Only Fantastically Amazing People Think We Have The Ur-Canon

[Bernard Muller]

to Huller,
You beat me to it! I checked on my own and I wrote, before I read your correction:
Actually, that Dionysus was a Roman historian and the book in question (now lost) was about the origin of the Romans (published 7BC)
http://books.google.ca/books?id=3QRaAQA ... in&f=false
Can you check your evidence before making wild speculations.

What make you think that "first book" refers to the initial gospel and not to a book that Dionysius "composed and published concerning their origin [of the Jews, most likely]"?
Isn't that the most natural reading of the statement?

You got me fooled here, for a while. But your "natural reading" is totally due to your diatessaronic obsession.

Cordially, Bernard

[Stephan Huller]

But I wasn't making 'wild speculations.' You there is another demonstration about what I was talking about at the beginning. You can't get out of 'your version of reality.' You thought (mistakenly) that I was citing Dionysius of Corinth. Now when I tell you that I was citing Dionysius of Halicarnassus specifically because he uses the same Greek phraseology you can't let go of the idea that I was citing 'Dionysius of Corinth' and thus 'made a mistake.' I didn't mistake the one Dionysius for the other - you did. I am guilty of not making the distinction clear (i.e. which Dionysius) but that's how I am. I am criticized for posting my own 'short-hand' here. I know all the references to the Corinthians Dionysius (so too the Alexandrian Dionysius). I assumed everyone else does too. But the fact that you didn't read my explanation and still insist that I made a mistake shows how difficult you find it to let go of your confirmed pre-suppositions (i.e. that I was mis-citing Dionysius of Corinth) which I wasn't

[Stephan Huller]

But your "natural reading" is totally due to your diatessaronic obsession.

No, that's not true either. I provided examples of scholars who assume the same thing as me. They (and I) can't see it is proved that Celsus is witnessing the birth of the fourfold gospel. But it is nevertheless a reasonable inference. What I take issue with, is the manner in which these scholars who want this to be the 'fourfold canon' cheat in order to avoid the implications of what Celsus is saying. Many of them (as I demonstrated) argue that even though Celsus says 'the first gospel' he 'really meant' to say 'first gospels' - or they just reduce it to a 'gospel' vs 'gospels' substitution - which is logically and linguistically impossible. He says 'first written gospel' was 'remoulded' 'three' 'four' and 'many-fold.' It is up to us to interpret this.

[EdwardM]

"They (and I) can't see it is proved that Celsus is witnessing the birth of the fourfold gospel."

Yet Origen claims, 50 to 75 years after Celsus wrote, that it was the 'heretics' that were changing their own writings!!!

[andrewcriddle]

Andrew

The Arabic Diatessaron is not the Diatessaron of Tatian nor the 'harmony' known or unknown in antiquity. The order and the narratives are different in every case - example from the Epistle to the Apostles:
..................................................

Hi Stephan

FWIW Codex Fuldensis agrees with the Arabic Diatessaron here.

Andrew Criddle

[Stephan Huller]

Consider also that Luke seems to have incorporated Johannine material in its composition:

Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John (XIH-XXI): Introduction, Translation, and Notes, AB 29a (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1970), 1000, claimed that the verse is "obviously an addition to the narrative, but in our opinion a redactor's addition, not a later scribe's." He goes on to say "Much of the language of Luke xxiv 12 is non-Lucan in style, and the redactor may have borrowed it from an earlier form of the Johannine tradition (where Peter but not the Beloved Disciple was mentioned). If this is true, Luke xxiv 12 does not Luke (xxiv. 12) does not speak of John, not a few have said that Luke mentions a second visit of Peter alone. The cause of this visit, it is said, was the message given him by Mary Magdalene after she saw the Lord (so Jones) ; but McClellan makes the constitute an independent witness to the story of the disciples' visit to the tomb. The other verse, Luke xxiv 24, is more important; for although it appears in the context of the Emmaus narrative, it is part of a summary of post-resurrectional happenings that may have come to Luke partially formed."

If you accept this basic formulation (that Luke borrowed from a proto-Johannine text) and John was the last of the gospels then isn't Luke necessarily a second century text and - even if we accept Irenaeus's late dating for Marcion - it seems strange on the one hand to posit Luke as an expansion of Mark on the one hand in early second century and then a generation later Marcion appears as a 'contractor' of that expanded text. Doesn't it make sense to suppose that Marcion had possession of a text that had a mix of what we might call synoptic and Johannine passage and this was later edited into its present form by Irenaeus? Why the assumption that if there was all the expanding and retraction that (a) Irenaeus was immune to the temptation to go along with everyone else refashioning texts and (b) that Irenaeus managed to actually find ur-Marcion when he was just as capable of lying about the provenance of his texts (i.e. 'according to Matthew' from Papias)?

[Stephan Huller]

FWIW Codex Fuldensis agrees with the Arabic Diatessaron here.

Right but I was thinking more in terms of a text like gospel of the community that produced the Epistle of the Apostles.

[Stephan Huller]

FWIW Turmel while arguing for a Marcionite origin for the Gospel of John dates it to 144 CE:

Gospel of Saint John is, considered in its first edition, a marcionite product. It didn't see the light of day until after the first third of the second century. This date illuminates the 5:43 text, in which the Johannine Christ, after having reproached the Jews for not receiving him, he who came in the name of his Father, added: "If another comes in his own name you will receive him". The apologists and the critics, who persist in remaining in the vicinity of the year 100, confess here honestly their embarrassment and confess their incapability to identify the "other" to whom the Jews will make a favorable welcome. Here is the sense of the oracles: "You refuse to receive me, I who came in the name of my Father; but, in a hundred and three years, you will receive the impostor Barkochba who himself will claim a heavenly mission ". The Johannine Christ describes what occurred in the year 132 when the Jews, led by Barkochba, revolted against Rome.

Gerd Theissen sees other basic parallels:

Marcion's canon and the Johannine corpus were at any rate comparable in one respect: they contained only writings in which there was just one theology - or for which one could postulate the same theology.

and again:

Marcion was not the first to develop the idea of such a two-part canon. Rather, it already appears implicitly in the Johannine corpus. Here we have a collection of writings which belongs together in theology and linguistic style (modern analysts were the first to be able to note the subtle differences between the Gospel and the Letters of John). Here for the first time the two most important genres of the New Testament canon - gospel and letter - were combined in a single collection of writings which emerged with an authoritative claim: the Gospel of John seeks to be the authentic and true testimony to Jesus.

There's more but that's a start (busy)

[Bernard Muller]

to Huller,

But I wasn't making 'wild speculations.' You there is another demonstration about what I was talking about at the beginning. You can't get out of 'your version of reality.' You thought (mistakenly) that I was citing Dionysius of Corinth. Now when I tell you that I was citing Dionysius of Halicarnassus specifically because he uses the same Greek phraseology you can't let go of the idea that I was citing 'Dionysius of Corinth' and thus 'made a mistake.' I didn't mistake the one Dionysius for the other - you did. I am guilty of not making the distinction clear (i.e. which Dionysius) but that's how I am. I am criticized for posting my own 'short-hand' here. I know all the references to the Corinthians Dionysius (so too the Alexandrian Dionysius). I assumed everyone else does too. But the fact that you didn't read my explanation and still insist that I made a mistake shows how difficult you find it to let go of your confirmed pre-suppositions (i.e. that I was mis-citing Dionysius of Corinth) which I wasn't

You were citing Dionysius of Halicarnassus? Why didn't you say so? More so because there is an Dionysus of Corinth, this one a Christian, whom you knew about.
So, with full knowledge that Dionysius you quoted was not a Christian, you answered my question:
What make you think that "first book" refers to the initial gospel and not to a book that Dionysius "composed and published concerning their origin [of the Jews, most likely]?
by
"Isn't that the most natural reading of the statement?"
That has no relation with your later excuse:
"I was using it as an example of the specific terminology in Greek not as a citation that Dionysius knew anything about the gospel."

If you knew you were quoting Dionysius of Halicarnassus, that makes you a very dishonest person.

I assumed everyone else does too

You are assuming a lot. So I was supposed to know it was Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek historian, writing in 7 BC. Certainly not a candidate who would mention the initial & first Christian gospel, which he admitted to have written.
That's a lot to assume from me.

you can't let go of the idea that I was citing 'Dionysius of Corinth' and thus 'made a mistake.' I didn't mistake the one Dionysius for the other - you did.

Now I am the one at fault!
Yes, that's what I thought first, for a short time, this Dionysus being the most likely candidate to refer to a first Christian gospel prior to Irenaeus.

Cordially, Bernard

[Stephan Huller]

Ok. I was sloppy. I am not retired. But the point was that it should have been clear because of my bolding that I was trying to explain the Greek with the use of a parallel expression in 'Dionysius.' This is an unnecessary diversion from the topic. The subject was Celsus's testimony. Nowhere did I say that Dionysius testifies to the existence of an ur-Gospel.