Revisiting this:
Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sat May 13, 2023 9:14 pm
(my emphasis)
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sat May 13, 2023 6:47 pmThey embedded small kernals of truth into their fictions and happily passed them off with the rest of their fabrication. The FF writings are from 11th-14th century. They
need to be set aside as late secondary evidence.
This is incorrect. Even if they are fabricated, they need to be understood as fabrications. The setting, motives, and origin of the fabricated texts need to be traced and placed in context, in detail. These hypotheses need to be defended against alternatives, alternatives which may make much more sense of the evidence. Even as fabrications, the texts could reveal much about those that produced them.
I have engaged in various discussions here on this very subject. Key search terms would be "Doctors of the Latin Church" and "Doctors of the Greek Church". These doctors are explicitly named and dated in the schematic "Chronological Map of the Evidence". Some example discussions are:
* Heresiology before 325 CE has been forged: NT Apocryphal literature is a Post-Nicene reaction to the NT Bible.
* Augustine's Confessions: a medieval forgery? (Detering)
* and from SA: Arguing Against the Church Fathers
And the very idea of referring to thousands of texts together as something to be "set aside" is fundamentally ahistorical.
In context the comment was an exhortation (to Martijn and others) to set aside the analysis of heresiologists and instead to engage in analysis of the Nag Hammadi Library. I was referring to priority and value of research of the NHL over that of the "Fathers" in matters relating to the big picture of Christian origins. I was using the term relatively not absolutely.
Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sat May 13, 2023 11:16 pmThat does make it more clear, but the language of "set aside" is most certainly still unfortunate.
Instead of "set aside" or even "secondary evidence," the words we are looking for are these: treated with caution.
Treated with extreme caution IMO. And from the above, I am certainly not trying to sweep them off the table where all the available evidence is martialed. That was the entire purpose of the "Map of the Evidence". The Fathers are the figures we find in Ecclesiastical History (EH) and they are vital data for various types of EH such as EH1 (Doctrines, Bishop Lists, NTC attestation, etc) and EH7 (Heresiology, heretics and attestation to the NT apocrypha -- including the NHL).
By the comment "setting aside" the "Fathers" I was suggesting a change in the focus of the investigation FROM the "Fathers" to the NHL.
And I stand by that comment in relation to investigations concerning Christian origins. The writings of the Fathers are certainly NOT time-capsules from antiquity whereas the NHL is certainly a time-capsule from antiquity.
And the language of "a thousand years removed" (referring to manuscripts) makes it hard to take what you're saying very seriously.
Manuscripts are generally a product of the age in which they were copied or written. You mentioned that yourself above. The NHL are manuscripts that were physically copied or written in the mid 4th century and are a product of their epoch. This is a general fact.
OTOH the earliest extant physical copies of the heresiological manuscripts (Justin, Irenaeus, Hippolytus et al - all of whom are hostile witnesses to the NHL texts and their ultimate authors) are literally a thousand years removed from the mid 4th century. This is a fact.
The integrity of the historical transmission of these manuscripts from antiquity is assumed.
It is an assumption which is rarely made explicit. Your index of Christian literature lists earliest and latest dates but does not list the dates of the earliest extnt manuscripts. This is not a reflection on your work because nowhere on the net have I found such a resource. Do you know of one other than what Roger's done with his Tertullian stuff?
What do you mean by saying the language of "a thousand years removed" (referring to manuscripts) is hard to take seriously? As far as I am concerned this language of "a thousand years removed" (referring to manuscripts) is a serious issue and it is responsible to acknowledge the facts in this issue. Explicitly.