300 Years That Never Was

Here are some starting points for researching the proposals that the Early Middle Ages didn't exist, and various studies of the falsification of history.

There were no Dark Ages (600-900) -- that seems like the easiest aspect to establish -- and therefore there was no "re-birth" since there was no "death" of Roman-era knowledge and mythology in the first place.

There are many theories, such as that Jesus didn't exist, or that even the apostle St. Paul didn't exist, or that all continents were once joined, or that heavier-than-air flight is possible, or that time and free will are illusory, or that drugs have always been the inspirational wellspring for religions. Why should the theory that the early middle ages didn't exist warrant any discussion in when investigating the origins and nature of religion?

Radical Critic Edwin Johnson wrote an important work, Antiqua Mater, in 1887, which included a little questioning of Paul's historicity, and then wrote in 1894 (7 years later) "The Pauline Epistles: Re-studied and Explained", which started by questioning the historicity of all of Paul's epistles, and continued on to question the reality and existence of all of European history prior to the invention of the printing press.

My modified version of the theory of Tradition is that, prior to the Enlightenment, no one believed in the modern literalist version of Jesus; they entirely didn't think about Christianity in such mundane terms; it was essentially all concerned with mystic experiencing and derived from it, theological doctrine.

According to the modern story, the ancients were stupid and supernaturalist, believing in Christian miracles, while moderns are smart and skeptical, and know that the Bible just reports materialist goings-on, embellished. The truth is the opposite: the ancients were smart, knowing that Christianity was basically mystic-state mythic allegory; the moderns are stupid, mistaking Christianity for literalist claims and projecting their own stupid, clueless literalism onto the pre-Enlightenment era.

The theories of no-Jesus, no-Paul/Apostles, and no-Early Middle Ages share a compatible spirit. Debaters of the historicity of Jesus should at least be aware of this. Hermann Detering is staying in the loop on this subject, and he's an important Radical Critic familiar with the no-Jesus theory.

Debating about dating is of central importance to the question of Jesus' historicity and to the broader yet fully relevant question of reconstructing the actual history of Christian origins. Therefore the general subject of time jumping in historical dating timelines is a topic that partly overlaps with and is relevant to the subject of Jesus' historicity -- especially when the subject of time jumping focuses specifically on the history of Christendom.

Detering saw this "new" time-jumping theory of Illig and crew, and pointed out to Uwe Topper, author of the book "Time Falsification", that the author of the important skeptical work Antiqua Mater, Edwin Johnson, proposed the same theory back in 1894, in "The Pauline Epistles: Re-studied and Explained".

There are many conspiracy theories to debunk. Many aspects of many of these theories fit together well. Aspects of the subject of time jumps are relevant to the origins and nature of Christianity, because the period of Western religion before the printing press was richly packed with the heritage of Greco-Roman religion, which was likely more experiential, mystic, and allegorical than the Christianity of the modern era.

Heribert Illig has a new book, Who Turned the Clock Ahead? How 300 Years of History Were Invented, on the subject of time jumping in historical dating timelines. There are some good webpages in English.

The topic of "The New Chronology" seems to focus mostly on debunking the existence of the years 600-900 (Illig's years are 614-911). That is the mild, conservative, modest theory of adjusting our calendars. Edwin Johnson takes it to a radical extreme, which is why I have trouble grasping what Johnson is saying.

To understand Johnson, the more moderate hypothesis of repudiating the existence of the years 600-900 is an effective stepping stone. I instantly liked doing away with 600-900; that solves at once many cognitive dissonances I have had. Now I can be better equipped to grasp the possible ramifications of Johnson's more sweeping reconceptualization of history.

The online resources about the nonexistence of the Dark Ages (the years 600-900) enable continuing on to study the possible ramifications of Johnson's The Pauline Epistles, which seems to be surprising even to the would-be radicals who are putting forth the minor and slight calendar adjustment of eliminating the years 600-900. Johnson seems to propose their "new chronology" -- squared. The New Chronology proponents are being surprised and humbled upon discovering that Johnson was there first and puts their supposed radicalism to shame.
Johnson doesn't provide an effective summary of what exactly he is proposing. I won't know until my third thorough reading and summarization of Johnson, but it seems that he's saying -- at the extreme -- that the entire corpus of ancient Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian writings was written in the monasteries around 1550 -- or something like that but more moderate.