Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

If Justin wrote the text originally against Mark or Marcion:

1. JUSTIN
2. IRENAEUS
3. EDITOR C
4. TERTULLIAN

with Epiphanius having Irenaeus's original reworking (he cites much from Irenaeus verbatim in Panarion)

It might also be simply

1. JUSTIN
2. IRENAEUS
3. TERTULLIAN

Secret Alias wrote: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.

Tertullian gave indications & allusions as to the 'text' [I presume you're referring to a gospel of some kind)

& How likely is it that Irenaeus is an embellished character?

I don't understand what you mean by embellished

My son is sick yet again. There are numerous times the text of AM betrays an original non-Lucan gospel. It often seems to belong to the original author (not Irenaeus or Tertullian). The evidence I find most fascinating is when we can still see the splice marks as it were of the original narrative dealing or accepting with a gospel which has known passages from Matthew or Luke in a different arrangement or order than any of the synoptics. The flying Jesus + the question of authority is one. The blind beggar of Jericho + Psalm 110 is another. Dives and Lazarus + Herod might be another.

And the language at the beginning of the thread us absolutely necessary because it "keeps things real." Too much of scholarship finds refuge and comfort in Ivory towers. Our texts are defiled whores. You can spend time getting to know a prostitute, trying to redeem her but once defiled she's lost all practical value as a wife or companion. You can't come back from corruption

And more in keeping with the current thread - did Clement really call his text "Stromata" or was this given by a later editor who basically threw together a "patchwork" of material from the original author (who may or may not have even been named Clement). Epiphanius isn't even sure he was "of Alexandria." All the early Patriotic works even the gospels and the letters of Paul have this same "patchwork-like" characteristic. It's often like "peace" was made by throwing things into a blender or scrambling an original source.

Secret Alias wrote:And the language at the beginning of the thread us absolutely necessary because it "keeps things real." Too much of scholarship finds refuge and comfort in Ivory towers. Our texts are defiled whores. You can spend time getting to know a prostitute, trying to redeem her but once defiled she's lost all practical value as a wife or companion. You can't come back from corruption

It is not "the language at the beginning of the thread" that is offensive, but almost everything else about it. How/why it hasn't been shut down and deleted off the site, with the OP permanently banned, is not to be understood. That analogy is not defensible in any redeemable way, nor are the characterizations it makes about women in the sex industry, nor are what one might understand are the author's preconceptions about women that it seems to expose. The fact that the thread has "conspicuously" been continued by various posters does nothing to legitimize the views of the OP.

There's nothing "conspicuous" about my single post in this thread. I'm also posting on other boards that are very lightly moderated (only for spam, planning of crimes or obvious mental illness), so I'm used to automatically filter stuff out that I'm not interested in. This doesn't change anything about the point that the thread presents a documented case of falsification of a text by an Alexandrian Church Father, as per title. Could this be less of a stream of consciousness and a bit more concise? You bet. But then again, this forum serves for developing ideas, which means a multitude of tangents is to be expected.

If you want to get to know some of the OP's ideas with more typos but better structure, you can always read his blog.

Maybe GMX can provide us with a better analogy for the corruption on the early Christian writings. Maybe he has something against whores, maybe he has something against the writings being likened to whores. But as I said, it's alost a standard symbol of corrupted writings in antiquity. I happen to believe in (a) the sanctity of virginity both in texts and people and (b) the repeated corruption of the Christian writings. I think the ancient analogy is the most suitable best description of the phenomenon at hand.