Was Peregrinus really a Christian ?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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arnoldo
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Re: Was Peregrinus really a replicant ?

Post by arnoldo »

Philip K Dick documented in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep of a replicant who had many parallels to Peregrinus's life. For example, this replicant wandered from place to place all throughout it's life. Eventually this wandering replicant is able to make it to earth where he meets his father- and then kills him. To disguise itself, this replicant wears shabby clothes and lives an ascetic lifestyle. Finally, when this replicant dies a bird flies away from him. Co-incidence? It is documented that Philip K Dick had experiences where events which occurred in the Roman Empire influenced his writings. Taking Philip K Dick's writings into account, it's likely that Peregrinus is in fact a replicant and not Polycarp. ;)
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Re: Was Peregrinus really a Christian ?

Post by perseusomega9 »

Stephen,

Do you think your theory of Peregrinus = Polycarp is strengthened by Trobisch's idea that Polycarp was editor of the canon, especially in light of Lucian's remarks that Peregrinus authored many of the Christians books?
The metric to judge if one is a good exegete: the way he/she deals with Barabbas.

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stephan happy huller
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Re: Was Peregrinus really a Christian ?

Post by stephan happy huller »

Well I mean I don't know if that really advances the cause of identifying Peregrinus with Polycarp because we don't have a source anywhere that says that Polycarp authored material in the name of other people. So while yes I think it is an important statement once you accept the idea that Polycarp was Peregrinus, I don't think it proves the association one way or the other. The strongest arguments are IMO:

1. that Peregrinus and Polycarp both effectively burned themselves alive by instigating the authorities
2. the bird flying out of the fire in both fiery deaths (present in the original Martyrdom of Polycarp but removed in surviving texts)
3. that the date of Polycarp's death was around the same time as Peregrinus
4. the reference to 'underworld couriers' in Peregrinus and the situation of assistants in the letters of Ignatius with Polycarp's name appearing as a secretary of at least some of the letters of the Ignatian corpus and the role of Polycarp in the Martyrdom of Ignatius

The example of (4) is the most problematic. Some people have argued for an association with Ignatius for the very same reason (Lightfoot makes the connection between the Passing of Peregrinus and the Ignatian corpus). But IMO Ignatius is a figure developed out of the example of Polycarp because of the obvious parallels between Lucius's book.

In other words, the Ignatian corpus especially in its Syriac form is one step removed from the collection of letters in its original form - i.e. letters written by the peregrinus to his followers. The name 'fiery one' (Ignatius or Nurono) only shows how vague a figure the shadowy peregrinus was - i.e. people likely only knew him as 'the fire martyr.' I think Irenaeus's defined his master as Polycarp owing to his 'fruitfulness.' But notice also that when engaged with his fellow pupil Florinus he only refers to the man as 'the presbyter.' The conclusion I draw from this is that (a) Polycarp originally had no name (b) the names 'Polycarp' and 'Ignatius' were developed posthumously.
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neilgodfrey
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Re: Was Peregrinus really a Christian ?

Post by neilgodfrey »

Roger Parvus has revived the theory first proposed by Daniel Völter that Peregrinus was the author of the letters attributed to Ignatius. Parvus incorporates the ideas of Josephe Turmel and Alfred Loisy that those Ignatian letters were originally composed by a "moderate Marcionite".

In particular he argues:

--that the seven Ignatian letters that comprise the middle recension were originally letters written by Peregrinus c. 145 CE,

--that he was an Apellean Christian i.e. a follower of the ex-Marcionite Apelles, and

--that later, towards the end of the second century, the letters were modified by a proto-Catholic Christian.

The series of posts making up his argument are listed at http://vridar.org/other-authors/roger-p ... -ignatius/

The death-wish is a significant feature of his argument.
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Daniel Völter: any 'recent' critical assessments?

Post by billd89 »

Daniel Voelter {= Daniël Erhard Johannes Völter} (1855-1942) born in Esslingen, Germany and died in Stuttgart, Germany (one imagines, of natural causes.) Lic. Dr. Voelter was a Professor of Theology at Amsterdam, so he is often called a "Dutch Professor". He was educated in Germany (Freiburg i . B. und Tübingen, 1883) and it is in that language we find his works; based on his bio, I think we should call him "German." He was critically appreciated by Eduard Norden, and he is reportedly associated with the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule (??) although he seems abit early, there.

A Dutch biography online translates as:
Völter became professor of New Testament exegesis at the Universiteit van Amsterdam in 1885. He devoted himself, among other things, to the interpretation of the Book of Revelation. He authored Die Entstehung der Apokalypse (second edition 1885), Der Ursprung des Donatismus (1883), Die ignatianischen Briefe, aus ihrem Ursprung untersucht (1892). At the same time he wrote, among other things, on the composition of the Pauline letters, on the dependence of the Old Testament on Egyptian views (Ägypten und die Bibel, fifth edition 1907). He belonged to the religious-historical school and celebrated a strictly critical view of the books of the Bible. All the Pauline Epistles are, according to him, adaptations of the basic ideas of the Apostle.



I am following up on Daniel Völter's Moses=Thoth thesis (1912-9); he meticulously details/footnotes his line-of-thinking, but his conclusions so outraged both Jewish and Christian academics he was ignored, effectively 'silenced'. He may or may not be a 'kook' - he was definitely a theoretical outlier whose pamphlets were not taken seriously by English-language critics. I think we may assume he was generally dismissed outright by most colleagues. Hmmm...
Last edited by billd89 on Sat Jul 24, 2021 9:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Daniel Völter: any 'recent' critical assessments?

Post by mlinssen »

billd89 wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 8:59 am Daniel Voelter {= Daniël Erhard Johannes Völter} (1855-1942) born in Esslingen, Germany and died in Stuttgart, Germany (one imagines, of natural causes.) Lic. Dr. Voelter was a Professor of Theology at Amsterdam, so he is often called "Dutch Professor". He was educated in Germany (Freiburg i . B. und Tübingen, 1883) and it is in that language we find his works; I think we should call him "German." He was critically appreciated by Eduard Norden, and he is reportedly associated with the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule (??) although he seems abit early, there.

A Dutch biography online translates as:
Völter became professor of New Testament exegesis at the Universiteit van Amsterdam in 1885. He devoted himself, among other things, to the interpretation of the Book of Revelation. He authored Die Entstehung der Apokalypse (second edition 1885), Der Ursprung des Donatismus (1883), Die ignatianischen Briefe, aus ihrem Ursprung untersucht (1892). At the same time he wrote, among other things, on the composition of the Pauline letters, on the dependence of the Old Testament on Egyptian views (Ägypten und die Bibel, fifth edition 1907). He belonged to the religious-historical school and celebrated a strictly critical view of the books of the Bible. All the Pauline Epistles are, according to him, adaptations of the basic ideas of the Apostle.



I am following up on Daniel Völter Moses=Thoth thesis (1912-9); he meticulously details/footnotes his line-of-thinking, but his conclusions so outraged both Jewish and Christian academics he was ignored, effectively 'silenced'.
In my search for Dionysus and Atum in regards to Thomas I'm also running into quite a few authors and books that "go for the Egyptian angle". There are crazy similarities, but it can't come as a surprise that an ideology and mythology that is many thousand years old and beautifully balanced in make and female, human and animal, while being firmly rooted into and tied to nature and cosmology, contains pretty much all the spiritual stories of the world - in all their possible variations

There were many statues of Pan or Min found in Coptic territory alongside Coptic texts, and of course its striking that Iusaas(et), the female counterpart of creation, literally the helping hand of Atum when he masturbated into his own mouth and sneezed out Shu, god of dry warm air, and spat out Tefnu, goddess of most air, as such creating the start of the universe - bears an eerie likeness to the I(H)S that we all know

NT Professor Dennis MacDonald has a very interesting book on Dionysus and John, but the water and wine, viticulture and woman at the well could very well come from Egypt too - as also the Greeks have strong similarities to Egyptian mythology

Look around at archive.org, there's a wealth of books there free to download or peruse
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mlinssen
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Re: Was Peregrinus really a Christian ?

Post by mlinssen »

You'll undoubtedly appreciate the full and free copy that Arthur Droge just very recently put on academia.edu:

https://www.academia.edu/43308533/Homer ... ebeck_1989

200 delightful pages
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