Secret Alias wrote: ↑Thu Apr 22, 2021 4:35 pm
Could someone do a 'where we're at' and list all the individual points and have everyone vote on what's indisputable? I am not that smart.
I started making a list of everything someone's mentioned, but there's a surprising amount of BS for a list of "indisputable historical facts." Of what's left, so much either seems either really vague or overly particular.
Here's some of what seems worth repeating:
1. The letters of Paul are relatively early. They may be heavily interpolated. They might be post-gospel forgeries. They may or may not be actual letters. But, in their original form, even on a hypothesis that puts them post-gospel, they're still relatively early in the history of Christian texts, given that so many other texts show a dependence of some kind on them.
The ideas that "the earliest known texts are the letters of Paul," "first knowledge of which [letters of Paul] is tied to Marcion," and "the earliest known New Testament books contained material from the texts now known as the Letters of Paul" are all possible and highlight the foundational character of the letters of Paul in the history of Christian texts.
2. The original language of the [extant] early Christian texts is koine Greek. Greek-speaking areas of the Roman empire such as "Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, and Italy" figure prominently as locations where writers speak of contemporary believers.
3. Early Christian texts generally make use of the Nomina Sacra, although that isn't necessarily true of Christian inscriptions and non-Christian texts about the Christians, which sometimes have the words written out. I'm unsure of where the patristics fall on this: anyone know? It's not really clear to me whether the use of nomina sacra is original to the texts (in the autographs) or a secondary phenomenon.
4. Several of the characters have potentially meaningful names. For example, "Jesus" means "God saves," and "Peter" (meaning Rock) has no pre-Christian attestation as a name. Some are obviously fictional like "Ebion" (poor).
Some words on the gospels:
5. The "synoptic" gospel was reworked several times, as shown from the three versions in the New Testament, from the Gospel of Peter, and from the references to texts being used that are like the synoptics but with different materials. The synoptics are characterized by "speaking in parables" and giving ethical teaching.
6. The Gospel of John was "harmonized" with the synoptic gospels into one gospel (allegedly by Tatian), but it wasn't rewritten into different "Johannine" gospels. Instead, there are very different texts that have a somewhat similar style to the gospel of John. The dialogues of Jesus in the NHL and in the gospel of John are characterized by doctrinal teaching that is explained by Jesus.
And here's the kind of thing that seems like it still deserves a lot more thought:
7. There appear to be three or four very different interpretations of the gospels. Some interpretations are allegorical (the Valentinians). Some interpretations are literalist docetic (the Marcionites). Some interpretations are literalist incarnationalist (the Justinians? if Justin Martyr can be picked as the supposed contemporary of Marcion with this point of view). We also hear about literalist adoptionists (rejecting the divinity of Jesus) at second hand. Why are there such divergent views on how to interpret the gospels? Where did each interpretation come from? And does this imply anything for the origin of the gospel story?
