Arguing Against the Church Fathers

[Secret Alias]

Wasn't directed at you. Have no interest in what you might say here.

[Leucius Charinus]

It's a public forum. Primary evidence is king.

[andrewcriddle]

For example after Pfaff published (1713) the Turin manuscript of Irenaeus in Greek, Harnack declared it a forgery.

So Pfaff was 'in on it'????

The Pfaff fragments probably are forgeries.
See http://hypotyposeis.org/weblog/2004/01/ ... naeus.html

Andrew Criddle

[Secret Alias]

Right but he's not part of the fourth century conspiracy. I'm saying that according to the nonsense spread by this conspiracy nut that the (alleged) conspirators with Eusebius must have invented the Church Fathers together w/the New Testament so that even if it was all invented the writings of the Church Fathers absolutely "know" and testify to the literary purpose of the gospel as they were written by the same individuals. That's all.

[Leucius Charinus]

"There is no question that the church fathers existed."

The historicity of Irenaeus is a postulate held to be true by all scholars.

... many scholars continue to rely on secondhand evidence from gnosticism’s ancient opponents in addition to the evidence from the Coptic gnostic texts, for several reasons (Pearson 2007; Broek 2013; DeConick 2016). Precisely because these texts were written anonymously or pseudonymously, the contextual evidence provided by the church leaders and Greek philosophers remains valuable. Their accounts, however inimical and erroneous, offer a basic historical framework that the primary texts simply don’t.

So even if Irenaeus’s paraphrases of Valentinian and Sethian writings are not from any of the exact texts in the Coptic gnostic codices as they survive in that language, thanks to his record there is no question that Greek versions of these kinds of texts were already circulating in the late second century in Lyon, on the other side of the Greco-Roman world from Egypt.

p.45
https://www.academia.edu/34056151/Gnost ... _the_Field

However this appears to be an unexamined postulate.

People have questioned the historicity of Jesus but no one to my knowledge has questioned the historicity of Irenaeus. Has anyone else questioned the historicity of Irenaeus? If they have not then it follows that the postulate is unexamined.

[lsayre]

Scientific method demands that everything retain(s) the potential to be openly and validly falsified. If it is not falsifiable it lies within the realm of either force or faith, with the second of these options rather often being merely a somewhat longer term fear or ignorance driven Stockholm Syndrome 'Like' symptomatic byproduct of the first, even if via parenting, though often via governance.

[GakuseiDon]

People have questioned the historicity of Jesus but no one to my knowledge has questioned the historicity of Irenaeus. Has anyone else questioned the historicity of Irenaeus? If they have not then it follows that the postulate is unexamined.

I've been thinking to bring this up with you on previous occasions:

I've seen you refer to ancient Greek and Roman texts before to support arguments, some from 3rd Century BCE and even earlier, nearly all of which have come through the same copying process that Christian texts have. Have you ever established those ones as originating from the time periods and from the persons they were purported to have been written by?

How, in your view, do we reach a level of confidence in any ancient text that has been recopied through the centuries, so that they can be used in analysis?

[neilgodfrey]

People have questioned the historicity of Jesus but no one to my knowledge has questioned the historicity of Irenaeus. Has anyone else questioned the historicity of Irenaeus? If they have not then it follows that the postulate is unexamined.

I've been thinking to bring this up with you on previous occasions:

I've seen you refer to ancient Greek and Roman texts before to support arguments, some from 3rd Century BCE and even earlier, nearly all of which have come through the same copying process that Christian texts have. Have you ever established those ones as originating from the time periods and from the persons they were purported to have been written by?

How, in your view, do we reach a level of confidence in any ancient text that has been recopied through the centuries, so that they can be used in analysis?

I attempted to get to the core of this basic question at viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8210 -- a question that seems to mystify scholars in biblical studies whilst seeming to be much more straightforward on the whole in other historical studies.

[Secret Alias]

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.

[Leucius Charinus]

People have questioned the historicity of Jesus but no one to my knowledge has questioned the historicity of Irenaeus. Has anyone else questioned the historicity of Irenaeus? If they have not then it follows that the postulate is unexamined.

I've been thinking to bring this up with you on previous occasions:

I've seen you refer to ancient Greek and Roman texts before to support arguments, some from 3rd Century BCE and even earlier, nearly all of which have come through the same copying process that Christian texts have. Have you ever established those ones as originating from the time periods and from the persons they were purported to have been written by?

How, in your view, do we reach a level of confidence in any ancient text that has been recopied through the centuries, so that they can be used in analysis?

Thanks for the question G'Don,

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 view monumental, epigraphic, numismatic and physical evidence as potentially more valuable than texts. Finally (in general) I rate this form of evidence as the backbone of chronology. Numismatic studies for example often provide evidence of the rulers (potentates) and the chronology of their rule. The referential connection and integrity of other evidence flows from this base line chronology (IMO).

The assessment of the historical integrity of each (text-and-author study) relates to its perceived merits and/or faults. So with all that said, back to your question(s) about the levels of confidence we may have in any given (text-and-author) study. Much related to this question has been discussed in Neil's thread mentioned above, which I am currently reading through a second time.

How do we know X existed?
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8210

In this discussion a demarcation was made between classical source criticism and biblical source criticism. They appear to be different animals, employing different methodologies. For the moment I have put the following stuff together.


The Issue of Historical integrity

My background is in the management and engineering of large scale databases and in the identification and assessment of issues related to database integrity. Database integrity refers to a referential integrity across the database between some, most or all of the elements within the database. The earliest forms of databases are now described as hierarchical in contrast to the modern dataases which are described as referential. My background covered the time span during which hierarchical database systems were replaced by relational database systems.

The Hierarchical Model was the first database management system model. This concept uses a hierarchical tree structure to organise the data. The hierarchy begins at the root, which contains root data, and then grows into a tree as child nodes are added to the parent node. For example, a company database might organize using one branch for Staff, followed by Departments, Teams and then Team Members. In contrast to this a relational database model is a type of database that stores and provides access to any and all data points that are related to one another.

IMO it would be valid to perceive the past and even present database containing a Christian history as hierarchical not relational. I would tend to describe it as hierarchical because it starts with God of the LXX and Jesus of the NT, then the NT apostles, then the NT literature itself, then the early church fathers of the "universal early church" leading through to Eusebius and the Nicene Fathers, and finally the Post Nicene Fathers. One might view Eusebius as the first Christian database designer and manager. This role was passed down to many others between the 4th century and the present day. Stuff got added, deleted and modified during the long march of the centuries. It also contains within it from its origin the heretics and the NT apocryphal (NTA) literature.

(As an aside I am inclined to suggest that the heretics were in fact the authors (and later preservers) of the NTA.)

The Christian database would not be relational simply because it is not really interested in data that is non Christian. OTOH I would tend to describe the past and present databases containing classical history as *more* relational because it is open-ended and its design and management is not really centralised. In one sense the Christian database would by the classists be viewed as a subset of the classical database. The integrity of both types of database is susceptible to GIGO (garbage in garbage out) as a result of errors, mis-classifications and/or fraud.


UNKNOWN AUTHORS

One of the major integrity issues I have with the Christian history are the masses of unknown authors. The names of the authors of the 27 books of the NT canonical literature are today unknown. (Although many have "certainty" with Paul) The names of the authors of the hundreds of NT apocryphal books are unknown. To this mysterious core we add the church fathers - supposedly historical characters and authors - cited first by Eusebius for the history and chronology of Christian origins and the church.

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

The following schematic shows that physical manuscripts may be presumed to have at least one author, as well as logical other relationships to other people. The manuscript may have had at least one separate publisher, at least one separate sponsor, at least one separate scribe, if the author (himself or herself) did not also perform theses functions. Behind the attribution of authorship (and other) names there is the presumed possibility of an historical identity.



If the image doesn't display it has been EXTRACTED from this page:
http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/Ancie ... erator.htm


1.2 Manuscripts (mss) - physical hand written source -
original documents (codices, scrolls, papyri fragments)