Arguing Against the Church Fathers

[Secret Alias]

Has mountainman even attracted one believer to this nonsense? Not a single follower. Just filling in time until he passes.

[neilgodfrey]

Has mountainman even attracted one believer to this nonsense? Not a single follower. Just filling in time until he passes.

. . . . Learn to respect those who disagree with you. Kinda important.

[Secret Alias]

This is not 'disagreement.' This is willful and consistent misrepresentation of the evidence. This is consistent selective reading and willful misinterpretation. The fragment of Tatian's Diatessaron on Dura Europos put an end to this a long time ago. But then again what do you care about the truth. The ends justify the means. An ally in evil ...

[Leucius Charinus]

Mountainman I think it is an accepted fact that Patristic material was reused by later Patristic sources. I will even acknowledge that early identities "Clement of Rome" "Ignatius" even Clement of Alexandria aren't as certain as they seem. Is Hegesippus a corruption of someone named Joseph for instance? Nevertheless where are you going to put the writers and writings? Not much changes with the loss of names and identities.

SA I'd be inclined to flag these writers and writings as potentially serious integrity issues with the received Christian history. This loss of integrity does not just concern the names and identities. It concerns the reported chronology of events, manuscripts and authorship. What to do with these fakes? It depends whether these fakes are just integrity exceptions or whether they are part of the whole design. As far as I can see anyone investigating these integrity issues has the responsibility to ask the question what is the worst case scenario.

The best case scenario is that there are no other fake identities lurking in the Eusebian history and that the status quo can be continued. The worst case scenario is that it is all fake and the product of a late fabrication. The evidence for the NT, NTA, and Christians / Chrestians and heretics becomes abundant and unambiguous everywhere by the appearance of the Christian emperors. This is the terminus ad quem. Latest possible date. Somewhere between these two scenarios is the historical truth.

As investigators all options not contravened by the historical evidence should be on the table. We should NOT IMO rule out that the later church industry hasn't cooked all its books.

[neilgodfrey]

This is not 'disagreement.' This is willful and consistent misrepresentation of the evidence. This is consistent selective reading and willful misinterpretation. The fragment of Tatian's Diatessaron on Dura Europos put an end to this a long time ago. But then again what do you care about the truth. The ends justify the means. An ally in evil ...

So you know what another actually is "willing" to be dishonest? Do you really believe that? Do you really believe I don't "care about the truth"? Seriously? That I'm an "ally in evil"?? (Is that because I so gingerly tried to walk on eggshells to gradually be able to point out to you that a certain way of reading texts was not entirely productive according to scholarly principles?)

Well that's easy to break your rule, then, isn't it. Just say that the one you disrespect is in some sense "wilfully" dishonest or "not caring" about honesty --

that's kinda dehumanizing your "other", don't ya think?

More than "dehumanizing" others, its "demonizing" them.

[Leucius Charinus]

Has mountainman even attracted one believer to this nonsense? Not a single follower. Just filling in time until he passes.

Negative Evidence

• "Is there any other point to which you wish to draw my attention?"
  "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
  "The dog did nothing in the night time."
  "That was the curious incident", remarked Sherlock Holmes.
  ~ "Silver Blaze", by Sir Arthur Conon Doyle

Negative Evidence - Richard Levin
Studies in Philology; Vol. 92, No. 4 (Autumn, 1995) (pp. 383-410)

p.383

"The first point is that we cannot hope to prove any proposition unless we look for negative evidence that might contradict it, and the second point is that many of us ignore the first point, because of the tendancy of our minds (not, of course, of "human nature") to look only for positive evidence that confirms a proposition we want to prove. This tendancy explains the remarkable tenacity of superstitions ... and of prejudices ....

p.389

The third basic point ... We must recognise, not only that we cannot hope to prove any proposition unless we look for negative evidence that might contradict it and that we have a tendency to look only for positive evidence, but also that we cannot hope to prove any proposition unless this negative evidence could exist. The principle is well known to scientists and philosophers of science, who call it disconfirmability. They insist that if a proposition does not invite disconfirmation, if there is no conceivable evidence the existence of which would contradict it, then is cannot be tested and so cannot be taken seriously. If it is not disprovable, it is not provable.

p.409

When combatants encounter an argument, they do not ask about the evidence for or against it; they just ask if the argument is for or against their side, since they believe ... that "the only real question ... is: Which side are you on".

... we not only tend to overlook or forget negative evidence that contradicts our beliefs, but when others point such evidence out to us, instead of thanking them for this chance to correct our beliefs, we tend to get angry with them, and this anger increases in direct proportion to our commitment to the beliefs.

[Leucius Charinus]

The fragment of Tatian's Diatessaron on Dura Europos put an end to this a long time ago.

Certainty brings insanity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dura_Parchment_24
"found in a workmen's bucket"

The Discovery of Dura-Europos,
Clark Hopkins,
Yale University Press
1979

[106]

...in one of the baskets of finds from the embankment, behind (west of) Block L8 and not far from Tower 18, a piece of parchment scarcely three square appeared. Susan [Hopkins], compiling the catalogue, entered it on the daily register and made the usual attempt to decipher and identify what she could. The little piece, not badly crumpled, was written in clear, legible hand, as far as the complete letters were concerned.

.. [107]

It was one of those chance finds, a fragment of parchment two blocks away and on the other side of the Great Gate from the Christian building. How it got into the debris at that point remains a mystery, and how it happened to be preserved and then discovered is another. Since it was impossible to sift the great mass of the embankment, we depended on the sharp eyes of workmen. A small piece of parchment, dirt brown, appearing in the shovel dirt and dust required good fortune as well as sharp eyes.

The find was made on March 5, 1933, and there was an enthusiastic but unsuccessful searching in the Bible to find the appropriate passage. We found readings close and tantalizing. Clearly we had some sort of gospel text, something indubitably connected with the Christian community. Susan made the transcription, as we took photographs and sent parchment and copies on to Yale, still not recognizing its extraordinary significance.

Did the 4 gospels get harmonised into a harmony gospel or did a harmony gospel get split up later into the tetrarchy - leadership of four - gospels ?

[Secret Alias]

For the point of this discussion the Diatessaron fragment proves beyond question that Christianity existed in the third century.

[Leucius Charinus]

Three 3rd century Alexandrian "Church Fathers"

Why are the three 3rd century Alexandrian Church Fathers, Ammonius, Origen and Anatolius, disambiguated by the classical historians from the three 3rd century Alexandrian Platonists of the same names? Were 3rd century Christian identities "borrowed" from well known 3rd century Platonist identities ?

http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/Nicae ... Christ.htm

[GakuseiDon]

My view on levels of confidence concerning the historical integrity of texts and their authors from antiquity is that it generally diminishes the further back in time we go. This however does not necessarily imply that they can't be used in analysis. Rather that the (provisional) conclusions which can be drawn from such evidence may not necessarily be associated with any great degree of certainty. My opinion reflects the aphorism "certainty brings insanity". Nevertheless this opinion is not nihilistic. I don't necessarily reject all attempted historical analysis of these texts. Each analysis, while restricted in certainty, can nevertheless be of value to the investigation.

...

I could go on but will cease here by adding a schematic. I hope this partly answers your question G'Don.

I appreciate your reply but it doesn't answer my question, I'm afraid. I remember one criticism of Dr Carrier's use of Bayes Theorem was that, rather than start with a controversial topic in history like historicity/mythicism, he should have started with some non-controversial historical topics in order to provide examples that show the power of the technique when used for history. I'd raise the same criticism for your approach: when you refer to ancient non-Christian texts, do you do so after evaluating them in the same way that you'd want ancient Christian texts to be evaluated?

If you don't, that's fine. For myself, I don't question that, say, Paul's letters generally attributed to him were written by Paul around the 50s/60s CE. That is, I'm assuming that that is the case. I'm willing to accept that it might be wrong, and if scholars come to some other conclusion then any of my own thoughts about early Christianity would need to be revised. But it's an assumption I'm happy to work from. More importantly, I found that Carrier and Doherty regularly side with modern scholarship on things like dates, attributions and interpolations, so I can assume modern scholarship is doing something right.

Lets take the writings of Plutarch and Paul. Both were writing around the same period. Both writings survive via similar copying processes. Both had pseudepigrapha attributed to them. If you were going to use the writings of Plutarch in an argument, how would you analysis their provenance before you felt safe enough to use them?