Indisputable Historical Facts About Early Christianity

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Jax
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Re: Indisputable Historical Facts About Early Christianity

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:11 am
Jax wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:06 amI am actively looking for any deviation of κύριος being anything other than an abbreviation of the first letter followed by a case ending in the first three centuries of the common era. Thanks for pointing out the KOY variant, what dating is proposed for that text?
Bonner's manuscript is dated to century II.
Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:02 am Also, there is this, which Paap also lists.
This one, containing the abbreviation with the rho (which is not part of the case ending), is dated to century III.
Cool! Thanks for that! :cheers:

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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Indisputable Historical Facts About Early Christianity

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Jax wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:14 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:11 am
Jax wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:06 amI am actively looking for any deviation of κύριος being anything other than an abbreviation of the first letter followed by a case ending in the first three centuries of the common era. Thanks for pointing out the KOY variant, what dating is proposed for that text?
Bonner's manuscript is dated to century II.
Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:02 am Also, there is this, which Paap also lists.
This one, containing the abbreviation with the rho (which is not part of the case ending), is dated to century III.
Cool! Thanks for that! :cheers:
No problem.

Ha, just found a weird one I had not noticed before. A fragment of the Epistle of Barnabas, dated tentatively to century IV or V, thrice abbreviates κύριος down to its first letter only, Κ.
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Irish1975
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Re: Indisputable Historical Facts About Early Christianity

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Peter Kirby wrote: Wed Apr 21, 2021 9:57 pm I'd say roughly 175 CE (pre-Irenaeus) is where "the great divergence" of theories begins. Before, pictures vary greatly. After, not so much. Irenaeus references so much that is so recognizable about Christianity ever since (e.g. four gospels), but the texts before Irenaeus have much greater variety. The text of Irenaeus itself is available in many places only in Latin, but there is a serendipitously ancient Greek fragment that attests to its antiquity.
In line with Peter’s observation, here is one possible approach—

1. The evidence we have for what “Christianity” was prior to about 175 CE is (a) poorly attested, (b) multifarious inasmuch as it is attested, and (c) taken on its own terms, gives little or no evidence of being a group of movements or traditions that were likely to converge and coalesce around a single “canonical” narrative about a unique figure, i.e. Jesus of Nazareth, Jewish messiah, exalted Lord, sender of apostolic witnesses to his earthly life, death, resurrection, and prophesied return at the Eschaton.

2. Therefore, the least disputable and most definitive event in the formation of “early Christianity” (i.e. a phenomenon that we are explicitly defining as the precursor and substantial cause of Christianity-as-world-religion (Nicea to the present), can only be the publication of the first edition of the 27-text New Testament, as reflected in the manuscript tradition going back to the 4th century, and more or less as argued by David Trobisch (consistent ordering and grouping of the 4 Gospels and the other 23 texts; use of Nomina Sacra; editorial attribution of Apostolic & Subapostolic & Fraternal “authorship” of all NT texts; codex format; pairing with LXX under the novel OT/NT concept). Other moments in the genesis of Christianity both before and after this publication—such as the earliest collection of the Pauline epistles, or the composition of the earliest Gospel, or the imperial establishment (i.e. in physical Churches) and “canonization” (i.e. legal mandating of) of the Christian Bible by emperors and/or their bishops—are both less indubitable and less important. That is, Christianity could have turned out more or less as we have it without these events having occurred. But we cannot imagine it turning out in its present form unless this 27-book anthology had entered the historical record when it did.

3. Attempts to establish a chronology of events and/or persons prior to the great publication in the 3rd quarter of the 2nd century are bound to be speculative, theological, apologetic, anti-theological, anti-apologetic, or otherwise not soberly historical. A few reasons for this “great divergence” are that we have too much evidence of the wrong kind, too little evidence of the right kind (e.g. archeological), etc., and there is always and inevitably entanglement of modern historical readings of the NT with modern theological readings of it.
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Jax
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Re: Indisputable Historical Facts About Early Christianity

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:32 am
Jax wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:14 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:11 am
Jax wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:06 amI am actively looking for any deviation of κύριος being anything other than an abbreviation of the first letter followed by a case ending in the first three centuries of the common era. Thanks for pointing out the KOY variant, what dating is proposed for that text?
Bonner's manuscript is dated to century II.
Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:02 am Also, there is this, which Paap also lists.
This one, containing the abbreviation with the rho (which is not part of the case ending), is dated to century III.
Cool! Thanks for that! :cheers:
No problem.

Ha, just found a weird one I had not noticed before. A fragment of the Epistle of Barnabas, dated tentatively to century IV or V, thrice abbreviates κύριος down to its first letter only, Κ.
Interesting! Are there any other examples of this with other NS in this text?
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Indisputable Historical Facts About Early Christianity

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Jax wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:44 amInteresting! Are there any other examples of this with other NS in this text?
Yes! The word θεός is reduced to Θ, too. It is a small fragment, so it appears those are the only nomina sacra. Both οὐρανέ and Ἰσραήλ occur in a profane sense, so an abbreviation would not necessarily be expected in those cases (though, of course, exceptions to this "rule" abound).
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Re: Indisputable Historical Facts About Early Christianity

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Jax wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 6:39 am Does that make it a fact?
There are no facts, only interpretations.
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Re: Indisputable Historical Facts About Early Christianity

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There are no facts, only interpretations.
That statement explains 5 years of Giuseppe at this forum.
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Jax
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Re: Indisputable Historical Facts About Early Christianity

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Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 9:13 am
Jax wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:44 amInteresting! Are there any other examples of this with other NS in this text?
Yes! The word θεός is reduced to Θ, too. It is a small fragment, so it appears those are the only nomina sacra. Both οὐρανέ and Ἰσραήλ occur in a profane sense, so an abbreviation would not necessarily be expected in those cases (though, of course, exceptions to this "rule" abound).
Looking like we have a lazy scribe on our hands.
Charles Wilson
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Re: Indisputable Historical Facts About Early Christianity

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Giuseppe wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 9:18 am
Jax wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 6:39 am Does that make it a fact?
There are no facts, only interpretations.
Is that fact or only your Interpretation?

Hegelians. Go figure.
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Jax
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Re: Indisputable Historical Facts About Early Christianity

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7: 1 Clement has no mention of a person named Clement in the text.

8: The "sudden and successive calamitous events" mentioned by the writer of 1 Clement are useless as a means of dating when the text was written due to the vagueness of the passage.

9: In 1 Clement the writer mentions Rome as the source and Corinth as the destination.

10: In the NT we have letters addressed to Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, and Italy but nothing addressed to, or received, from the Levant, Asia, or North Africa.
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