Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

I think Riley's comments are worth citing here:

Parenthetically, it is clear that T(ertullian) had a detailed knowledge of" Irenaeus' work, for he also cites or quotes Irenaeus in Adv. Marc. l and often in De an. Irenaeus seems to have been practically the entire source of T's knowledge of the various heretical schools. https://books.google.com/books?id=-UlFA ... EQ6AEIIzAA

To argue this point is only yet another sign that you have mental issues. Please continue to offer practical and reasonable arguments for me to consider. I am not willing to continue arguing whether water is wet or fire hot.

Secret Alias wrote:

This is the exact parallel to your Irenaeus and Tertullian speculation.

Why don't you look and compare Irenaeus's testimony on the Valentinians http://gnosis.org/library/advh1.htm and Tertullian's Against the Valentinians http://www.tertullian.org/articles/rile ... entary.htm and tell me whether or not Tertullian (a) reused Irenaeus or (b) can be used as an independent authority on Valentinianism.

Obviously Tertullian is dependent on Irenaeus here, BUT why are you so stupid as to think that NEW material in this work of Tertullian is from Irenaeus too just because the rest can clearly be demonstrated to be?

Some more sampling of references. Mead says that Adversus Valentinianos is "entirely founded on Irenaeus." Wace writes that "Tertullian's tractate adversus Valentinianos is not an independent authority. Apart from a few personal notices concerning him and his disciples which he may have taken from the lost work of Proculus (c. 4, cf. c. 11), his whole account is a paraphrase of Irenaeus, whom he follows almost word for word, and more or less faithfully from c. 7 onwards."

BUT why are you so stupid as to think that NEW material in this work of Tertullian is from Irenaeus too just because the rest can clearly be demonstrated to be

I am demonstrating myself to be less than stupid by referencing an interesting phenomenon (the recycling of Patristic texts among the Church Fathers) which challenges the naive (= stupid) notion that because a Church Father's name appears to be associated with an MS that the Church Father is the source for that information. Surely this phenomenon can't be limited to the texts where we actually have preserved from antiquity. We only have two texts of Irenaeus preserved from antiquity and one of them has been copied and recopied by Tertullian as well as author ancient writers. Given the frequency of this 'recycling effort' and our knowledge of other titles written by Irenaeus (i.e. the Prescription, Against Marcion etc), the similarities of these names with names of texts associated with Tertullian, the preservation of Irenaean words, terms and scriptural citations within these texts and finally the high estimation that Tertullian accords Irenaeus ( viz. Irenaeus is "that very exact inquirer into all doctrines") there is great likelihood that the parallels found in Against the Valentinians would be found in these other Tertullian texts and the similarly named Irenaean texts.

My complaint is really about Tert's death-bed conversion claim. Tert's "prescription against heretics" is heavily based on Irenaeus, yet Irenaeus doesn't make this claim. Its obvious Tert made it up, despite most of the rest of what he says coming straight from Irenaeus (except of course his excellent smart-ass remarks). But then a moron like you comes around wanting to treat it as certain that Irenaeus also made this death-bed conversion claim just because most of Tert's work is based on Irenaeus. That's plain stupid.

davidbrainerd wrote:My complaint is really about Tert's death-bed conversion claim. Tert's "prescription against heretics" is heavily based on Irenaeus, yet Irenaeus doesn't make this claim. Its obvious Tert made it up, despite most of the rest of what he says coming straight from Irenaeus (except of course his excellent smart-ass remarks). But then a moron like you comes around wanting to treat it as certain that Irenaeus also made this death-bed conversion claim just because most of Tert's work is based on Irenaeus. That's plain stupid.

Actually, what should be obvious by now is that David made up the "death-bed conversion" claim not Tertullian.
Yet, he trashes Tertullian for supposedly making up a story that he never made up.

As far as recycling older material, well...that is what historians do.

For example: Jon Meacham has made a lot of money selling books about dead Presidents by claiming he discovered some tid-bit of information not commonly known. Did you know Thomas Jefferson did not like to drink whiskey?

But was plagiarism (which is the less polite way of referencing the activity under discussion) acceptable literary behavior in antiquity? I find that hard to believe. Here is another (highly ironic) example - Clement in accusing the pagans of plagiarism himself plagiarized a pagan treatise entitled On Plagiarism Περὶ κλοπῆς for his information https://books.google.com/books?id=Ub7rp ... ty&f=false

Clearly as the author notes plagiarism was not acceptable behavior in Roman antiquity

https://books.google.com/books?id=wP0fA ... sm&f=false
https://books.google.com/books?id=B8AxN ... ty&f=false

Apparently this author has also pointed in the direction of studies of plagiarism in Patristic texts (of course written in German) "Mulke 2008: 194-200, meanwhile, deals with some references to plagiarism among Latin Christian writers." https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... ATn8X-ux6A

Secret Alias wrote:... Tertullian's Prescription was a recycling of Irenaeus's treatise of the same name. Rather than merely arguing that case ...

Out of genuine interest, has this specific case (regarding Tertullian's Prescription, etc.) been argued somewhere before, by you or someone else?

If I find it I will let all of you know. "Searching for it with interest" is the best way to state matters know. If I find it we have what amounts to the best evidence for the ahistoricity of the gospels or at least the weakness of the gospels as historical documents. It should be around somewhere.