Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Mon Oct 31, 2022 6:00 pm

neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Mon Oct 31, 2022 1:40 am

Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 10:50 pm

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Jul 18, 2022 8:04 am
1. how did the Romans all agree to follow a religion that never existed before Constantine?

The same way that (via R. Gmirkin) the Hebrews - Jewish and Samaritan - all agreed to follow a religion that never existed before Ptolemy II. Ditto for Ardashir and Zoroastrianism in the Sassanid Persian empire. Ditto for Muhammad and Islam in the Arabian empire. These book religions all followed civil wars and were implemented by the victorious war lord ("Savior") at the zenith of his military power. In each case the populace followed a top-down coalition-of-the-willing.

Luke 16:16:
The Good News of God's Kingdom Is Proclaimed and Everyone Is Forced into It

Gmirkin does not argue that the Judean and Samaritan populations "all agreed to follow a religion that never existed before".

Gmirkin argues that the Pentateuch was created c.274 BCE at the library of Alexandria during the rule, and with the sponsorship, of Ptolemy II Philadelphus - the son of one of Alexander's generals. It was produced by the ruling class. It was guided by the precepts of Plato relating to the creation of a new colony, with a new constitution that proclaimed to be ancient. Plato argued that the population should be enrolled in an appropriate education system. This included censorship of "deemed" competing material). Plato wrote that within a few generations the population would be on board (essentially "converted"). This Platonic "perfect theocrasy" would be brought into being by the guardian class. This is how I read Gmirkin.

That is how he explains the origins of the literature.

But that's not the same as explaining how the program was implemented in fact -- though as you also note, Plato said it would take a "few generations" for "the population" to be on board. There were evidently pro and anti-Temple or temple-critical sectarians from the earliest days, including divisions between Israel/Samaria and "Judah", and pro and anti-Moses sectarians.

IDK how the program for the "Books of Moses" was implemented because I am unfamiliar with whatever evidence is available from that specific time period (say 274-110 BCE).

What I have studied is the available evidence during the Christian revolution of the 4th century (say 325-381 CE). I have made a map of that literary evidence (including C14 results) and identified three classes of Christian literature:

1) NT Canonical literature
2) NT Apocryphal literature
3) Ecclesiastical historiography

As a result of this study I have made the novel proposal that the NT apocryphal literature (2) was not authored by Christians (as claimed by (3) Ecclesiastical historiography) but by the pagan resistance reacting to (1) the canonical NT Jesus Story, in an attempt to oppose the imperial implementation program of c.325 CE onwards. The Arian controversy was about the avalanche of NT Apocryphal books. Arius was involved. Arius was a Platonist and not a Christian.

This proposal allows that NT canonical literature may have been the product of the 1st/2nd century. In this study the NT apocryphal texts and authors are primary sources while the Ante Nicene heresiologists are secondary sources.

The NT canon took time to be (mostly) agreed upon.
Among the debates: whether Apocalypse of John was in or out.
Christian texts not included in NT canon (examples: Edgerton; Thomas) are evidenced in papyri fragments dated before Constantine.

StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Tue Nov 01, 2022 5:24 am Christian texts not included in NT canon (examples: Edgerton; Thomas) are evidenced in papyri fragments dated before Constantine.

The date range estimates underpinning the claim that these fragments are early rely exclusively upon paleography in isolation. Take the Thomas fragments for example:

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Oxyrhynchus_1
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Oxyrhynchus_654
(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_Oxyrhynchus_655

(1) is dated to the early half of the 3rd century.[2][3] although Grenfell and Hunt originally dated the fragment between 150 and 300

(2) is dated to the middle or late 3rd century.[1][2]

(3) is dated to the early 3rd century.[1][2]


Paleography in isolation

Professional paleographers have expressed concerns over this practice. What level of confidence can be placed on error margins of plus or minus 25 years provided by paleography in isolation? The upper bounds of such estimates should include the 4th century. The 4th century saw the rise of codex technology and all these fragments are from codices. The city rubbish dumps where these fragments were found underwent a population explosion during the mid 4th century. This should be factored in but isn't.


On the necessity of caution in assigning palaeographical date ranges

Brent Nongbri:



Eric G. Turner:




SUMMARY

On the basis of the above I am arguing that we cannot exclude 4th century dates for the fragments of the non canonical material. What C14 dates we do have for this material support a 4th century chronology

Here is a summary of all the non canonical papyri:
http://mountainman.com.au/essenes/Apocr ... papyri.htm

Pete, you quoted Brent Nongbri. I will too, from New Testament Studies, specifically from

Palaeography, Precision and Publicity: Further Thoughts on P.Ryl.iii.457 (P52)
Brent Nongbri
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2020, pp. 471-499

In this article Nongbri, after detailed examination and comparison, extended the date range of this fragment of the Gospel of John from circa 125 to say the following in his conclusion:

"Specialists have identified similar handwriting in documents dating from the early second century to the early third century. If the Rylands fragment was copied within this timeframe, it ranks among the earliest surviving manuscripts of the New Testament, and indeed among the earliest extant artefacts of ancient Christians."

In other words, to before Constantine.

Dividing canon and apocrypha texts was a process. But both sorts show Christianity before Constantine.

Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Tue Apr 05, 2022 5:59 pm 4) It follows from the above that the proposal views there to have been no heresy prior to the very strong Constantinian Nicene orthodoxy

5) All theories for the authorship of the NTC and the history of Christian origins may be entertained in relation to the transmission of the NTC to the 4th century, The proposal here is that no matter when the NTC was composed

The proposal gets an F grade, but aside from that, it's super weird that you don't just come out and say something about the composition of the NTC and your beliefs about the uninterrupted period of orthodoxy.

The only obvious answer is that you are awkwardly attempting to make your ideas more palatable to Christian reviewers.

And that's kinda sad, because there's all this pent-up left-field fight-the-man energy. Then it just fizzles and becomes apologetics.

StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Thu Nov 03, 2022 5:40 am Pete, you quoted Brent Nongbri. I will too, from New Testament Studies, specifically from

Palaeography, Precision and Publicity: Further Thoughts on P.Ryl.iii.457 (P52)
Brent Nongbri
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2020, pp. 471-499

In this article Nongbri, after detailed examination and comparison, extended the date range of this fragment of the Gospel of John from circa 125 to say the following in his conclusion:

"Specialists have identified similar handwriting in documents dating from the early second century to the early third century. If the Rylands fragment was copied within this timeframe, it ranks among the earliest surviving manuscripts of the New Testament, and indeed among the earliest extant artefacts of ancient Christians."

In other words, to before Constantine.

Nongbri's statement is a conditional. In his book Nongbri writes:

Dividing canon and apocrypha texts was a process. But both sorts show Christianity before Constantine.

The canonical and apocryphal texts were authored by at least two different groups of authors and share two completely different trajectories of preservation. They are worthy of being considered as two completely different classes of literature which are nevertheless somehow related to one another. The canonical texts were preserved after 325 CE in imperial libraries whereas the apocrypha texts were subject to censorship, and consigned to be burnt by fire. Many have survived (like the Nag Hammadi Library) only because they were buried. Some survived because their stories and legends were useful to the orthodoxy of the later 4th century - such as the extravagant legends of the deaths of Peter and Paul in Rome. These legends were very helpful to the Bishop of Rome Damasus in his efforts to kick-start the Christian tourism business and the highly successful and eminently lucrative Holy Relic Trade which flourished under the church industry for more than a thousand years.

Arguably we have no primary evidence for the apocryphal texts prior to 325 CE and the entire chronology of its authorship is conditionally reliant on the historical integrity of the secondary evidence - the attestations of a small group of "early" heresiologists. Tertullian attests to the presence of the Acts of Paul. Irenaeus attests to the presence of the Gospel of Judas and others texts. And so on. But when we go looking for earliest manuscripts which contain these attestations we are lead into the late middle ages. This is not good in the integrity stakes.

Were these heresiological attestations fabricated and forged by the Nicene church to cover up the controversy which the apocryphal texts caused to the Constantinian orthodoxy and its "canonical agenda"? Did the imperial regime suppress the history of such an embarrassing literary controversy at the very time the NT and LXX bible codex was first widely circulated?

I reserve the right to ask such questions. I reserve the right to make a study of the history and authorship of the apocryphal class of literature in isolation and to treat this class as related to, but independent of, the canonical literature. By all means put whatever evidence you like on the table to be examined. The novel proposition is that whether or not the canonical literature existed prior to Constantine the apocryphal literature did not exist prior to 325 CE and essentially represents a diverse avalanche of pagan literature reacting to and responding to the emperor's agenda of elevating the canonical books to be a political instrument in the Roman empire, and to a place which they did not deserve.

Pete, you are free to pretend that the texts that were eventually canonized as NT and that others that were eventually called apocrypha were two eternally absolute separate categories, if you wish to pretend that.
Why?
Why waste so much of your life on this?
If you hate Christianity, rather than resorting to make-believe history, why not deal with that directly?

Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Thu Nov 03, 2022 5:02 pm

Leucius Charinus wrote: ↑Tue Apr 05, 2022 5:59 pm 4) It follows from the above that the proposal views there to have been no heresy prior to the very strong Constantinian Nicene orthodoxy

5) All theories for the authorship of the NTC and the history of Christian origins may be entertained in relation to the transmission of the NTC to the 4th century, The proposal here is that no matter when the NTC was composed

The proposal gets an F grade, but aside from that, it's super weird that you don't just come out and say something about the composition of the NTC and your beliefs about the uninterrupted period of orthodoxy.

As an independent researcher I get to choose what research proposals I study.

The only obvious answer is that you are awkwardly attempting to make your ideas more palatable to Christian reviewers.

My ideas are such that I must inform the Christian reviewers that IMO the entire corpus of NT apocryphal literature was likely authored not by Christians, but by non Christians reacting to the stories that were presented in the NT and LXX codex being pushed at them by the Emperor Constantine. How palatable is that?

And that's kinda sad, because there's all this pent-up left-field fight-the-man energy. Then it just fizzles and becomes apologetics.

This is an attempt to reconstruct a balanced political history of the Christian revolution of the 4th century (325-381 CE).

• We Hellenes are men reduced to ashes,
  holding to our buried hopes in the dead;
  for everything has now been turned on its head.
  
  --- Epigram of Palladas

StephenGoranson wrote: ↑Fri Nov 04, 2022 1:14 pmIf you hate Christianity, rather than resorting to make-believe history, why not deal with that directly?

What's with the hate stuff? I am an historical researcher sifting through the historical evidence. In almost every post I present historical evidence and respond to the historical evidence presented. The church industry and the 4th century sources it preserves has tendered the make-believe history.

The following can be found in the Ecclesiastical History sources of the 4th century: Christian hagiography - the lives of the Christian Saints; Christian martyrologies and martyrdoms - the deaths of the martyrs; the cult of the Saints and Martyrs and the truly wonderful Holy Relic trade. This stuff isn't make believe history?

The proposal is that we should add heresiology to this above list of church industry fabrication of make-believe history. None of this requires me to hate Christianity but it does require me to expose the above strands of "Ecclesiastical History" as make-believe history and fraud. I apologise for any inconvenience this may cause to readers.