PhilosopherJay

Hi Vorkosigan,

Thank you for pointing out that this is probably an expansion of Justin's passage. Good point and I agree with it. We know that Eusebius is familiar with Justin's work, reading and quoting it while writing his History, so this, at least, points in the general direction of Eusebius as the author.

However, the full extent of the internal inconsistency I am trying to bring out can only be appreciated through a direct examination of the text:

Here is the quote of Hegesippus at 2:23.4

Here is the quote of Hegesippus at 4:22.4:

I think we have to assume that the quote at 4.22.4 about the events happening after James death comes after the description of James' death at 2:23.4, either because it was in Hegesippus that way or Eusebius wants us to believe it was in Hegesippus that way. Now at 2:23.8, we have a reference to the seven sects, indicating that the author has already mentioned them. But in the passage at 4:22.5, we seem to have a mention of the seven sects, and since the passage explains what the author means by the seven sects: "like Simon from whom came the Simonians," etc., we have to assume that the author is telling us about the seven sects for the first time.

Thus the problem is this, when we reconstruct the order of the two passages according to the reference to James, it appears that the order is
:2:23 (description of James' death) and then 4:22 (what happened after James' death).

However, When we reconstruct the order of the two passages according to the reference to the seven sects, we get the reverse order 4:22 (Mention and explanation of Seven Sects indicatiing first use of the term) and 2:23 (declaration that The Memoirs have already mentioned the Seven Sects).

To get rid of the contradiction, we may assume that Hegesippus told us what happened after James' death first and then went back and described James' death for us. We can try this solution. The opening lines of the two paragraphs are:

2.23.4 James, the brother of the Lord, succeeded to the government of the Church in conjunction with the apostles. {description of James the Just Martyrdom}

4.22.4 And after James the Just had suffered martyrdom, as the Lord had also on the same account, Symeon, the son of the Lord's uncle, Clopas,was appointed the next bishop.

If we reverse them, we get:

4.22.4 And after James the Just had suffered martyrdom, as the Lord had also on the same account, Symeon, the son of the Lord's uncle, Clopas,was appointed the next bishop.

2.23.4 James, the brother of the Lord, succeeded to the government of the Church in conjunction with the apostles. {description of James the Just Marytrdom}

No, I'm afraid we're getting nonsense from the reversal. Although, not impossible that this is the order, it is quite improbable. These two paragraphs are describing the succession of leadership after the death of Jesus. It goes from Jesus to James to Clopas. Talking about what happens after James with Clopas and then going back to talk about what happened to James breaks the continuity of the discussion on succession. The death of James can hardly be an afterthought to the succession of Clopas.

The James/Sect Contradiction remains a puzzle.

We have to add another contradiction to this. The passage at 4.22.5 talks of the seven sects as being Christian sects. The author of this passage gives an example of how Christian sects sprung from seven Christian sects.

The next passage at 4.22.6 suddenly turns the seven Christian sects into Jewish sects. Obviously, the author of the passage at 4.22.5. is not the same author as the author at 4.22.5. It is almost certainly Eusebius who is the author of the passage at 4:22.6. The passage at 4.22.5 is talking about a heretic named Thebuthis and all kinds of Second Century Christian Heresies.

We thus have three passages from three different authors.



We can associate the author of the first passage (4) in orange with the author who describes the death of James. The second passage (5) in Olive, seems just to be just a schoolboy's note (probably Eusebius). The third passage is Eusebius trying to save the consistency of the other two passages.

From this we can see more of Eusebius' methodology. He is pasting passages from different sources to create Hegesippus and adding his own ideas to clue them together.

I guess generally, we have to debate the "Evolutionary Forgery Hypothesis" verses a "Eusebius the Master Forger Hypothesis."

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

PhilosopherJay

Hi Jacob,

Thanks for your defense of the Temple Dating Hegesippus Hypothesis. It is such a slam-dunk case, that it is hard for me to see the objections to it.

I think you're right that it is a false analogy, but not because of the length of time the Sigiriya Fortress has been in ruins. A place may become known by a building or structure that once stood there. For example:

from http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/181.asp

The question is does it make sense to refer in the Second Century to the area of the Temple as The Temple and (as you noted) if there is any evidence that it was done.

I think The Temple was such a strong symbol for Jews with so much emotional baggage attached that it is hard to believe a Jewish historian of the Second Century could just use it so casually as a reference location point in this way. I recall Jerome reporting that Jews still went three centuries later to the Temple site on the anniversary of its destruction and wept.

A better analogy would be this: We read a passage in a book saying, "He fell from the World Trade Center and a monument was constructed to him that still stands next to the World Trade Center." Can we really put the author post 2001? I would say that our two choices is to believe that the author was really writing pre 2001 or someone has written the passage post 2001 and wants us to believe that the passage was written pre-2001.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Rick Sumner

This is heinously flawed. The Rabbis discussed the temple without getting terribly misty-eyed.

I recall CNN reporting that some Jews still weep at the Western Wall. You'll forgive me if I don't think that's evidence that Israel Finkelstein couldn't have written _The Bible Unearthed_.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Vorkosigan

H's work bears several resemblances to Justin Martyr's. When E quotes H on Antinous, he next quotes Justin on Antinous. Whoever forged H drew on Justin Martyr, that much is clear. I'll take a moment today and sift through Justin Martyr....

No, I think you have confused E's meaning. Let's look at what the passage says.

"But Thebuthis, because he was not made bishop, began to corrupt it. He also was sprung from the seven sects among the people, like Simon, from whom came the Simonians, and Cleobius, from whom came the Cleobians, and Dositheus, from whom came the Dositheans, and Gorthaeus, from whom came the Goratheni, and Masbotheus, from whom came the Masbothaeans. From them sprang the Menandrianists, and Marcionists, and Carpocratians, and Valentinians, and Basilidians, and Saturnilians."

H is indicating that the Christian heretics came from (SPRUNG FROM) the seven jewish sects (highlighted in red). E does not list seven heretical sects, but ELEVEN" 1)Simonians 2)Cleobians 3) Dositheans 4) Goratheni 5)Masbotheans 6) Menandrianists 7) Marcionists 8) Carpocratians 9) Valentinians 10) Basilidians 11) Saturnilians. H is probably offering a solution to the problem of heretics claiming to be the real Christians. This anti-Jewish smear removes the taint that the heretics are Christians....H claims that they are not alternative Christians, but perverted Jews.

E quotes H discussing the sects that divided the Jews, and sure enough, there are Seven:

"There were, moreover, various opinions in the circumcision, among the children of Israel. The following were those that were opposed to the tribe of Judah and the Christ: Essenes, Galileans, Hemerobaptists, Masbothaeans, Samaritans, Sadducees, Pharisees."

Thus, earlier on, when James confronts the Seven Sects, he is confronting representatives of those seven sects.

"8 Now some of the seven sects, which existed among the people and which have been mentioned by me in the Memoirs, asked him, `What is the gate of Jesus?' and he replied that he was the Saviour"

It appears to me that your argument is based on a misreading of the text, Jay. H's usage is consistent and E is not trying to save anything by ad hoc forgeries. There are eleven heretical sects sprung from seven Jewish ones. H's history is bogus, but that does not imply that E forged it. Thus, your conclusion below is not supported by the text, because H names eleven, not seven, heretical sects. Since E does not tell us where the passage naming the seven Jewish sects comes from, we cannot make any claims about the order, and thus, any contradiction drops from sight.

I hope you will not be angry with me. I deeply admire your perceptive, fertile and creative mind, which ranges far beyond mine. But it just seems here that you have overstepped what the text will support.

Vorkosigan

Notsri

Assuming for the moment that H was not merely E's concotion, one might ask: Were vols. 1-4 of Hs' Memoirs published only after completion of vol. 5? E tells us in H.E. 2.23.3 that he's now quoting from vol. 5. It seems to me that if H had previously published vols. 1-4 under the title Memoirs (in other words, he does now possess "a distance from the work"), it would not be unreasonable for him at this point, in the process of producing vol. 5, to say: "Now some of the seven sects...which have been mentioned by me in the Memoirs [i.e., those 4 volumes already circulating under this title]."

PhilosopherJay

Hi Vorkosigan,

I'm looking forward to seeing the results.

Sometimes a very slight anomally appears in a bit of text and it jars you for some reason almost on a subconscious level. Something is a little wrong but you do not quite know what it is. That was the case with this passage:

"But Thebuthis, because he was not made bishop, began to corrupt it. He also was sprung from the seven sects among the people, like Simon, from whom came the Simonians, and Cleobius, from whom came the Cleobians, and Dositheus, from whom came the Dositheans, and Gorthaeus, from whom came the Goratheni, and Masbotheus,]from whom came the Masbothaeans. From them sprang the Menandrianists, and Marcionists, and Carpocratians, and Valentinians, and Basilidians, and Saturnilians."

What was wrong was the repetition of the words "From them sprang." My first thought was that the author names five sects sprung from the seven Jewish sects, and then he repeats the phrase "From Them sprang" and then he names six more sects sprung from the seven sects. Now assuming he is just making a list of these eleven Christian sects than the repetition of the phrase "From them sprang" is for the last six sects quite unnecessary. Perhaps it was a rhetorical flourish, I thought, repetition of a phrase can emphasize a point. But why not use the phrase "sprung from the seven sects" over again. It is what should be there if he is being rhetorical. If not being used for rhetorical effect, the phrase must have a factual purpose, then the word "them" in "from them" should refer back to the nearest "them." What was the nearest them? The nearest "them" were the five Christian sects just mentioned: Simonians, Cleobians, Dositheans, Gortheni, and Masbotheans. Read this way the six Christian sects the Menandrianists, and Marcionists, and Carpocratians, and Valentinians, and Basilidians, and Saturnilians come out of the five previously mentioned Christian sects. And this agrees with the reading of the material on heretics that the later Christian sects grew out of the earlier ones. This solved the problem of the phrase "From Them Sprang." It was not a bad or inept rhetorical flourish, but a necessary explanation of six sects coming out of five sects.

I now parsed the paragraph this way:

But Thebuthis, because he was not made bishop, began to corrupt it. He also was sprung from the seven sects among the people, like Simon, from whom came the Simonians, and Cleobius, from whom came the Cleobians, and Dositheus, from whom came the Dositheans, and Gorthaeus, from whom came the Goratheni, and Masbotheus, from whom came the Masbothaeans. From them sprang the Menandrianists, and Marcionists, and Carpocratians, and Valentinians, and Basilidians, and Saturnilians."

My next sense that something was wrong came from studying the sentence "He also was sprung from the seven sects among the people, like Simon, from whom came the Simonians..." Should not the sentence read "He also was sprung from the seven sects among the people, like Simon who was sprung from the Samaritans" or "like Simon who was sprung from the Essenes" the structure of the sentence was unbalanced. The sentence was not saying that Simon and the others were sprung from the Seven Sects. It was saying that Thebuthis had a sect of followers named after him, like Simon, from whom came the Simonians, and Cleobius, from whom came the Cleobians, etc.

At this point it was easy to see that the paragraph makes complete sense only if we simply rearrange the words of the first part of the sentence: "He also was sprung from the seven sects among the people, like Simon" could just as well be read as "also from the seven sects, he was sprung from among the people like Simon." The translation now becomes:

The anomalies in the grammar are eliminated this way and the paragraph makes perfect sense. Thebuthis comes from people like Simon, Cleobius, Dositheus, Gorthaeus, and Masbotheus who had groups of people named after them (and they were the first group of Church heretics). Thebuthis is one of the seven sects of the next generation of Church heretics, along with 1. Menandrianists, 2. Marcionists, 3. Carpocratians, 4. Valentinians, 5. Basilidians, and 6. Saturnalians. The 7th of the Seven Sects are the Thebuthisians (or whatever his followers are called).

We can suppose that this passage came from an author discussing the Seven Heretical Sects of the second generation of Church Heretics.

This hypothesis also helps to explain why Eusebius tells us in the next paragraph that there were seven sects of Jews divided by their approach to the issue of circumcision (How many positions can you have on circumcision?). I think it has to be seen in connection with him using Hegesippus as a witness to the non-corruption of the Church. He wanted to use the Thebuthis paragraph as it does talk about corruption outside the Church, but it contains the stuff about the Seven Sects and he needs to somehow explain it and keep his First Century Chronology consistent. This forces him to invent Seven Jewish Sects. He apparently had trouble coming up with Seven, as he had to use the Christian Masbothean Heresy over again as a Jewish Heresy.

Your comments in this thread have been fair, perceptive, knowledgeble and to the point. I always welcome such criticism whether I agree with it or not...I thank you for the kind compliments.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

PhilosopherJay

Hi Notsri

It is a possibility.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Notsri

...just thought I'd share a bit of info. that's recently come to my attention, which I think further complicates the case for a Eusebian forgery of H (to my knowledge no one yet has mentioned this in the thread; pardon me if someone has).

1. Aside from the fragments of Memoirs preserved in E's H.E., another apparently exists in the works of Photius of Constantinople. I don't personally have access to Photius' works, so perhaps someone else could look into this. I think it would definitely be worth checking into.

2. In De viris illustribus 2, Jerome quotes the very same passage from H as found in H.E. 2.23; was he quoting from H.E., or directly from the Memoirs? The language there seems ambiguous. In De vir. ill. 22, however, where Jerome talks of H in greater length, the language seems less dubious. Jerome speaks of the five volumes of the Memoirs as having been composed "in a simple style, trying to represent the style of speaking of those whose lives he treated." IMHO, such a comment bespeaks a personal knowledge of the work. But there's more. Jerome goes on there: "[A]rguing against idols, he [H] wrote a history [i.e., another work]...He says: 'They built monuments and temples to the their dead as we see up to the present time, such as the one to Antinous, servant to the Emporer Hadrian, in whose honor games were celebrated as well, and a city founded bearing this name, and a temple with priests established.'" It seems probable from this passage, then, that Jerome knew of two separate works composed by H, one of which goes unmentioned by E.

Vorkosigan

No, all of this can be found in Eusebius. The Antinous quote is not only mentioned in E, but right after comes a quote on the same topic from Justin Martyr, both are on page 161 of my Penguin edition. In that same passage is an allusion to "the simple style" of H "in five short books, written in the simplest style. Jerome is copying E, not H.

Roger Pearse writes:

http://www.tertullian.org/articles/z...enaeus_eng.htm
Even more surprising is the fact that this Greek of the 16th century had seen the five books of Hegesippus, as their youngest witness until now had been Stephanos Gobaros, usually assigned to the 6th century following Photius (cod. 232). That the old Hegesippus of the 2nd century is meant, is shown by the attribute a)nh_r a)postoliko&j (cf. Eus. H. e. II, 23, 3) and the number of the books (cf. Eus. IV. 8, 2; 22, 1).

However, this is by Timothy Zahn, the 19th century German scholar . The obscurity of this quote may be understood from the fact that search Stephanos Gobaros in quotes bring up only that site, on the whole Web.

The Catholic Encyclopedia says
"We learn from a note in the Bodleian MS. Barocc. 142 (De Boor in "Texte und Unters.", V, ii, 169) that the names of the two grandsons of St. Jude were given by Hegesippus as Zoker and James."

and

"The fragments of Hegesippus, including that published by De Boor (above) and one cited from Stephen Gobaras by Photius (Bibl. 232), have been elaborately commented upon by Zahn, Forschungen zur Gesch. des N.T. Kanons (Leipzig, 1900), VI, 228 sqq., who discusses other traces of Hegesippus. On the papal catalogue see Lightfoot, Clement of Rome (London, 1890), I, 327, etc.; Funk, Kirchengesch. Abhandlungen (Paderborn, 1897), I, 373; Harnak, Chronol., I, 180; Chapman in Revue Bened., XVIII, 410 (1901); XIX, 13 (1902); Flamon in Revue d Hist. eccl., Dec., 1900, 672-8. On the lost manuscripts, etc., see Zahn in Zeitschr. fur Kirchengesch., II (1877-8), 288, and in Theol. Litteraturblatt (1893), 495. For further references and a fuller account see Bardenhewer, Gesch. der altkirchl. Litt., I, 483 sqq."

The Catholic Encyclopedia absurdly notes that:

"Dr. Lawlor has shown (Hermathena, XI, 26, 1900, p. 10) that all these passages cited by Eusebius were connected in the original, and were in the fifth book of Hegesippus. He has also made it probable (Journal of Theol. Studies, April, 1907, VIII, 436)"

I suspect that the Hegesippus fragments are fragments someone made up and attributed to H.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Peter has nailed Photius' works here:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...ibliotheca.htm