Grondin's GJW Roundup

[Peter Kirby]

It's pretty good:

http://www.gospel-thomas.net/x_gjw2.htm

Larry Hurtado takes the opportunity to beat up on Karen King some more:

http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2014/ ... he-issues/

For having the audacity to publicize and for refusing to declare things conclusively settled and for failing to make everything happen and happen now, etc.

Most ironic quotation from the post: ' This was the classic “rush to judgment.” '

From someone who knows a thing or two about rushing to judge...

[Stephan Huller]

Larry Hurtado is wonderful person. Really, he's a wonderful, wonderful person. What's great about these people is that if you ask them privately or not so privately - would you accept C14 results if they contradicted a modern dating? They will squirm and then say no or change the topic. So what's the point in having a debate? Karen should just test the ink of the John fragment even if that means using up the whole text in order to get a conclusive dating for the pair. I will never be convinced by the opinions of religious zealots on anything which might affect their religious zeal. Just test the fucking Gospel of John fragment and that will decide matters.

[steve43]

I didn't know that John Holmes wrote a Gospel.

[Roger Pearse]

Stephen Emmell, a very senior Coptologist, has also written in praise of Christian Askeland's work. His breakthrough, I think, was to realise that there was a bit of data nobody else had thought about.

Another interesting angle that I read somewhere: Karen King may have been specifically targeted by the forger. That is, rather than being a scammer herself, she was selected by the scammer precisely because he believed, based on her past publications, that she would find the forgery more convincing than perhaps another scholar. Which is a valuable insight into the method of the forger. It wasn't an accident that she was the person it was sent to. The point was also made that, rather than sending it elsewhere when she hesitated, he just waited, until she convinced herself that it might be real.

[Roger Pearse]

This article by Peter Head makes some unusual and interesting points about the forger's approach.

[Peter Kirby]

... which has apparently lead some interesting points of your own (nice post, btw):

http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2014 ... fe-affair/

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi All,

A whole clique of Christian theologists appear to have made complete fools of themselves by dismissing the ink and DNA evidence and promoting crazy and silly forgery theories regarding this document. I think this marks the end of Christian theology pretending to have anything to do with science and history. They are simply not interested in scientific analysis and history, but only interested in promoting rhetorically their religious fantasies -- specifically in this case that a god-man named Jesus existed and he was not interested in having sex with women.
Hopefully, this will make people realize that they are by and large a medieval guild dedicated to masturbatory Scholasticism.

[Peter Kirby]

What do you believe that "the ink and DNA evidence" (sic) demonstrate?

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi Peter,

For one thing, it means that this fragment has more likelihood of being genuine than 99% of the fragments that these so-called scholars accept as genuine without any scientific dating of ink or materials at all. Apparently, it is okay to accept documents and evidence as genuine if they like what is in them. Their only criteria for genuineness is if it matches their preconceived and biased notions of history.

These Christian theologians claim that every third letter of every other line matches the fourth letter of every second letter in the empty space of this or that fragment and therefore cannot be authentic. Of course they have never demanded that any other documents, especially the oldest copies, of the NT gospels be subject to the same scientific testing. Thus, they are satisfied with the cache of fake and untested documents that they use to propagate their generally anti-scientific supernatural hypotheses.

Why are they not demanding that codex Vaticanus, Alexandrinus or Sinaiticus and P45,P46,P47 or P66 be tested. Every day Christian Theologians use these and hundreds of other manuscripts and fragments to prove their pet theory about this or that development of the New Testament. They are declared to be the oldest documents of their kind and yet they have never undergone any scientific testing to prove their age or genuineness. These so-called scholars should be ashamed to say they know anything about Christian history at all when they do not demand scientific testing of documents, except in the case of documents that do not support their dogmatic theories.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

What do you believe that "the ink and DNA evidence" (sic) demonstrate?

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi Peter,

I think this is interesting from http://www.examiner.com/article/jesus-s ... ed-genuine

On April 11, 2014, Scientific American reported that an announcement from the Harvard Divinity School stated the document is probably genuine.

It went on to say that, “the testing of the papyrus, the ink, the handwriting and the grammar, however, all point to the document's authenticity, according to a recent statement from the Harvard Divinity School”.

There was also a technique called micro-Raman spectroscopy utilized to help determine the authenticity of the fragment.

Timothy M. Swager, a chemistry professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The New York Times, that there is absolutely no evidence that the fragment had been doctored up.

Scientific American reported that, “Swager used infrared spectroscopy, which analyzes the low-frequency light from an object, to see if the ink showed any inconsistencies or variations that would suggest it was a recent forgery. None were found”.

Test revealed that the carbon in the ink matched samples of other papyrus documents that date from the first to eighth centuries A.D.

Thus the only chemist to actually test the ink, a chemist at what is probably the best scientific institution in the country, M.I.T., found it to be genuine and found no evidence of it being a recent forgery. You can read about infrared spectroscopy here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_spectroscopy

Those people who rejected the authenticity of the fragment without any evidence of fraud in the first place, now reject the scientific evidence and repeat their paranoid assumptions and baseless forgery theories over again or make up new ones. These pseudo-scientists are like astrologers rejecting the findings of astronomers because it does not match the zodiac signs they were taught.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin