Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Fri Apr 14, 2023 3:12 am

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 8:18 pm

Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 6:40 pmPaleography is not being dismissed.

If you're not just quote mining Nongbri... tell me, can other people quote Nongbri's conclusions to you? What about other paleographers? Could we get a list of the paleographers who have studied Christian manuscripts and that you don't dismiss?

Do you have a problem with Nongbri's work as a paleographer? From the essay I also cite Eric Turner who writes that “however conscientiously the paleographer tests out and refines his apparatus of criteria, it is unlikely that he will succeed in eliminating a subjective factor.

Eric G. Turner:

“Every paleographer is aware of his fallibility on this score. The person without paleographical skills will have observed with interest a number of recent examples of incompatible dates.

5) Different editors of separated fragments P.Oslo ii 10 and P. Harris 45 later determined to be from the same ms dated 3rd century and 1st century. Both could not be right!

6) Same editor (Sir Frederick Kenyon) dated different fragments of same ms to late 3rd and early 3rd centuries. Both could not be right!

7) P.Oxy 2105: Hunt (1927) = edict of a prefect - Petronius Honoratus, prefect in 148 CE. P.Oxy 2105: Rea (1967) = edict of prefect - Maevius Honoratianus, prefect in 231-236 CE. This example is especially instructive since it is the error of an outstanding palaeographer; and concerns a documentary hand, a type of writing which it is often claimed is easier to date with confidence that a book hand.

8) The helplessness felt by paleographers when they have to rely on the morphological analysis of letter forms is well illustrated by the lack of agreement on the dating of the Ambrosian Iliad, and more recently of the Duke University fragments of Plato Parmenides 253. I cannot bring myself to date this fragment in the 2nd century, as Professor W.H. Willis does, and throughout this study I have treated it as 3rd-4th century. Other paleographers ... assign it to the 6th century.

The Typology of the Early Codex: Eric G. Turner. Originally published: 1977.

No, but you continue to prove my point that you're interested only in quote mining paleographers in your attempt to dismiss paleography.

So can others now quote the conclusions of Nongbri and Turner to you? You've already dodged this question once.

I don't have a problem with Nongbri's work as a paleographer. Do you?

And how are you feeling today about the three problems that I pointed out? Are you intent on denying their validity?

And what is your intention regarding updating your essay to reflect your own concessions regarding the Dura fragment?

Also, you highlighted a sentence saying "Out of hundreds of instances of supposed 'early' Christian literature it is the only instance for which the dating method is not paleography in isolation." I asked simply, "why do you think that is?" Maybe you could try to answer the question.

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 8:18 pm

Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 6:40 pmOTOH it appears that we have an almost "black hole" of physical evidence prior to the 4th century.

And now I have to add a third problem.

(3) You equivocate between defending the possibility of a 4th century ad quem and being able to play your little games like this one. You haven't shown any kind of "black hole."

Well then cite some physical evidence other than DP24. The church fathers wont help you here since their earliest extant manuscripts are in most cases a thousand years removed from the "event horizon". The paleographically dated fragments from the Oxy rubbish dumps dated early have - in almost all cases - 3rd century upper bounds. The confidence that we can place in these upper bounds is being cautioned by the professional paleographers. You can sneer at this as a little game but the fact remains that most of the Oxy rubbish dumps were quite obviously commissioned and used only when the city experienced a population explosion of "monks" in the 4th century.

Ante Nicene physical manuscripts from Non Christian secondary evidence (such as Josephus and Tacitus) are also late. Additionally a good case can be made that many if not all instances of this class of secondary evidence for the Christian cult have been piously interpolated or forged many centuries down the track. Richard Carrier is completely unaware that two recent translators consider Marcus Aurelius' mention of the Christians to be a later interpolation. The essay I wrote was a response to Carrier's claims in case you missed the context.

Carrier agrees we have no archeology. Carrier assumes Paul existed. I don't. Period. Carrier assumes the ante Nicene church fathers are historical sources with historical integrity. Like you and mainstream do. And most others here. I don't. It is responsible to ask what if the 4th century Nicene church fabricated its origins? Or at lest some of them. And if some then how much? Eusebius did not find a letter written by Jesus H Christ. The Roman emperor Philip the Arab did not convert to the cult. Helena did not find the One True Cross and pack of nails. Constantine may have had a dream but he placed a Chi Rho on his coins.


The ad quem dates of composition are usually fixed by the first quotation or other utilisation of the text by some other datable work. With the saga of Christian origins these supposedly datable works are represented by the works of the church fathers. What if Eusebius' 4th century Historia Eccesiastica is of the same genre as the 4th century work Historia Augusta? How do we deal responsibly with the real problem of pious forgery?

If there are no other datable works with historical integrity then the ad quem looks to the earliest proof of existence of the texts, represented by the earliest physical extant manuscript copy. Or something that is very close to this. That's why the Nag Hammadi library and other manuscript discoveries have the potential to turn the traditional thinking about Christian origins on its head. These are all dated around the mid 4th century. The C14 dating tells the same 4th century story. A 4th century "Big Bang" of primary physical evidence.

But then again if you really think there is physical evidence (primary or secondary) prior to the 4th century cite it. Until then we could be looking at a black hole with an ad quem event horizon in the 4th century.

LC wrote above, in part:
"....You can sneer at this as a little game but the fact remains that most of the Oxy rubbish dumps were quite obviously commissioned and used only when the city experienced a population explosion of "monks" in the 4th century...."

Papyri from Oxyrhynchus include documentary texts that are internally-dated to before the 4th century.

Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 3:18 am

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 8:18 pm

Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 6:40 pmOTOH it appears that we have an almost "black hole" of physical evidence prior to the 4th century.

And now I have to add a third problem.

(3) You equivocate between defending the possibility of a 4th century ad quem and being able to play your little games like this one. You haven't shown any kind of "black hole."

Well then cite some physical evidence other than DP24. The church fathers wont help you here since their earliest extant manuscripts are in most cases a thousand years removed from the "event horizon". The paleographically dated fragments from the Oxy rubbish dumps dated early have - in almost all cases - 3rd century upper bounds. The confidence that we can place in these upper bounds is being cautioned by the professional paleographers. You can sneer at this as a little game but the fact remains that most of the Oxy rubbish dumps were quite obviously commissioned and used only when the city experienced a population explosion of "monks" in the 4th century.

Ante Nicene physical manuscripts from Non Christian secondary evidence (such as Josephus and Tacitus) are also late. Additionally a good case can be made that many if not all instances of this class of secondary evidence for the Christian cult have been piously interpolated or forged many centuries down the track. Richard Carrier is completely unaware that two recent translators consider Marcus Aurelius' mention of the Christians to be a later interpolation. The essay I wrote was a response to Carrier's claims in case you missed the context.

Carrier agrees we have no archeology. Carrier assumes Paul existed. I don't. Period. Carrier assumes the ante Nicene church fathers are historical sources with historical integrity. Like you and mainstream do. And most others here. I don't. It is responsible to ask what if the 4th century Nicene church fabricated its origins? Or at lest some of them. And if some then how much? Eusebius did not find a letter written by Jesus H Christ. The Roman emperor Philip the Arab did not convert to the cult. Helena did not find the One True Cross and pack of nails. Constantine may have had a dream but he placed a Chi Rho on his coins.


The ad quem dates of composition are usually fixed by the first quotation or other utilisation of the text by some other datable work. With the saga of Christian origins these supposedly datable works are represented by the works of the church fathers. What if Eusebius' 4th century Historia Eccesiastica is of the same genre as the 4th century work Historia Augusta? How do we deal responsibly with the real problem of pious forgery?

If there are no other datable works with historical integrity then the ad quem looks to the earliest proof of existence of the texts, represented by the earliest physical extant manuscript copy. Or something that is very close to this. That's why the Nag Hammadi library and other manuscript discoveries have the potential to turn the traditional thinking about Christian origins on its head. These are all dated around the mid 4th century. The C14 dating tells the same 4th century story. A 4th century "Big Bang" of primary physical evidence.

But then again if you really think there is physical evidence (primary or secondary) prior to the 4th century cite it. Until then we could be looking at a black hole with an ad quem event horizon in the 4th century.

I see that you continue to avoid several questions.

The third problem stands. Your games of referring to a "black hole" and "big bang" and "event horizon" are subjectively fun for you to play but have no value as evidence. And once again you show that you don't know how historical reasoning and evidence work.

That's because you chose the weak and feckless path of "defending ad quems." That might be okay if you were content with being an extreme skeptic who qualifies their skepticism by saying that they are looking for conclusive proof to defeat their skepticism. Because that's the most you can wring out of your "defense of the ad quems."

But you enjoy your games. You want to believe. You want to have a defense for your hoped-for beliefs. You want others to be impressed with your subjective ideas and idiosyncratic interpretations. You're sensitive to the fact that you are not objective at all, so you alternate between stilted prose where you attempt to sound like you know what you're doing and a peppering of things you blurt out because they trigger happy chemicals about things you need to be true. "Big bang." "Event horizon." "Black hole."

Here's a clue, then. If you want to be taken seriously about what you want to believe, you need to start with a foundation in evidence. You don't have any evidence because you took the forum troll's path of defending only the possibility that you might be right. That's what ad quem means here. You defended a possibility that in each case it's possible that a manuscript dates to the fourth century or later. If you want that to be meaningful and a platform for your further speculations, as you have shown you do, you're going to need to focus on more than possibilities. You would need to bring something to the table. You would need to firm up the "a quo" part of the date range.

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 9:14 am But you enjoy your games. You want to believe. You want to have a defense for your hoped-for beliefs. You want others to be impressed with your subjective ideas and idiosyncratic interpretations. You're sensitive to the fact that you are not objective at all, so you alternate between stilted prose where you attempt to sound like you know what you're doing and a peppering of things you blurt out because they trigger happy chemicals about things you need to be true. "Big bang." "Event horizon." "Black hole."

Here's a clue, then. If you want to be taken seriously about what you want to believe, you need to start with a foundation in evidence. You don't have any evidence because you took the forum troll's path of defending only the possibility that you might be right.

Irish1975 wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 11:48 am

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 9:14 am But you enjoy your games. You want to believe. You want to have a defense for your hoped-for beliefs. You want others to be impressed with your subjective ideas and idiosyncratic interpretations. You're sensitive to the fact that you are not objective at all, so you alternate between stilted prose where you attempt to sound like you know what you're doing and a peppering of things you blurt out because they trigger happy chemicals about things you need to be true. "Big bang." "Event horizon." "Black hole."

Here's a clue, then. If you want to be taken seriously about what you want to believe, you need to start with a foundation in evidence. You don't have any evidence because you took the forum troll's path of defending only the possibility that you might be right.

It is sadly true. He's never developed beyond his forum crank roots. He's the equivalent of a Young Earth Creationist who insists that he is just following the science.

That's why his only interest in paleography is just to quote mine paleographers selectively in the attempt to disregard paleography. He has no ability to interact with their work in a meaningful way, and he has no intention of determining the true state of the evidence. His intention is only to rub out the evidence to his own satisfaction. Attacking paleography wholesale is just a means to an end. If he thought the paleography supported his cause, you would instead see him singing its praises.

And he continues to avoid my questions.

I think one of the problems is that he doesn't think that Christianity matters as a cultural phenomenon. It's like Nazis looking at Torah scrolls or Muslims looking at a statue of the Buddha. They don't say to themselves "hey here is something worth preserving." There isn't an intrinsic "value" to Christianity. He is allowed to urinate on Christianity because he knows in advance it's fake.

StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 4:00 am LC wrote above, in part:
"....You can sneer at this as a little game but the fact remains that most of the Oxy rubbish dumps were quite obviously commissioned and used only when the city experienced a population explosion of "monks" in the 4th century...."

Papyri from Oxyrhynchus include documentary texts that are internally-dated to before the 4th century.

My argument acknowledges this and the fact that the city existed for centuries prior to the 4th century. It was a walled city and it had a rubbish dump within the walls. But my argument points out that there is on record a massive population increase during the 4th century at which time (and not earlier) a much larger city developed outside the original walls and at that time period many other rubbish dumps were commissioned and used.



Obviously people could throw old rubbish onto new rubbish dumps. The general point I'd make is that there is positive and negative evidence against all historical propositions. Yes there are manuscripts discovered at the city of Oxy from the earlier centuries some of which are explicitly dated. Most manuscripts and fragments are not explicitly dated.

Unless we are willing to discuss both the positive and negative evidence associated with the estimation of the date of the "early" Christian manuscripts at Oxy then we are not being rational.


Do you Stephen (and everyone in general) agree with these observations? I am prepared to identify, list and discuss both the positive evidence supporting, and the negative evidence against, the mainstream hypothesis AND my alternative hypothesis concerning the dating of Christian literature at Oxy. Are you?

MrMacSon wrote: ↑Mon Apr 10, 2023 3:59 pm If Christianity was 'invented whole-cloth' in the 4th century, it's very unlikely it would have been invented by a Roman emperor and even less likely it would have been invented by one in Constantine's situation ie. given his family background and upbringing in the cult of Sol Invicitus which persisted among Roman elite, such as Constantine's father, after Aurelian's elevation of it in the early 270s CE.

It's very unlikely Constantine would have had the inclination or the time (given all that was going on in the Roman empire in his time, including the shift to establishing its headquarters in Byzantium/Constantinople. It is possible Christianity was elevated in the 2nd half of his rule but how or to what actual extent will be hard to determine: almost all the assertions and legends about Constantine's interactions with Christianity, apart from those related to the Council of Nicea, apply to early in his rule, related to his military activity).

Eusebius might have had the time and inclination but his writings—well, the writings attributed to him—fairly strongly suggest that, while he was clearly inventing some aspects of 'early Christian history', ie. before 'his time', he was still relying on genuine earlier textual traditions.

I think it's likely that what's viewed as early Christian history has almost all been embellished; and probably at least twice, in stages ie. works of the likes of Tertullian and Origin were likely embellished in the 1-200 years after they were first written; then probably in the 4th-5th centuries; and probably again at some later stage. If Eusebius' works were embellished, they are likely to first have been within 100 yrs.

It seems fairly clear, to me that the basic traditions associated with and attributed to Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Hyppolytus, Clement of Alexandria, the author of the Refutation of All Heresies, and a few others in the mid-late 2nd century to 3rd century, are realistic and genuine. Whether they all are might be debateable. They give witness to Marcion and Marcionite Christianity, Simonism/Simonianism, Sethianism, Valentinianism and other so-called 'gnostic' sects and traditions. As do people like Plotinus…

1. Monarchs and political men exploit whatever religion exists in their time, and maybe pervert it. But total invention is inconceivable. And the political turbulence of late antiquity is hard to exaggerate. Just staying alive on their thrones, and keeping down usurpers, took all their energy. If you think of those great would be reformers, the pharoah Akhenaten and the emperor Julian, the immediate failure of their quixotic agendas says a lot.

2. There is way too much weirdness in the heresiologists. How or why would any orthodox authority “invent” such material?

3. We should instead ask about the profound mythologization of cultural memory that occurred in European civilization from Constantine until the Reformation period of the 16th-17th centuries—a period of some 14 centuries give or take. Then came modernity and secularization, followed by fundamentalism and the culture wars of today. The dependence of our cultural memory on the middle period, the medieval period, is what counts. That was when “the Western mind” became Christian, and has stayed Christian ever since in spite of modernity and technological revolution. I feel that this angle is rarely discussed or considered by those for whom it is altogether relevant.

4. I hold medieval eccelisastics responsible not so much for embellishing ancient texts—they were poorly educated, remember—as for supressing a lot of material that must have been around and must have been “unthinkable” for Christians. For example, I think about why Tacitus’ Histories breaks off where it does, with the run up to the war of 70, and why the time of Pilate is missing from the Annals. Why Eusebius appears to black out so many early Marcionite authors.

5. If the question is whether ancient Christianity originated in a massive hoax, the answer is no. There are more interesting questions. And whatever really happened, the burden of interpreting all these crazy texts is with us regardless. I’m increasingly less interested in historical criticism, and more interested in questions of interpretation.

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 9:14 amThe third problem stands. Your games of referring to a "black hole" and "big bang" and "event horizon" are subjectively fun for you to play but have no value as evidence.

Analogies are often useful. SA uses analogies in the adult entertainment industry all the time. My analogies are often drawn from the scientific industry.

And once again you show that you don't know how historical reasoning and evidence work.

I reject that proposition. I have pointed out the elements of historical methodology as used by classical source criticism and biblical source criticism and how these differ in some of their approaches to historical reasoning. You have not responded to this at all. Do you have a problem with it?

That's because you chose the weak and feckless path of "defending ad quems." That might be okay if you were content with being an extreme skeptic who qualifies their skepticism by saying that they are looking for conclusive proof to defeat their skepticism. Because that's the most you can wring out of your "defense of the ad quems."

It should be entirely obvious that I am an extreme skeptic of the received "history" of the NT literature, of the church fathers and of Christian origins. And yes of course I seek whatever conclusive proof that may exist - for and against the mainstream hypothesis and for and against any alternative hypotheses. Not just my own.

Here's a clue, then. If you want to be taken seriously about what you want to believe, you need to start with a foundation in evidence. You don't have any evidence because you took the forum troll's path of defending only the possibility that you might be right.

At page 8 of that essay I prepared a schematic showing a chronological map of the Evidence. This is the "foundation of evidence" that you have called for. This map is from the mainstream perspective and in it the classes of evidence mapped are:

(1) New Testament Canonical literature (NTC) including the LXX or Septuagint.
(2) New Testament Apocryphal literature (NTA) including the Nag Hammadi Codices.
(3) Ecclesiastical History (EH)
(4) Non-Christian literary sources;
(5) Archaeological evidence.

These are further defined (with reference to each and every manuscript) here:
viewtopic.php?p=144019#p144019

That's what ad quem means here. You defended a possibility that in each case it's possible that a manuscript dates to the fourth century or later. If you want that to be meaningful and a platform for your further speculations, as you have shown you do, you're going to need to focus on more than possibilities. You would need to bring something to the table. You would need to firm up the "a quo" part of the date range.

Both the "a quo" and "ad quem" ranges are shown in the above map of the evidence for all the classes. The map does not show any proposed forgery of the NT canonical literature. However it does show a proposed alternative chronology (325-337 CE) and interpretation for the composition of the NT Apocryphal literature. The map of the evidence also notes the proposed subsequent forgery of EH7 (heresiology) but maps the mainstream chronology of the ante Nicene heresiology. As mentioned above, the class of "church history" labelled as EH1 (orthodox understanding of the "early" universal church, attestation to the NTC, the lists of bishops, etc) is accepted as provided by current mainstream theories.

You'll note that the literature is defined at the detailed level for (1) NTC and (2) NTA in part via ECW. Your ECW tables show the mainstream "a quo" and "ad quem" date ranges. Although I understand why both the mainstream "a quo" dates and "ad quem" dates are as they are, my study concerns only the "ad quem" claims. These in large part are set from textual criticism of the NTC and via attestations in the writings of the "church fathers" (EH1 with respect to the NTC; EH7 with respect to the NTA). I am highly skeptical of the historical integrity of all these sources.

The physical primary and secondary evidence

What is not shown in your ECW tables (and nowhere else gathered altogether in one place on the net that I have found) are the dates for the earliest extant physical manuscript for each of the texts representing the entire collection of NT literature (NTC, NTA and EH as defined above). If people are asking what I believe then I believe that the dates of the earliest physical manuscript evidence for all these classes of literature MUST be brought out into the open discussion of Christian origins. Because I am skeptical of the received "history" I seek physical proof. Any skeptical investigator worth their salt would demand the same.