billd89 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 25, 2023 4:17 pmA single 4th C AD inscription to semi-fictional then-largely mythic character (Apollonius) of the 1st C isn't very interesting to me.
The date of the inscription is not known.
But the 4th C. Jesus inscription would be just as, if not much more, credible with all the papyri evidence. So no, you haven't persuaded anyone here, either.
About the chronology of the papyri evidence -------- in his book "God's Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts" (2018) Brent Nongbri writes:
Epilogue p.269
"Although a few Christian books may be as old as the 2nd century,
none of them must be that old ... The drive to have older and
older Christian manuscripts, however, shows no signs of abating".
(6) "The All" as a technical term in the NHL appears to follow Plotinus' use in the Enneads
The term "the All" is used more than 200 times in the Enneads of Plotinus (MacKenna translation). The term is also plastered throughout many texts of the Nag Hammadi Library. To what extent might this indicate that the authors of the texts in the NHL which use the term "The All" were familiar with the Enneads of Plotinus? For instance the term occurs 22 times in the The Gospel of Truth.
Does anyone have an opinion on this?
Rubbish. "The All" does not originate in The Enneads;
That was never the claim. The claim is that the term permeates the Enneads. As such you could say the term was popularised by Plotinus' use of it.
The term also appears to permeate the NHL. What is your explanation for this? That the mid 4th century NHL scribes and editors were reading a few references in Philo?
billd89 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 25, 2023 4:17 pmA single 4th C AD inscription to semi-fictional then-largely mythic character (Apollonius) of the 1st C isn't very interesting to me.
The date of the inscription is not known.
I accept the qualification of Jones [1980]: a date within the 3rd-4th C range is correct. It's probably an inscription c.350 AD ; maybe AI will settle it one day more precisely, but you won't be pleased with those results.
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Tue Jul 25, 2023 10:40 pmThat was never the claim. The claim is that the term permeates the Enneads. As such you could say the term was popularised by Plotinus' use of it.
The term also appears to permeate the NHL. What is your explanation for this? That the mid 4th century NHL scribes and editors were reading a few references in Philo?
No, that's definitely your framing here (which is wrong, simply): I would never say Plotinus is responsible for the term because that's wrong also. The 4th C. collector(s) of the NHL preserved works hundreds of years older, but those works had been edited (as you admit) over several centuries. As it goes: 'old stuff'.
Philo was a product of 1st C. BC scholarship: his teachers were likely born c.50 BC. His use of The All is merely consistent with what he learned, 'old stuff.' Philo's library only survived because Church Fathers saved it, recognizing hints of their own prehistory and aspects of the theosophy in their Savior's origins. The concept of 'The All' neither originates from nor is any way dependent on Philo, either; he was just one exponent of an older metaphysical expression.
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Tue Jul 25, 2023 10:32 pm
That was never the claim. The claim is that the term permeates the Enneads. As such you could say the term was popularised by Plotinus' use of it.
The term also appears to permeate the NHL. What is your explanation for this? That the mid 4th century NHL scribes and editors were reading a few references in Philo?
No, that's definitely your framing here (which is wrong, simply): I would never say Plotinus is responsible for the term because that's wrong also.
Again you're arguing against your own strawman. What other work in antiquity employs the Hellenistic technical term "The All" over 200 times? My argument is that this excessive employment by Plotinus popularised this technical term. Dig? Obviously the term existed before Plotinus. But Plotinus' highly systematic use of the term in a specific technical sense is novel. At least that's what I think.
The 4th C. collector(s) of the NHL preserved works hundreds of years older, but those works had been edited (as you admit) over several centuries. As it goes: 'old stuff'.
That's the contemporary mainstream view and I disagree with it. A generation prior to the mid 4th century collectors / editors of the NHL the second most miraculous event on planet earth happened. The first was the life of IS XS. The second was that the NT Story Book about IS XS was sponsored and circulated by a Roman emperor as a political instrument in the Roman empire. Sometime during Constantine's rule the Greek speaking elites suddenly and unexpectedly discovered that they were now bound by a "Holy Writ". That the Roman empire was now to be bound together in a centralised monotheistic state cult.
But the NHL Editors remained completely unconcerned with this momentous event. They just drearily continued to copy books from centuries ago without any comment about the Christian state church. What did they write about the "XS" in the NT?
They wrote in NHC 11.1 - "But our generation is fleeing [Alexandria and going 400 miles up the Nile to Nag Hammadi] since it does not yet even believe that the XS is alive."
Some gnostic gospels (for example Trimorphic Protennoia) make use of fully developed Neoplatonism and thus need to be dated after Plotinus in the 3rd century.
Some gnostic gospels (for example Trimorphic Protennoia) make use of fully developed Neoplatonism and thus need to be dated after Plotinus in the 3rd century.
Well, no. 'Someone said' does not make it so. Plotinus raised in a milieu of Egyptian Gnosticism, exposed to and (logically) taught by 2nd C Gnostic teachers who had learned the previous generations' lessons, pushes many of "his" ideas back +60-100 years earlier. The "first systematic philosopher of" something presumes there was an awful lot of unsystematic teaching, already generations in the making. I'm surprised you need this explained to you.
Some gnostic gospels ...need to be dated after Plotinus in the 3rd century.[28][29]
28. Plotinus, a native of Lycopolis in Egypt, who lived from 205 to 270 was the first systematic philosopher of [Neo-Platonism], Turner, William (1913). "Neo-Platonism" . In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 10}. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Quoting the Cafflics' Encyclopedia (of that modernist Pope Pius X), now?
Origen (c.248 AD) also uses the term many, many times in response to Celsus (c.175 AD); the Logos Alēthēs may have been composed in Alexandria, and Celsus probably knew of (Jewish) Logos-theology. Plotinus came much, much later; despite your fervid imaginings, Plotinus (c.270 AD) is really -- ahem -- not influential here.
Freerk Jan H. Berghuis, Divine Descent: Rhetoric, Linguistics and Philosophical Theology in Origen, Contra Celsum 4.1-22, PhD [2020],p.261:
In (29) we also encounter the qualification Origen uses rather frequently to indicate God as having a supreme position: ὁ ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεός (‘God who (reigns/ judges) over all’).234 Other qualifying expressions that are used by Origen, indicate God as the creator and governor of the universe: ὁ τῶν ὁλῶν δημιουργός (‘the creator of all’) and ὁ τῶν ὁλῶν θεός (‘the God of all’).235
234 See e.g. in text (29) above; the combination is used 103x in Contra Celsum. Chadwick usually renders the phrase as ‘the supreme God’. In the Fiedrowicz & Barthold edition it is more precisely translated as ‘der über alles waltenden Gott’.
235 With some variants in 1.20.13; 1.25.23; 1.25.39; 1.30.15; 1.56.34; 2.9.24; 2.51.54; 3.3.7; 3.5.13; 3.15.11 etc.
billd89 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 26, 2023 5:35 pmThe "first systematic philosopher of" something presumes there was an awful lot of unsystematic teaching, already generations in the making. I'm surprised you need this explained to you.
Plotinus set the systematic foundation for what later 4th century Christians would repackage as their "Holy Trinity".
Plotinus (204/5 – 270 C.E.), is generally regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism. He is one of the most influential philosophers in antiquity after Plato and Aristotle.
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The Three Fundamental Principles of Plotinus’ Metaphysics
The three basic principles of Plotinus’ metaphysics are called by him ‘the One’ (or, equivalently, ‘the Good’), Intellect, and Soul (see V 1; V 9.). These principles are both ultimate ontological realities and explanatory principles. Plotinus believed that they were recognized by Plato as such, as well as by the entire subsequent Platonic tradition.
