mountainman

[The upper bound provided was the year 340 CE. The year 325 CE is before the upper bound of 340 and therefore the chance it was manufactured after 325 CE not neglible.

An alternative scenario is proposed where the Greek Gnostic literature is subject to imperial search and destroy operations commencing 325 CE when the gnostic books first appeared as a reaction to the Constantine Bible). The translation to Coptic was undertaken at Nag Hammadi for the sake of the urgency brought on by such a political environment. Someone wanted to preserve the gnostic literature, and it was not safe for it to be available to the eyes of those who could read Greek. Coptic and Syriac translations were undertaken in attempt to preserve the original Greek books, and this may have happened in a few short decades after Nicaea, when all the trouble started.



They date it based on Eusebius's citation of Irenaeus. The identification is not one one might call secure, even if we trust Eusebius ...

The following from ben witherington's blog:




Radiocarbon dating the gJudas





THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS AND THE QARARA CODICES SOME PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS
Peter M. Head, Tyndale Bulletin 58.1 (2007) 1-23.

If according to your statement:

how do you propose to derive this result from the following results taken from Head's report (which I am assuming are radiocarbon ages - not calibrated because of the +/- x years):

1) Papyrus from interior of leather cover: AD 209 +/- 58 years;
2) Loose papyrus from fragments associated with codex: AD 333 +/- 48 years;
3) Leather with attached papyrus from binding: AD 223 +/- 51 years;
4) Papyrus from page 9: AD 279 +/- 50 years;
5) Papyrus from page 33: AD 279 +/- 47 years.

Obviously result 1) and 2) are ignored because they are from the binding, which is older than the paper the scribe used. The above report also states that result 2) dated 333 CE is specifically to be ignored. That leaves results 4) and 5) for the papyrus dating, and both are 279 CE with similar range of error. These two dates - for 4) Papyrus from page 9: AD 279 +/- 50 years; and 5) Papyrus from page 33: AD 279 +/- 47 years. - appear to be uncalibrated radiocarbon age estimates.

As to how these two dates 4) and 5) became to be published as 280 CE plus or minus 60 years is not known to me. You must note that Peter Head states the final report was not available to his review, and IMO is still not available to the general public after seven years.

mountainman

In "The City of Constantine" c.381 CE, the Temple of the Goddess Aphrodite is turned into a brothel
and the Temples of Sun and Artemis into stables. What did we have when it all started?

mountainman

After such analysis I have written an essay entitled A Pageant of Christian Identity Frauds masquerade in the Academy of Plato

WIKI currently disambiguates two separate identities called Ammonius's in the 3rd century - Ammonius the christian and Ammonius a platonist theologian. WIKI also currently disambiguates two separate identities called Origen - the pupil of Ammonius, Origen the christian and Ammonius a platonist theologian.

Eusebius appears to have engaged in the criminal practice of identity theft, by stealing the identities of well known and respected Platonist theologians, who were obviously part of the Apostolic lineage of Plato and his canon of books. With these stolen identities he fabricated part of his account of the Christian lineage.

In case someone asks why didn't the Platonists complain about Eusebius's criminal practices, my answer is that Constantine had too many swords.

Maklelan

But idea 3 is absolutely precluded, irrespective of what leverage you think you can garner from making points 1 and 2. The fact is, the manuscripts date to well before Constantine, and the Gospel of Judas, which is based on a much earlier text derivative of the New Testament texts, is also earlier than Constantine. Point 1 is also precluded by the very physical evidence on which you claim to be depending exclusively.

mountainman

The arguments for preclusion that you might raise against the new idea (1) that the Gnostic material is a reaction after Nicaea are addressed in depth in this essay An alternative chronology for the lost authorship of the Gnostic Gospels. Have you read this essay?


In order to be quite specific by what I mean by the Gnostic Gospels *etc* I have tabulated Over 100 The Gnostic Gospels and Acts - a review of the New Testament Apocryphal texts . I have personally read these over 100 texts where available, and the essay above about the chronology of the gnostic material is a result of this research.

Here is a sample analysis:

Toto

Please note that this rule is still in effect.

We will no longer entertain any new threads on mountainman's claim that Constantine or Eusebius invented Christianity in the fourth century, or that Arius wrote the non-canonical Christian literature, or that the non-canonical literature is parody, until mountainman or others produce some evidence.

stephan huller

What about my threads about how to pick up women at bars using Marcion and the ascetic tradition in early Christianity as a conversation starter?

Toto

We do not seem to have a rule against such threads.

Note that the primary rule is not to be boring. The Eusebius threads were getting boring.

Maklelan

I have, and I find it quite uninformed and presuppositional. Your arguments make mountains out of mole hills while you simultaneously ignore the actual mountains, and most of the argument rests on the strength of nothing more than assertion. We have plenty of firmly dated Gnostic and New Testament manuscripts that date to far enough before Nicea to utterly preclude your thesis. Even if you simply dismiss paleographic dating, which no scholar, irrespective of their leanings, would ever allow you to just flippantly do, we can prove the New Testament and the Gnostic material predate Nicea and Constantine. The Gospel of Judas, for instance, has been both paleographically and C14 dated to the third century, and it is unquestionably a translation from a Greek text that preexisted it. Papyrus 4 is a copy of Luke that was used as cartonnage for a Philo manuscript that was subsequently sealed in a jar that was buried in the wall of a house in Coptos that was destroyed by 292 CE. It was discovered in situ in a clear stratigraphic context. It is of the Alexandrian text-type. I would point out, as well, that the text-types that have been developed in New Testament textual criticism are quite accurate and rather thoroughly undermine the notion that these texts were just invented ex nihilo. They unquestionably evince a long and independent transmission history for which your theory simply cannot provide. A friend of mine is actually in charge of a project that is digitalizing New Testament manuscripts and running statistical analyses on the textual characteristics of the manuscripts. Those analyses so far (only a few hundred manuscripts have been digitalized so far) confirm the traditional Alexandrian, Byzantine, and Western divisions, but also provide additional evidence for sub-types that have been proposed in the past by scholars. All of things are simply ignored in your analysis, and for two reasons: (1) you don't know the scholarship, or its extent, and (2) you don't want to deal with evidence that you know you can't engage.

Your argument has been falsified over and over again, and you've yet to be able to directly engage a single point. I'm satisfied that no thinking adult who would ever make their way to this board could possibly find your argument compelling in light of what I've pointed out, so I'm going to chalk this up as a thorough and rather decisive loss for you unless you can provide, in your very next post, actual, positive, and compelling evidence that the second and third century dates for the Gnostic and New Testament texts is to be rejected. You don't have any such evidence anywhere on your website, just to preempt that lazy response. Come up with something compelling in your next post or you have lost this debate and will be put on ignore.

Maklelan

Mountainman, I thought I would add something. I've just had the opportunity to look through Fox's book, Pagans and Christians, and I found the portion you insisted claimed the Nag Hammadi codices had been C14 dated to 348 CE. It's from p. 414, and here it is:



Notice it does not say anything at all about C14 dating. What it actually states is what I stated earlier, that grain receipts incorporated into the cartonnage of Codex VII had dates on them, the latest of which corresponded to October of 348 CE. The actual binding of the codex must be later than that, since the receipts would have had to have been of no further use. The paleographic analysis of the cursive style of other texts of the cartonnage (which is much more accurate than majuscule) gives a date around 360 CE, which is perfectly in line with what we would expect. You have no C14 dates to speak of for Nag Hammadi. Once again, you have either misrepresented or entirely misunderstood the data for which you express such concern, and in doing so, you lead us to further corroboration of the value of paleographic analysis. Your graph is meaningless, as are your Gospel of Judas radiocarbon data. You're simply fabricating evidence out of thin air. You have no case whatsoever. Stop pretending you do.