After 20 Years Plus of Flogging His Theory How Many Here at the Forum Believe Mountainman?

[davidmartin]

It's like an ultra-Samaritan (Dosithean?) position

one time i thought a Samaritan origin but the Odes use the whole scripture freely
a really crazy thought is ultra syncretic, what if Jesus existed and wasn't particularly opposed to Greco-Roman religion. There could be a Christian version whenever there's a God able to give birth, he sends out apostles, one for each religion. The only one to survive was the Jewish version, much modified, this isn't so wacky if in the ancient world the mysteries were thought to be essentially the same thing. There is a small amount of pagan syncretic Christian material surviving, the Nassene psalm, the announcement to the temple of Page, the Simonian accounts, what if they thought religions were potentially compatible

[Peter Kirby]

No, Christianity Was Not Invented in the 4th Century

And yes. We know that for a fact. Like QAnon, which is a new secular religion spreading, quite bizarrely, across the globe, I have noticed another strange conspiracy theory gaining popularity and spreading worldwide: the belief that Christianity was invented in the 4th century by agents of Constantine’s government. It’s not new. You can find instantiations of this claim going back decades, escalating to varying degrees of absurdity (years ago one guy tried interrupting a talk I was giving by insisting the entirety of ancient literature was invented in the Renaissance!), but this lesser version is newly raging in popularity. I know because I’ve been arguing lately with a lot of people who keep coming to me insisting on it, and they are coming to me from countries all over the globe, and each has their own “version” of this Constantine myth, and their own talking points, so it does not appear to be coming from any central source. It’s just a metastasizing cancer like every other conspiracy theory these days. It suffers from all the same flaws one should know better than to fall victim to, as covered in my Vital Primer on Media Literacy, and my articles From Lead Codices to Mummy Gospels and Killing Crankery with Bayesian Reasoning.

It fits the mold of all conspiracy theory thinking: a comforting belief that one has caught “the government” lying to them and can now “expose” the lie and thus “take down” the global threat of Christianity by “spreading the gospel.” In this new evangelism, “Christianity” is usually (though not always) framed as The Vatican, in echoes of Protocols of Zion style conspiracy theories against the Jews. And the notion “triggers” all the usual false levers of intuition: it “feels” right, various puzzle pieces can be “fitted together,” and Dunning-Kruger amateurism slips right into the bear trap of thinking “you” know how things like archaeology and history and science work better than literally thousands upon thousands of actual experts. Which is why so many make such an effort to “convert” real experts like me: they need some of us to agree with them, to legitimize their delusion.

But it’s still a delusion. Here’s why.

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/18047

Carrier and the Mainstream Dating Game:
Defending a 4th century terminus ad quem for Christian Origins

ABSTRACT:

The historian Richard Carrier as a spokesperson for the 1st century mainstream theory of Christian origins has attempted to falsify a 4th century origin hypothesis by adducing evidence which is supposedly both 1) unambiguously Christian and 2) can be securely and confidently dated earlier (i.e., to the 1st, 2nd or 3rd century). The evidence adduced does not convincingly preclude a 4th century terminus ad quem for Christian Origins.

https://www.academia.edu/60176264/Carri ... an_Origins

There are a few problems with this pseudonymous Academia.edu-published text. I have the time and inclination only to briefly mention a couple.

First, you confuse the issue of a "terminus ad quem for Christian origins" and "results that conclusively prove any Christian manuscripts pre-date Constantine." Suppose you could show that there are no results that conclusively prove a Christian manuscript pre-dates 325. What would that mean? Only that, of course. It would not follow that dating conclusions about Christian origins do not have evidence, something not even addressed in any significant way.

An example of this is the difference between theories about the origin of the Homeric epics and the dates of the known surviving manuscripts. It's relatively uncommon that we have manuscripts that survive that are very close in time to the original texts from antiquity. And the original texts themselves could point to "Christian origins" that are earlier still.

Second, obviously, even from your own argument, it doesn't even mean that a fourth century or later date for all Christian manuscripts is in any way probable. Your own arguments admit the fact that your touted "ad quems" about dating the manuscripts could very well be shown to be improbable, even highly improbable. That's because you're demanding conclusive proof otherwise, and you will die on the hill of saying that they still aren't "conclusively" disproven.

A typical example of your approach here is Dura Parchment 24:

Dura Parchment 24 is a critical manuscript because it is understood to be dated by archaeological stratiographic dating prior to the fall of Dura Europos 256 – 57 CE.

Regarding which you simply say: "Could DP24 have been introduced to Dura between the 3rd and the 20th century? We don’t know." And surely you will never know. In the same way, you've dismissed paleography out of hand, with some carefully quote mined references to obscure thinly the fact that it's simply because it gets in your way. By attacking methodology itself relentlessly, all means of knowing can be eradicated, in the service of the entirely boring idea that once you have no means of knowing left, you will remain ignorant.

Why you deploy this kind of universal ignorance in your own particular fashion is, indeed, a mystery.

[MrMacSon]

Besides dating and dateable manuscripts, there's the issue of dating physical fragments of texts such as Rylands Library Papyrus P52, Papyrus 46, etc., many of which are dated earlier than manuscripts even by people cautious of dating these texts

Sure, even their dating is debateable, but these are still likely to have been written before the start of the 4th century:

Date
.. < . . snipped . . >
Brent Nongbri[4] has criticized both Comfort's early dating of 𝔓⁵² and Schmidt's late dating, dismissing as unsound all attempts to establish a date for such undated papyri within narrow ranges on purely paleographic grounds, along with any inference from the paleographic dating of 𝔓⁵² to a precise terminus ad quem for the composition of the Fourth Gospel. In particular Nongbri noted that both Comfort and Schmidt propose their respective revisions of Roberts's dating solely on the basis of paleographic comparisons with papyri that had themselves been paleographically dated. As a corrective to both tendencies, Nongbri collected and published images of all explicitly dated comparator manuscripts to 𝔓⁵²; demonstrating that, although Roberts's assessment of similarities with a succession of dated late first to mid second century papyri could be confirmed,[41] two later dated papyri, both petitions, also showed strong similarities (P. Mich. inv. 5336,[50] dated around 152 CE; and P.Amh. 2.78,[51] an example first suggested by Eric Turner,[52] that dates to 184 CE). Nongbri states "The affinities in letter forms between (P. Mich. inv. 5336) and 𝔓⁵² are as close as any of Roberts's documentary parallels",[50] and that P.Amh. 2.78 "is as good a parallel to 𝔓⁵² as any of these adduced by Roberts".[24] Nongbri also produces dated documents of the later second and early third centuries,[53] each of which display similarities to 𝔓⁵² in some of their letter forms. Nongbri suggests that this implied that older styles of handwriting might persist much longer than some scholars had assumed,[22] and that a prudent margin of error must allow a still wider range of possible dates for the papyrus:

• "What emerges from this survey is nothing surprising to papyrologists: paleography is not the most effective method for dating texts, particularly those written in a literary hand. Roberts himself noted this point in his edition of 𝔓⁵². The real problem is the way scholars of the New Testament have used and abused papyrological evidence. I have not radically revised Roberts's work. I have not provided any third-century documentary papyri that are absolute "dead ringers" for the handwriting of 𝔓⁵², and even had I done so, that would not force us to date 𝔓⁵² at some exact point in the third century. Paleographic evidence does not work that way. What I have done is to show that any serious consideration of the window of possible dates for 𝔓⁵² must include dates in the later second and early third centuries. Thus, 𝔓⁵² cannot be used as evidence to silence other debates about the existence (or non-existence) of the Gospel of John in the first half of the second century. Only a papyrus containing an explicit date or one found in a clear archaeological stratigraphic context could do the work scholars want 𝔓⁵² to do. As it stands now, the papyrological evidence should take a second place to other forms of evidence in addressing debates about the dating of the Fourth Gospel."

Nongbri resists offering his own opinion on the date of 𝔓⁵², but apparently approves the relatively cautious terminology both of Roberts's dating, "On the whole, we may accept with some confidence the first half of the second century as the period in which (𝔓⁵²) was most probably written";[3][54] and also of Roberts's speculations on possible implications for the date of John's gospel, "But all we can safely say is that this fragment tends to support those critics who favour an early date (late first to early second century) for the composition of the Gospel rather than those who would still regard it as a work of the middle decades of the second century" ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rylands_L ... s_P52#Date

Nongbri, Brent (2005) "The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel", Harvard Theological Review 98:1, 23–48

Nongbri, Brent (2020) "Palaeography, Precision and Publicity: Further Thoughts on P.Ryl. III.457 (P52)." New Testament Studies 66: 471–99

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_46#Date

[mlinssen]

"Damn the facts! I'm right, I have it all worked out! Listen to ME!"

People listen to what they experience as pleasant, and generally that which doesn't intrude is counted among pleasantries

There are very few facts in this field by the way, save for the texts that we hold in our hands: and I've pointed out again and again that we can't trust the translations of those, and that really all that we have are the very manuscripts, in their original form alone

I like this forum a lot, it has taught me an awful lot about the study of Christian origins. It is a forum so you'll have your clowns, village idiots, assholes and trolls next to the typical handful of people worth interacting with, and I often get to walk the thin lines (and occasionally cross them, as that also is what forums are for).
And to my very great surprise, even after 3 years I keep finding the occasional gem out here, and it usually is in ongoing conversations that I do such, even though the occasional OP also offers some: Giuseppe is a great driver behind much of that, by the way

My greatest disappointment? That hardly anyone is interested in anyone else's theory, plus the fact that most theories out here are mere opinions because they're baseless claims (and CW is an exception there), unsupported by any form of research or evidence

Ah well. I think I'm the youngest there in terms of engagement, almost 4 years of Thomas now (and related) and no one here will challenge my theory, no one has a use for Thomasine Priority as it would completely destroy everything there is, by rendering into fiction all that comes after.
But it is what the evidence demonstrates, alas, so I'm currently wrapping up on a 50-pager, just on logion 47, showing how Thomas led to *Ev and how *Ev led to the canonicals. With the Patristics as witnesses, including the LXX, full of Latin, Greek and Coptic, filled with hyperlinks to publicly available sources - and Easter eggs, of course

It's been a wild diversion, occupying a lot of my time but also greatly satisfying to some extent - yet I'll be back at pure Thomas after this, and you can all safely listen to yourselves again.
Although I'll surely drop a note here and there

[davidmartin]

here's a gem for you ml, early 2nd century. Does not name Jesus once (like the Shepherd of Hermas and the Odes)

Mine are no strange discourses nor perverse
questionings, but having been a disciple of Apostles I
come forward as a teacher of the Gentiles, ministering
worthily to them, as they present themselves disciples
of the truth, the lessons which have been handed down.

Aping the apostle - claiming to inherit their gospel from prior apostles [wait a few seconds for that to be undermined!]

For who that has been rightly taught and has
entered into friendship with the Word does not seek to
learn distinctly the lessons revealed openly by the
Word to the disciples; to whom the Word appeared and
declared them, speaking plainly, not perceived by the
unbelieving, but relating them to disciples who being
reckoned faithful by Him were taught the mysteries of
the Father?

Reading carefully - note the subtle shift, they are referring to themselves here, as shall be seen

If thou grieve not this grace, thou shalt
understand the discourses which the Word holds by the
mouth of those whom He desires when He wishes.
For in all things, that by the will of the
commanding Word we were moved to utter with much
pains, we become sharers with you, through love of the
things revealed unto us.

Aha, now we see it 'revealed unto us'
The author claims due to the Word's propensity for revelation their revelation came from it, rather than being handed down as initially claimed
So, just like the Pauline epistles, a previous understanding is being 'updated' with a newer one (until it wins)
This is yet another piece of evidence for this line of development occurring

[ABuddhist]

here's a gem for you ml, early 2nd century. Does not name Jesus once (like the Shepherd of Hermas and the Odes)

Mine are no strange discourses nor perverse
questionings, but having been a disciple of Apostles I
come forward as a teacher of the Gentiles, ministering
worthily to them, as they present themselves disciples
of the truth, the lessons which have been handed down.

Aping the apostle - claiming to inherit their gospel from prior apostles [wait a few seconds for that to be undermined!]

For who that has been rightly taught and has
entered into friendship with the Word does not seek to
learn distinctly the lessons revealed openly by the
Word to the disciples; to whom the Word appeared and
declared them, speaking plainly, not perceived by the
unbelieving, but relating them to disciples who being
reckoned faithful by Him were taught the mysteries of
the Father?

Reading carefully - note the subtle shift, they are referring to themselves here, as shall be seen

If thou grieve not this grace, thou shalt
understand the discourses which the Word holds by the
mouth of those whom He desires when He wishes.
For in all things, that by the will of the
commanding Word we were moved to utter with much
pains, we become sharers with you, through love of the
things revealed unto us.

Aha, now we see it 'revealed unto us'
The author claims due to the Word's propensity for revelation their revelation came from it, rather than being handed down as initially claimed
So, just like the Pauline epistles, a previous understanding is being 'updated' with a newer one (until it wins)
This is yet another piece of evidence for this line of development occurring

Which text and author are you quoting from?

[mlinssen]

here's a gem for you ml, early 2nd century. Does not name Jesus once (like the Shepherd of Hermas and the Odes)

Mine are no strange discourses nor perverse
questionings, but having been a disciple of Apostles I
come forward as a teacher of the Gentiles, ministering
worthily to them, as they present themselves disciples
of the truth, the lessons which have been handed down.

Aping the apostle - claiming to inherit their gospel from prior apostles [wait a few seconds for that to be undermined!]

For who that has been rightly taught and has
entered into friendship with the Word does not seek to
learn distinctly the lessons revealed openly by the
Word to the disciples; to whom the Word appeared and
declared them, speaking plainly, not perceived by the
unbelieving, but relating them to disciples who being
reckoned faithful by Him were taught the mysteries of
the Father?

Reading carefully - note the subtle shift, they are referring to themselves here, as shall be seen

If thou grieve not this grace, thou shalt
understand the discourses which the Word holds by the
mouth of those whom He desires when He wishes.
For in all things, that by the will of the
commanding Word we were moved to utter with much
pains, we become sharers with you, through love of the
things revealed unto us.

Aha, now we see it 'revealed unto us'
The author claims due to the Word's propensity for revelation their revelation came from it, rather than being handed down as initially claimed
So, just like the Pauline epistles, a previous understanding is being 'updated' with a newer one (until it wins)
This is yet another piece of evidence for this line of development occurring

That is a most interesting one David - hardcore Thomasine plus, so to say.
THE EPISTLE TO DIOGNETUS is what I now understand! I don't know any of it, quickly scanned it, and this chapter 11 is quite different indeed

[dbz]

"Damn the facts! I'm right, I have it all worked out! Listen to ME!"

People listen to what they experience as pleasant, and generally that which doesn't intrude is counted among pleasantries

There are very few facts in this field by the way, save for the texts that we hold in our hands...

the source materials are insanely opaque and don't fit together properly, you'd think after the mountain of surviving texts it would be pretty easy to come up with at least one theory that works, but no. we are obviously missing some major pieces of the puzzle

I think people underestimate HOW HARD IT IS to say anything meaningful about early Christianity. There is the accepted version of history which has its holes. And critics point to the holes. But reconstructing a better version of history is problematic because of the many nuances glossed over by the proponents of the traditional model. Hard to be productive in the field of early Christianity. Most of the stuff posted here at the forum is more about trying to win over proselytes who might "like" the theory than serious scholarship.

Sound methodology requires (1) that we attend to the effect of our unevidenced assumptions on the probability of our theory; (2) that we attend to how likely our theory makes all the evidence (including what isn’t in evidence, not just what is); and (3) that we compare our theory’s merits in these regards to any other viable theory, especially the most viable competing theory you can find or contrive.
[...]

The first task means we can’t rest our theory on a bunch of assumptions not in evidence; only if we can produce evidence for them (and enough evidence as makes them quite likely) or show that the competing theory also requires assumptions (assumptions yours does not) that are collectively just as unlikely, can we rest a theory on any assumptions at all. Otherwise, we should simply concede our theory is less plausible than the other.
[...]

The second task means we can only claim the evidence supports our theory over competing theories if the evidence altogether is more likely to exist as we find it on our theory than on any competing theory.

---

--Carrier (27 December 2020). ""What Did Josephus Mean by That?" A Case Study in the Relationship between Evidence and Probability". Richard Carrier Blogs.

[mlinssen]

"Damn the facts! I'm right, I have it all worked out! Listen to ME!"

People listen to what they experience as pleasant, and generally that which doesn't intrude is counted among pleasantries

There are very few facts in this field by the way, save for the texts that we hold in our hands...

the source materials are insanely opaque and don't fit together properly, you'd think after the mountain of surviving texts it would be pretty easy to come up with at least one theory that works, but no. we are obviously missing some major pieces of the puzzle

I think people underestimate HOW HARD IT IS to say anything meaningful about early Christianity. There is the accepted version of history which has its holes. And critics point to the holes. But reconstructing a better version of history is problematic because of the many nuances glossed over by the proponents of the traditional model. Hard to be productive in the field of early Christianity. Most of the stuff posted here at the forum is more about trying to win over proselytes who might "like" the theory than serious scholarship.

Sound methodology requires (1) that we attend to the effect of our unevidenced assumptions on the probability of our theory; (2) that we attend to how likely our theory makes all the evidence (including what isn’t in evidence, not just what is); and (3) that we compare our theory’s merits in these regards to any other viable theory, especially the most viable competing theory you can find or contrive.
[...]

The first task means we can’t rest our theory on a bunch of assumptions not in evidence; only if we can produce evidence for them (and enough evidence as makes them quite likely) or show that the competing theory also requires assumptions (assumptions yours does not) that are collectively just as unlikely, can we rest a theory on any assumptions at all. Otherwise, we should simply concede our theory is less plausible than the other.
[...]

The second task means we can only claim the evidence supports our theory over competing theories if the evidence altogether is more likely to exist as we find it on our theory than on any competing theory.

---

--Carrier (27 December 2020). ""What Did Josephus Mean by That?" A Case Study in the Relationship between Evidence and Probability". Richard Carrier Blogs.

Aye to that.
I'm not missing any pieces to the puzzle, by the way, save for a neat list of Judaic uprisings from about 0 CE to 250 CE

You can see how SA apparently is having trouble making his case, or selling something that really no one wants to hear

Dunno in what garbage heap david is digging this time

[davidmartin]

There is no garbage heap I will not scavenge.
Yep THE EPISTLE TO DIOGNETUS, this is a prize find here although i wish i had read it sober the first time, the effects were jarring once i got into it
So the pattern is clear enough. This is the 'offshoot gospel' of the 'offshoot revelation' (missing the Chrestian stamp of approval)
It comes along with it's new 'mystery' of the Father, the Father forgot to tell anyone else, and along comes with it a honking change of attitude

Now, suddenly Judaism is lumped together with Greco-Roman religion and totally hammered into the ground, in it's place the world denying outlook of the apostle of sin himself. This total rejection of society leads to gruesome martyrdoms which is portrayed as if it were a good thing. The original gospel, of course, was not so extreme as the offshoot (see the Odes). It loved the world, childbirth, nature, the creation of God, etc, The existential problem was ignorance not sin and Jesus was not a sacrifice for ignorance, like the offshoot gospel quipped.

Of course the offshoot gospel wants to be seen as the original gospel, naturally, but laid bare is the fact it wasn't, just a bunch of gentiles that saw 'their oil' under another countries ground. Now the serious business of reconstructing the original gospel can begin, that of The Magdalene. It's pretty damn easy recipe to cook, just read the Odes and maybe add a sprinkling of Thomas, your gospel is served madame