Thomas Scott - Irenaeus Never Existed

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Thomas Scott - Irenaeus Never Existed

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But we may even doubt whether the name of Irenaeus, which figures so prominently in the ecclesiastical history, attaches to a real personage. The word Ειρηναίος, as observed by Eusebius, and dwelt upon by the learned writers I have before referred to signifies 'peaceful' and afiixed to a treatise designed to put down heresies and induce concord of religious sentiment, it may very well have been adopted by the writer as a designation appropriate to the purpose of his work, so that we may be entitled to end our examination with the supposition that it is quite possible we have nothing before us, under the heading of Irenaeus, but an anonymous production, written when or by whom we know not, saying that it came out at some time antecedent to Tertullian and Eusebius. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&h ... now+not%22
In treating of Irenaeus have pointed out that there is room to question the existence of churches in Gaul during the second century, and it will be_ seen hereafter that these alleged early persecutions cannot be said to rest upon any true historical basis https://books.google.com/books?id=DdUwA ... 22&f=false
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
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Re: Thomas Scott - Irenaeus Never Existed

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I can't access much, but p.28 has -
... In treating of Irenaeus I have pointed out that there is room to question the existence of churches in Gaul in the second century ... https://books.google.com.au/books?redir ... ume&q=Gaul
lol. Snap^

and p.13 -
... body to be placed near it." (On the Resurrection of the Flesh," c. xlii, ; "On the Soul," c. xxxix. li.. lvii.). If we are reading Tertullian, and not introduced monkish fables, the author is shown to be positively untruthful, as well as possessed of an inordinate love ... https://books.google.com.au/books?redir ... Tertullian
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Re: Thomas Scott - Irenaeus Never Existed

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FWIW P Oxy 405 Supports the traditional date of Irenaeus.

This was discovered after Thomas Scott wrote.

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Re: Thomas Scott - Irenaeus Never Existed

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andrewcriddle wrote: Fri Jul 13, 2018 10:24 pm FWIW P Oxy 405 Supports the traditional date of Irenaeus.
Hi Andrew. In what way does P Oxy 405 support the traditional date of Irenaeus?
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Re: Thomas Scott - Irenaeus Never Existed

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MrMacSon wrote: Sat Jul 14, 2018 12:22 am
andrewcriddle wrote: Fri Jul 13, 2018 10:24 pm FWIW P Oxy 405 Supports the traditional date of Irenaeus.
Hi Andrew. In what way does P Oxy 405[/url] support the traditional date of Irenaeus?
It dates from c 200 CE therefore it implies a date of Against Heresies (of which it is a fragment) of no later than say 185 CE. (I'm defining Irenaeus here as the author of Against Heresies. P Oxy 405 does not establish the status of the name Irenaeus i.e. whether or not this was a birth name baptismal name or pseudonym.)

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Re: Thomas Scott - Irenaeus Never Existed

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andrewcriddle wrote: Sat Jul 14, 2018 3:14 am It dates from c 200 CE therefore it implies a date of Against Heresies (of which it is a fragment) of no later than say 185 CE ...
Cheers. On what basis does P Oxy 405 imply a date of Against Heresies of no later than say 185 CE?
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Re: Thomas Scott - Irenaeus Never Existed

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MrMacSon wrote: Sat Jul 14, 2018 4:05 am
andrewcriddle wrote: Sat Jul 14, 2018 3:14 am It dates from c 200 CE therefore it implies a date of Against Heresies (of which it is a fragment) of no later than say 185 CE ...
Cheers. On what basis does P Oxy 405 imply a date of Against Heresies of no later than say 185 CE?
It’s a fragment of Against Heresies.
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Re: Thomas Scott - Irenaeus Never Existed

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Peter Kirby wrote: Sun Jul 15, 2018 4:05 am It’s a fragment of Against Heresies.
I realise that. I would like to know if it has been specifically dated and, if so, on what basis. I have recently been wondering if paleography of early Christian texts such as P Oxy 405 is a biased methodology b/c it is both self-referencing and based on assumed or likely dates.

It is said to have been the earliest witness to the text of the New Testament when it was discovered [2006 interview with Dan Wallace (about textual criticism and in which he discussed the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts he started in 2002)].

In that interview, Wallace says -

.. scholars [have been urged] to take a closer look at the minuscules. Of course, they are so inaccessible that the trumpet sound hardly causes a stir ...

... much work needs to be done on the lectionaries. Every once in a while, scholars will speak of the value of the lectionaries, but they still are hardly getting looked at.

Other tasks remain, such as making a more careful distinction between a patristic commentary and a minuscule text with commentary. Sometimes the difference between classifying a manuscript as a father or a minuscule with commentary is very slight. Kurt Aland reversed his own decisions on such matters more than once. But since minuscules are considered far more important than fathers, the very label can be the death knell of an otherwise important manuscript.

As well, there are several other kinds of witnesses to the text of the New Testament that have been ruled out of court. No one considers them any more, but they should be given their due. For example, P.Oxy 405, if I recall, is a late second century/early third century papyrus that includes a quotation from Matt 3. At the time of its discovery, it was the oldest manuscript to witness to the text of the New Testament. But it doesn’t get mentioned because there is no classification for it.

Unfortunately, we are very much in the dark regarding versions. There are probably thousands of versional witnesses to the New Testament that have not been catalogued ...
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DBW: .. There is a widening chasm between the church and the academy over biblical studies in general and textual criticism in particular. When the Jesus Seminar produced The Five Gospels it rattled people because they had no context in which to place the discussion, no sense that these scholars were for the most part too liberal for most liberals, and no knowledge that conservative scholarly treatments of the life of Jesus existed ... More recently and more relevant for textual criticism, Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus has shaken up a lot of people. But if we tell people that they don’t need to worry about such tomes, that everything is under control, we simply confirm them in their prejudices
Peter Head made a comment at the bottom of that webpage
... POxy 405 is a ms of Irenaeus; and Irenaeus is cited at Matt 3.17 certainly in dependence on this manuscript [different from Irlat cited in v16].
I don't understand what what Head wrote means, eg. how can Irenaeus be "cited at Matt 3.17" ?? or how is that premise related to "certainly in dependence on this manuscript" ??


Head had written a little about P.Oroxy 405 in in 1995 relation to it being used to date P64 -

Peter M. Head (1995) 'The Date of the Magdalen Papyrus of Matthew (P. Magd. Gr. 17 = P64): a response to C.P. Thiede' Tydndale Bulletin, 46(2); 251-285.

Available as an immediately downloaded Word.doc ie. when on clicks on the link http://tyndalehouse.com/tynbul/library/ ... rusMat.DOC


There is also

Andreas Scemidt (1991) Der Mögliche Text Von P. Oxy. III 405, Z. 39–45 New Testament Studies 37(1), p. 160

Extract
Die Entstehung des P. Oxy. III 405 ‘is not later than the first half of the third century, and might be as old as the latter part of the second.’ Er umfaßt sieben Fragmente und zeigt unter anderem eine Parallele zu Mt 3. 16 f. Ich befasse mich mit den Zeilen 39–45 ['It includes seven fragments and shows, among other things, a 'parallel' to Mt 3. 16 f. I will deal with lines 39-45'].

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... 66825C2B5C


John Bartram has a webpage dedicated to P. Oxy 405: https://sites.google.com/site/originsof ... ynchus-405

He refers to Scemidt's paper, but has

Abstract: Grenfell and Hunt's reconstruction of the text of P. Oxy. III 405, lines 39-45, is based on J. A. Robinson's identification of it as a fragment of Irenaeus, Contra Haereses. The papayrus text is too short, however. A clearly visible abbreviation sign leads instead to the conclusion that the text preserves a variant of Matt 1:22-25, and represents a Christianization of the LXX citation made there. (German) (c) Religious and Theological Abstracts


So that's three separate passages of gMatthew mentioned in relation to P. Oxy 405: Matt 1:22-25; 3:16; 3:17,


Head's 1995 paper has footnote 76 which is -
OxyPap III (1903) 10-11 and plate 1 (P. Oxy 405 = Cambridge University Library MS Add. 4413). Grenfell & Hunt edited it, as an unidentified theological work; the manuscript was subsequently identified as Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. iii.9 by J.A. Robinson in Athenaeum (Oct. 24, 1903), noted and re-edited in OxyPap IV (1904) 264-65.
and fn 77 -
For a recent brief discussion of the date of the work [P.Oxy 405], see D.J. Unger & J.J. Dillon, St. Irenaeus of Lyons Against the Heresies (Ancient Christian Writers No. 55; NY: Paulist, 1992) 3-4. Cf. Roberts’ later comment that the treatise must have reached Oxyrhynchus ‘not long after the ink was dry on the author’s manuscript’, C.H. Roberts, Manuscript, 53; see also his ‘Early Christianity in Egypt: Three Notes’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 40 (1952) 94
Previously, fn 63 says -
... Roca-Puig appealed to P. Oxy 1179, P.Oxy 661, P. Dura 2, P. Oxy 405 [to date P64].
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Re: Thomas Scott - Irenaeus Never Existed

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Addendum to my previous post

Charles E Hill, 'Irenaeus, the Scribes, and the Scriptures. Papyrological and Theological Observations from P.Oxy. 405'

https://www.academia.edu/10485335/Irena ... b._version_

Likely from Irenaeus : life, scripture, legacy, 2012 / edited by Sara Parvis & Paul Foster; based on a 2009 conference held at the University of Edinburgh http://www.worldcat.org/title/irenaeus- ... /833459893

P.Oxy. 3.405 (vH 671), consisting of fragments of a papyrus roll containing parts of Against Heresies, 3.9.3, was first published in 1903. At that time Grenfell and Hunt could say that “it is probably the oldest Christian fragment yet published”.9 (Oxyrhynchus Papyri III, 10). This of course is no longer the case, though P. Oxy. 405 can still claim the distinction of being the oldest Christian fragment yet published which contains a New Testament quotation.

Written in what C. H. Roberts calls “a handsome professional hand,”10 the fragment has also gained notoriety for its being so close chronologically to its original. Book three of Against Heresies was written sometime in the 180’s, and Roberts was very confident that P.Oxy 405 should be dated to the late second century.11 In his memorable words the manuscript “reached Oxyrhynchus not long after the ink was dry on the author’s manuscript”.12 Peter Rodgers thinks “It is not impossible that Irenaeus himself had written the fragment”.13

If P.Oxy. 405 did not actually originate in Lyons (penned by Irenaeus himself or not), the manuscript surely will be a first, or at latest, second generation copy of one which did originate there under Irenaeus’ own direction or supervision. Finally, P.Oxy. 405 has been of interest to NT text-critical scholars because its quotation of Matthew 3.16-17 is closer to the form of text in Codex Bezae than even the reputedly faithful Latin translation of AH allows, for it reveals, among other things, the reading, “you are my beloved Son” rather than, “This is my beloved Son.”

But P.Oxy. 405 reveals another very interesting and potentially significant scribal phenomenon which has received almost no attention, namely, the wedge-shaped marks, or “diplai,” in the left margin, each corresponding to a line of text.14

9 B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part 3 (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1903), 10.

10 C. H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt, The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy 1977 (London, 1979), 23.

11 Roberts, Manuscript, Society and Belief, 23, it “certainly comes from the later part of the [second] century.” It is a “scholarly” text: “One of the criteria Turner employs for identifying the ‘scholarly’ texts is the presence of critical signs and other scribal practices” (23-24), and P.Oxy. 405 has them, as we shall see.

12 Roberts, Manuscript, Society and Belief, 53. Of course, we really do not know when it reached Oxyrhynchus. Roberts elsewhere suggests that the ms may have been produced in a scriptorium either in Alexandria – perhaps in relation to the school founded by Pantaenus – or in Oxyrhynchus itself (24).

13 Peter R. Rodgers, “Irenaeus and the Text of Matthew 3.16-17,” in J. Harold Ellens, ed., Text and Community. Essays in Memory of Bruce M. Metzger , two vols., Volume 1 (Sheffield: Phoenix Press, 2007), 51-55, at 51.

14 Grenfell and Hunt apparently judged that these were in 'the original hand of the scribe'. Having examined the papyrus myself (8 August 2008), with the help of the icam iris video enlarger in the conservation department at the Cambridge University Library, I can confirm that this is the case. The diplai exhibit the same color and density of ink, the same quality of line as the written text, and they correspond to the scribe’s use of space-filling diplai in the text at column i, lines 10 and 14


https://www.academia.edu/10485335/Irena ... b._version_
Then, p.6 -
The use of diplai, or any other marginal markings, to indicate quotations was thus not the norm. And P.Oxy. 405 turns out to be not only 'possibly the earliest Christian example', but among the earliest of all examples. Of other surviving Christian theological works from the early period, many, such as the mss of The Shepherd of Hermas, do not contain quotations per se. Others do contain quotations but no marginal markings.22

I have, however, so far come across six more, non-Biblical Christian manuscripts from the seventh century or earlier which use the diplai They are:

  • P.Mich. xviii.764, a two-column papyrus roll, dated by the editor to the second or third century,23 so, very much contemporary with P.Oxy. 405. It is a fragment of an unidentified homily or treatise. The left margin of the right-hand column contains diplai marking citations of Jer. 18.3-6 and 1 Cor. 3.13.

    23 Cornelia Eva Römer, “7.64. Gemeinderbrief, Predict oder Homilie über den Menschen im Angesicht des Jüngsten Gerichts,” in Cornelia E. Römer and Traianos Gagos, eds., P. Michigan Koenen (= P. Mich. Xviii). Michigan Texts Published in Honor of Ludwig Koenen (Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1996), 35-43.

  • Paris Bib. Nat. P.Gr. 1120, a late third-century,25 two-column papyrus codex found at Coptos, Egypt, containing two of Philo’s works.26 As Roberts pointed out, it is clearly a Christian copy of Philo, as shown by the nomina sacra abbreviations for God, Son, Father, Spirit, & Lord ...

    25 The original edition by the discover (V. Scheil’s in Mémoires publiés par les membres de la Mission Archéologique francaise au Caire 9.2 (Paris, 1893), v) dates it to the sixth century ... [but others] including A. S. Hunt, Roberts, Turner, and Hurtado, date it to the third century

    26 A papyrus fragment given the Gregory-Aland number P7, variously dated anywhere from the late third to the sixth century.30 This is actually not a NT manuscript but an unknown work which contains a quotation of Luke 4.1-2, marked with marginal diplai.31
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I have, so far, found no NT papyrus manuscript which uses diplai to mark quotations.35 The first Biblical manuscript I know of which does so, also the only one of the period which does so consistently, is Codex Vaticanus (early to middle fourth-century).
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4. Were the Marks Original to Irenaeus (or his Scribe)? [p. 14]

Arguing against their originality would be the fact that the next earliest known fragments of Against Heresies, the Jena fragments, from a very fragmentary third- or fourth-century roll (portions of A.H. 5.3.2-13.2) found at Apollonopolis, P. Jena. Inv. 18 and 21,52 do not have them.53

One might easily imagine, however, that by book 5 this scribe, like the scribes of the Philo treatises mentioned above, and of Sinaiticus, might have simply given up. Also, the Jena fragments display a less careful hand than P.Oxy 405.54

Perhaps this scribe did not have the skill or the interest required to produce a more scholarly volume such as P.Oxy 405. On the other hand, the earliest and perhaps textually most important of the Latin manuscripts of Against Heresies, Codex Claromontanus of the 9th century, does use marginal markings, though of a somewhat different shape, more like an elongated “s”
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5. Diplae Sacrae?
In any case, it is significant that the author or the scribe of P. Oxy. 405 (whether Irenaeus himself or another) is very conscious that Irenaeus is at this point in the manuscript quoting a literary text. Do the diplai tell us anything more? In particular, would the scribe have marked Irenaeus’ quotations of the writings of Ptolemy the Valentinian, or pagan authors, or only quotations of what Irenaeus (or the scribe) regarded as Scripture? It is a pity that no more of the manuscript survives, from which alone we might be able to gain a definitive answer to this question. But the surrounding evidence may help us form a reasonably solid provisional answer. The only discussion of this phenomenon from antiquity which I have to this point discovered, is that of Isidore of Seville (560-636) in his Etymologies 1.21.1356 compiled between 615 and the early 630’s. In his section on critical marks, he says of the diple, “Our scribes place this in books of churchmen to separate or to make clear the citations of Sacred Scriptures.”57 Isidore links the diple to the marking of quotations of Sacred Scripture, and mentions no other forms of literature.
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At least in manuscripts where we can make the distinction, then, Isidore’s comment proves true. Early Christian scribes adopted this siglum for marking quotations of Holy Scripture. Apart from Vaticanus’s probably unwitting marking of Aratus in Acts and its partial marking of 1 Enoch in Jude, we have uncovered no instance of a Christian scribe (or scribe of a Christian text) marking non-Scriptural quotations – this pertains even to the Christian copy of Philo mentioned above' ...

Conclusions

... First, this copy of Irenaeus’ writing is made on a roll. As Roberts and many others have observed, Christians used the codex for their Scriptural writings. Larry Hurtado says, “there is no New Testament text copied on an unused roll among second- or third-century Christian manuscripts.”70

Second, the words of Scripture contained in this roll are distinguished from the words of Irenaeus by diplai in the margin.
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Re: Thomas Scott - Irenaeus Never Existed

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MrMacSon wrote: Mon Jul 16, 2018 12:27 amI don't understand what what Head wrote means, eg. how can Irenaeus be "cited at Matt 3.17" ?? or how is that premise related to "certainly in dependence on this manuscript" ??
He is saying that Irenaeus is cited in the textual apparatus of important modern critical texts of Matthew, and that the citation of Irenaeus at Matthew 3.17 for the "you are" variant (as opposed to "this is") certainly depends upon that variant having been found in papyrus Oxyrhynchus 405. (Wallace was trying to give an example of a manuscript with important information about the NT text which is generally ignored because it is not a straight up manuscript of the NT itself, and Head is saying that, while this does happen, this particular manuscript is not an example of it happening, since it is cited in the critical texts. I can see Irenaeus being cited at Matthew 3.17 for "you are" in the Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum, for example.)
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