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What Is A Historyscope?

Westerners are not only known as history ignoramuses, but double dumbass history ignoramuses when it comes to Early Christianity history. Since I'm the one-and-only Historyscoper (tm), let me quickly bring you up to speed before you dive into my Master Historyscope.

In 172 after being expelled from the Christian church for his views, Justin Martyr's converted pagan pupil Tatian of Assyria (Syria) (of Adiabene) (120-80) closes his Christian school in Rome and returns to Arbela in Mesopotamia (modern-day Arbil in N Iraq), setting up the ascetic sect of the Encratites, rejecting worldly goods, meat, alcohol, and sex, and substituting water for wine in the Eucharist, setting himself up as an independent authority against Iraeneus, Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, and Origen, pissing them off and causing all but two of his works to be later destroyed; he denies that Adam was saved, pissing them off more; he writes the Diatessaron (a harmony of the four canonical Gospels, with no effort to hide inconsistencies), then trans. it into Syriac and brings it to Arbela with him; it becomes the std. text of the four Gospels in the Syriac-speaking churches until the four separate Gospels of the Peshitta version supplant it in the 5th cent.

They worship the Marlboro Man? In 177 Smyrna-born (St.) Irenaeus (130-202) is appointed bishop of Lugdunum (Lyons) to attempt the conversion of the Druidic Gauls, and goes to Rome to plead with Eleutherius to deal with the ascetic Montanist movement in Phrygia, which extols virginity, uses Hebrews 6:4-6 to claim that sins committed after baptism cannot be forgiven, and whose prophets go into ecstasy and speak with God's voice in the first person, claiming to supersede the Gospels, which later turns on Romanized Carthaginian Tertullian (160-230), who becomes a Montanist and writes De Ecstasi; followers of Eastern Christianity are driven across the English Channel during the persecutions of Lyons, carrying it with them and founding the Celtic Church in Britain, which takes until 1172 to conform with the Roman Catholic Church in rites and ceremonies (664 in England, 1153 in Scotland and Ireland).

She loves you, yah yah yah yah? In 180 Smyrna-born Bishop St. Irenaeus of Lyons (130-202) pub. Against the Heresies (Refutation and Overthrow of Gnosis, Falsely So Called) (5 vols.); accuses Marcion and other heretics of the One Gospel Fallacy, i.e., sticking to just one gospel to justify their misguided doctrines, the Jewish Christians sticking to Matthew, the Marcionists to Luke, the Christ-denying Gnostics to Mark, and the Valentinians to John, using Ezek. 1 to solve the equation, with the immortal soundbyte "It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are, for since there are four courners on the Earth in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout the world, and the pillar and ground of the Church is the Gospel... it is fitting that she should have four pillars" (3.11.7); Irenaeus then stokes Millennium Fever with the suggestion that since 6 precedes the perfect number 7, the number 666 embodies the original, present, and final revolts against God, while Jesus' number in Greek is 888 (5.28.2); Irenaeus also becomes the first writer to name the Four Evangelists (me, myself and Irenaeus?), causing later Christian paintings to show the four Gospel writers in the four corners (of the painting) as an angel (Matthew), lion (Mark), bull (Luke) and eagle (John); he denounces the 13-page papyrus Gnostic Coptic Gospel of Judas, "The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot", which claims that Judas was the only disciple who understood and followed Christ (who mocks the others), and that Jesus actually asked Judas to betray him, and that therefore he's one cool dude; "Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom"; "Look, you have been told everything. Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star"; "You will be greater than all the others, Judas. You will sacrifice the man that clothes me"; "You will be cursed by the other generations - and you will come to rule over them"; a Coptic language copy dated to 280 is lost in the 4th cent., discovered in 1970 in a cave near El Minya, Egypt, put in a safe deposit box until it begins to deteriorate, and finally pub. in English trans by the Nat. Geographic Society in Apr. 2006; written at a time when the Romans were killing Christians while the Christian bishops actually encouraged martyrdom, the whole thing is aimed at stopping their own bishops by guilt-tripping them?

About 180 Greek poet Oppian of Corycus (Anabarzus) (born in Corycus, Cilicia) writes the 5-vol. Halieutica, a poem on fishing dedicated to Marcus Aurelius and his son Commododus; early next cent. Oppian of Apamea (Pella) (from Apamea, Syria) writes the 4-vol. poem Halieutica II, a poem on hunting, but of inferior quality - maybe all them barbarians got to him?

In 180 Assyrian Christian writer Tatian (b. 120) dies in Arbela, Mesopotamia after becoming the first to declare that God created matter by the power of the Logos: "And as the Logos, begotten in the beginning, begat in turn our world, having first created for himself the necessary matter."

In 180 Roman Catholic historian(Jew born in Jerusalem) (St.) Hegesippus (b. ?) dies after writing a refutation of Gnosticism, a catalog of heresies, and a 5-vol. treatise on Christianity (lost except for quotations by Eusebius of Caesarea), becoming the first to adduce the argument that the bishops of Rome go back to the apostles and hence all heretics are full of it?

In 180 Greek Christian theologian (St.) Melito of Sardis (b. ?) dies, leaving Homily on the Passion, which incl. the doctrine of the Harrowing of Hell, based on Bible passages in Is. 24:21-22, Zech. 9:11, Ephesians 4:8-10, 2 Cor. 2:14, Acts 2:27 and 2:31, 1 Peter 3:19-20 and 4:6, in which Christ allegedly descended into Hell and freed the righteous who died before he came, incl. Adam and Eve - the holy Mission: Impossible?

On June 28, 202 Christian bishop of Lyons St. Irenaeus (b. 130) dies in Lugdunum, Gaul (modern-day Lyons, France); martyred by Severus, according to St. Gregory of Tours; he predicts the Second Coming of Christ in the year 500.