Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Secret Alias wrote: ... we've got to stop pretending that the texts of the early Church weren't corrupted. The body of early Christian writings, to use the original analogy, highly fuckable material and so - the material undoubtedly succumbed to rape. If you don't like my analogies or language there is always Jerome's original testimony:

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/27102.htm

That link is to Jerome's Apology Against Rufinus (Book II).

Her is a link Jerome's Apology Against Rufinus (Book I) - http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/27101.htm

• Addressed to Pammachius and Marcella from Bethlehem, A.D. 402.
  
  The documents which Jerome had before him when he wrote his Apology were (1) Rufinus' Translation of Pamphilus' Apology with the Preface prefixed to it and the book on the Falsification of the Books of Origen, (2) the Translation of the Περὶ ᾿Αρχῶν and Rufinus' Preface, (3) The Apology of Rufinus addressed to Anastasius (see p. 430), and (4) Anastasius' letter to John of Jerusalem (p. 432 Apol. ii, 14, iii, 20). He had also other letters of Anastasius like that addressed to the Bishop of Milan (Jerome Letter 95. See also Apol. iii, 21). But he had not the full text of Rufinus' Apology (c. 4, 15). He received letters from Pammachius and Marcella, at the beginning of the Spring of 402, when the Apology written at Aquileia at the end of 400 had become known to Rufinus' friends for some time. They had been unable to obtain a full copy, but had sent the chief heads of it, and had strongly urged Jerome to reply. At the same time his brother Paulinianus who had been some three years in the West, returned to Palestine by way of Rome, and there heard and saw portions of Rufinus' Apology, which he committed to memory (Apol. i, 21, 28) and repeated at Bethlehem. To these documents Jerome replies.

Which Rufinus is this addressing??

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From Jerome's Apology Against Rufinus (Book I) -

...I am called in this Preface brother and colleague, yet my supposed crimes are set forth openly, and it is proclaimed that I have written in favour of Origen, and have by my praises exalted him to the skies. The writer says that he has done this with a good intention. How then does it come to pass that he now casts in my teeth, as an open enemy, what he then praised as a friend? ...

...Tully says in his book of pleadings for Galinius: "I have always felt that it was a religious duty of the highest kind to preserve every friendship that I have formed; but most of all those in which kindness has been restored after some disagreement. In the case of friendships which have never been shaken, if some attention has not been paid, the excuse of forgetfulness, or at the worst of neglect is readily accepted; but after a return to friendship, if anything is done to cause offense, it is imputed not to neglect but to an unfriendly intention, it is no longer a question of thoughtlessness but of breach of faith." So Horace writes in his Epistle to Florus

• Kindness, ill-knit, cleaves not but flies apart.

2. What good does it do me that he declares on his oath that it was through simplicity that he went wrong? His praises are, as you know, cast in my teeth, and the laudation of this most simple friend (which however has not much either of simplicity or of sincerity in it) is imputed to me as a crime. If he was seeking a foundation of authority for what he was doing, and wishing to show who had gone before him in this path he had at hand the Confessor Hilary, who translated the books of Origen upon Job and the Psalms consisting of forty thousand lines. He had Ambrose whose works are, almost all of them, full of what Origen has written; and the martyr Victorinus, who acts really with 'simplicity,' and without setting snares for others. As to all these he keeps silence; he does not notice those who are like pillars of the church; but me, who am but like a flea and a man of no account, he hunts out from corner to corner ...

3. ..I am told that he is in a fury, and has composed three books against me full of graceful Attic raillery, making those very things the object of attack which he had praised before, and turning into a ground of accusation against me the impious doctrines of Origen; although in that Preface in which he so lauded me, he says of me: I shall follow the rules of translation laid down by my predecessors, and particularly those acted on by the writer whom I have just mentioned. He has rendered into Latin more than seventy of Origen's homiletical treatises, and a few also of his commentaries on the Apostle; and in these, wherever the Greek text presents a stumbling block, he has smoothed it down in his version and has so emended the language used that a Latin writer can find no word that is at variance with our faith. In his steps, therefore, I propose to walk, if not displaying the same vigorous eloquence, at least observing the same rules.

4. These words are his own, he cannot deny them. The very elegance of the style and the laboured mode of speech, and, surpassing all these, the Christian 'simplicity' which here appears, reveal the character of their author. But there is a different phase of the matter: Eusebius, it seems, has depraved these books; and now my friend, who accuses Origen, and who is so careful of my reputation, declares that both Eusebius and I have gone wrong together, and then that we have held correct opinions together, and that in one and the same work. But he cannot now be my enemy and call me a heretic, when a moment before he has said that his belief was not dissonant from mine. Then, I must ask him what is the meaning of his balanced and doubtful way of speaking: "The Latin reader", he says, "will find nothing here discordant from our faith." What faith is this which he calls his? Is it the faith by which the Roman Church is distinguished? Or is it the faith which is contained in the works of Origen? If he answers "the Roman", then we are the Catholics, since we have adopted none of Origen's errors in our translations. But if Origen's blasphemy is his faith, then, though he tries to fix on me the charge of inconsistency, he proves himself to be a heretic. If the man who praises me is orthodox, he takes me, by his own confession as a sharer in his orthodoxy. If he is heterodox, he shows that he had praised me before my explanation because he thought me a sharer in his error ...

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/27101.htm

Jerome is Eusebius's son??

Now you, Secret dude, are getting us in to mountainman territory? What say thee, knave?

MrMacSon wrote: Her is a link Jerome's Apology Against Rufinus (Book I) - http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/27101.htm

• Addressed to Pammachius and Marcella from Bethlehem, A.D. 402.
  
  The documents which Jerome had before him when he wrote his Apology were (1) Rufinus' Translation of Pamphilus' Apology with the Preface prefixed to it and the book on the Falsification of the Books of Origen, (2) the Translation of the Περὶ ᾿Αρχῶν and Rufinus' Preface, (3) The Apology of Rufinus addressed to Anastasius* (see p. 430), and (4) Anastasius' letter to John of Jerusalem (p. 432 Apol. ii, 14, iii, 20). He had also other letters of Anastasius like that addressed to the Bishop of Milan (Jerome Letter 95. See also Apol. iii, 21). But he had not the full text of Rufinus' Apology (c. 4, 15). He received letters from Pammachius and Marcella, at the beginning of the Spring of 402, when the Apology written at Aquileia at the end of 400 had become known to Rufinus' friends for some time. They had been unable to obtain a full copy, but had sent the chief heads of it, and had strongly urged Jerome to reply. At the same time his brother Paulinianus who had been some three years in the West, returned to Palestine by way of Rome, and there heard and saw portions of Rufinus' Apology, which he committed to memory (Apol. i, 21, 28) and repeated at Bethlehem. To these documents Jerome replies.

Which Rufinus is this addressing??

Which Rufinus indeed because, according to http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2709.htm, Rufinus' Apology, "Sent to Anastasius, Bishop of the City of Rome ...was called forth by accusations against Rufinus made, soon after his accession, to Anastasius, who held the Roman see from *498 to 503."

Jerome lived 347-420AD/CE

Pope Anastasius I (died 19 December 401) served as Pope from 27 November 399 to his death in 401.

Anastasius I Dicorus (Latin: Flavius Anastasius Dicorus Augustus, Greek: Ἀναστάσιος; c. 431 – 9 July 518) was Byzantine Emperor from 491 to 518.

Is it just a case the dates should be *398 to 405* rather than '498 to 503' ??

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But accusations are flying -

• "Eusebius, it seems, has depraved these books"
  
  "my 'friend', who accuses Origen, and who is 'so careful' of my 'reputation', declares that both Eusebius and I have gone wrong together"

Secret Alias wrote:My point was simply why do we pretend "Clement" is Clement, "Paul" is Paul, "Mark" is Mark.

Because the realization of what happened leaves us mostly empty-handed. And there's nothing people hate more than uncertainty. A convenient lie is always preferred.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, I like how the forum cuts the title down to "Texts of Alexandrian Church Fat". What's left if you trim that down?

From Jerome's Apology Against Rufinus (Book II)

12. "...Now I find among many bad things written by Origen the following most distinctly heretical:

• "that the Son of God is a creature, that the Holy Spirit is a servant:
  
  'that there are innumerable worlds, succeeding one another in eternal ages:
  
  "that angels have been turned into human souls;
  
  "that the soul of the Saviour existed before it was born of Mary, and that it is this soul which being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied itself and took the form of a servant;
  
  'that the resurrection of our bodies will be such that we shall not have the same members, since, when the functions of the members cease they will become superfluous: and that our bodies themselves will grow aërial and spirit-like, and gradually vanish and disperse into thin air and into nothing: that in the restitution of all things, when the fullness of forgiveness will have been reached, Cherubim and Seraphim, Thrones, Principalities, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Archangels and Angels, the devil, the demons and the souls of men, whether Christians Jews or Heathen, will be of one condition and degree; and
  
  "when they have come to their true form and weight, and the new army of the whole race returning from the exile of the world presents a mass of rational creatures with all their dregs left behind, then will begin a new world from a new origin, and other bodies in which the souls who fall from heaven will be clothed;
  
  "so that we may have to fear that we who are now men may afterwards be born women, and one who is now a virgin may chance then to be a prostitute.

"These things I point out as heresies in the books of Origen."

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/27102.htm

Secret Alias wrote:And for Stuart. Any time you want to debate whether our Adv Marc is a pristine text I'm ready. If you don't like me calling your sacred text - sacred because you think it has the miraculous power to transport us back in time to see the lost Marcionite gospel - a whore, I don't know if I can do that. I think texts should be pure and pristine if we are going to use them to develop historical understandings from them. This is not a virgin text. We do not have the original author's testimony. It says so right at the beginning of the fucking text. Admit the text has two and likely three authors based on the intro and we can move on.

You paint a straw man of me here. I never said anywhere that AM is pristine. Every reading needs to be tested before accepted. You can assign you estimate of how reliable any given passage is as to being Marcionite or a variant in the Marcionite, or simply a Latinization, or simply wrong. The way you do this is by comparing attested terms - I base a lot of my examination on the consistency of the attested and the unattested vocabulary - and the general consistency with Marcioniote theology. I also look for marker words and phrases that might indicate a break in the source. If there is more than one source for any Marcionite reading then there is more optimism.

All the sources probably combine to give us only a rough outline of the text that was part of the Marcionite Bible and which sections were absent. Its an eclectic heuristic exercise to attempt to reproduce a version. There are several attempts none is what I'd call a solid critical edition. Remember Tertullian seems to be looking at a single copy, and its probably as wild a text as every manuscript from the 4th and 5th century ever found. We can only say he looked at one text from probably a greatly diverse milieu. That doesn't make any of his readings wrong per se, but they may not be the correct critical text, just some text.

Were we do agree is that nearly all the early Patristic works have been edited and reworked to answer issues of a later date. Where we separate from Mountain Man is we (I assume you are with my view here) don't think everything is fabricated, building a false timeline, but that elements were "corrected" to the "truth" in much the same way orthodox scribes changed NT readings throughout the text (UBS does not catch them all - but perhaps that is elusive as the text was never fixed). Tertullian was not immune, as is evident in the nearly identical content of Adversus Iudaeos and Adversus Marcionem book 3. Also the style of De Praescriptione Haeretiorum suggests a later posthumous origin, when such lists were popular (puts even further doubt into Irenaeus accepted dating).

Now where I disagree with you is on how to detect what is later. I look for later controversies or changes in style that are dead giveaways. I have also come to notice that the definition of Martyr (testimonial) changed after Decius. Also references theologies that align with Manicheans. There are other indicators of interpolation. But these markers have not presented themselves to me in AM series for the most part. But I am suspicious that we may be looking at a 3rd edition, from a later collector, with the opening

[1] Whatever in times past we have wrought in opposition to Marcion, is from the present moment no longer to be accounted of. It is a new work which we are undertaking in lieu of the old one. My original tract, as too hurriedly composed, I had subsequently superseded by a fuller treatise. This latter I lost, before it was completely published, by the fraud of a person who was then a brother, but became afterwards an apostate. He, as it happened, had transcribed a portion of it, full of mistakes, and then published it. [2] The necessity thus arose for an amended work; and the occasion of the new edition induced me to make a considerable addition to the treatise. This present text, therefore, of my work--which is the third as superseding the second, but henceforward to be considered the first instead of the third--renders a preface necessary to this issue of the tract itself that no reader may be perplexed, if he should by chance fall in with the various forms of it which are scattered about.

That reads like a confession of a later author/editor trying to explain the sudden appearance of a new edition of a known work.

I also have a problem with AM 1.2.3 section discussion Cerdon's supposed influence. This looks to me as if it was drawn from a later work, and placed in AM as a correction. (the words Cerdone et were all that needed to be added in 1.22.10 to continue the fiction.) This maybe a hint of when AM was edited. (Hint, think about what happened under Decius)

I give these as an example of the type of markers I would except as evidence - though a trial is necessary to convict. So if you present these types of focused arguments you'll get somewhere with me.

I hope this gives you a better understanding of my position on Tertullian, and all the Church Fathers. The dating given them is largely a later invention, but like the NT books, we should be wary of the timelines handed to us and instead work back from the earliest manuscript found to find the era where the rhetoric fits best - that will at least tell us when the work was likely revised.

None of this has anything to do with your foul language. You have the vocabulary to insult at a postgraduate level. Its simply an effort at naked bullying meant to disrespect people and try to place yourself superior, a judge. Why Mr. Kirby lets you get away with it is beyond me. And Stephen we both know its just you being lazy.

It's 3 am in the morning and I happen to be up because one of the kids are sick. The claim of bullying has come up. I find that utterly ridiculous. You were offended at the language I'm this thread and the real issue you have with me is my refusal to allow you to claim "Marcionite readings" from Tertullian. Any time you want to debate that I'm there. The issue will be the same as that raised here. The early Patriotic texts were written by author A, edited by author B (and sometimes then author C) and often times ascribed to yet another author. Along the way readings creep in. AM claims to examine Marcion (let's call that D). Marcion had known readings associated with him. They may have been at the core of AM or this may have been added to a commentary on the gospel directed against the Jews (as AM 3 developed from Against the Jews). So both A and D had variant readings associated with them as well as editor B and possibly C. You can't claim every variant or even most variants in AM are Marcion's. The original texts have been repeatedly defiled

According to Criddle here the original text likely goes back to Justin. I agree. Justin had an ideosyncratic gospel text. I think Irenaeus was editor B. There may have been another editor. Tertullian a Montanist gave the text's final form in Latin.

The levels of degradation then

1. JUSTIN (perhaps merely writing a commentary of some sort)
2. MARCION (possibly added by Irenaeus or a part of Justin's original text)
3. IRENAEUS
4. EDITOR C or secondary editing by Irenaeus (in the manner Against Valentinus exists on its own and as part of Adv Haer)
5. TERTULLIAN

Epiphanius claims to have the Marcionite gospel in front of him but is a frequent liar in Panarion. He has some secondary source which may go back to (2) or related to it.