Most Manuscripts are not Primary Sources

[Peter Kirby]

Is this a joke or something?

We must assume your own sincerity and, likewise, that of ebion.

[ebion]

Is this a joke or something?

We must assume your own sincerity and, likewise, that of ebion.

I assure you both of my sincerity, and that of Douglas del Tondo, the author of the videos I posted links to. He asks the question Was Paul the Apostle Jesus Condemns in Revelation 22:

I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: (Rev. 2:2 [KJV])

which we answer affirmatively. His research is excellent, his book is excellent, and I find a wealth of good new information engagingly presented in his videos. He is amongst the best in world at deliniating how Constantine made the Churchunists what they are today, and I'll sincerely stand behind any work of his I link to or quote.

I build on his work (with hommage, gratitude and credit due) to go further and show that the Faulines are MarcionOrLater, not the Paul in Acts. And I want to elaborate the inclusion of the worship of Mollech into the Roman cult by Constatine, and some of his predecessors, that make the Pontifex Maximus what he is today.

As for attacks on my sincerity, I'll shrug them off and let my writing speak for itself: poof.

[Leucius Charinus]

When Nag Hammadi codices were bound tells us that the writing--composing, translating, penning, copying--was all earlier, but, by itself, not how much earlier.

Setting the theoretical autographs aside for one moment the dating of the manufacturing of the NHL tells us that a certain group of people in the mid 4th century at Nag Hammadi -- perhaps elite members of the Pachomian monastery system --- were investing a great amount of time in the industry of codex manufacture.

Several may well have been composed--and appear to have been--well before Constantine was even born.

These writings are claimed to have existed earlier than Constantine primarily because testimonies of so-called "earlier heresiologists" are adduced as evidence for the claim. For example the manuscripts of Irenaeus are adduced in support of the late 2nd century existence of a copy of the "Apocryphon of John". (Ditto for the gJudas). I understand this claim.

My point is that we also have the obligation to adduce evidence against this claim. The evidence against this claim is that the manuscripts for Irenaeus which contain these attestations are not in Greek but rather in Latin, and that these manuscripts are almost a thousand years removed from the late 2nd century. One cannot just wave around a 11th century Latin manuscript for Irenaeus as certain proof for the claim that the Apocryphon of John or the Gospel of Judas were circulating in the late 2nd century. Hypothetically these tracts could have been circulating in the late 2nd century. But we don't know for sure. The only thing that we know for sure is that the C14 tells us that these texts were in circulation in the mid 4th century.

Gnosticism, as some NH mss show, certainly began long before the 4th century.

Again the prior existence of gnosticism is adduced by the attestations found in the so-called "early heresiologists" and in one instance in the writings of Porphyry ("Life of Plotinus [16]). Is it possible that later Christians who preserved this literature made some interpolations into it? Hypothetically this is quite possible IMO.

People who write against Christianity are often not subtle. Lucian, Julian, and some writers closer by.

Some I would argue do write subtly. I would point to "The Acts of Peter snd the Twelve Apostles" which is found as the first tract in Codex V! of the NHL. The Codex 6 contains another seven tracts all of which are undeniably non Christian.

Attempting to wrench whole large groups of texts into mere--and sub rosa--responses to Constantine is, to me, unpersuasive.

There is also the matter of the use of the "nomina sacra" found riddled throughout the NHL. My argument is that the authors (or editors) of the NHL found the "nomina sacra" in the imperial codices (perhaps such as Vaticanus or Sinaiticus -- both supposedly from the 4th century). And in their responses to the books they found in these imperial codices (not just the NT but the LXX) as a result also employed the same (or somewhat modified) "nomina sacra".


I can accept that you are unpersuaded concerning a hypothetical 4th century date for the NT apocrypha (including the NHL and the gnostic stuff). Can you accept that I am unpersuaded concerning a hypothetical late 2nd century date for some of these texts (mentioned above)? Or do you maintain that the attestations in a 11th century Latin ms of the Greek writer (Irenaeus) as being "historical" and "beyond dispute"?

And trivialization. And reductionism.

There are many historical theories for the authorship of the large group of Christian canonical texts. Also AFAIK there is no general historical theory for the even larger group of Christian apocryphal texts. A curious feature of both groups of texts is that we do not know the names of the authors (except, some will claim, Paul). Why is it that we do not know the names of the authors of practically all of Christian literature? Or indeed when they wrote. How can there be a consensus in such a vacuum of authors' names and composition dates?

And perhaps due to a faulty, biased inappropriate-for-history algorithm. And differing levels of proof-requiring.

We have discussed primary and secondary evidence and appear to be largely in agreement in the above discussion. The crunch arrives with the classication of the 11th century Latin manuscripts for the Greek writer Irenaeus in which we find attestations supposedly for ante-Nicene NT apocryhpal writings. I class the Irenaeus manuscripts as secondary evidence and as a result do not place the same value on it as I do on the 4th century Coptic NHL manuscripts.

The Irenaeus evidence is from a hostile (heresiologist) witness, exists only as a Latin translation of Greek original and is 900 years removed from the supposed autograph. The Coptic NHL evidence is from the epoch I am making a study of - the Christian revolution of the 4th century. The Coptic NHL texts may be one translation step away from any Greek originals but, as a collection of texts bound in numerous codices, it is as close as we have to the earliest NT apocryphal material (in bulk) so far discovered.

[Leucius Charinus]

Is this a joke or something?

We must assume your own sincerity and, likewise, that of ebion.

I assure you both of my sincerity, and that of Doulas del Tondo, the author of the videos I posted links to.

My comment was in regard to the difference between apologetics and secularism, and I posted a link to his website: https://www.jesuswordsonly.org/index.html

There can of course be sincerity in both secularism and apologetics but I also find it useful to distinguish between them:

Secularism is the principle of seeking to conduct human affairs based on naturalistic considerations, uninvolved with religion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism

Apologetics is the religious discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologetics

[StephenGoranson]

Peter/LC/etc.
No, if I may say so, we are *not* largely in agreement. Among other things, about your parsing and application of primary and secondary evidence.
No, evidence about Irenaeus is not limited to a medieval ms. There are other (additional) indications, as I repeatedly noted. Sources Chrétiennes ed., fragments, testimonies. A web of data. Like it, and like him, or not. Not the sort of complex stuff remotely-easily fake-able. Not interpolations coordinated by some fantasy agent.
No, it is not good method to dismiss evidence you don't like and pretend to have evidence for what you propose.
No, Coptic translation from Greek is not a trivial matter. Not a detail to be "neatened" by you into irrelevance for your prior hypothesis.
No, neither you nor anyone you know could invent Origen's works, including awareness of gnostics.
No, not ok to question most ("coincidentally" inconvenient-to-you) dates but, then, flip a switch, and declare a large swath of texts--as if!--all securely dated to mid-4th century, without evidence, to suit your bizarre fixation.
Yes, there are attempts to fake history--such as yours.

[Leucius Charinus]

Peter/LC/etc.
No, if I may say so, we are *not* largely in agreement. Among other things, about your parsing and application of primary and secondary evidence.
No, evidence about Irenaeus is not limited to a medieval ms. There are other (additional) indications, as I repeatedly noted. Sources Chrétiennes ed., fragments, testimonies. A web of data. Like it, and like him, or not. Not the sort of complex stuff remotely-easily fake-able. Not interpolations coordinated by some fantasy agent.

The machinations of ecclesiastical history have been faked before. Consider the agent of the 9th century labelled as "Pseudo-Isidore" who, with a team, cobbled together a complex web of fakes and forgeries. It was exposed as a fraud in the 17th century, after almost 800 years of fake news:

eg: Letters 1-5 of Pope Clement, preface, Letters 1-3 of Pope Eusebius.
viewtopic.php?p=162920#p162920

There is good reason to be skeptical:

The Decretals of the Pseudo-Isidore

False Decretals is a name given to certain apocryphal papal letters contained in a collection of canon laws composed about the middle of the ninth century by an author who uses the pseudonym of Isidore Mercator, in the opening preface to the collection. For the student of this collection, the best, indeed the only useful edition, is that of Hinschius, "Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianæ" (Leipzig, 1863). The figures in parenthesis occurring during the course of this article refer the reader to the edition of Hinschius. The name "False Decretals" is sometimes extended to cover not only the papal letters forged by Isidore, and contained in his collection, but the whole collection, although it contains other documents, authentic or apocryphal, written before Isidore's time.

The Collection of Isidore falls under three headings:

• (1) A list of sixty apocryphal letters or decrees attributed to the popes from St. Clement (88-97) to Melchiades (311-314) inclusive. Of these sixty letters fifty-eight are forgeries; they begin with a letter from Aurelius of Carthage requesting Pope Damasus (366-384) to send him the letters of his predecessors in the chair of the Apostles; and this is followed by a reply in which Damasus assures Aurelius that the desired letters were being sent. This correspondence was meant to give an air of truth to the false decretals, and was the work of Isidore.

• (2) A treatise on the Primitive Church and on the Council of Nicæa, written by Isidore, and followed by the authentic canons of fifty-four councils. It should be remarked, however, that among the canons of the second Council of Seville (page 438) canon vii is an interpolation aimed against chorepiscopi

.

• (3) The letters mainly of thirty-three popes, from Silvester (314-335) to Gregory II (715-731). Of these about thirty letters are forgeries, while all the others are authentic. This is but a very rough description of their contents and touches only on the more salient points of a most intricate literary question.

Their apocryphal character

Nowadays every one agrees that these so-called papal letters are forgeries. These documents, to the number of about one hundred, appeared suddenly in the ninth century and are nowhere mentioned before that time. The most ancient Manuscripts of them that we have are from the ninth century, and their method of composition, of which we shall treat later, shows that they were made up of passages and quotations of which we know the sources; and we are thus in a position to prove that the Pseudo-Isidore makes use of documents written long after the times of the popes to whom he attributes them.

Thus it happens that popes of the first three centuries are made to quote documents that did not appear until the fourth or fifth century; and later popes up to Gregory I (590-604) are found employing documents dating from the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, and the early part of the ninth.

Then again there are endless anachronisms. The Middle Ages were deceived by this huge forgery, but during the Renaissance men of learning and the canonists generally began to recognize the fraud. Two cardinals, John of Torquemada (1468) and Nicholas of Cusa (1464), declared the earlier documents to be forgeries, especially those purporting to be by Clement and Anacletus. Then suspicion began to grow. Erasmus (died 1536) and canonists who had joined the Reformation, such as Charles du Moulin (died 1568), or Catholic canonists like Antoine* le Conte (died 1586), and after them the Centuriators of Magdeburg, in 1559, put the question squarely before the learned world. Nevertheless the official edition of the "Corpus Juris", in 1580, upheld the genuineness of the false decretals, many fragments of which are to be found in the "Decretum" of Gratian.

As a partial explanation of this it is enough to recall the case of Antonio Agustin (died 1586), the greatest canonist of that period. Agustin seriously doubted the genuineness of the documents, but he never formally repudiated them. He felt he had not sufficient proof at hand, so he simply shirked the difficulty. And it is also to be remembered that, owing to the irritating controversies of the time, anything like an impartial and methodical discussion of such a subject was an utter impossibility.

In 1628 the Protestant Blondel published his decisive study, "Pseudo-Isidorus et Turrianus vapulantes". Since then the apocryphal nature of the decretals of Isidore has been an established historical fact. The last of the false decretals that had escaped the keen criticism of Blondel were pointed out by two Catholic priests, the brothers Ballerini, in the eighteenth century.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05773a.htm

No, it is not good method to dismiss evidence you don't like and pretend to have evidence for what you propose.

Well I do have evidence for what I propose (NTA authorship > 325 CE). I propose that we should expect a mountain of mid 4th century physical NTA codex and manuscript evidence (like the NHL). And that is exactly what has been discovered.

The earlier attested existence of some of these NTA texts (like "The Secret Book of John" and "The Gospel of Judas") is found in a 11th century Latin copy of the Greek writings of the Irenaeus the Bishop and heresiologist of Lyons. There may be good reason to consider dismissing this attestation evidence.

No, neither you nor anyone you know could invent Origen's works, including awareness of gnostics.

The 4th century "Doctors" and "Saints" Basil and Gregory invented an attestation to the Clementine Recognitions in the Philocalia of Origen that was not Origen's at all. As a result all scholarship treated Origen as if he were aware of the Clementine Recognitions and that as a result it was a 2nd century work. However this invention was uncovered (see below) and next Eusebius becomes the earliest witness to the Recognitions. Today some European scholarship considers the Recognitions to have been authored by an Arian during the rule of Constantine. Which is precisely my general proposal.

Are the attestations to "The Secret Book of John" and the "Gospel of Judas" found in Irenaeus actually from Irenaeus in the 2nd century?

Harnack gave a very complete summary of all the literary parallels on the Patristic side, and his work is a standard of reference for those who approach the subject. He made, however, one bad mistake is supposing, as others had done, that the Recognitions were quoted by Origen, thus determining a literary terminus ad quem for their composition; and it fell to the lot of Dr. Armitage Robinson to show that the supposed reference in the Philocalia of Origen was not Origen's at all, but was to be credited to the
editorial hands of Basil and Gregory.

Notes on the Clementine Romances
Author(s): Rendel Harris
Source: Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 40, No. 3/4 (1921), pp. 125-145
Published by: The Society of Biblical Literature
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3259292

No, not ok to question most ("coincidentally" inconvenient-to-you) dates but, then, flip a switch, and declare a large swath of texts--as if!--all securely dated to mid-4th century, without evidence, to suit your bizarre fixation.

I have proposed that the large swathe of texts known as the NT apocrypha are post Nicene reactions to the NT and LXX codices. That is exactly what has been discovered.

I have outlined earlier what may have motivated the church to systematically interpolate or forge earlier attestations to NTA text into other literature (such as Irenaeus, Origen). The key motivation IMO was in part an attempt to remove from the political histories, the embarrassment over the utterly controversial literary reaction to the very first official circulation of the imperial Christian NT and LXX Bible codices. The bizarre machinations of the century Arian controversy are easily explained. The controversy was over prohibited books. A 4th century Samizdat.

Yes, there are attempts to fake history--such as yours.

And Red Skelton's: "Read all about it. Paper boy swindles millions"

Yes there are documented accounts where attempt to fake history were undertaken by the (Latin) church industry. Fascinating reading. eg: Letters 1-5 of Pope Clement, preface, Letters 1-3 of Pope Eusebius.
viewtopic.php?p=162920#p162920

[StephenGoranson]

"....That is exactly what has been discovered....."

In all I have read, you have not shown that.

[Leucius Charinus]

No, it is not good method to dismiss evidence you don't like and pretend to have evidence for what you propose.

Well I do have evidence for what I propose (NTA authorship > 325 CE). I propose that we should expect a mountain of mid 4th century physical NTA codex and manuscript evidence (like the NHL). And that is exactly what has been discovered.

"....That is exactly what has been discovered....."

In all I have read, you have not shown that.

I am referring here to the evidence which would be expected according to the theory. That is the predictive power of a theory to explain the chronology of the composition of the NT apocryphal manuscripts which have already been discovered.

The mainstream theory (depending on the details) expects that we should find physical remnants of NT apocryphal manuscripts in the first three centuries. The mainstream theory expects this because the heresiological material (from the middle ages) such as Irenaeus et al suggests this. The mainstream chronology is basically treating Irenaeus as an authority. That might have been OK before any of the NT apocryphal manuscripts were discovered.

The alternative theory expects that we should find physical remnants of NT apocryphal manuscripts only in the post Nicene epoch (ie after 325 CE).


WHAT DOES THE EVIDENCE SAY?:
What are the dates of the physical remnants of NT
apocryphal manuscripts so far actually discovered ?

(1) Papyri fragments from Oxyrhynchus :
http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/Apocr ... papyri.htm
Arguably all this material is all late.

(2) Complete or partial Codices from Egypt: These include the NHL, Tchacos, Qarara, Akhmim, Askew, Bruce, etc. All these codices are from the 4th century or later.


SUMMARY - Mainstream theory vs Alternative theory ---- Predictive Power

The mainstream theory predicts stuff early. It must rely on the argument that although the evidence existed over the 1st/2nd/3rd century it has perished or been lost and as a result not discovered.

The alternative theory predicts stuff late. It does not need any further or additional speculation. It claims that there is no early evidence to be discovered because the stuff only came into being post 325 CE.

[Peter Kirby]

Well I do have evidence for what I propose (NTA authorship > 325 CE). I propose that we should expect a mountain of mid 4th century physical NTA codex and manuscript evidence (like the NHL). And that is exactly what has been discovered.

This is evidence that you don't understand manuscripts.

[Leucius Charinus]

Well I do have evidence for what I propose (NTA authorship > 325 CE). I propose that we should expect a mountain of mid 4th century physical NTA codex and manuscript evidence (like the NHL). And that is exactly what has been discovered.

This is evidence that you don't understand manuscripts.

How so? Above I have just clarified that this statement relates (in regard to the current collection of physical manuscript evidence) to a comparison between the explanatory power of the mainstream paradigm and that of my alternate hypothesis. Feel free to support your claim with your reason(s).