We do have Josephus, who seems to align with Luke and (Atwill argues) John. But we own four gospels - and that's just in the canon. Luke finished, at best, in third place (behind Mark and probably Matthew, I'd add Peter). Also we have the Revelation at Patmos which is no proRoman text.

The Christian Church is not something an Emperor can much control. The Constantines made some effort, and they may even have believed that the Flavians had endorsed Luke-Acts, confusing that with the other way 'round; but the Constantines' Christendom descended into Arius' Eunomianism and down to failure. Maybe Theodosius I?

UPDATE 12/11