Doug Shaver

It wasn't the only text they had. They had other texts that were inconsistent with John, but they were also committed to a denial of that inconsistency. Since anything can be inferred from a contradiction, the list of possibilities was endless.

Against whatever their accusers believed. "You're a heretic" is just churchspeak for "Anyone who disagrees with me deserves to burn in hell."

mountainman

Yes I do call that a significant bias. Thanks for stating your bias.


The "silly little "Chrestos" theory that was referred to in the article The vacuum of evidence for pre-4th century Christianity is not mine. This article was authored by a group of British archaeologists, who have also published the following articles on the archaeology of "Chrest" .... from historyhuntersinternational:

Chrestians and the lost history of Classical Antiquity


Chrest Magus


Acts of the Chresmologoi: the Role of Oracles and Chronicles in the Creation of Divine Men

Maklelan

Wow, you got me there. I must not have qualified that statement in any way in the comment you put in elipses.

So you're just going to defer everything to their website from now on? You'll appropriate their conclusions and you won't let them go, but you won't defend them?

Maklelan

I'm a slow learner. That's one of the things I have to deal with as a knuckle-dragging dogmatism who can hardly read.

I've seen flickers of well-informed discussion here, and I'm sure there's more hiding in the rafters waiting for these guys to calm down.

mountainman

I will defend the main article - the vacuum of evidence for pre-4th century Christianity. The opening claim is as follows:

Let's return to the list of evidence (I added the NT and the "fathers")

* Tacitus (15th century ms)
* Pliny (15th century ms)
* P.Oxy. 3035
* The Shepherd of Hermas
* Oxyrhynchus papyri dated via palaeography to before the 4th century
* the inscription of Abercius
* the books of the New Testament
* all the writings of the second and third century apologists and church fathers

Let's return to Tacitus.

You have a 15th century manuscript with suspect provenance that was hailed as a forgery when it was published. There is the mention of a very similar passage in the 5th century by Sulpicius Severus. This is not any form of certain proof that the Tacitus reference is genuine. But I imagine that your argument is that the Tacitus reference proves the existence of Christians before the 4th century.

Maklelan

So you're abandoning the argument about Chrestos, or you are just going to defer any challenges to them while you continue to appeal to it? Are you not aware that the silly "Chrestos" argument is rather critical to their main article?

And this is completely false. We have numerous papyri that can be very reliably dated to before the fourth century that are explicitly Christian. It's been shown that the silly notion that the nomina sacra obscure the name Chrestos rather than Christ is simply false, so that cannot be appealed to to sidestep the papyri.

And I've shown that this website's myopic and dogmatic interpretation of that data does not hold up to informed scrutiny.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were also hailed by some as forgeries when they were first publicized.

I would put Tacitus' manuscript quite low down on the list of evidences for Christians prior to the 4th century. I would put all the witnesses to the New Testament, the texts of the church fathers, and the Abercius epitaph well before that.

Duvduv

Papyri can be dated within a certain range of time. But 50 or 100 year difference can mean a lot. If a papyrus can be "dated" at year 250, it could also mean 220 or 320!

mountainman

We have numerous papyri that have been supposedly "very reliably dated via palaeography" to before the fourth century. Here is what the author, an archaeologist, of the article I am defending has to say about the false reliability of palaeographical dating:




"Early Christian Papyri witnesses"

Let's therefore commence with the so-called "Early Christian" papyri fragments dated palaeographically prior to the 4th century. You are obviously working with the hypothesis that the palaeographical dating of these fragments is to be treated as unambiguously reliable and accurate - is this correct? I have quoted the author's opinion about the so-called reliability and accuracy of the dating of these papyri fragments. And right up front I would like to see from you an acknowledgement that we do not in fact have any papyrus containing an explicit date or one found in a clear archaeological stratigraphic context (although you may attempt to claim the Dura papyri find is an example of a clear archaeological stratigraphic context) - all we have is the palaeographical assessment in isolation, uncorroborated by any other dating mechanisms, being used as the primary dating methodology.

Maklelan

There are serious issues with your appeal to Brent's discussion. First, he is addressing a specific argument about a specific single text, namely attempts to insist that P52 can be dated securely to the early second century CE (no later than 150). He states that an explicit date or a clear stratigraphic context would be needed "to do the work scholars want P52 to do." Notice he does not say those things are needed "to date a text to within a 100-year window." It's the specificity with which scholars date P52 that is the issue. Elsewhere Brent appeals to paleographic dating to give a roughly 50-year range for P46:

He goes on to say he leans toward the upper end of that range. Again, this is still far too early for your silly little theory. Next, P52 is a tiny small fragment. Only 18 of the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet are attested, meaning fully one quarter of the alphabet is not there to compare to other texts. Paleography is far more accurate when all the letters are attested and more secure scribal habits can be identified. Next, Brent still puts the range from the second century to the third century. This is before the fourth century, and that's even with the highest dating ever proposed for the text. This doesn't indicate methodological weakness any more than the fact that every C14 laboratory on the planet has to constantly calculate the degree of contamination the lab itself introduces.

Finally, appealing to Brent's comments to try to undermine the notion that we can date text paleographically to before the fourth century is not only problematized by the fact that Brent himself dates texts to the third century (and happily dates texts paleographically in other publications [here, for example]), but also by the rather enormous paleographic field, of which you are no doubt entirely ignorant. We have quite an enormous collection of Greek papyri, much of it coming from secure archaeological contexts and/or radiocarbon dated, and/or containing explicit dates. These aid in the production of relative frameworks within which other texts can be situated. Most paleographers try to find chronological anchors for their analysis, and better techniques are always being sought. Take a look, for instance, at the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists (here). Browse the available articles and read about how dating is done. Read this 2011 article for more information about the new dating mechanisms being used to corroborate paleographical analysis (the author works with Brent at the same university, by the way). Barker rejects paleographically dated comparanda and tests new methods, concluding that P52 must be rather broadly dated to the second or third century CE. He gives an initial range of between 200 and 223 for P46, saying some phenomena found in the text correlating with earlier material would necessitate a more broad range of 150 to 250. These dates all undermine your thesis.

When careful ranges are given.

And I have corrected your misrepresentation of his opinion.

I would be lying if I said that. It's incorrect and quite naive. Also, you should read Brent's Yale dissertation on Paul.

Maklelan

The exact same is true of C14 dating, although the range can be anywhere from a few decades to a few hundred years.