Heresiology before 325 CE has been forged: NT Apocryphal literature is a Post-Nicene reaction to the NT Bible.

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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mlinssen
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Re: Heresiology before 325 CE has been forged: NT Apocryphal literature is a Post-Nicene reaction to the NT Bible.

Post by mlinssen »

Leucius Charinus wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 9:32 pm
Secret Alias wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 5:50 pmIs it because you've come up with comprehensive explanations for what's at Dura Europos.
Ninety pages of discussion:
Dura-Europos domus ecclesiae? Archaeology, Iconography & MSS
https://historum.com/threads/dura-europ ... ss.129950/
No.
Summarised in a five page essay:
The Runes of Christ at Dura Europos
https://www.academia.edu/38115589/The_R ... ra_Europos

Find fault with the essay if you can.
Dura Europos proves Christianity existed in the third century. End of story.
Yale Divinity College would love to prove that Christianity and the oldest known Christian "house-church" existed way out on the Persian border at Dura Europos in the 3rd century, and that it was "discovered" by their 1930's archaeological team. Feel free to subscribe to their theological interpretation of Jesus H. Christ in their artistic appreciation of the murals. I certainly don't.

It's like believing there is historical truth in the accounts of Marcion in the fabulous falsifying Ante Nicene Fathers of the Catholic Church industry. O wait !! You believe in this bullshit.
Without any further ado, these are highly interesting:

The Sisaeus Graffito: ΤΟΝ ΧΡΙC ΜΝΗCΚΕCΤΕ CΙCΕΟΝ TON ΤAΠΙΝΟΝ

XP and IC could be one, or it could be two separate words - and in the former case it would be an attempt to contact xrhstos with IS

The Proclus Graffito: ΤΟΝ ΧΝ ΙΝ ΥΜΕΙΝ ΜΝ[Η]CΚΕC[ΘΕ] [ΠΡ]ΟΚΛΟΥ

This one is even more interesting as it would be the accusative of the form above yet that would mean that the nominative is XR instead of XS - and there's no match between the two even if they're two separate words. But what we do see is that xrhstos is again used as an adjective - assuming that xrhstos is meant of course, and not xristos or anything else

But XPIS is extraordinary - and if these inscriptions belong with these murals then there's little doubt that they really do depict scenes from the stories. Yet XPIS as an abbreviation, in part or in whole - now that is a time capsule
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: Heresiology before 325 CE has been forged: NT Apocryphal literature is a Post-Nicene reaction to the NT Bible.

Post by Leucius Charinus »

mlinssen wrote: Wed May 11, 2022 10:51 pm Without any further ado, these are highly interesting:

The Sisaeus Graffito: ΤΟΝ ΧΡΙC ΜΝΗCΚΕCΤΕ CΙCΕΟΝ TON ΤAΠΙΝΟΝ

XP and IC could be one, or it could be two separate words - and in the former case it would be an attempt to contact xrhstos with IS

The Proclus Graffito: ΤΟΝ ΧΝ ΙΝ ΥΜΕΙΝ ΜΝ[Η]CΚΕC[ΘΕ] [ΠΡ]ΟΚΛΟΥ

This one is even more interesting as it would be the accusative of the form above yet that would mean that the nominative is XR instead of XS - and there's no match between the two even if they're two separate words. But what we do see is that xrhstos is again used as an adjective - assuming that xrhstos is meant of course, and not xristos or anything else

But XPIS is extraordinary - and if these inscriptions belong with these murals then there's little doubt that they really do depict scenes from the stories. Yet XPIS as an abbreviation, in part or in whole - now that is a time capsule
The inscriptions are in fact graffiti. They are discussed at page 241 of the Preliminary Report. The first one (above) is numbered #595 and described as "scratched with a point in the square painted grey and adorned with black border between the court door and the small niche. The second one is numbered #596 and described as "letters carefully cut and placed in a green border line just below the little niche between the doorways." #596 is inscribed on the top of the border above the mural of David beheading Goliath.


Hopkins and the Overbars on the Two Inscriptions

In the preliminary report Hopkins did not show these nomina sacra with overbars. Moreover, in the concluding section of the report he wrote this:
  • “Very possibly, however, in short inscriptions
    this line above was not considered necessary.”
    [13]
It could be concluded from this that Hopkins did not in fact see an overbar above either the XPIC or XN IN graffiti. 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]
The Final Report [15] on the discovery of the presumed Christian building at Dura Europos was not completed until 1967. It was authored by Carl Herman Kraeling (1897–1966) and published posthumously. In the final report these overbars are now clearly reflected. Even for the “IN” which, in one interpretation has the profane rendering of “in yourselves” (i.e. not Jesus). How are these paradoxes to be resolved?
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Re: Heresiology before 325 CE has been forged: NT Apocryphal literature is a Post-Nicene reaction to the NT Bible.

Post by StephenGoranson »

Epiphanius wrote Panarion in 375 or so, but he quoted or paraphrased some sources written before 325. He was of course quite biased, but not especially creative, and he was confident that he could refute those he considered to be heretics, so was not afraid to quote them.
Page 16 of the following gives examples:
https://people.duke.edu/~goranson/Josep ... berias.pdf
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Re: Heresiology before 325 CE has been forged: NT Apocryphal literature is a Post-Nicene reaction to the NT Bible.

Post by mlinssen »

StephenGoranson wrote: Thu May 12, 2022 5:21 am Epiphanius wrote Panarion in 375 or so, but he quoted or paraphrased some sources written before 325. He was of course quite biased, but not especially creative, and he was confident that he could refute those he considered to be heretics, so was not afraid to quote them.
Page 16 of the following gives examples:
https://people.duke.edu/~goranson/Josep ... berias.pdf
You have a very appealing writing style! And what is really sexy is how the right of the text is so perfectly aligned - you didn't use Word Perfect for this, but a really fancy editor. AmiPro?
Or is my memory hazy and was WP6.0 this good already
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Re: Heresiology before 325 CE has been forged: NT Apocryphal literature is a Post-Nicene reaction to the NT Bible.

Post by StephenGoranson »

Thanks. It was WordPerfect, though I no longer have that set up.
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Re: Heresiology before 325 CE has been forged: NT Apocryphal literature is a Post-Nicene reaction to the NT Bible.

Post by Jair »

I’m not even going to try to get into the XP or IC stuff because I don’t know Greek. But am I correct in deducing that what’s being debated is whether Dura was a Christian place, or a Chrestian place in the 300s?
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Re: Heresiology before 325 CE has been forged: NT Apocryphal literature is a Post-Nicene reaction to the NT Bible.

Post by Secret Alias »

3rd century. Specifically "before 256–257 CE" (and it wasn't like Christians arrived the day before it shut down). A reasonable guess is that Christianity existed by late second century and if there aren't mountainman's "forgery factories" under Constantine what stands in the way of a normative understanding of a 1st century religion?
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Re: Heresiology before 325 CE has been forged: NT Apocryphal literature is a Post-Nicene reaction to the NT Bible.

Post by Secret Alias »

The question isn't whether there was Christianity before Constantine but why is it so rare for things from the 1st - 3rd century to survive pristinely. Answer: fight over available resources. When I used to hang out with underwater archeologists in Egypt they explain why so little marble survived from antiquity. It was all reused by 4th - 7th century builders. Massive recycling problem especially by the Church.
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Re: Heresiology before 325 CE has been forged: NT Apocryphal literature is a Post-Nicene reaction to the NT Bible.

Post by Secret Alias »

The so-called Hippolytus statue is problematic too for this theory. Why would someone build a statue for a third century Church Father with a calculation for Easter based on the year 222 CE? Yes it is good through 333 CE. But it was clearly made for 222 CE. Why do that?
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Re: Heresiology before 325 CE has been forged: NT Apocryphal literature is a Post-Nicene reaction to the NT Bible.

Post by Leucius Charinus »

StephenGoranson wrote: Thu May 12, 2022 5:21 am Epiphanius wrote Panarion in 375 or so, but he quoted or paraphrased some sources written before 325.
I am fully aware of the mainstream paradigm view associated with the writings of the 4th century heresiologist Epiphanius. The alternate proposal I put forward in the OP is that the sources that he quotes or paraphrases dating prior to 325 are fabricated sources, and that there were no NT apocryphal (NTA) writings composed prior to 325 and that there were no heretics (authors of the NTA) prior to this date.

The political context at the time Epiphanius wrote was the end game of the Christian revolution and an epoch highlighted by the edicts of the emperor Theodosius in which a revised Nicene orthodoxy was being written into the law codes. Anyone who did not conform to this revised Nicene orthodoxy was to be considered a heretic or a madman and would be dealt with by the imperial troops. The regime was loose with the truth.
He was of course quite biased, but not especially creative, and he was confident that he could refute those he considered to be heretics, so was not afraid to quote them.
Page 16 of the following gives examples:
https://people.duke.edu/~goranson/Josep ... berias.pdf
One of his most important pre-Nicene sources was the "Blessed Irenaeus", supposedly the Bishop of Lyons and a Greek writer despite the fact that all the direct sources for Irenaeus are Latin manuscripts preserved by the Latin church. The Latin church appears in the later 360's-370's with Damasus and his pupil Jerome who provided the first Latin Bible codex - the Vulgate. Epiphanius visited Rome during this epoch and it is generally agreed that the Greek writings of the Blessed Irenaeus were at this time translated to Latin by Rufinus.

The examples provided at page 16 and following are all in accordance to the mainstream paradigm that the Blessed Irenaeus (and the rest of the examples) were historical figures who interacted with heretics and the books of the NT apocrypha prior to 325 CE. The mainstream paradigm accepts these pre-Nicene heresiologists to be legitimate sources. The alternative view in the OP is that these are illegitimate sources which were forged, or fabricated by the Nicene orthodoxy in the later 4th century. And that there was no heresy prior to Constantinian orthodoxy - no NT apocryphal literature prior to the appearance of the Constantine Bible (NT + LXX).

One final point. The alternative proposal is not related to the mainstream history of the NT canonical (NTC) literature. See point 5) in the OP. You can feel free to subscribe to any theory of this history of (canonical) Christian origins. First century or second century.

5) All theories for the authorship of the NTC and the history of Christian origins may be entertained in relation to the transmission of the NTC to the 4th century, The proposal here is that no matter when the NTC was composed, whether Jesus is historical or mythical, when the NTC was published by Constantine, none of the books of the NTA had been authored.

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