Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Ben C. Smith wrote:

Peter Kirby wrote:Celsus does not, however, give any clues about which supposedly has priority, except that he seems to believe the more-harmonized ones might be later.

If my only criterion for priority and posteriority were that the more harmonious ones were posterior, I would be hard-pressed to recreate the order Celsus has in mind.

That's true, except that if he had something called a "Diatessaron" or "Synoptic Harmony X" or something... I have a guess where he'd put that one (last).

Peter Kirby wrote:

Ben C. Smith wrote:

Peter Kirby wrote:Celsus does not, however, give any clues about which supposedly has priority, except that he seems to believe the more-harmonized ones might be later.

If my only criterion for priority and posteriority were that the more harmonious ones were posterior, I would be hard-pressed to recreate the order Celsus has in mind.

That's true, except that if he had something called a "Diatessaron" or "Synoptic Harmony X" or something... I have a guess where he'd put that one (last).

True enough. I would agree.

None that I know of state or imply that Mark copied Matthew or vice versa.

Irenaeus is a tricky fox. He claims to be Polycarp's devoted student even though he is forced to admit his archnemesis Florinus knew him better. I don't think we should just look for confessions on Irenaeus's part. He used Papias, Papias assumes a change of order from something written by Matthew to Mark, Irenaeus makes plain (= lies) and says that 'something' is the gospel of Matthew. Unless Papias's testimony was unknown I'd say it's pretty certain what Irenaeus was implying (or at least his fall back position when in intelligent company).

And couple that with the moving the stones of a mosaic allegory (Adv Haer 1.8) and it's case closed. Got to coach ...

In Modern Greek, λόγια is used usually to refer to "lies." heh heh

So, according to Eusebius, there are extant five writings of Papias which are given the title of Exegesis of the Lies of the Lord.

Ben.

I think the difficulty is that while we are after the truth 'the truth' inevitably comes to us indirectly. Take the example of Papias's testimony. Yes to be certain there is nothing in what we know of Papias's testimony which would support the logia being equated with Irenaeus's Hebrew Matthew - directly that is. But that isn't the end of the story. Irenaeus develops an understanding from Papias's testimony which implicitly identifies the 'logia' with Hebrew Matthew. Yet Irenaeus doesn't mention Papias directly in that testimony. Why is that? Irenaeus develops the beginning of his system from Papias and leaves Papias unmentioned. Is it because Papias was unknown and the testimony is left unmentioned because Irenaeus uses it as his secret 'cheat sheet' - I don't think so. I think Papias's testimony was well-known enough that Irenaeus didn't feel he had to make direct reference to it. If that's true then the rest of what Papias says about Mark being Matthew (= logia) applies to the relationship between Irenaeus's Matthew (our Matthew) and Irenaeus's Mark (our Mark) - at least implicitly in Irenaeus's mind and those who followed them. In other words, Irenaeus and his followers secretly or clandestinely assume that Mark's source is Matthew. This is undoubtedly why there are these gratuitous references to an 'Aramaic original' text (which Irenaeus can't distinguish from Hebrew) in Mark. And yes implicitly I am fairly certain that Irenaeus had a hand in manufacturing the fourfold gospel set (an adaptation of Trobisch's POV).

And you're only lying if you actually utter an untruth. You can't really catch Irenaeus saying that Papias's logia = Hebrew Matthew so he isn't lying.

And this name Παπίας finally deserves some attention. Was there really a man of this name or is it a collection of sayings ascribed to '(Church) fathers' = פאפי. In other words, when 'Papias' says that he preferred to hear the witnesses of Lord rather than books these people were likely called פאפי. So was the collection identified later as belong to Παπίας really only just the very 'living voices' identified as Papias's preference?