Amaleq13

Given this expressed view, one wonders why you continue to post them.

rlogan

duh! I see you did. I misread it the first time. Sorry.

stupid diet. not firing on all cylinders.

Casper

Yes indeed! Whenever I get into a studying mood, this consumes me completely. I may not be any more than a nusaince here myself, but I always welcome direction from everyone.

Something that has evolved in my mind over the last few years is the possible relationships between Simon Magus, Paul, Marcion and (don't laugh) Lucian's Perigrinus (sp?). Could these all be different views/perception of the same person? Were they all mythical and all manifestations of the same historic kernels? Each one has a very convenient boogyman role, since Herod and Pilate aren't there to kick around.

Roger Pearse

Lucian, The Passing of Peregrinus.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Steven Avery

Integrity First.

Sure...

"Integrity First"

And the way the Eusebius discussion is framed, using the the following type of (earlier discussion I think was deleted by the moderator as "vague" so more specific here) analysis is exactly what I'm talking about.

1) We skeptics claim as a fact that the Testimonium is a forgery.

2) And we will assume as true that Eusebius was the forger, since one grad student wrote a paper with that view.

3) Ergo, our views, conjectures and conclusions on the Testimonium are primary evidence that Eusebius is a liar.

4) And this is good evidence that everything of Eusebius can be considered lies and false.

This is scholastically and intellectually silly stuff, but it is only done to try to bring back to life the earlier nonsensical "Eusebius/liar" stuff that Roger ably disassembled on his website, where he went over the exact history of the accusation step by step, using the primary sources.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

S.C.Carlson

I don't know if you're aware of this, but Hermann Detering on his website has explored some of this in "Is Lucian's 'On the Death of Peregrinus' a Satire on Marcion?" (PDF). (The link is to an English translation.)

Brother Daniel

True. That's exactly why people construct straw-man arguments: to give themselves an easy target. You have just made a beautiful example.

"Integrity." Yes indeed. Matthew 7:1-5 must have been written specially for you.

Amaleq13

Wrong from the start. "We" skeptics accept the consensus view of the vast majority of scholars that the passage has been tampered with by Christian editors. "We" go on to note that there is no evidence to support any of the entirely speculative attempts to "reconstruct" a text that may be entirely interpolated. "We" recognize that there is really no reason to assume, as these speculating scholars do, that there was an original passage subsequently altered or that this alleged original text was about the Jesus of the Gospels.

Wrong again. A few accept this conclusion but it is clear that "we" skeptics are not convinced as a group as this suggests. "We" simply cannot consider it reliable evidence of anything since there is no credible method of identify if there was original text or what it contained.

Wrong yet again. The primary evidence that has been offered for that claim is his statement about false information sometimes being useful to teach certain people. His inclusion of the obviously edited TF has been primarily used to argue that, at the very least, Eusebius cannot be relied upon to have critically examined the claims he repeats. He either missed it entirely or repeated it despite knowing it had been tampered with. Both options lead to the same conclusion of unreliability.

A perfect score of zero! It is good evidence that Eusebius cannot be relied upon for accurate information and external confirmation should be obtained for any claim he makes.

Casper

SC,

thank you, yes, Detering started me thinking about this. I am curious how much criticism or support the idea has, even if only partial.

Roger,

Thank you for that link! I take it that you disagree at least in part with Detering's hypothesis?

andrewcriddle

One problem I have with Detering's idea about Peregrinus Proteus is that according to (later) Christian testimony Marcion came from a Christian family (his father was a bishop), he does not appear to have been a convert to Christianity from Paganism as Peregrinus was.

Also I don't think that to Lucian, Marcion's split from proto-Orthodox Christianity over the relation of the God of the OT to that of the NT would have been seen as leaving Christianity for Paganism. (An orthodox Christian might have seen it in that light but that is another matter)

Finally it is a problem that Peregrinus is mentioned by several Christian writers with no hint that he was a follower of Christ. Detering argues that Ad Martyras which is a particular problem for his theory is not by Tertullian but even if he is right I'm not sure it solves the problem. Peregrinus is regarded in Ad Martyras as a pagan philosopher not as any sort of Christian Andrew Criddle