Most Manuscripts are not Primary Sources

[StephenGoranson]

None of the mss you listed, some as "possibly," qualify as "primary sources" in the manner that *you* used that same category when dismissing history that you don't like, don't find "neatened" to your liking.

You don't have, imo, any primary sources for, e.g.,
Constantine inventing Christianity
or for
all New Testament apocrypha being written by pagans after the canon of New Testament was, in some folk's minds, closed.

(PS. Some groups have an open canon. E.g., LDS/Mormons' canon iiuc is, at least theoretically, open.)

[Leucius Charinus]

None of the mss you listed, some as "possibly," qualify as "primary sources" in the manner that *you* used that same category when dismissing history that you don't like, don't find "neatened" to your liking.

When I am investigating the NT apocryphal (NTA) manuscripts (such as the NHL) and their authors then these represent my primary evidence / sources. The extremely hostile writings of the "Fathers" (heresiologists who write AGAINST the authors of the NTA) are obviously classed by the historical method as secondary evidence / sources. Do you understand this at all?

If I were investigating the "fathers / heresiologists" then the writings of these identities would be primary sources. But I am not investigating the heresiologists. I am investigating the NTA and the authors of these NTA writings.

You don't have, imo, any primary sources for, e.g.,

all New Testament apocrypha being written by pagans after the canon of New Testament was, in some folk's minds, closed.

There is in existence a whole stack of physical Coptic language codices containing NTA writings in the mid to later 4th century and that stack is getting bigger and bigger with more manuscript discoveries over the centuries. What do the laws of probability have to say?

We have no complete NTA codices from the 3rd century. All we have is a handful of papyri fragments which have been dated by paleography in isolation to the epoch prior to the Nicene council. Arguments have been made that the upper bounds of most of these handful of NTA papyri fragments may be extended to the earlier 4th century.

Constantine NTC Bibles (325-337 CE)

Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are dated to the 4th century and some scholars perceive these to be either exemplars of the Constantine NT Bibles or a copy of them. If this is true then NTC codices like these were being circulated by the Christian emperors during the Christian revolution of the 4th century (325-381 CE).

My claim is that the time frame allows the mid 4th century NTA manuscripts to be a reaction to these early 4th century NTC codices. There are differences in the books included in these NTC Bible codices when compared to later NTC bible codices which reflect the Festal list given by Athanasius.

From this I could suggest that Constantine wanted to have his edition "canonised" but he failed to achieve this before his death. Some changes in the contents were introduced later in the 4th (or perhaps subsequent) centuries.

The later succession of Christian emperors saw to the preservation of the NTC Bible codices in their imperial libraries and scriptoria. OTOH the (pagan) resistance to the Christianisation of the empire had no choice but to consign their (treasonous / seditionist) NTA codices to burial in the earth. Thus the NHL.

The heresiogical literature

The earliest physical manuscripts containing the heresiological literature are more often than not a thousand years removed from the century in which the supposed "autographs" were composed. With respect to the history of the NTA and the "heretical authors" of the NTA this entire class of literature represents secondary evidence.

You may subscribe to the immaculate transmission of the manuscript of the "heresiological Fathers" from antiquity to the middle ages. But I remain critically skeptical of this claim and suspect that it is more reasonable to view heresiology not as history but rather as pseudo-historical propaganda of the Christian victors in their struggle to impose a veneer across a massive controversy over the (pagan) reception of the NTC "Jesus and Apostles Story Book" in the 2nd quarter of the 4th century. This controversy involved IMHO an avalanche of NTA books --- "Other Jesus and Apostle Story Books" which the emperors and the Nicene church did not like.

[Leucius Charinus]

PeterLC above,Thu Nov 23, 2023 5:40 pm and Fri Nov 24, 2023 1:58 pm, seems to be advising us to ignore fragmentary texts including quotations in other authors. (Use the texts we have--but those are the texts we have.)

I have provided examples in an attempt to clarify my position but seemingly without success. I am not advisng you to ignore fragmentary texts including those which are quotations in other authors. I may sound like a broken record but my advice is to be very careful in distinguishing between primary and secondary evidence.

If we are investigating texts (such as the Gospel of the Hebrews) then on the one hand those texts which are extant (in either a fragmented or a complete state) in ancient manuscripts are to be classed as primary sources (wrt the study of the text).

On the other hand texts by other authors which preserve in them quotations of such texts are to be classed as secondary sources. The earliest extant manuscipts for these secondary source quotations (from the "Fathers") are mostly over a thousand years removed from antiquity.

Christian Texts with no extant separately transmitted (primary) manuscripts:

Gospel of the Hebrews 80-150 No primary text
Gospel of the Ebionites 100-160 No primary text
Gospel of the Egyptians (Greek) 100-160 No primary text *
Gospel of the Lord (Marcion) 130-130 No primary text
Gospel of the Nazoreans 100-160 No primary text
Gospel of Bartholemew Late No primary text
Apocalypse of Peter (Greek) 100-150 No primary Text

* There is a separate Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians in the NHL.

Elsewhere, PeterLC advises us to use classical research methods.
Many or most Dead Sea Scrolls are fragments. P.Oxy. 4009 and 5575 are fragments. Should we ignore such?

No of course we should not ignore such fragments. The question is whether we have any such fragments for the texts listed above - including the Gospel of the Hebrews. I am not aware of any primary sources for any fragments considered by scholarly consensus to be a fragment for any of the texts listed above.

Quotations by, say, Jerome are to be ignored?

Quotations by Jerome represent a secondary source not a primary source. I am not advocating to ignore the secondary sources. What I am advocating for is to properly distinguish between the primary and secondary sources. And to allocate far more weight to the primary sources than to the secondary sources. IMO this is what the historical method requires us to do.

2) If anyone tries to discredit and demote all sources that do not agree with a peculiar fixation about Constantine--even while having no good sources for that peculiar fixation about Constantine--then a reader may reasonably regard such effort as bogus.

Are you advocating that primary and secondary sources are to be treated as having equal weight?

[ebion]

When I am investigating the NT apocryphal (NTA) manuscripts (such as the NHL) and their authors then these represent my primary evidence / sources. The extremely hostile writings of the "Fathers" (heresiologists who write AGAINST the authors of the NTA) are obviously classed by the historical method as secondary evidence / sources. Do you understand this at all?

If I were investigating the "fathers / heresiologists" then the writings of these identities would be primary sources. But I am not investigating the heresiologists. I am investigating the NTA and the authors of these NTA writings.
...
There is in existence a whole stack of physical Coptic language codices containing NTA writings in the mid to later 4th century and that stack is getting bigger and bigger with more manuscript discoveries over the centuries. What do the laws of probability have to say?

I strongly agree in another thread and argue that we are only now getting to see the real gems in the NHL.

We have no complete NTA codices from the 3rd century. All we have is a handful of papyri fragments which have been dated by paleography in isolation to the epoch prior to the Nicene council. Arguments have been made that the upper bounds of most of these handful of NTA papyri fragments may be extended to the earlier 4th century.
...
Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are dated to the 4th century and some scholars perceive these to be either exemplars of the Constantine NT Bibles or a copy of them.

"Sinaiticus and Vaticanus": Not a chance - Sinaticus (a.k.a. Codex Simonides) the author pointed out is a 19 c. production. Vaticanus was so bad Erasmus rejected it in the 16 c. and may not be much earlier. But your arguments still hold.

The later succession of Christian emperors saw to the preservation of the NTC Bible codices in their imperial libraries and scriptoria. OTOH the (pagan) resistance to the Christianisation of the empire had no choice but to consign their (treasonous / seditionist) NTA codices to burial in the earth. Thus the NHL.

And thank-God for the NHL; and it wasn't sequestered by the Vatican and Askenazis so we get to read them.

This controversy involved IMHO an avalanche of NTA books --- "Other Jesus and Apostle Story Books" which the emperors and the Nicene church did not like.

And if you combine them with throwing out the Faulines as MarcionOrLater, they lead to a very different Christianity.

[StephenGoranson]

Of course not all sources and mss have equal weight.
Nor do they neatly fall into two categories, I suggest.
Nor, afaIk, do they support an imagined factory of Constantine pagan minions producing all NT apocrypha.

[DCHindley]

That you can at least understand (or even contribute analogy) to my claims indicates one of the major issues in honest public discussion. This IMO is encapsulated in Daniel Dennet]s criteria as follows:

How to compose a successful critical commentary:

• You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.”

Wasn't this also what J D Crossan claims he has done with the social stratification theories of Kautsky & Lenski when he came up with his own Kautsky-Lensky hybrid model, in Birth of Christianity? I had difficulty locating where he said that his aim is to build up the opposing view to its greatest effect, before criticising that scholar. It may have been in a Methodology exchange on Crosstalk2, or in the book Birth of Christianity (1998).

Adultering and twisting the ideas expressed by others to better express one's own ideas is something I accused J D Crossan of doing with the sociological theories of Gerhard Lenski (Power & Privelige) and John Kautsky (Politics of Aristocratic Empires), when he conjured up his "Lenski-Kautsky model" of class in Birth of Christianity.

It was posted on the Historical Jesus Materials & Methodology seminar sponsored by Jeffery Gibson of Crosstalk fame.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/hjm ... dolgy/info [dead link, now]

Due to now broken link, I have added the table comparing Crossan's statements about "the Kautsky-Lenski" model to what John Kautsky & Gerhard Lenski actually said:

What Crossan says:	The rest of the story:
Crossan adopts what he call the "Lenski-Kautsky model" of class, drawing on Gerhard Lenski's Power & Privelige and John Kautski's Politics of Aristocratic Empires.	However, the definition of social class is that of G. E. M. de Ste. Croix ("Karl Marx and the History of Classical Antiquity", Arethusha 8, 1975), not that of either Kautski or Lenski.
On pg 153 of BOC, (Marked Social Inequality), Crossan quotes Lenski to establish your three distinctive features causing the increase of social inequality, to support his contention that 1st century Galilee was feeling such pressure.	Crossan leaves out the context of Lenski's statement, which is when an agrarian society replaces an advanced horticultural society, and not the situation we have in 1st century Galilee, which Crossan says is the commercialization of an advanced agrarian society.
Crossan quotes Lenski, pg 199, to illustrate the mushrooming process of urbanization in newly agrarian societies.	Crossan does not mention that Lenski elsewhere on the same page of his book indicated that these "fairly large" cities were more often than not national capitals, with perhaps five hundred thousand permanent residents at the very most, with the vast majority of towns being much more modest in size, leaving the vast majority of the population unaffected by mushrooming urbanization.
In support of the feature of monetization, Crossan quotes Lenski, pg 207, to the effect that the introduction of money in agrarian societies offered aristocrats the opportunity to use it to indebt and consequence exploit the peasants.	However, Lenski also says on the same page that "in the rural areas especially, the use of money was an infrequent experience, especially for peasants," so in other words, while money lending could be "highly rewarding", it appears also to have been the exception rather than the rule.
On page 155, Crossan quotes Lenski (pg 271) to the effect that "[t]he Peasant Class, that vast majority of the population, was held "at, or close to, the subsistence level."	Crossan ignores the fact that all Lenski's examples are drawn from medieval Europe, China and Japan.
Crossan adds the comment "so that their appropriated surplus could support elite conspicuous consumption".	While the phrase "conspicuous consumption" is based on a passage elsewhere in Lenski's book, the comment is not relevant to the kind of situation he is analyzing, and thus seems inserted to score an ideological point.
At pg 157 (Agrarian Commercialization), Crossan begins to quote John Kautsky, pg 25, note 31, to the effect that “ ‘ancient Athens and Rome ... are commercialized’ agrarian empires.”	However, Crossan leaves out the rest of note 31, "To be sure, the term 'traditional' has also been applied to empires existing up to the emergence of modern states, like the Chinese, Russian, and Ottoman empires into the nineteenth century ... not to mention ancient Athens and Rome -- all of which are commercialized and hence *modern*" societies, not advanced Agrarian.
On pg 158 Crossan emphasizes that Kautsky represents aristocrats as living off peasants surplus in a one sided manner with no reciprocity involved for the Peasants.	However, G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, who Crossan earlier cited approvingly for a definition of "class", published The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981, a year before Kautsky), takes a far more lenient view of the exploitative relationship between aristocrats and peasants than does Kautsky.
Crossan does not cite de Ste Croix's 1981 book in the bibliography of BOC.	This gives the impression that Crossan should have been aware of this publication with a far more lenient view, but chose not to present that view, and thus left to wonder why de Ste. Croix is so reliable when he defines "class" but not so reliable when he defines economic relationships between classes.
On page 158 Crossan discusses (localized) peasant revolts as characteristic of commercialization of agrarian empires (relying on Kautsky alone in this matter, although representing it as inherent in both Lenski & Kautsky.	However, Lenski speaks only of "inconsistent status" individuals as leaders of revolutions, and only on pp 88 & 409, and Crossan again ignores de Ste. Croix who indicated that crushing levels of economic exploitation did not characterize the Roman empire until the 4th century CE.
On pg 166 Crossan asks a rhetorical question: "What if priests, prophets, scribes, bureaucrats, or retainers, acting institutionally or charismatically, instigate an *ideological* revolution?"	Crossan is essentially endorsing an ideological perspective by presuming an "ideological revolution" rather than the political revolution such sociological changes might normally be expected to produce.

Crossan managed to gut and bowdlerize both Lenski and Kautsky, making the use of these authors invalid since they really did not say or even imply what Crossan said (or wanted to believe) they did.

I posted the original complaint about Crossan's spin doctoring in 2014 and the table later in 2021. The Materials & Methodology seminar might have been archived by someone, somewhere, and was sometime around 2000.

DCH

[Leucius Charinus]

Of course not all sources and mss have equal weight.

My argument has been that primary sources in general are relatively more valuable to an historical investigator than are secondary sources.

Nor do they neatly fall into two categories, I suggest.

But they may, I suggest.

Nor, afaIk, do they support an imagined factory of Constantine pagan minions producing all NT apocrypha.

The current paradigm has as its chronological framework that all the NT apocrypha (NTA) were composed more or less continually over the first four centuries with a focus on the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The chronology of the current paradigm is supported only by the attestations found in the secondary evidence of the heresiologists / church fathers and in one paragraph of Porphyry's "Life of Plotinus" (16). It is not directly supported by the chronology of the primary evidence (such as the NHL).

I have suggested an alternative theory for which a chronology based directly upon the primary evidence stacked up in the middle of the 4th century. I regard the secondary evidence of the "Fathers" above, for which the earliest extant manuscripts are in general a thousand years or more removed, as corrupt. These middle-age heresiological sources are either mistaken or fabricated.

The mainstream paradigm for the authorship of the NTA has been part of the Christian education system since the Christian revolution of the 4th century. It has AFAIK never been questioned. The mainstream paradigm is not contravened by the chronology of the primary manuscript evidence but neither is the alternative paradigm.

The notion that a factory of Constantine (era) pagan minions (reacting against the Constantine Bibles) produced the NHL and the NTA is supported by the state and chronology of the primary evidence.

[Leucius Charinus]

It was posted on the Historical Jesus Materials & Methodology seminar sponsored by Jeffery Gibson of Crosstalk fame.
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/hjm ... dolgy/info [dead link, now]

I remember Doctor Jeffery Gibson well from the old BC&H forum into which he made various famous incursions.

[StephenGoranson]

Again, no good evidence that all NT Apocrypha were written in 4th century and following by Constantine-started factories of pagan minions.
Some available books, for whatever reasons, just didn't get into the canon. Or canons (there is some variation).
Attempting to disqualify all evidence you dislike is not generally-accepted as if good methodology.

[Leucius Charinus]

Again, no good evidence that all NT Apocrypha were written in 4th century

Again, the good evidence is the primary evidence = remnants of physical NTA manuscripts. There appears to have been an avalanche of NTA codices in the 2nd quarter of the 4th century. The alternative hypothesis suggests that there were no earlier NTA. Which is what we find. We find a stack of NTA manuscripts surviving from that epoch.

The mainstream theory postulates there were earlier NTA books on the basis of the secondary evidence. I think that is a major problem with the mainstream theory. Secondary evidence such as the manuscripts attributed to Irenaeus, Epiphanius or the like.

A Catalog of Epiphanius's Blunders, Misrepresentations and Outright Lies
http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2017/ ... nders.html

Is there a catalog for Irenaeus?

and following by Constantine-started factories of pagan minions.

Constantine did not start the NTA factories (like the NHL). The NTA books were produced by the resistance against the emperor's agenda. Earlier you wrote:

StephenGoranson wrote: ↑October 27th, 2023, 2:39 am

Plus, you, Peter LC, overestimate the ability of tyrants to erase all opposing views. Again, I mention Stalin, one of the most murderous dictators, perhaps we can agree. Even he did not prevail in ending all underground, opposition writing, called samizdat.

This is a reasonable analogy if I understand the samizdat. Stalin was not in control of the underground printing press. Analogously Constantine was not in control of the NTA codex production scriptoria. Other secondary evidence suggests Bullneck sent the army out on search and destroy missions for prohibited books. The alternative hypothesis views the NTA authors as the underground resistance during the first part of the Christian revolution of the 4th century (325-381 CE)

Some available books, for whatever reasons, just didn't get into the canon. Or canons (there is some variation).

There are variations in the transmission history of the NT canonical literature. But there is a vast difference between a collection of Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, Alexandrinus, Bezae etc and the collection of tracts in the NHL. There will always be a very small overlap area between the NTC and the NTA. But I would draw your attention outward to the two distinct collections NTC and NTA. The question in my mind is "what are the NTA"? Who wrote them and when. What were their means, motives and opportunities.

The mainstream theory tells me to accept the secondary evidence of Tertullian that the "Acts of Paul" was composed in the 2nd century by a Christian presbyter "out of love for Paul". No author names are provided in the secondary evidence to identify the author. We are told he was kicked out of the holy universal church as a result of his contribution to Christian literature. Jerome later fraudulently adds this happened in the presence of the Apostle John. All this patristic stuff represents secondary (or tertiary) evidence. Added to that the heresiological literature of all the "Fathers" represent hostile (secondary) witnesses.

Attempting to disqualify all evidence you dislike is not generally-accepted as if good methodology.

I am attempting to follow the historical method which values adherence to the primary evidence as a generally accepted good methodology. The secondary evidence (of the Fathers) is at the foundation of the 1st/2nd/3rd/4th century NTA authorship chronology. Using the secondary evidence at the foundation of a chronological model should be the last resort. Attempting to reconstruct a chronological model for the history of the NTA (NHL) authorship should concern itself with the primary evidence. We have that.

The NHL is a 4th century time capsule that contains stuff very close to the primary evidence. OTOH Fathers Irenaeus and Epiphanius et al are time capsules from the Middle Ages or later that contain hostile secondary evidence.

Isn't it time to skeptically question the "Fathers" on the value and the integrity of their (secondary) accounts of their political enemies (the authors / preservers of the NTA)? Pious forgery is fraud after all.