Dura Europos

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
User avatar
Leucius Charinus
Posts: 2817
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 4:23 pm
Location: memoriae damnatio

Re: Dura Europos

Post by Leucius Charinus »

Secret Alias wrote: Mon Sep 26, 2022 9:46 am I've often asked Pete if this isn't proof of Christianity in the third century what would you need.
Explicit identification and confirmation of the existence of Christian nomina sacra in the "house church". Provide that and we have a Christian "house church" in the 3rd century.
Secret Alias
Posts: 18362
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: Dura Europos

Post by Secret Alias »

So you want someone from the 3rd century to write " we are Christian I promise."
User avatar
Leucius Charinus
Posts: 2817
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 4:23 pm
Location: memoriae damnatio

Re: Dura Europos

Post by Leucius Charinus »

No I want to walk through a process to explicitly re-identify and re-confirm the integrity of the two supposed Christian nomina sacra in the supposed "house church".

Neither of the supposed nomina sacra have over-bars / supra-linears. Hopkins knows they there were necessary on manuscripts because by the time he wrote the Preliminary Report he had discovered Dura Parchment 24 which has nomina sacra with the standard overbars.

THE PAINTINGS IN THE CHRISTIAN CHAPEL 285

The abbreviation XC is of course common and Traube states that in Egypt at least since the fourth century, and perhaps since the third it was in ordinary use A In the papyri and parchments the abbreviations of sacred names and words are written with the line above to mark the contraction and that this was also the case at Dura is proved by the abbreviations written so in the Tatian fragment found in the sixth campaign.
Very possibly, however, in short inscriptions this line above was not considered necessary. I could find no parallel for the abbreviation XPIC though XPC is, of course, common.

[my bolding]

The Excavations at Dura Europos: CONDUCTED BY YALE UNIVERSITY AND THE FRENCH ACADEMY OF INSCRIPTIONS AND LETTERS
Preliminary Report of Fifth Season of Work
October 1931— March 1932

Edited by
M. I. Rostovtzeff

PUBLISHED New Haven Yale University Press 1934
PREFACE dated Rome November 1933

VII THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
by C. Hopkins

238-253

Most surprising of the discoveries of the campaign was that
of a church, adorned in part with frescoes admirably preserved.


In the preliminary report Hopkins did not show the nomina sacra with overbars. It could be concluded from this that Hopkins did not in fact see an overbar above either the XPIC or XN IN graffiti. Otherwise why did he write they probably were not necessary in short inscriptions.

As a result of reading this report, Avi-Yonah in 1940 called them “individual freaks”:

The earliest example of contracted nomina sacra on inscriptions are the Dura Europos graffiti in the chapel, dated A.D. 232-3 (EDE 1931/2, p.241). These have no mark
over them. Such unmarked nomina sacra continue to crop up in the course of centuries, but they probably represent little more than individual freaks; it seems, however, probable that the system as described by Traube was not adopted for inscriptions before the 4th century. [14]

[14] Michael Avi-Yonah, Abbreviations in Greek Inscriptions, Quarterly of the Department of
Antiquities in Palestine (Jerusalem: Government of Palestine, 1940)
As reprinted in Abbreviations in Greek Inscriptions Al. N. Oikonomides, Professor of Classics Loyola University Chicargo. Illinois,ARES Publishing 1974, page 27

https://www.academia.edu/38115589/The_R ... ra_Europos


It looks to me like the overbars were added in the Final Report.


PUBLICATION of the FINAL REPORT

Carl Hermann Kraeling (March 10, 1897 - November 14, 1966)
C. Bradford Welles (August 9, 1901 – October 8, 1969)

Timeline


1958 C. Bradford Welles suggests Kraeling be editor Final Publication of the Christian Building.

1965 Welles becomes editor (Previous editor Dr Ann Perkins, Collections had been moved twice)

1966, Oct 29 Final Report (Welles, New Haven); Ill health beset Kraeling over past months has not improved PREFACE OF THE EDITOR

1966, Nov 14 Professor Kraeling died; two weeks after the manuscript went to press.

1967 The Christian Building, By Carl H. Kraeling with a contribution by C. Bradford Welles

In his Prelim Report Hopkins tells us there were no over-bars above the
XPIC and XN IN.

As far as I am concerned with no overbars mainstream have no nomina sacra.
Both these inscriptions appear to have profane translations (without overbars).

Without the nomina sacra all mainstream have are the murals. Where's Wally?
I have suggested it was just as likely to be a Jewish House Church.
StephenGoranson
Posts: 2308
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 2:10 am

Re: Dura Europos

Post by StephenGoranson »

The Dura-Europos gospel ms evidences Christian presence in D-E. D-E has been extensively excavated; many religious buildings have been identified, including a real synagogue. Christians gathered; the house church is the only viable candidate place, evidenced by paintings and inscriptions, and architectural modifications to make it church. If you have better alternate explanations of the paintings I haven't read them.

Avi-Yonah agreed with Taube (1907) that overbars are not always present in early NS. Other archaeological examples have since been reported. In the final report VIII:II page 96 col. 1, Kraeling/Welles: "I show the present state of the plaster"--namely, with overbars.

[Btw, a Greek inscription from a synagogue-later-church location in Sepphoris, Galilee has Avi Yonah-relevant abbreviation.]

Pete, you appear to be unwilling or unable to acknowledge any evidence that clashes with your commitment to the false claim that Constantine originated Christianity. Such a claim is not only refuted by evidence, but it is odd on its face. Constantine was powerful but not known as a philosopher nor theologian (unlike, say, Marcus Aurelius or Julian). And Emperor conspiracy theorists can't even agree on which emperor supposedly fits their different imagined scenarios. (Aside: does anyone reading this actually agree with Joseph Atwill on who wrote Shakespeare plays?)

I previously gave the example of Akhenaten as a wannabe religion maker who failed.
Or consider Genghis Khan, surely one of the most successful conquerors ever. His influence on religion? Not so much.

I wonder, don't know, whether this suits some personal need for you. Seems to me a lot of wasted effort on a certifiably dead end.
User avatar
Leucius Charinus
Posts: 2817
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 4:23 pm
Location: memoriae damnatio

Re: Dura Europos

Post by Leucius Charinus »

StephenGoranson wrote: Tue Sep 27, 2022 5:50 am The Dura-Europos gospel ms evidences Christian presence in D-E. D-E has been extensively excavated; many religious buildings have been identified, including a real synagogue. Christians gathered; the house church is the only viable candidate place, evidenced by paintings and inscriptions, and architectural modifications to make it church. If you have better alternate explanations of the paintings I haven't read them.
Confirmation bias alone explains why Christian Biblical scholars of 1932 (January to at least November) looked to the New Testament in an effort to explain the murals in the house church. The first mural to attract the attention of Clark Hopkins was the one of David and Goliath. Here is what Hopkins writes about the discovery.

In Feb 1932 a mural of David and Goliath could not have been Jewish

Feb 10 1932 - Report of Clark Hopkins, Field Director,
to President James Rowland Angell


It was this striking scene of David and Goliath that confirmed the impression which had been growing on me as we advanced; we were in a little Christian chapel, the first certainly Christian work to be found at Dura. As if to set any lingering doubt to rest, a graffito framed in the red and black geometric design which had first attracted our attention in the sanctuary called upon the reader to remember the Christ. We could then go back and interpret with more confidence the scenes already revealed.

Feb 10 1932 -
Report of Clark Hopkins, Field Director,
to President James Rowland Angell

So Hopkins says he thinks he is in a little Christian chapel before he cites what he supposes to be the name of Christ in its abbreviated Christian form. Why would he reject the possibility that he has just discovered a Jewish "house church" with a mural of David and Goliath? The answer is provided by Hopkins himself, writing many decades later:

Clark Hopkins: Discovery of the synagogue

"We stood together in mute silence and complete astonishment. A casual passerby witnessing the paintings suddenly emerging from the earth would have been astonished. If he had been a Classical archaeologist, with the knowledge of how few paintings had survived from Classical times, he would have been that much more amazed.

But if he were a biblical scholar or a student of ancient art and were told that the building was a synagogue and the paintings were scenes from the Old Testament, he simply would not have believed it. It could not be; there was absolutely no precedent, nor could there be any. The stern injunction in the Ten Commandments against the making of graven images would be sufficient to prove him right."

As cited in "Early Christian Synagogues" and "Jewish Art Historians".
The Discovery of the Synagogue of Dura-Europos
Author(s): Margaret Olin
Source: Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft, 27. Bd. (2000), pp. 7-28
Published by: Verlag des Kunstgeschichtlichen Seminars der Philipps-Universität Marburg
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/134871

It seems completely obvious (to me anyway) that Hopkins admits that it was, in early 1932 when he discovered the church house and the mural of David and Goliath, completely impossible that the these were Jewish. Jewish wall paintings from the Old Testament were not to be believed. "There was absolutely no precedent, nor could there be any. The stern injunction in the Ten Commandments against the making of graven images would be sufficient" to reject Jewish provenance.

A great deal happened between January 1932 when Hopkins discovered the supposed Christian murals (because they were not Jewish) and November 1932 when he discovered the Jewish synagogue. Biblical academics all across Europe and the US piled on to the discovery of the oldest Christian chapel on planet Earth. It was exciting times. Biblical group think went into overdrive during 1932 (prior to the discovery of the synagogue).

25 April 1932 - Cumont says Christian frescos causing sensation (Letter to M.I. Rostovtzeff)

25 Sep 1932 - Hopkins gives a Presentation at the Third International Congress of Christian archaeology at Ravena



Avi-Yonah agreed with Taube (1907) that overbars are not always present in early NS. Other archaeological examples have since been reported.
No I don't read it that way at all. The system outlined by Ludwig Traube for the abbreviations in ancient Christian manuscripts insisted that they always carried a supralinear stroke drawn across the whole abbreviation. The abbreviations discussed by Hopkins in the Preliminary report do not show the supralinear stroke and Hopkins suggested "it may not be necessary on short inscriptions". IOW Hopkins says there were no supralinear strokes over the abbreviations he reported upon. Avi-Yona called them "individual freaks". He says that "the system as described by Traube was not adopted for inscriptions before the 4th century." SUMMARY = no overbars = "freak"

In the final report VIII:II page 96 col. 1, Kraeling/Welles: "I show the present state of the plaster"--namely, with overbars.
The final report attests to these statement by Welles:

p.95 and p.96
17. SISAEUS "XPIC"
Copied by Hopins 1931/32 traced and revised by Welles in the Yale Art Gallery

18. PROCLUS "XN IN"
Read by Hopkins in 1931/32; revised and traced by Welles in the Yale Art Gallery

The key phrase is "traced and revised by Welles in the Yale Art Gallery"

In these revisions, taking all the above into account, IMO the supralinear strokes were added by Welles.
Secret Alias
Posts: 18362
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: Dura Europos

Post by Secret Alias »

Stupid is is stupid does. Keep up your struggle against the truth Pete. The irony is that even as you lie the truth manifests itself. So bad a liar you are.
rgprice
Posts: 2057
Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2018 11:57 pm

Re: Dura Europos

Post by rgprice »

Awe, its a pdf image, so can't search, highlight or copy :( But nice article. Thanks.
StephenGoranson
Posts: 2308
Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2015 2:10 am

Re: Dura Europos

Post by StephenGoranson »

So, Pete, your defense of no Christian church in Dura-Europos now additionally requires the charge that Prof. Welles, Yale classicist, Greek specialist, founder of the American Society of Papyrologists, faked part of two inscriptions. That others at Yale could check.
When Welles reported on the current state of the graffiti, he was informing that less (fewer letters elsewhere) was now visible than before, not more. Welles may be more reliable than Hopkins.
Then, Pete, grace us with your proposed different translations from the Greek.

That the D-E synagogue paintings surprised many people is well-known fact. Sometimes archaeological finds are unexpected or not persuasively explained until some time after first look. That's one reason to dig. I could give examples from experience in digging.
You have written that 100% is inappropriate in history research, yet the elephant in your room is your Constantine misinterpretation, in your current writing 100% untouchable.

How do you interpret the paintings?
For example, what about the painting usually interpreted as Peter attempting to walk on water. If that is misinterpreted, what is your better interpretation?
Or Pete, are you attempting to walk on rhetorical water?
User avatar
Ken Olson
Posts: 1277
Joined: Fri May 09, 2014 9:26 am

Re: Dura Europos

Post by Ken Olson »

The Excavations at Dura-Europos 5th Season 1931-1932 (1934) edited by M.I. Rostovtzeff is online here (and downloadable):

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dl ... 3/mode/2up

The contributions of C. Hopkins (p.238) on the church and inscriptions and P.V.C. Baur (p.254) on the paintings may be of special interest.

Best,

Ken
Secret Alias
Posts: 18362
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: Dura Europos

Post by Secret Alias »

The contributions of C. Hopkins (p.238) on the church and inscriptions and P.V.C. Baur (p.254) on the paintings may be of special interest.
To anyone but Pete the mountainman.
Post Reply