Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2023 5:50 pm
Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sat Jun 10, 2023 7:06 pm
So what do you make of it?
NTC (NT canonical literature)
Any 4th century NTC invention hypotheses will need to be revised to include 3rd century Χρειστιανοι
inscriptions.
I appreciate this; it means at least we're making some kind of progress on these questions. That's what I was looking for.
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2023 5:50 pmIn the world of intellectual property an invention is identified as something which includes a novel step. So the data implies something related to Χρειστιανοι was already in the world before Constantine took control of the empire. The question is what was it.
True, that is the question.
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2023 5:50 pmDid the Χρειστιανοι of Phrygia use nomina sacra? If not why not? Did the Χρειστιανοι of Phrygia possess NTC literature? Did they possess NT Apocryphal (NTA) literature? Did they possess some Diatesseron-like "harmony" gospel such as that likely to have existed at Dura Europos earlier in the 3rd century? IDK the answers to these questions.
In general, we don't
know anything more about this family of Temenothyrai than what's on the inscription. Accordingly, any answers of "IDK" aren't necessarily very significant. However, that's not really how historians work either. The goal of a historian is to gather together relevant data and create an explanation of it. This doesn't mean engaging in a sort of logical empiricism where that which is not explicitly proven, does not enter into that explanation. For example, we may have some limited data for a Greek cult: some incriptions dedicated to it, some magical text papyri invoking it, some literary sources a century later describing it. We could atomize all this data and declare that we know nothing about the cult and that no one piece of information can be related to another. I would question why someone would consider that the best approach.
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2023 5:50 pmOr indeed why we have no physical data at Rome, Alexandria or any of the cities of the empire until the 4th century.
This kind of statement is completely inconsistent with the reality of material culture and interpreting it as historical data. As a rough estimate, based on my own reading, maybe 1 or 2 inscriptions in 100 have any explicit indication of date. The vast majority of inscriptions don't have an explicit indication of date. Even less papyri have an explicit indication of date. This question either resolves into the true answer -- the "why" is that it is a consequence of a blinkered methodology that implicitly assigns data later if the date is not certain -- or it leads down a rabbit hole when given the false answer that we somehow know that there is no such extant artifact that was produced before the 4th century.
Other than the overwhelming majority of artifacts having no explicit indication of date, at least a majority of inscriptions seem to have no explicit indication of which religious tradition it belongs to, and almost all art can be interpreted variously if we push hard enough. There are very many occasions where it's impossible to be completely sure of a "Christian" or non-"Christian" authorship. This is especially true once we have atomized our understanding of what "Christian" is, to the point that we would need some explicit term like the word "Christian" in a particular spelling to confirm it. While this does succeed in showing some kind of reasonable doubt about many artifacts and the religious beliefs that produced them, it's unsound to make a pronouncement like the one above on the basis of it.
Last but not least, I believe the typical hypothesis is that Christians were a small minority in the third century, a very small minority in the second century, and with at most limited existence in the first century. Another typical hypothesis is that they were, for large stretches of time, an illicit group. I have also provided some sources according to which valuables and texts were seized to be destroyed in the early fourth century. Every hypothesis has the imperial favor of Constantine greatly expanding their influence, allowing the flourishing of their material and literary culture. It's not logical to compare (and complain) that which is before the 4th century to that which is after.
If we're looking for a more appropriate comparison, it would be to look at some other cult - say, that of Mithras - and to compare the evidence for it to that of the pre-4th century Christ (or Chrest) cult. [With a caveat: no comparison is perfect. For example I think I recall that the Mithras cult sometimes was in favor with significant Roman leaders during this time period. -PK]
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2023 5:50 pmLikewise wrt the
manuscripts who was the χρησιανοι ("Chresian") mentioned in P.Oxy XLII 3035 explicitly dated 28 February 256 CE? Why do the manuscripts consistently have "Chrestians" in the early period?
We should start by investigating the facts of the matter. I don't believe you've established them. Then we should develop explanatory hypotheses.
Fortunately, if I do get to my Part B (225-275), we will have some more data with which to work that is from an earlier time period.
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2023 5:50 pmWhat role does the NHL Gospel of Philip have to play in its explicit juxtaposition of Christian and Chrestian along with two different nomina sacra (XS and XRS) for Christ?
Both are questions we can ask.
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2023 5:50 pmNTA (NT apocryphal literature)
The theory on the provenance of the NTA is unaffected by these Χρειστιανοι inscriptions. Well over ten years ago I relegated the 4th century NTC invention idea to third place behind the exploration of two other ideas as outlined here:
This is kindly acknowledged. I figure we have to start somewhere.
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2023 5:50 pmIdea (1) - The Gnostic Gospels and Acts were authored 325-336 CE as a reaction to the Constantine Bible
It has to be allowed that most of the texts you're referencing have no explicit mention of authorship or date. So, for many of these texts, it's at least possible (if not probable) that they were produced in the timeframe of the mid 4th century. Therefore, at least some of these hypotheses of date, when regarding individual texts, will have a certain kind of respectability due to the fact that they can't be disproven.
I don't think your claim of a "Constantine Bible" in the year 325 is sound. Most evidence points a little later.
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2023 5:50 pmIdea (2) - Evidence of systematic Christian identify theft suggests Arius may not have been a Christian, but in fact a Platonic theologian, and may be identified with the Gnostic Leucius Charinus (i.e. Arius authored at least some of the NTA)
Unlike parts of idea (1), this will never really be respectable in any way. It will never be in the history books. This isn't a conspiracy. Its rejection is not at all a product of any kind of traditionalist, conventional, or Christian bias. It's not even in the slightest bit unfair. It's just a particularly poor idea that is abundantly contra-indicated by the information that we have available.
Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sun Jun 11, 2023 5:50 pmIdea (3)- Constantine commissioned the fabrication of the New Testament and its history 312-324 CE
This re-ordering was accompanied by the note:
- It is important to note that idea (1) is to be examined first.
Secondly, idea (2) is to be examined. Finally, idea (3) may be
approached, and examined only after review of ideas (1) and (2).
http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/
The problem of course (as I see it) is that most researchers are only interested in determining the provenance and authorship of the NTC literature. Hence SA (this thread as an example) and others won't take any account of this note and just want answers to questions about Idea 3. It is difficult indeed almost impossible to disentangle exploration of the NTA (ideas 1 and 2) from that of the NTC (idea 3).
I think there are bigger problems. I'd say that a most significant problem with this approach to (1) is that you can't address it first, even if you wanted to. Certainly you could try to address it before (2) or (3), but nobody is going to follow you on (2) or (3) anyway, so that's not what I mean by not being able to address it first. What I mean is that historical investigation, especially when we're talking about the difficult topic of assigning provenance and dating to texts and artifacts, generally goes from the most specifically dated and provenanced to the least.
Since the gospels, acts, dialogues, and treatises that you're mentioning generally have little to no explicit indication of genuine authorship or date, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to start with them. We would want to start with other things that are dated more specifically and try to build some context for the time period that we're talking about. Only then would we try to piece together where other texts and artifacts fit within that kind of chronology.
So you may be more interested in exploring these texts and your hypothesis about when they were written, but you're not going to make any headway if you start there. You've bitten off for yourself a very ambitious project that you would need to undertake first. That project is to work your way through all the other literature of the ante-Nicene period, especially that with an author attached, and place them historically.
You would need to be able to do more than express your personal doubts about them, or ask others to show something about them, or mention the dates of their manuscripts, or make idiosyncratic remarks on other texts such as pseudo-Seneca or pseudo-Isidore, or fulminate against a system of oppression that produced them and/or the unscientific nature of pretty much everyone else involved in the disciplines of history and scholarship. You would need to shoulder a certain level of burden of proof to rebut the presumption that other historians and scholars have some idea of what they're doing here. You would need to show that there's something significant that everybody else is missing (and to repeat, the date of the manuscripts isn't, that's just how it is) about these texts, something that shows that they were most likely produced at a later date.
So you're missing your idea (0) that you can go through all these
other texts and show that they were most likely produced in the fourth century or later, referring to the texts that have more explicit indications of authorship and date that are regarded as ante-Nicene by contemporary academics. For each of these texts, the work required is significant. Individually and for each of these authors, at the very least (the very least), I would expect the equivalent of a minimum 30-50 page journal article establishing a new thesis regarding them. There's no alternative here, no shortcut. This is just the reality of taking up a quixotic approach to history. There are many windmills to be tilted against.