Freethought & Rationalism Archive

spin · 03-25-2008, 09:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

[X] has to resort to the crank's tactic of claiming interpolation...

While I find myself often agreeing with Jeffrey Gibson's push for more reasoned, evidenced argument here, I also find it difficult to agree with statements such as the above, though I guess it's more a problem of expression rather than intent.

Attempting to identify interpolations per se is not a crank's tactic. That's merely ad hominem. We have gospels whose existences are proof of massive interpolations. It would be shallow to try to claim that the gospels of Mt and Lk were simply the work of lone redactors/authors. We have bits stuck in John, at the end of Mark, into epistles, scholars have traced various levels of interpolation in Acts. In fact, interpolation seems to be the rule, not the exception, and it would be special pleading to say that it didn't happen while we were not looking, ie in the earlier stages of the literature than have survived and thus, as there is no sign in the manuscript tradition, it didn't happen. Interpolation happened.

The task is to have meaningful criteria for identifying examples. That's where Jeffrey Gibson's complaint actual comes in. Interpolations are not a matter of convenience: you can't suddenly argue that, because some text causes difficulties, it was probably an interpolation. One has to argue the case for each interpolation, though without support of the manuscript tradition it is a complex proposition. Nevertheless, most scholars have no difficulty in accepting for example that the Testamentum Flavium is at least partially interpolated despite the lack of manuscript support. People are more willing to accept interpolations where it doesn't matter.

spin

youngalexander · 03-25-2008, 12:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

So I ask any and all here to post what you see as the instances in which Pete has done the things listed above.
Jeffrey

Well Jeffrey, I regard invitations to a 'bear-bait' as decidedly 'indecent'!

Jeffrey Gibson · 03-25-2008, 01:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by youngalexander

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

So I ask any and all here to post what you see as the instances in which Pete has done the things listed above.
Jeffrey

Well Jeffrey, I regard invitations to a 'bear-bait' as decidedly 'indecent'!

Thanks for not answering my question about what in your eyes makes a definition "decent" as well as to why the OED one for "crank" crank does not qualify.

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Gibson · 03-25-2008, 01:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Interpolations are not a matter of convenience: you can't suddenly argue that, because some text causes difficulties,

or disconfirms an apriori

Quote:

it was probably an interpolation.

And this -- as well as an appeal to censorship and misrepresentation such as Pete makes when Julian says what Pete doesn't want him to say --is what I meant by the "crank's tactic".

Jeffrey

MarkA · 03-25-2008, 01:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lpetrich

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarkA

I do not follow what you mean. What is your understanding of how manuscripts were produced and/or copied in antiquity?

I am trying to explain how absolutely absurd it is to suppose that Eusebius had hired a team of forgers to run all over the eastern Mediterranean to insert references to Xianity in lots and lots of books.

If you doubt this, I challenge you to perform this experiment:

Write all the text content of some sizable document by hand. Yes, all of it. You need not duplicate the font and size and styling, just the text content.

You have to write without a pencil, without a modern-day ballpoint pen, but with the old-fashioned kind of pen that you have to dip into an inkwell every now and then. And do so without making any blots on the paper.

You have to write in reasonably-clear handwriting, preferably either printing-style or italic-style; try to write as carefully as you can.

You have to write on some relatively expensive writing material that you would be reluctant to throw away.

You can mark out every here and there, but at no better than the average rate of some ancient or medieval scribe.

Once you've done that, make some changes and do it all over again.

Yes, all over again.

Once you have completed this challenge, you will understand how difficult it was to duplicate a book before Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press.

Again I do not see the point you are trying to make. All manuscripts were produced in this way in antiquity. The Library at Alexandria employed scribes to makes copies (not just one) of every manuscript that came to Egypt. If someone anywhere wanted a copy of any work it had to be handwritten by scribes.

I appreciate the difficulty of doing the work I just do not follow why you think it would be impossible to do since it was done in every library in the ancient world and of course in the Emperor's court.

MarkA · 03-25-2008, 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by andrewcriddle

Quote:

Originally Posted by MarkA

My understanding is that orthodox christianity was imposed by Constantine at Nicea when he ordered the assembled bishops to accept the creed he devised and circulated on pain of expulsion from the Empire. This creed was a compoltation and a compromise of the most generally accepted beliefs at the time. This is not to say that all churches accepted all of the content before the Council just some of them. Yet the whole cloth must be accepted for a person to be considered orthodox. Is there any scholar who agrees that there was an orthodox church before then?

I think this partly depends on what one means by orthodox church. There was previously an institutional church with creeds and statements of faith, which had procedures for deposing bishops for their unorthodox views. See the case of Paul of Samosata. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/wace/biodic...20of%20Antioch. The Council of Nicea is part of a process in which the definition of orthodoxy becomes more strict, but institutional procedures for dealing with unorthodoxy already existed.

Andrew Criddle

I agree with your statement.

My point is that how broad and universial was the notion and 'definition' of orthodoxy before Nicea? That is, there were probably orthodox notions of what were acceptable beliefs and what were not. How much lee way was there in those beliefs? What was the line that separated orthodoxy from heresy? I think Nicea narrowed the definition and that it is not at all clear that even the orthodox churches supported a definitive position since Constantine had to impose a definition via the Creed unilaterally. Is there any evidence that some sort of consultation took place away from the meeting with orthodox bishops to develop the Creed?

mountainman · 03-25-2008, 03:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by angelo atheist

Eusebius is one of the most important and 'biased' early historions of Christianity.[ 260-340 ce.] It seems that the further one distances from Jesus actual supposed existence, the more the myth grew. That hints that the whole episode is no more than a fable that grew as time wore on and more myths were attached to it until Jesus became god himself. Sorry for the slight off topic post. But it places Eusebius with the rest of the early church fathers, quoting hearsay.

I need to point out that your opening sentence "Eusebius is one of the most important and 'biased' early historions of Christianity" is not sufficiently accurate. The situation is far more critical than this. In fact Eusebius is our only source for the prenicene history of christianity. Lightfoot has stated the position as follows:

Quote:

"None ventured to go over the same ground again,
but left him sole possessor of the field
which he held by right of discovery and of conquest.
The most bitter of his theological adversaries
were forced to confess their obligations to him,
and to speak of his work with respect.

It is only necessary to reflect for a moment
what a blank would be left in our knowledge
of this most important chapter in all human history,
if the narrative of Eusebius were blotted out,
and we shall appreciate the enormous debt
of gratitude which we owe to him.

The little light which glimmered over the earliest
history of Christianity in medieval times
came ultimately from Eusebius alone,
coloured and distorted in its passage
through various media.

-- J.B. Lightfoot, Eusebius of Caesarea, (article. pp. 324-5),
Dictionary of Christian Biography: Literature, Sects and Doctrines,
ed. by William Smith and Henry Wace, Vol II.

Best wishes,

Pete Brown

mountainman · 03-25-2008, 04:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug Shaver

Not only that. For his theory to work, they also had to create a whole corpus of Christian documents out of whole cloth -- AND use arahaic (for them) handwriting so that 20th-century paleographers would be fooled into thinking they'd been written a century or two before Eusebius's lifetime.

And Syriac and Coptic and Boharic and Sahidic and Latin -- and manage to have them buried in Egyptian sands and squirreled away in monasteries and other places.

Doug and Jeffrey (and others),

I have attempted to make discussion of the nature of the non canonical texts as being pagan sedition and polemic, parody and jest against the canon.

Constantine back the canon and closes the temples c.324 CE.
Arius and the opposition pagans write the apocrypha.
The Arian controversy was a battle of political belief
against the reality of unbelief.

Who was Lithargoel?

Best wishes,

Pete Brown

mountainman · 03-25-2008, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Civil1z@tion

Let's assume you're version of events fits the evidence as well as the Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher who got exagerrated over time. Even assuming that, the massive conspiracy necessary for this forgery would be far more complex than the other answer.

The forgery was imperial. Constantine was boss. COnstantine was a big man in the fourth century. He stood tall, well over a hundred feet up, towering over the City of Constantine. Who needs a f***g conspiracy? The army was quite sufficient is you are a malevolent despot like Bullneck.

Quote:

So using Occam's Razor, I would have to accept that some guy named Jesus did exist in the first century CE unless you have evidence which cannot be explained by the "real Jesus" hypothesis and is explained by the "Eusebius made it up" hypothesis.

We have an emperor cult formed 312 CE when Pontifex Maximus Constantinus paraded the head of Maxentius on a pike around the streets of ROme.

Quote:

Furthermore, Jeffrey brings up a good point on the Gnostic gospels which have recently been found. For instance, the Gospel of Judas text we have has been carbon dated to ~280 CE.

The C14 date published was 290 CE plus or minus 60 years.

Quote:

So assuming the previous mentions of the gospel as heresy by Iraneus in 180 are forgeries, you're theory would have to postulate that within 8 years of the mastermind behind this Christianity forging effort, Constantine, being born, (he didn't become emperor until 306CE) a rival version of Christianity was formulated then crushed and its documents hidden.

The gJudas C14 results have an upper bound of 350 CE. The only other NT related C14 citation is gThomas (Nag Hammadi) at 348 CE plus or minus 60 years. So I have no conflict to explain in the chronology here however I will go on and explain this further.

Check April deConick's assessment of gJudas as a parody. Yes, I know she conjectures (incorrectly IMO) an earlier dating for it. However my exlanation for the apocrypha as an entire genre is that they are pagan seditious polemuc against the canon, dated from 324 CE onwards. Arius probably had his hand in at least some of them. Some were hunted down to be destroyed as heretical works, and others - at other times - were preserved as the non canonical NT texts.

For my research summary on this see:
NON CANONIC as PAGAN POLEMIC

Quote:

This brings up yet another point. There would certainly be large numbers of writers who would know the real history, why couldn't at least one of them done the same thing the gnostics and hidden his work before its destruction?

IMO the "Gnostics" were the pagan priesthood who were unlucky enough to be alive in the eastern empire in the year 324 CE. These people wrote the apocrypha (the non ncanonical NT literature). Start with Arius.

That is, in case you have not noticed, I have thereby provided a complete account of the history of the invention of the NT related literature. The canon by Constantine during the period 312-324 CE, and the non canonical by Arius of Alexandria, and many others in the period from 324CE for a century.

Quote:

All it would take would be one document hidden in some cave for archeologists to find which says that all the history was a forgery and your theory would gain a huge amount of plausibility. As far as I know, no search document exists.

I will give you a list of two such documents:

(1) Against the Galilaeans - the three books of Julian
(2) Books 1 to 13 of the histories of Ammianus Marcellinus

There are probably alot more.
Best wishes,

Pete Brown

mountainman · 03-25-2008, 04:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeffrey Gibson

Pete has claimed -- and no doubt will claim agan and again ad nauseum -- that there are writers who have said this very thing: Julian and Arius.

Unfortunately, Pete has utterly misunderstood what Arius was all about and has to resort to the crank's tactic of claiming interpolation and distortion and censorship to get Julian to say what he wants him to say.

Cyril was incapable of denying that Julian was convinced that the fabrication of the Galilaeans (ie: the recently appeared religious Galilaeans, followers of Jesus the Galilaean and not Judas the Galilaean -- SEE GIBBON) was a fiction of men composed by wickedness.

Also see Nestorius.
Also see the nature of the "anathemas" of 4th century councils.

Mainstream is incapable of classifying the Arian controversy because the real nature of the controversy involves a deeply buried fraud, which was covered up by the political power of the bishops like Cyril -- The Seal of the Fathers --- under a corrupt Christian emperor regime in the early fifth century. See the list of banned books started at that time (if not well before). Mainstream do not have any cohesive theory of the apocrypha, and think that the canon literature is more important. Well, it was.

Best wishes,

Pete Brown

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