First Century Christian Writings Missing from our Forum's Website

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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rakovsky
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Re: Wiki EarlyChristian writings Missing from our Forum'sWeb

Post by rakovsky »

Footnotes Commentary on the Epistle to the Laodicieans:
http://www.orthodox.cn/patristics/apost ... odicea.htm

I find these footnote commentaries helpful and sometimes hard to find.

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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Wiki EarlyChristian writings Missing from our Forum'sWeb

Post by Ben C. Smith »

rakovsky wrote:Footnotes Commentary on the Epistle to the Laodicieans:
http://www.orthodox.cn/patristics/apost ... odicea.htm

I find these footnote commentaries helpful and sometimes hard to find.
From that page:

This epistle, along with those to the Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Philemon were likely written during Paul's Roman captivity, about A.D. 61- 63.

I mean, wow. An assertion of this epistle as genuinely Pauline: something one does not see every day. :)
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Re: Wiki EarlyChristian writings Missing from our Forum'sWeb

Post by Ben C. Smith »

I have the Latin, an English translation, the attestation, and some parallels on this forum: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1936.
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Re: Wiki EarlyChristian writings Missing from our Forum'sWeb

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Which Prayers in the Apostolic Constitutions are Prayers 11-16 of the Hellenistic Synagogal Prayers?
Prayer 6 = Apostolic Constitutions 7:37;
Prayer 7 = Apost. Con. 7:38;
Prayer 8 = 7:39
Prayer 9 = Apost Con 8.5
Prayer 10 = Apost. Con. 8.6
Prayer 11 =Apost. Con. 8.9
Prayer 12 = Apost. Con 8.12
Prayer 13 = Apost. Con 8.15
Prayer 14 = Apos Con 8.16
# 15 =Apost 8:40
# 16 = Apost. Con. 8:41

I think it would be worth listing the Prayers' citations on the Text Excavations page, since The Apostolic Constitutions themselves are easily available online, but the list is not, unfortunately. That is, if one believes that they are really from 100 AD to 300 AD like scholars tend to claim, instead of being from the same time as the rest of the Apostolic Constitutions.

Personally, I didn't notice anything convincing to say that the Hellenistic Prayers though were from a particularly separate era than the Constitutions. It just seemed to be a logic used for this claim that since the Hellenistic Prayers are a version of known 8-Fold Jewish Prayers, that they must have been earlier and not something that was taken from Jewish prayers in eg. the 4th c.

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Re: Wiki EarlyChristian writings Missing from our Forum'sWeb

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rakovsky wrote:Which Prayers in the Apostolic Constitutions are Prayers 11-16 of the Hellenistic Synagogal Prayers?
Prayer 6 = Apostolic Constitutions 7:37;
Prayer 7 = Apost. Con. 7:38;
Prayer 8 = 7:39
Prayer 9 = Apost Con 8.5
Prayer 10 = Apost. Con. 8.6
Prayer 11 =Apost. Con. 8.9
Prayer 12 = Apost. Con 8.12
Prayer 13 = Apost. Con 8.15
Prayer 14 = Apos Con 8.16
# 15 =Apost 8:40
# 16 = Apost. Con. 8:41

I think it would be worth listing the Prayers' citations on the Text Excavations page, since The Apostolic Constitutions themselves are easily available online, but the list is not, unfortunately. That is, if one believes that they are really from 100 AD to 300 AD like scholars tend to claim, instead of being from the same time as the rest of the Apostolic Constitutions.

Personally, I didn't notice anything convincing to say that the Hellenistic Prayers though were from a particularly separate era than the Constitutions. It just seemed to be a logic used for this claim that since the Hellenistic Prayers are a version of known 8-Fold Jewish Prayers, that they must have been earlier and not something that was taken from Jewish prayers in eg. the 4th c.
Fiensy in Prayers Alleged to be Jewish: An Examination of the Constitutiones Apostolorum argued that since the Apostolic Constitutions is generally hostile to Judaism, the author was not borrowing from the synagogue himself but using prayers that his Christian community had borrowed from the synagogue some time earlier. Other scholars have not found this a convincing argument.

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Re: Wiki EarlyChristian writings Missing from our Forum'sWeb

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andrewcriddle wrote: Fiensy in Prayers Alleged to be Jewish: An Examination of the Constitutiones Apostolorum argued that since the Apostolic Constitutions is generally hostile to Judaism, the author was not borrowing from the synagogue himself but using prayers that his Christian community had borrowed from the synagogue some time earlier. Other scholars have not found this a convincing argument.
I agree. Religious customs and practices can be found that are shared between Spanish Christian and Spanish Jewish communities, or between Eastern European Christian and Jewish ones. It doesn't necessarily mean that the two religions were not avowedly ideologically opposed to each other, only that there was a sharing of practices. Two examples that come to mind int he East European case are the practice of kissing or touching clerical garb by lay people in connection with the ceremonial parading of the Scriptures in the liturgy and the practice of making challah or paschal bread during the season of Pesakh or Paskha.

Theoretically, I suppose that one of the apostles in Judea could have picked up a copy of the contemporary Second Temple ritual prayers and modified them to form the "Hellenistic Prayers" in AD 69, or else the author of the Apost. Constitutions could have been an Antiochian who memorized or picked up a copy of his local synagogue's ritual prayers and then modified them for the first time to fit into his Constitutions in 380 AD.

The 150 AD - 300 AD dating given by most scholars for the Hellenistic Prayers looks far too speculative.

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Re: Wiki EarlyChristian writings Missing from our Forum'sWeb

Post by Peter Kirby »

rakovsky wrote:70 - 100 Birkat Ha Minim by Shmuel ha-Katan (See also Council of Jamnia)
Not sure how accurate it is to claim that this is a late 1st century reference to Christians.
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Re: Wiki EarlyChristian writings Missing from our Forum'sWeb

Post by DCHindley »

rakovsky wrote:Which Prayers in the Apostolic Constitutions are Prayers 11-16 of the Hellenistic Synagogal Prayers?
Looks like you already supplied the answer to your question.
Prayer 6 = Apostolic Constitutions 7:37;
Prayer 7 = Apost. Con. 7:38;
Prayer 8 = 7:39
Prayer 9 = Apost Con 8.5
Prayer 10 = Apost. Con. 8.6
Prayer 11 =Apost. Con. 8.9
Prayer 12 = Apost. Con 8.12
Prayer 13 = Apost. Con 8.15
Prayer 14 = Apos Con 8.16
# 15 =Apost 8:40
# 16 = Apost. Con. 8:41

I think it would be worth listing the Prayers' citations on the Text Excavations page, since The Apostolic Constitutions themselves are easily available online, but the list is not, unfortunately.


Any text of the Apostolic Constitutions available online would likely derive from either the Ante-Nicene Fathers series (late 1886s) or ultimately their (unnamed) source, William Whiston (1711) .

If I have untangled things correctly, William Whiston of Josephus' works fame, translated the Greek Apostolic Constitutions in 1711 as The Constitutions of the Holy Apostles by Clement (sic) in Greek and English, with the Various Readings from all the Manuscripts.

Whiston's English translation was at an unknown later date translated into German by an anonymous writer, who apparently claimed to have revised the translation on the basis of Whiston's own Greek text.

Later, in 1848, Irah Chase (DD) translated this German revised translation back into English, as The Work Claiming to be the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles - Including The Canons.

Finally, Whiston's original English translation was re-published (without mention of Whiston's name) in the Ante-Nicene Christian Library (ANCL) series (vol. 17, Edinburgh: 1870, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, the latter being the one who was responsible for updated comments).

The 24 volume ANCL series were later consolidated into 8 volumes plus an index and published in the USA as the Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF) series (in this series the translation with Coxe's additional commentary, is in vol. 7, 1886, A. Cleveland Coxe, general editor). This is the English translation that is more likely than not to be the version available online. However, both Whiston's as well as Irah Chase's translations mentioned above (Chase's is still in copyright) are available online from archive.org.
That is, if one believes that they are really from 100 AD to 300 AD like scholars tend to claim, instead of being from the same time as the rest of the Apostolic Constitutions.

Personally, I didn't notice anything convincing to say that the Hellenistic Prayers though were from a particularly separate era than the Constitutions. It just seemed to be a logic used for this claim that since the Hellenistic Prayers are a version of known 8-Fold Jewish Prayers, that they must have been earlier and not something that was taken from Jewish prayers in eg. the 4th c.
I thought D. R. Darnell's article, "Hellenistic Synagogal Prayers" which includes a new English translation of the relevant parts of the Apostolic Constitutions with an analysis (in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed James H. Charlesworth, vol. 2, 1985), was fairly persuasive. The introduction covers the history of proposals that these are based on Hellenistic Jewish Synagogal prayers starts with K. Kohler (1893), W. Bousset (1915), R. Goodenough (1935), J. H. Charlesworth (1981), so it is more than just whimsy.

DCH
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Re: Wiki EarlyChristian writings Missing from our Forum'sWeb

Post by andrewcriddle »

DCHindley wrote:
That is, if one believes that they are really from 100 AD to 300 AD like scholars tend to claim, instead of being from the same time as the rest of the Apostolic Constitutions.

Personally, I didn't notice anything convincing to say that the Hellenistic Prayers though were from a particularly separate era than the Constitutions. It just seemed to be a logic used for this claim that since the Hellenistic Prayers are a version of known 8-Fold Jewish Prayers, that they must have been earlier and not something that was taken from Jewish prayers in eg. the 4th c.
I thought D. R. Darnell's article, "Hellenistic Synagogal Prayers" which includes a new English translation of the relevant parts of the Apostolic Constitutions with an analysis (in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed James H. Charlesworth, vol. 2, 1985), was fairly persuasive. The introduction covers the history of proposals that these are based on Hellenistic Jewish Synagogal prayers starts with K. Kohler (1893), W. Bousset (1915), R. Goodenough (1935), J. H. Charlesworth (1981), so it is more than just whimsy.

DCH
IIUC there is an agreement on the synagogue origin of these prayers.

What we have been discussing is whether the late IVth century author of the Apostolic Constitutions used contemporary (late IVth century) synagogal prayers or much older prayers (say from synagogue practice c 200 CE).

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Re: Wiki EarlyChristian writings Missing from our Forum'sWeb

Post by rakovsky »

Another work I came across that is not in the Early C. W. list is the Gospel of the Twelve. Scholars say that the Gospel of the Ebionites, part of the Clementine Recognitions, and the Gospel of the Twelve carry a unique shared trait, particularly in their discussion on the cessation of Temple sacrifice.

Puech & Blatz 1991, p. 374 – "the majority of critics today are inclined to identify it (the Gospel of the Twelve) with the Gospel of the Ebionites,"

"The Gospel of the Twelve (Greek: τους Δώδεκα Ευαγγελιον), possibly also referred to as the Gospel of the Apostles, is a lost gospel mentioned by Origen in Homilies in Luke as part of a list of heretical works. Schneemelcher's standard edition of the New Testament Apocrypha states that Jerome incorrectly identified the Gospel of the Twelve, which he referred to as the Gospel according to the Apostles, with the Gospel of the Hebrews (Dial. adv. Pelag. III 2), whereas Origen clearly distinguished between them (Homilies in Luke 1.1). Ambrose and Bede may have also made allusions to it. A relationship has been postulated between this otherwise unknown gospel and the Gospel of the Ebionites.[1]"
SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_the_Twelve

A second lost work not in the list is the Ascents of James, which is considered to have used ideas from the Gospel of the Ebionites and considered to have been used in the Clementine Recognitions.

And what about the Circuits of Peter and the Clementine Acts of the Apostles? Could they be 1st to 2nd century works?

The collection of New Testament apocrypha known as the Clementine literature included three works known in antiquity as the Circuits of Peter, the Acts of the Apostles and a work usually titled the Ascents of James. They are specifically referenced by Epiphanius in his polemic against the Ebionites. The first-named books are substantially contained in the Homilies of Clement under the title of Clement's Compendium of Peter's itinerary sermons, and also in the Recognitions attributed to Clement. They form an early Christian didactic fiction to express Jewish Christian views, i.e. the primacy of James the brother of Jesus, their connection with the episcopal see of Rome, and their antagonism to Simon Magus, as well as gnostic doctrines. Scholar Robert E. Van Voorst opines of the Ascents of James (R 1.33–71), "There is, in fact, no section of the Clementine literature about whose origin in Jewish Christianity one may be more certain".[44] Despite this assertion, he expresses reservations that the material is genuinely Ebionite in origin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebionites

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