The dominical logia (for Ulan).

[Secret Alias]

ascribing it to the heretic Cerinthus

But this is another bullshit thing. There was no heretic named Cerinthus. It's a garbled reference to something else. Time and again the desperate need for certainty makes us take bad evidence at face value (like hitting on the fattest ugliest girl at last call). We take bad evidence at face value in order to allow us to saying something definitive about 'X' - but it's all a lie. There was no heretic Cerinthus. Epiphanius seems to indicate some manuscripts say Merinthus. It is only in Samaritan letters that Kaf and Mem can be confused. So we always come back to the same problem - indirect source information.

[Secret Alias]

Of course no one here knows anything of what I am talking about so here widen your horizons:

[Secret Alias]

Epiphanius on this subject:

But they are called Merinthians too, I am told. Whether the same Cerinthus was also called Merinthus I have no idea; or whether there was someone else named Merinthus, a colleague of his, God knows! I have already said that not only he himself at Jerusalem often opposed the apostles; but his supporters did it, and in Asia. But it makes no difference whether it was he or whether it was another colleague who supported him, whose views were similar, and who acted with him for the same ends. The whole perversity of their teaching is of this sort and they are called both Cerinthians and Merinthians.

[Secret Alias]

And then this is what 'systematizers' do to mitigate the damage here.

They exclaim 'so what is it? Cerinthus or Merinthus?'
Honest answer 'I don't know.'
They respond: 'So what does any of this mean. What do you propose is the meaning of 'Cerinthus' or 'Merinthus'?
Honest answer: 'I don't know.'
They conclude (privately): 'well since you don't know anything and you can't do anything with your knowledge we'll continue to assume that Cerinthus is a real person and the rest of the information is basically accurate.'
Honest question: 'Why?'
Honest answer: 'Because we have to be productive.'
Honest Question: 'Why?'
Honest answer: 'I don't know.'
Honest Question: 'Why not stop then, why not stop doing something you do apparently quite uncontrollably and entirely compulsively'
Honest answer: 'I can't'

At least this was an honest discussion.

[perseusomega9]

Any wild and crazy ideas what Cerinth or Merinth might mean in Samaritian?

[Ben C. Smith]

But this is another bullshit thing. There was no heretic named Cerinthus.

My point does not depend on there being an actual Cerinthus. All that matters to my point is that Gaius rejected the fourth gospel, and the reasons he did so. That he attributed it to Cerinthus is just color, so far as my point is concerned.

Ben.

[Secret Alias]

But it's like the guy playing football against the Special Olympics team. Yeah you got 46 touchdowns in the game. Yeah you might be a great quarterback anyway. But then again maybe not ...

When you see this kind of uncertainty with something as basic as a name, the information as a whole is garbled. Anything beyond the specific points referenced by Gaius is fog - i.e. the context. I honestly don't feel we can be certain about anything because the transmission of information is so poor. It's better than having nothing or no information. True. It's something. True. But we have to be ready at any given moment to collapse our constructs because they might be completely wrong.

[Secret Alias]

All studies in early Christianity are predicated on Vaihinger's 'as if' principle.

[Ben C. Smith]

But we have to be ready at any given moment to collapse our constructs because they might be completely wrong.

I am ready for that. Any time. I just do not think that the threat of our notions toppling equals our notions actually toppling.

Ben.

[Secret Alias]

No but it's not that simple. We're just making castles made of sand here. The study of early Christianity is principally a study of corrupt texts that aren't recognized as corrupt texts. There isn't just the potential for misrepresentation. The misrepresentation of what we are dealing with is baked into the end products of all scholarship. Indeed I'd go so far that we can't allow people to be productive in this field or perhaps better yet can't allow any conclusion to be taken as certain. It's like allowing the blind to fly airplanes.

Take Watson's point about Irenaeus's use of Papias. Yes there is a clear borrowing. But is it deliberate misrepresentation? I think so. I don't believe that you can get from Papias's statement to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - honestly that is. But Watson stops short of saying that so the inherited constructs stand. That is his aim and the aim of all of his ilk (Goodacre, Hurtado etc).

Of course you can ask the question - why are you so certain that Irenaeus is lying? I think going back to Vaihinger we have to act as if Irenaeus is lying to demolish the last structure standing - the secret agenda and beliefs of Watson, Goodacre, Hurtado. It's a useful fiction. We need to establish an absolutely nihilistic playing field and not start from the inherited position by default.

In the end this is all doodling, sketching, dreaming. At best a child playing with an inanimate object thinking it is alive or what my father would call Brotlose Kunst. There is very little substance to any of this.