Steven Avery

Hi folks,

Steven, when do you think the book of John was written ?

If you ever answer that question, we may figure out why you make such strange, unsubstatiated claims as on this thread.
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Steven, you claimed the Didascalia was a forgery, so I wondered if you had any real basis for the claim.

Oviously you were blowing smoke, it just fits your scenario, but the claim has no evidentiary basis.

Thanks for making that clear, it will help us to know how to evalulate future assertions you make.

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Shalom,
Praxeus

Steven Avery

I dunno how accurately it does that, it was 200 years later, it does represent church teaching in the 3rd century as does Apostolic Constitutions in the 4th.

If you want to say that the Didascalia (and the Didache and the Apostolic Constitutions) varies from the teachings of the Apostles, I would likely agree. That is far different than saying the documents are "forged" in some unspecied time and place.

Shalom,
Praxeus
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

yummyfur

Are you saying that the Twelve Apostles lived in the 3rd century?
From the Didascalia:

"For I Matthew also, who am one of the twelve Apostles who speak to you in this Didascalia, was formerly a publican; but now, because that I believed, I have obtained mercy, and have repented of my former deeds, and have been counted worthy also to be an apostle and preacher of the word. "

and this

"When therefore the whole Church was in peril of falling into heresy, all we the twelve Apostles came together to Jerusalem and took thought what should be done. And it seemed good to us, being all of one accord, to write this Catholic Didascalia for the confirming of you all. "

It's fairly clear that the text purports to be written by the Twelve Apostles. To me a book purporting to be written by the Twelve Apostles directly in the text, but written in the third century, is either a forgery, or a complete fiction.

freigeister

Let me concede your point for argument's sake, and assume for a moment that Papias does not refer to the adulteress. Where does that leave us? We have Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, giving a homily on the pericope c. 400, which means that it had wide currency and legitimacy at that time. We have Augustine, of the same time period, giving us an explicit explanation for why the pericope is rare in manuscripts. And, of the same period again, we have the pericope's inclusion in the Vulgate. These three facts make the pericope as legitimate many other parts of the NT whose legitimacy is not contested.

Steven Avery

Thanks Yummyfur, for a real response :-) I definitely agree that false first-person authorship claims are phoney, and that the work can then be considered a "forgery", despite the attempts by many to consider "pseudepigrapha" as simply the genre of the times.

It is clear that improper authorship was considered deligitimizing any work that might be considered as scripture, and an improper first-person assertion should put a general pall over its authority of any writing.

Of course the false first-person citation does not affect..
a) the third-century dating, which has already discounted the claim.
b) evidence for beliefs and practices at the time
c) showing what stories were extant in the Gospels at the time

And that was the context of the thread.

Shalom,
Praxeas
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

andrewcriddle

Origen did write a detailed commentary on John. It was apparently never finished but covered more than half of the Gospel. Unfortunately it does not survive complete and the detailed treatment of the end of chapter 7 and beginning of chapter 8 is among the parts missing. However a list by Origen of what he had covered in that part of John makes it unlikely that he mentioned the Pericope.

John Chrysostom wrote a detailed and original set of homilies on John without mentioning the Pericope

Cyril of Alexandria wrote a detailed commentary on John without mentioning the Pericope

Nonnus wrote a paraphrase of John in Greek hexameters without mentioning the Pericope.

Andrew Criddle

Steven Avery

Thanks .. good info.
Have you done any checking on the dozen or so writers between around 375 and 500 in this list from post 23 ?
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php...3&postcount=23

Some of them likely were doing homilies, others referencing the pericope in other ways. Are you familiar with ? Omitting Jerome, Apostolic Constitutions, Augustine

375 Ambrosiaster
380 Ambrose
Pacian in the north of Spain (370),
Faustus the African (400)
Rufinus (400)
Chrysologus (433)
Sedulius a Scot (434),
Two anonymous authors
Victorius or Victorinus (457)
Vigilius of Tapsus (484)
Gelasius Bishop of Rome (492),
Cassiodorus
Gregory the Great

Inclusion and omission weighing always has a little different dynamic than variant readings. However, if they great majority of commenators reference a verse then it would show the verse was in common usage, even if some manuscripts and commentators omitted it.. (as referenced by Augustine).

Shalom,
Praxeas

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic/

Peter Kirby

For my edification, where can I find the Greek and Latin for these quotations/references in the church fathers?

best wishes,
Peter Kirby

John A. Broussard

Could you tell me the procedure we should follow to determine whether or not the bible contains errors?

Thank you.

Peter Kirby

Like I said, my reply about Metzger will be anticlimactic. I think that Praxeus enjoys arguing about personalities (Metzger, Ehrman, Brown, etc.) much more than I do.

(I am not necessarily stating any General Principles of a Theory of Misinformation and Intellectual Dishonesty here, but rather commenting on a particular case.)

Was Metzger deceptive and dishonest, as Praxeus alleges? Since we both agree that Metzger's statement is true--and it is true on its most straightforward reading, not by lawyerspeak or through ambiguity--the burden of proving such an allegation about Metzger's intentions to deceive and his intellectual dishonesty lies squarely upon Praxeus. The most that Praxeus can claim is that Metzger's information (not misinformation) is irrelevant to the evidence surrounding the Pericope Adulterae, but even there I would disagree. Behind Metzger's statement is the observation that a long line of commentators in the Greek language pass right over the passage, including the commentators Origen, John Chrysostum, Nonnus, and Cyril of Alexandria. That counts for something.

What is not behind the statement by Metzger is any statement on the Latin fathers (or Syriac, or Coptic, or...). Praxeus has no right to impose the misunderstanding of certain laypersons, getting the information at second hand on a tape recording and recalling it from memory, as a fault of Metzger. What is clearly misunderstanding is clearly not misdirection on the part of Metzger in this case.

The greatest extent of Metzger's fault in his five-paragraph presentation on the Pericope is the failure to discuss the references from the Latin Fathers, beginning no earlier than 375. Certainly it would be useful information to know that the passage was in Latin and/or Greek manuscripts of John by or before the mid-late fourth century, that Jerome claimed it to be in "many" Greek and Latin manuscripts, and that Augustine offered an explanation for why it was omitted from many manuscripts. To omit all this would be inexcusable for a substantial article devoted to the subject of determining whether the passage is authentic. It is excusable in a five-paragraph summary of the reasons that the UBS committee chose a certain reading, in a book that is explicitly a companion volume to the UBS, which does list the manuscript and citation support of the Pericope Adulterae. Metzger does not claim to be exhaustive in his book, or even to address himself systematically to the arguments that may go against the decisions of the committee, but rather attempts to summarize the committee's reasoning. Certainly the lack of a discussion of these Latin Fathers is a flaw, an imperfection, but I wouldn't call it "intellectual dishonesty," much less deception and the host of other epithets that Praxeus has freely flung at Metzger.

best wishes,
Peter Kirby