Early Christian Ebionaen Canon

[andrewcriddle]

Here is P Oxy 1782
By the way; Steven said if the POxy text is very close to Sinaiticus I think he meant if the POxy text is very close to Bryennios

Andrew Criddle

[Steven Avery]

Yep - fixing it.

[ebion]

Bryennius said he went back to the manuscript and found the Didache, which he had missed on pass one, this was about 10 years later. Definitely a quirky account.

"And, although the MS was discovered in 1873, the findings of the Didache were not made public until 1883."
Shawn Wilhite
https://www.shawnjwilhite.com/blog/2017 ... he-didache
...
Especially important are two Greek fragments, Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1782, dated to the "late fourth century" and published by Greenfell and Hunt in 1922 (12-15). These tiny scraps, about two inches by two inches apiece, contain verses 1:3c-4a and 2:7-3:2. Despite small differences, the wording on those scraps is very close to Byrrenios's text. That is very important confirmation for the basic accuracy of Codex Hierosolymitanus 54, given the gulf of centuries between it and the earlier fragments
https://www.earlychristianwritings.com/didache.html

2 inch fragments can only be scraps of evidence. and scraps are not very important. It's not the difference Hoole points out; it's the additions that the Bryennios manuscript has, that just happen to be from the non-NT parts of Sinaiticus (Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd Of Hermas). Coming shortly after S and H were "discovered".

And Byrrenios "discovers" his manuscript in a library that the "discoverer" of S, Tischenduper, had visited on his route back from, and in posession of, his "discovery" (a detour of a thousand miles at a time Wickedpaedia claims he was broke). During which time he confers with Bryennios' lord and master, the Patriarch.

Here is the Greek by David Robert Palmer https://bibletranslation.ws/trans/didache.pdf

Thanks - that's a valuable critical study I didn't know of, dozens of the Greek versions, including H, the Bryennios manuscript (listed separately), and the P1782 scraps. Ben Smith looked at P1782 scraps in a post I referred to above.

The critical study by David Robert Palmer has in there a listing for the "Apostolic Constitutions" but he does not say whose version. So my question remains: what's the origin of Whiston's Greek text in ~1711?

[ebion]

I don't want to go too deeply into this, but we contend that the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews is NotFaul, that is to say, whoever wrote it, it is not a part of the Faulines, so we can include Hebrews in our canon. It's an interesting work, and one that I have seen referred to as an Ebionaen text, and there's nothing in its theology that would make me dispute that. The subjects are very Hebrew, as are the Ebionaens. The Greek and the vocabulary are said to be of a higher quality than the Faulines, but there are some who say it may have been originally written in Aramaic or Hebrew.

What I plan to do is summarize here the Early Chrsitian Writers who have said HebrewsisNotFaul, and to point to threads on the forum where this topic is discussed in more depth. It doesn't matter much to me who wrote it as long as it isn't Faul, although I am curious as to when it was written: it seems to be anti-Faul hence possibly written after the Faulines, or is it just anti-Paul-in-Acts? The Greek and the vocabulary are said to be of a higher quality than the Faulines, but there are some who say it may have been originally written in Aramaic or Hebrew.

A synopsis of some of the major Early Chrsitian writers:

• Tertullian thought it was written by Barnabas.
• Hippolytus[10] excluded Hebrews from the works of Paul, attributing it to Clement of Rome. Bar Ṣalībī, In Apoc. 1.4.
• Eusebius records that "some have rejected the Epistle to the Hebrews, saying that it is disputed by the church of Rome, on the ground that it was not written by Paul. Hist. Eccl. 3.3.5; cf. also 6.20.3.
• The KJV finishes it with "Written to the Hebrews from Italy by Timothy"

We ask How early is the first reliably dated independent attestation for the book of Hebrews? A key point to bear in mind in terms of our criteria for the canon is that Hebrews does not cite any of the NT:

My RSV only lists one verse as having any NT reference. Verse 5:7 has the tears of Jesus found only in the interpolated Luke 22:44, and his fear of death in the cup scene from the parallel Synoptic accounts.

I do see verse 2:9 paralleling some of the Philippians hymn. And verse 2:10 seems to come from the same concepts as John 1:3 and Colossians 1:15-16. There are other interesting parallels, but not a single quote I'm aware of.

This may argue for Hebrews being in the apochrapha along with Jude and the Relelation of John.

Some of the threads discussing the Epistle in depth are:

• Making sense of the Pauline Epistles
• Did Jesus Author the Epistle to the Hebrews?
• Questions about Dating Letter to the Hebrews post 70 CE
• On the Epistle to the Hebrews MrMacSon went thru Hebrews in a series of posts three years ago; perhaps see / start at this post viewtopic.php?p=117106#p117106 and following ie. the rest of my posts on that page (page 3)
• Does Hebrews use Paul?

I'll tag this with Eclive and keep the post updated as bits of info are accumulated.

[Steven Avery]

The critical study by David Robert Palmer has in there a listing for the "Apostolic Constitutions" but he does not say whose version. So my question remains: what's the origin of Whiston's Greek text in ~1711?

Whiston was translating a Greek edition of the Apostolic Constitutions.

Francisco Turrianos (Torres) (c. 1509 – 1584), was a Spanish Jesuit who did a Greek edition of the Apostolic Constitutions in 1563.

You can get information

Early Jewish Prayers in Greek (2008)
Pieter W. van der Horst, Judith. H. Newman
https://books.google.com/books?id=5ljlUfvmt14C&pg=PA7

William Whiston and the Apostolic Constitutions: Completing the Reformation (2023)
Paul R. Gilliam III

This does not explain all the complexities about the Syriac mss. and the Didache, but it does solve one basic question.

[Steven Avery]

2 inch fragments can only be scraps of evidence. and scraps are not very important. It's not the difference Hoole points out; it's the additions that the Bryennios manuscript has, that just happen to be from the non-NT parts of Sinaiticus (Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd Of Hermas). Coming shortly after S and H were "discovered".

And Byrrenios "discovers" his manuscript in a library that the "discoverer" of S, Tischenduper, had visited on his route back from, and in posession of, his "discovery" (a detour of a thousand miles at a time Wickedpaedia claims he was broke). During which time he confers with Bryennios' lord and master, the Patriarch.

I don't think the Shepherd of Hermas is related to the Byrennios manuscript. Your writing in the first sentences seems to separate Bryennios manuscript and H, which are the same.

The Tischendorf-Bryennios manuscript connection above is a bit tenuous.

[ebion]

I don't think the Shepherd of Hermas is related to the Byrennios manuscript.

If you read what I wrote and cited, please note what Hoole describes as the relation of the Shepherd of Hermas to the Byrennios manuscript; I link to his full text.

Your writing in the first sentences seems to separate Bryennios manuscript and H, which are the same.

If you read the study that was linked to in your name:

Here is the Greek by David Robert Palmer https://bibletranslation.ws/trans/didache.pdf

you'll see that in the critical study the Bryennios manuscript and H are treated as separate, the former being a published book I presume as Palmer provides no details, as I referred to above.

Hoole uses the term "Byrennios manuscript" almost exclusively, I feel to convey the notion of authorship.

[ebion]

This is from the Jesus Database I dug out from https://web.archive.org/web/20120318061 ... lLuke.html Although the Ebioneans clung to Matthew, I read somewhere that they also read Acts and Luke and we've included them in our canon. Luke tends to be a superset of Matthew, and it's interesting to what is only in Luke.

The following table has been extracted from the JESUSDATABASE. While there are 143 items with single attestation that occur in Luke, there are just 49 that are unique to Luke. These 49 items are listed below. To see the full text of the item, click on the index number in the left column.

Item	Name	Data
146	Looking Backwards	(1) 1Q?: Luke 9:61-62
431	Conception of John	(1) Luke 1:5-25
432	Birth of Jesus	(1) Luke 1:57-80
433	Jesus at Twelve	(1) Luke 2:41-52
434	John's Ethic	(1) Luke 3:10-14
435	Gentiles Preferred	(1) Luke 4:25-27
436	On Sabbath Labor	(1) After Luke 6:1-4 in Codex Beza [ D]
437	Woe against Riches	(1) Luke 6:24
438	Woe against Saiety	(1) Luke 6:25a
439	Woe against Laughter	(1) Luke 6:25b
440	Woe against Praise	(1) Luke 6:26
441	Condemnation for Condemnation	(1) Luke 6:37b
442	Widow's Son Raised	(1) Luke 7:11-17
443	Having rejected John	(1) Luke 7: 29-30
444	Women with Jesus	(1) Luke 8:2-3
445	Inhospitable Samaritans	(1) Luke 9:52-55
446	The Seventy Return	(1) Luke 10:17-20
447	The Good Samaritan	(1) Luke 10:29-37
448	Martha and Mary	(1) Luke 10:38-42
449	Friend at Midnight	(1) Luke 11:5-8
450	Adversaries watch Jesus	(1) Luke 11:53-54
451	Little Flock	(1) Luke 12:32
452	Much and More	(1) Luke 12:47-48
453	Repent or Perish	(1) Luke 13:1-5
454	The Barren Tree	(1) Luke 13:6-9
455	Cripple and Sabbath	(1) Luke 13:10-17
457	Jesus and Herod	(1) Luke 13:31-33
458	Dropsy and Sabbath	(1) Luke 14:1-6
459	Place at table	(1) Luke 14:7-10
460	Inviting the Outcasts	(1a) Luke 14:12-14 (1b) Luke 14:21b
461	The Tower Builder	(1) Luke 14:28-30
462	The Warring King	(1) Luke 14:31-32
463	Renouncing All	(1) Luke 14:33
464	The Lost Coin	(1) Luke 15:8-10
465	The Prodigal Son	(1) Luke 15:11-32
466	The Unjust Steward	(1) Luke 16:1-7
467	This World's Sons	(1) Luke 16:8
468	Unrighteous Mammon	(1) Luke 16:9
469	Faithful and Unfaithful	(1a) Luke 16:10-12 (1b) 2 Clem. 8:5b [from Luke 16:10a]
470	Exaltation and Abomination	(1) Luke 16:14-15
471	Rich Man and Lazarus	(1) Luke 16:19-31
472	Days are Coming	(1) Luke 17:22
473	The Unjust Judge	(1) Luke 18:1-8
474	Pharisee and Publican	(1) Luke 18:9-14
475	Salvation for Zacchaeus	(1) Luke 19:1-9
476	The Disciples' Confession	(1) Luke 19:28-40
477	Jerusalem Destroyed	(1) Luke 19:41-44
478	Two Swords Enough	(1) Luke 22:35-38
480	Ascension of Jesus	(1a) Luke 24:50-52 (1b) Acts 1:9-11

I will want to refer to this table in future posts.

[ebion]

Eisenman anyone?

Compared to Eisenman I try to be rigourous :-,) It's not easy to mine for facts in his writings, but I'm getting the feeling that Esau/Edom/Idumean is a topic he avoids by going to Qumran. "Biblical scholarship" has been so devoted buttressing the MarcionOrLater Faulines that it's an impediment to getting at the truth of Paul in Acts.

The conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees is blatant in Matthew, but the conflict between Jesus with Herodians is subtler: we really have only Acts to go on. But clearly the Ebionaens were on the right track in rejecting Paul and the Faulines, and the Ebionaens are said to have read Acts: what else did they know about Paul in Acts?

I think to answer that question we'll have to sort out some of the Ebionaen apocrypha, namely the Ascent of James, the Travels of Peter, and the Clementine Recognitions. Now that we know that Paul is a part of Herod's immediate family, the conflict between Peter and Paul in them may show some details on his agenda.

[ebion]

Unlike Tischenduper and Bryennius, I trust Whiston, so I'll go back to his Apostolic Constitutions, but maybe I'll avoid the version "improved" by Donaldson. But we still don't know what manuscript Whiston was working from, although he includes the greek that he translated in his book. Unfortunately the version on the Internet Archive is a poor version to OCR, because of the middle English font and dual=greek columns.
Does anyone know of an OCRed version of Whiston's Apostolic Constitutions?

The Grabe response is here

An essay upon two Arabick manuscripts of the Bodleian library,
and that ancient book, call'd the Doctrine of the Apostles, which is said to be extant in them; wherein Mr. Whiston's mistakes about both are plainly prov'd / (1711)
by John Ernest Grabe.
https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008734705

Earlier I mentioned the Arabic manuscripts, e.g. there is background information here:

Grabe's essay is on the Internet Archive:

• https://archive.org/details/essayupontwoarab00grab
• https://archive.org/details/bib_fict_4102655
• https://archive.org/details/essayuponarabick00grabuoft

But Whiston has a rebuttal:

• https://archive.org/details/remarksondrgrabe00whis
• https://archive.org/details/bib_fict_4102656

I'll save time and just read the rebuttal.