Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

http://markusvinzent.blogspot.com/2017/ ... rs-of.html

Looks to be an interesting book.

He also seems to believe the short recension is the precursor to the middle and long, and even then it's not the original.

perseusomega9 wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2017 10:05 am http://markusvinzent.blogspot.com/2017/ ... rs-of.html

Looks to be an interesting book.

He also seems to believe the short recension is the precursor to the middle and long, and even then it's not the original.

Ignatius ("Iggy" as his friends called him in grade school) is a tough fellow to get one's head around. You might recall the discussions that were going on a while ago and my meager attempt to analyze the long and middle recensions in Greek & English, plus made a stab at comparing these to the shorter Syriac versions of his letters where they exist.

I went in agreeing with the "consensus," that the middle recension was likely the original, the longer an expansion of the middle, and the shorter an extreme simplification of the middle.

There were so many mystifying differences, and similarities, between the middle and long recensions, that I came out thinking the middle & long recensions were both by the same author, the longer being "re-done" at a much later date.

This leaves open, in my evil mind, the possibility that both were commentaries on a common document that was read aloud to "Ignatius" and the two versions were in fact his commentary by means of "free association" (whatever came to his mind, one thing after another, triggered by key words in the common document).

This was reinforced by the realization that the man (men?) had misheard some Greek words. The middle and longer have quite a few of these cases where similar sounding Greek words are found in about the same relative place in the documents, which causes the free association to digress.

Who wrote that common document, and what language it was written in, I cannot pretend to be competent enough to answer, although I suspect it was Greek due to the similar sounding but entirely different words in the corresponding places of both recensions.

Now I came away with the impression that the shorter Syriac forms of the letters, where they existed, were far less sophisticated than the supposed letters exchanged between Jesus and Abgar, or Paul and Seneca. The shorter Syriac versions seemed, to me at least, to be pretty simple, like a student's attempt to translate something from Greek into Syriac but without knowing very much about Greek.

Since I openly acknowledge my almost complete ignorance about Greek composition, I guess that makes me an "expert!"

DCH

I think that as letters we should always give preference to the shortest recension. Christian letters are absurdly long.

Generally, ancient letters are quite short and rarely go over one page (Seneca, Ep. 45.13; Cicero, Fam. 11.25.2). https://books.google.com/books?id=miAzD ... nt&f=false

If it weren't for the fact that dogma was added to the Ignatian letters the short letters would naturally be assumed to be the most authentic.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Tue Dec 12, 2017 6:16 pm Generally, ancient letters are quite short and rarely go over one page (Seneca, Ep. 45.13; Cicero, Fam. 11.25.2). https://books.google.com/books?id=miAzD ... nt&f=false

Don't forget that folks like Cicero published their own correspondence, editing them to exclude the matter that was irrelevant or related to a now-disfavored individual. Mr. Trobisch, who readily speaks to you but not to me, discusses this in his book on Paul's Letter Collection. Letters published in such a collection were brief because they were intended to preserve some turns of phrase or maxims the author had made famous, or his impressions about well known personalities, etc., and no more.

The Pauline letters are long-winded because of all the Christ dogma that have been thrown in as commentary. Seneca or Cicero don't have to comment on their own eloquence, although they may want to file away the stuff that does not emphasize it. "So and so had really bad breath ..." just doesn't stay in the letters.

The Egyptian garbage dump papyri are brief because the writers were much simpler folks than someone like Seneca. Statements like "Beloved wife! Sell all your jewelry and send me the money so I can buy armor for resale to the corn fleet sailors! I think I can really score if I had funds!" really can't be simplified any more than it is.

DCH

I am not buying it. When you have Church Fathers say 'Marcion cut' from the Pauline letters = they were shorter. This makes sense because I can't follow the underlying thread of a letter like 1 or 2 Corinthians. It's basically a short letter with tons of new stuff added. Same with Ignatius. Sorry have to do my favorite thing in the world FIFA 18 India vs China.