mountainman

Dear Toto,

In the editorial review cited.

Do these docetic elements exist in the canonical gospels?
Or are they only present in the non canonical texts?
I am trying to focus on the apochrypa.

Occam wouldn't like that. It's called additional conjectures. Yes we have a good story here, but there are certain parts which are docetic and we dont like those parts, so we are going to conjecture that they have been subsequently added to the non-docetic material of the text. How convenient!

I am interested in establishing the historical core, not of the canon, but of the non canonical corpus of literature, and there is a difference. The christians can have their canon and its conjectured historical core which cannot be proved. The canon and the apocrypha are related, but because they have different authorship, it would be mistake to assume that just because we cannot find any historical core to the canonical gospels that the same will apply to the non canonical gospels.


Firstly, let me say that I do appreciate your dead parrot satire joke. Secondly, the thesis that Constantine caused the creation of the new testament canon, and the thesis that the new testament non canonical corpus was authored after the council of Nicaea are two separate and distinct theses, since two separate bodies of literature are involved in each case. Do you acknowledge that this is a fact? Can you distinguish the difference between a parrot and a kookaburra?

You have politely asked me not to carry on about the first thesis any more, and I hope you have noted that I have been refrained in this regard, not because I believe that the thesis parrot is dead, but because you believe that the thesis parrot is to be put in a cage for the benefit of other birds in this forum. Why do you now taunt the parrot?

This thread is about the kookaburra. The canon of the parrot is caged. The early christian stooges are about to be interrogated about what they know about the flight of the kookaburra in the first 400 years of the common era. We have a number of reports by these early Eusebian stooges to substantiate the claim that there was early authorship and publication of some of the NT apocrypha before christianity became the state religion. We have a number of reports from academic scholarship to substantiate the claim that many of the NT apocrypha were actually published after Nicaea. These latter reports include the only two C14 citations available at this time in history -- since both are in respect of the new testament apocryphal corpus, not the canonical.

I intend to examine both these sets of claims, and argue a case that in fact our traditional belief - that the NT apocrypha were authored before Nicaea - is based on a very small number of inserted fictional accounts by Eusebius and his continuators, and that the Acts and the Gospels of the apocryphal new testament was simply the polemical reaction by fourth century Hellenistic Academia to the NT canon getting the nod to be promoted over the "Ineffible and unwritten Logos" and to become the material of a very concrete "Holy Writ", written in Greek for the benefit of the greek speaking hegemon, of a new centralised Roman state political monotheism, which everyone agrees, was implemented at Nicaea.


Best wishes,


Pete

Toto

All of them.

Occam's razor has nothing to do with this. I am describing the assumptions that Crossan and many liberal scholars made, which is that there is a historical core to the story with supernatural additions. You asked about Crossan's theory.

This is insane. The non canonical gospels, as you note, often are derivative of the canonical gospels. They have even more supernatural elements.

Do you think you have found a loophole? I think that these are two variations of the same theme.

It's a dead parrot. It can't hear my taunts.

You keep confusing the C14 date of a manuscript and the date of composition.

What is this examination to consist of? Your examination of the dead parrot consisted of repetitions of vague assertions. Do you actually have any evidence here?

Otherwise, it's a dead kookaburra and it can join the dead parrot in its cage.

aa5874

Are there really any known dates of composisition for the anonymous writings of the NT?

It may be that there are those who confuse assumed date of composition with actual date of composition or think that the assumed date of composition is more reliable than or trumps C-14 dating.

mountainman

Dear aa5874,

Some suspect the first, other suspect the second century, not year for the authorship of the canonical texts of the NT. Mega volumes of Eusebius offer different possibilities concerning the well-reported canonical texts. However no such parallel comprehensive treatment for the non-canonical texts exists in Eusebius ... I will gather the citations up in a future post.

Thankyou for your objective statement of fact. What happens immediately on the translation of the Nag Hammadi codices carbon dated to the epoch 348 CE (plus or minus 60 years), with quite a large number of clearly "New Testament Apocryphal tractates" bound within the codex? All the NT scholars move "date of composition" backwards two centuries.

They would have us believe that people in the fourth century sat around and wrote nothing original whatsoever. They would have us believe that the Nag Hammadi authors were scribes copying texts hundreds of year old out of reverence and respect for those texts. I will grant that old texts were preserved by the author(s) of the NT apocryphal acts. The Acts of Thomas contains a text called "The Hymn of the Pearl" which has been purposefully embedded in this tractate, and placed into the mount of the apocryphal apostle Thomas, Jesus' christian slave in India. The authorship of this 'Hymn of the Pearl' is acknowledged to be far older than the authorship of its host text "The Acts of Thomas". This is the way of old preservation.

Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Dear Toto,

My mistake. I have used the term "historical core" inappropriately here. The term I should have used instead should have been something like "historical authorship" or even the "historical manuscript tradition". I am taking the stand that the NT canon and the NT apocrypha are preserved both in the manuscripts of the christian church "historians" and are also preserved quite independently of the church, such as Nag Hammadi. I do not mean to state that the NT apocrypha have an Historical Jesus at their core, when it is very clear that they have a "Romantic Ficititious Jesus" at their core. I think everyone will agree this.

The non canonical acts and gospels can be readily perceived as a package of clever Hellenistic Romance narratives based on literary characters who make their debut appearance in the new testament canon. The apocrypha mimic and copy the canon in creative and highly imaginitive ways, and are written as stories full of the supernatural feats of super-heroes, because such stuff is eternally popular with the masses. Someone wrote the apocrypha in an historical sense. Eusebius et al would have us believe that they were authored in conjection with the canon early, before Nicaea. While this may be correct or incorrect, we know quite certainly, independent of Eusebius, that many of these tractates were being authored in the fourth century after Nicaea.

Have a look at the first post for a general idea. I intend to exhaustively specify all the documentary evidence by which underpin the foundation of the belief that at least some of the NT apocrypha were written in the epoch leading up to Nicaea. Once was have all the available evidence gathered together, then we can examine it in a cohesive and all-encompasssing manner. Do you have any objections to this process?


Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Dear Toto,

Described by Emperor Julian as wretched, Eusebius in his 4th century "history" inserts the following reference to the apocryhpal Gospel of Peter. This reference, like the Jesus and Agbar correspondence, and the "TF", have traditionally been viewed as genuine. It is cited by Eusebius in order to establish the existence of a tractate titled "The Gospel of Peter" known to one Serapion of Antioch, whom E describes as a patriarch. Serapion is depicted as a leader of sorts, and is able to recognise and identify that gPeter was authored and was being preserved in a nearby "school of christian heretics", which he names as the Docetae. These very nasty heretics were characterised by a number of features, among which was their insistent belief that Jesus did not live in the flesh at all. We might call them the "Gnasty Gnostics". Many of the new testament apocryphal Gospels and Acts are gnostic. What is the difference between a gnostic pythagorean and a pythagorean gnostic?


What do we know of the school of Serapion of Antioch? Was it an open school or an underground school? Are there such things as underground schools (plural) which have operated for three centuries without detection by archaeologists? The wretched Eusebius is attempting to inform us that the "Docetae" have their own school, which had been running for generations at least, and in presenting Serapion's letter (above) E is basically attempting to inform us that Serapion was not only clever, but he was from the orthodox school of canonical thought, like a missing-link to the one true school of thought, which was underground.

He could walk right up to the christian school (of the Docetae) and borrow one of their books. Did they know him? Did he have a library card? We now have two underground schools of "early christian thought" about the year 200 CE, each having generations of supposed attendance, and each having a supposed --- shall we say "underground congregations".

This picture does not fit with what the archaeological reports are telling us. This picture has been acccepted as a genuine part of the jig-saw puzzle of "early christian history". There are other translations of this letter which provide different translators' artistic rights in their output. I have yet to gather them together. Eusebius is trying his best here to assure us that there are two communities just in this one little spot, which are "christian". These two communities in this one little spot were supposed to have been operative, if we are to believe E, for a number of generations.

One problem with this statement of opinion by Eusebius, via the Letter of Serapoin, is that the archaeologists are trying their best to tell us that they cannot find anything. How far underground can two communities of christians, both supposedly extant between the first and the fourth century, have been in order that that leave absolutely no trace of their existence? No fragments of any of these libraries dated conclusively to the year 200 CE. No dated fragments.

We have no crosses following behind the Gospel of Peter, walking along behind the three with their heads in the clouds, saying "YES"! We have no trinkets of the cross whatsoever from the first three centuries. We have no "christian schools' rubbish", or the rubbish of the congregations associated with these "schools". This is remarkable. Nobody can be so tidy for centuries. Where is that Bayes' theorem? Whom should we believe, and/or subject for testing their testimony? Eusebius and/or the 21st century archaeologists? Obviously both, if we are skeptical.


Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Dear Readers,

Let us assume for the sake of an argument that we have two opposing and evolving religious groups: the group of orthodox-who-will-become-canon and the group of non-orthodox-Gnostics. Groups C and G.

Groups C and G co-evolve despite written accusations of heresey of C and G until the epoch at which group C serrendipitously achieves a meteroic rise to become the supreme state monotheistic religion in the ROman empire. At this time the "canon" in possession of group C is raised to the status of "Holy Writ". Group C destroys the literature of group G.

Group C writes a history of the encounter and proceedings. It contains a history of the development of the canon of group C. But it also contains a history of the development of the "pseudo-canon" of group G -- whom group C perceive to be their opponents.

Should we expect the history of group C to be accurate with respect to the development of the canon of group C?

Should we expect the history of group C to be accurate with respect to the development of the canon of group G, and the history of the interactions between group C and G?

Finally should we expect these expectations to be the same? When the victors write the history, is there a difference between the integrity of the account describing the opposition as compared to the integrity of the account describing their own acheivements?

Can someone please try and paraphrase this?
Thankyou. It may be difficult to understand.

Best wishes,


Pete

Toto

Is anyone still reading?

I'm glad you are not insisting on your earlier claim that one individual wrote all of the literature of C and G.

Paraphrase: Pete thinks that history is like a morality tale, with good guys and bad guys, and we should all root for the good guys and hiss the villain.

Things are not so clean and neat. C and G were not well defined groups. individuals moved from C to G to H to J to I and back again. Pagans became Christians and Christians became pagans, orthodox became heretics and vice versa.

Now if Constantine and Eusebius were so evil and so efficient as you seem to think, we would have no records of the G group. They would have been written out of history so efficiently they would be lost, as most of the history and events of that period have been lost.

In fact, real history is much more interest than the simple morality tale that you think explains everything.

mountainman

Dear Toto,

Between the period 312-324 (with later revisions) one individual wrote the only history of the literature of both groups C and G for the period from the year dot to the year 324 CE. The official state historical prelude to Nicaea. What does this history reveal?

Yes, this is what the Testimonium Eusebian would have us believe.

C&E surely would have done this had they been able to do so. Does anyone in this forum think that Consantine was ever in a position to have the entire record of any resistance to what he was doing wiped out? Obviously not, because the opposition texts were able to be preserved by future generations. Why was he not in any position to have them all destroyed?

I am exploring the option that he could not do this at Nicaea
because (at least half of) the "non-canonical" NT literature
had not then been authored.

Eusebius would like me to believe otherwise. But why should I believe Eusebius?
Please tell me the reasons by which you are convinced that Eusebius is to be
believed (not for testimony to Jesus, Christians and the One True Cross, but) for
as a reliable witness to the opposition and/or resistance to the state religion.

Believing Eusebius in order to believe (or otherwise) in a history of Jesus etc is one thing. Believing Eusebius in order to to believe (or otherwise) in a history of those who Eusebius portrays as the opposition to the followers of Jesus is entirely another. Dont you see the distinction I am attempting to draw?

One is a historical narrative by the orthodox of the orthodox, the other a historical narrative by the orthodox concerning the opponents of the orthodox. Are we capable of separating these two strands of history? Do you mind me attempting to separate these two issues?

For example .....

Without Emperor Constantine's approval, these events could have occurred c.324/325 CE as resistance by the pagans. Someone could have quickly written "The Acts of Pilate" as sedition against Constantine's grand plans. Through Constantine the christians had control of the imperial courts and the law courts, but the pagans still had provincial control of the schools. Eusebius is describing a grass-roots resistance against the christian army of Constantine, at the social level of the schools. The schools were perhaps the last of anything in which the non-christian resistance had any authority. The temples had been shut.


Best wishes,


Pete

aa5874

My theory is that, whether it was one individual or not, they did not get to manipulate all the history. There must be history of Jesus believers that was untouched.

I think if you follow Eusebius, you might be able to find out what he did not get the time to manipulate.

I think Eusebius may have been overwhelmed by the task of re-writing the history of Jesus believers.

If you read the writings of Eusebius you will see his "modus operandi".