This thread has gone completely off the rails.
Is there another quote from Julian specifically (insinuating) about manipulating grammar?
We can even credit Julian the Apostate's critique of them, when he insinuates that they manipulated grammar any which way they chose.
Maybe my eyes are failing me. Julian in the quotation I see you've provided does no such thing. You seem to have backtracked since making the comment...
Julian the Apostate "Against the Galileans".
"But you are so misguided that you have not even remained faithful to the teachings that were handed down to you by the apostles. And these also have been altered., so as to be worse and more impious, by those who came after. At any rate neither Paul nor Matthew nor Luke nor Mark ventured to call Jesus God."
Is this the new champion of Unitarianism and Oneness? Julian was raised as an Arian Christian under the tutelage of Eusebius of Nicomedia. He abandoned that creed for paganism, and sought to stamp out Christianity, labeling Christianity as an apostasy from Judaism. That work was thoroughly refuted by Cyril of Alexandria (in ten books), Gregory Nazianzus (2 invectives), etc. Gregory of Nyssa's address Against Eunomius and a host of early Christian writings could be leveled against this type of statement.
Why not add the narrative that follows that quotation in Julian's account? Because Julian continues to write:
But the worthy John, since he perceived that a great number of people in many of the towns of Greece and Italy had already been infected by this disease, and because he heard, I suppose, that even the tombs of Peter and Paul were being worshipped ----secretly, it is true, but still he did hear this,----he, I say, was the first to venture to call Jesus God. And after he had spoken briefly about John the Baptist he referred again to the Word which he was proclaiming, and said, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." But how, he does not say, because he was ashamed. Nowhere, however, does he call him either Jesus or Christ, so long as he calls him God and the Word
You three find him to be a credible source? But in reality, John was refuting the error of Cerinthus, whose teachings were plaguing the churches of Asia Minor, in his opening chapter and throughout the book.
If TRJM wants to contest this dating, he might go to:
...Pulls out a specious article claiming the early Christians were "Unitarians"...
.. It seems to me that some posters wear their ignorance as a badge of pride at Carm.
In truth, it is Trinitarian "Christianity" which came relatively late, at least 300 years after the death of Christ. The Earliest Christians were the Unitarians (the apostles, the first converts, the Ebonites, etc..)
It didn't and maybe you and Steven can take some time reading them firsthand instead of making vague generalities. It was Arianism, not Trinitarianism, that sprung up in the fourth century. Its founder, Arius was a fourth century Deacon of Alexandria
.
The Ebionites were heretics and exposed as such by the disciples of the Apostles and their students after them.
Ignatius, Polycarp (Lat.,
in dominum nostrum et deum Iesum Christum), Barnabas, Mathetes, Aristides, Justin Martyr, Pseudo-Clement, Tatian, Melito of Sardis, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyon, Athenagoras of Athens, Clement of Aelxandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus of Rome, Origen of Alexandria, Gaius of Rome, Novatian, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Commodian, Dionysius of Alexandria, Dionysius of Rome, Arrnobius of Sicca, Methodius of Olympus, Alexander of Alexandria, and Eusebius of Caesarea all attribute Deity to Christ, calling him "God." We can infer that this was likely also the case of Theognostus of Alexandria, based upon surviving fragments.
Theophilus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, Novatian, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Dionysius of Alexandria, Dionysius of Rome, Methodius of Olympus, etc. specifically speak of the "Trinity" long before your timeline allows.
