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: First Century Christian Writings Missing from our Forum's Website

Post by rakovsky »

Peter Kirby wrote: Tue Jan 15, 2019 4:19 pm
rakovsky wrote: Tue Jan 15, 2019 4:09 pmmaybe it was the other way around, and 4 Esdras was a Jewish Christian work that incorporated the Apocalypse of Peter

I don't think so.
Dear Peter,
Can you please tell me why you think that the Apocalypse of Peter used 4 Esdras, instead of the other way around?
I couldn't find any information as to why some scholars suppose this.

Is it just because some scholars propose that the middle of 4 Esdras is a Jewish non-Christian writing?

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Peter Kirby
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Re: First Century Christian Writings Missing from our Forum's Website

Post by Peter Kirby »

rakovsky wrote: Mon Jul 22, 2019 3:13 pm
Peter Kirby wrote: Tue Jan 15, 2019 4:19 pm
rakovsky wrote: Tue Jan 15, 2019 4:09 pmmaybe it was the other way around, and 4 Esdras was a Jewish Christian work that incorporated the Apocalypse of Peter

I don't think so.
Dear Peter,
Can you please tell me why you think that the Apocalypse of Peter used 4 Esdras, instead of the other way around?
I couldn't find any information as to why some scholars suppose this.

Is it just because some scholars propose that the middle of 4 Esdras is a Jewish non-Christian writing?
I don't even remember what I wasn't or was thinking then, at this point.

So I guess you can just consider me skeptical. Nothing more or less.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
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rakovsky
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Re: First Century Christian Writings Missing from our Forum's Website

Post by rakovsky »

Thanks for responding, Peter.
Most scholars seem to pull out the middle of 4 Esdras and consider it non-Christian Jewish, while considering the beginning and ending to be Christian and naming them 5 and 6 Esdras, respectively. Based on this scheme, 4 Esdras would almost certainly come before the Apocalypse of Peter. My guess is that this is their premise when dating the Apocalypse of Peter as being written after 4 Esdras (c. 90-96 AD).

But this underlying premise is questionable, because scholars have different views on whether the entire document is actually Christian. The problem is that in this early period, plenty of passages by Christians could be Jewish and not overtly Christian.

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rakovsky
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Re: First Century Christian Writings Missing from our Forum's Website

Post by rakovsky »

It's hard for me to see how one would date the Epistle of Eugnostos to 50-150 AD and date Sophia of Jesus Christ to 50-250 AD, but date the Gnostic Gospel of the Egyptians/Book of the Great Invisible Spirit to a period more than decades later (eg. to date it to 200-350 AD). They are all in Nag Hammadi Codex III, the Book of the Great Invisible Spirit has a colophon saying that it was written down by Eugnostos, and Sophia of Jesus Christ even uses the term "the Great Invisible Spirit." Codex III even places the "Book of the Great Invisible Spirit" before those other two books. I think that most likely either (A) all three books were written within at least a few decades of eachother, or (B) the Book of the Great Invisible Spirit was only copied down by Eugnostos and written significantly earlier than the other two.

Personally, I would date Eugnostos' Epistle and Sophia of Jesus Christ to after 124 AD, because they seem to come after John's Gospel (they are after the Apocryphon of John in the Codex and have some resemblance to ideas in John's Gospel) and because Eugnostos' Epistle has a passage that closely resembles a passage in Aristides' Apology, which was written in 124-140 AD. But these reasons don't prove definitively that they were written so late. Conceivably, Aristide could have read Eugnostos' Epistle and written his Apology after the latter.

At the least, Sophia of Jesus Christ must be written after the Gospel of John (ie. after a point in 90-100 AD), since in The Woman Jesus Loved, A. S. Marjanen comments about "Sophia of Jesus Christ": "The second part of the Savior's greeting in 91,20-23 ("my peace I give to you") is so peculiarly Johanine see (John 14,27; cf. also 16,33) that its occurrence in the Sophia of Jesus Christ must be taken as an indication of Johanine influence on its author."

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Re: First Century Christian Writings Missing from our Forum's Website

Post by schillingklaus »

Justin Martyr is aware of an early form of the Memento Domine, part of the Roman Catholic Canon Missae. Irenaeus alludes to the prayer Supra Quae, one of the most important parts of the same.
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