Toto

This is not what the blurb I found said. The final edit may have been in the fourth century, but Czachesz dates the Acts of Peter to the Decian persecution in the third century.

Given the varieties of Christians that most people assume existed in the second and third centuries, this seems like an unremarkable assumption.

Poe's Law is not a hard and fast law. It is an observation about internet debates in the 21st century, where debaters mock creationist arguments by taking them to extremes. There is a lot of mockery in ancient literature, but no evidence that anyone mocked their opponents by constructing an illogical argument that appeared to be in favor of the opponent's position.

And these acts are not logical arguments. They are stories, with some features that impress you as wild, but are not unusual in the literature of the time.

mountainman

By association with gThomas codex, NHC codex 6 was C14 dated to 348 CE. None of the scholars dispute that the codex itself was prepared in the fourth century. The debates however continue over various conjectures that these scholars entertain, as to when the text may have been first written. Some place the original date of composition and authorship of the text earlier than Czachesz and some later.

But how much more is it an unremarkable assumption when you consider the
varieties of Non-Christians that most people assume existed in the second and third centuries. Dont you see you are always wearing the "Lets look at the Christians" glasses?


On the contrary, from what I have read on the subject, it is the general impression of most scholars who have approached the non canonical literature to themselves describe the genre of this literature as romance. When examples are then provided, covering a multitude of texts, these examples are invariably like Homeric versions of the Acts with monsters and unbelievable events. These observations are not mine. I am simply repeating what other scholars have written.

My study necessitates a summary of all such commentary, so at some later time I will certainly provide citations for these assertions. In the meantime however, the above must do.

I would like to see some independent comment about the applicability (or otherwise) of Poe's Law to this issue. One does not have to have studied much ancient history or biblical history to have an assessment on this possible relationship with Poe's Law.

Here for example is the opening verses from The Apocalypse of Peter:

Was the author writing this 300 years after Jesus' alleged death? Why did they not find him, nor mention of him among any generation of the prophets?
Was the author saying "We think its fiction -- we have never heard of this man Jesus".?

In order to ask this question one must conjecture that the text of this was authored by a non-christian. Is this such a difficult exercise in objectivity? Look at the political parties of today. Would they write things like this about their opponents?



Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Toto

My assumption is that Christians were not all that prevalent, so there would be no particular reason for a second or third century non-Christian to write a coded criticism of them, and things that mention Jesus and Peter and 12 apostles are probably some sort of Christian writing. I don't see the problem with this.

Precisely: this indicates that Christians wrote in a genre that was popular at the time, including monsters and events that look unbelievable to our modern scientific knowledge.

This is clearly not what the writer is saying, since he goes on to say "He has now appeared among these..."

From here at p 131, it appears that the text is hard to interpret at that point. But the 300th year of the covenant would not be 300 years after Jesus' death.

I see no reason for that conjecture.

I don't think so.

mountainman

You appear not to be acknowledging the academic observation that there exists a vast difference between the perceived genre of the canonical acts and the genre of the non canonical acts. The genre of the canonical acts is rarely referred to as "Romance", yet this is precisely one commonly used term to describe the non canonical acts. Why is this? You have not addressed this issue.

I have seen the claim also by many mainstream sites that the canonical "Acts" represents the only claim to any form of history in the new testament. So, the canonical "Acts" has been presented to be a history. Looking for history in the non canonical acts seems alsmost impossible, and most scholars decline to assert anything whatsoever "historical" about them on account of their "highly romantic tendencies".

The canonical acts may present monsters and unbelievable events to our modern scientific knowledge, but the non canonical acts take these monsters and unbelievable events to an entirely new level of definition. You dont seem to appreciate the distinct level of "genre difference" which has been repeatedly observed by scholarship between the two sets of christian literature.

When searching the internet for information about the non-canonical christian literature, there are many thousands of sites which host copies of many of the texts --- the texts are scattered everywhere. What I have failed to find to date are many comprehensive analyses of the non canonical texts, although there are a few exceptions (You have listed a couple.) The recent appearance of the Nag Hamadi texts into the picture has made a difference to the way people think about the non canonical, and this has only been in very recent times (1960's/70's). The scholarship in the field thus does not have the precedent authority of hundreds of years, as was the case in BC&H prior to their publication.

An obvious question might be why did the authors of the Nag Hammadi codices bind christian stories in the same books as pagan stories? Do you have an answer for this?


Do I need a reason to ask a question?





Best wishes,



Pete Brown

Toto

I tend to favor Richard Pervo's view that the canonical Acts is a historical novel. CA is not as wild as the noncanonical Acts, but it still incorporates themes from popular novels of the day. I am not sure what your point is here.

In any case, the genre of canonical Acts is still a hotly debated point.

From Nag_Hammadi_library

Lots of Christian churches today incorporate secular stories in one way or another. I am not sure what needs to be explained here.

mountainman

The Christian church of the fourth century was an imperial thing, nothing like the situation we find ourselves in today. To make an analogy between then and now, can you envisage the Whitehouse building Basilicas around the US, or having many important "christian officials" permanently in the white house?
In the fourth century, people were killed because of their beliefs, by the authodoxy, because the authodoxy was an imperial thing.

Mainstream currently presume that the Nag Hammadi author(s) were in fact, just your average christian "church person", and not in fact, the total opposite (ie: pagan parodists), writing utterly unbelievable non historical ramance stories about the christian apostles and their leader, the "slave-master" Jesus.

The numbers of christians in the rule of Constantine is estimated to be small, and many historians claim the bulk of the empire, and particularly the east (ie: Egypt, Syria) were pagan. The academics were those in the lineage of Porphyry, the non-christian ascetic pythagorean academic, whose writings were burnt under order of Constantine. They would not have been too happy with Constantine and his new religious initiatives.

But since the history is to be understood in terms of christian victory, perhaps it is not important to attempt to understand the story from the other side of the ledger?

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Toto

Unfortunately, I can imagine that. We have a borderline theocrat in the White House who has been hiring Christian theocrats in the White House and funnelling money to "faith based" Christians.

What is authodoxy?

I think that the assumption is that the NH authors were gnostic Christians, outside the orthodoxy, and the unbelievable tales that they wrote were just that - imaginative religious fiction. After all, the assumption is that these documents were stored away from official eyes because they were not orthodox.

mountainman

(In terms of "religion" and politics ...)

I think that in the fourth century there was an authodox (but yet diverse) pagan collegiate religion in operation. At this time, Constantine legislated for Christianity to become the authodox religion of the empire.

It was a battle of traditions: the old and the new. But we know what the result of the battle was. Christianity became the supreme authodox religion.
But not immediately. It took a few hundred years to destroy its opposition.


IMO, in order to be outside the authodoxy of the early 4th century, one had to be outside of christianity altogether, since christianity by default had one foot in the court of the Roman emperor, and one foot in the dioceses of the empire. The mainstream assumption that the NH authors were gnostic Christians is entertained by most commentators.

I have attempted, without any success, to suggest that there is another option here, namely that the NH authors were gnostic Non-Christians, outside the orthodoxy (of Constantinian-Imperial-Political christianity altogether), and the unbelievable tales that they wrote were just that - imaginative religious fiction -- which were satires, and send-ups of the canonical counterparts.

But perhaps both groups were operational? In this case, I am not aware of the number of christians vs the number of pagans in the rule of Constantine, but from what I have read it was very lopsided, and there was a pagan majority. So in a statistical sense, and in a political reactionary sense, there were many times more non-christians around at that time, than there were either christians (in total) or the very small segment of christians who were considered as "heretical christians". Do you see this demographic?

Perhaps another question is, do we have any non-christian polemic against christianity from the fourth century, in order to know what it looks like? What are some examples and samples? We have Julian's Satire mentioning Jesus and COnstantine, but much of his other writing has been censored, refuted and burnt. The satire by Julian involves a Saturnalia Party by the Gods, to which they invite all the ROman emperors since Julius, and a host of military supremacists, such as Alexander the Great. Constantine and Jesus get roasted by satire. But this is direct polemic. Emperor Julian was not writing from underground.


Who else, who has not been censored? Ammianus is a pagan, but he exhibits a very dry and subtle anti-christian polemic, which is characterised by fairness and balance, so we do not have any "weird stories" from Ammianus. I think the authors were underground, and anti-authodox. This fits the non-christians of Constantine's era, rather than the christians of his time.

Also, we know via the Decretum Gelasianum that the Pope's and the authodox treated some of these non canonical works as heretical. This is important. One entry on this prohibited list is this:

all the books made by Leucius the disciple of the devil

The works were considered by Eusebius to be heretical. We also know that Constantine himself declated certain works of Porphyry and of Arius as heretical, and edicted to have them burnt, and anyone keeping these writings, to be beheaded. (See Constantine's Dear Arius Letter).


Perhaos the authodox did not want to have any more unbelievable tales, or imaginative religious fiction written. But why did they come down so hard on the heretics? Were the heretics simply non-christians? Were the pagans trying to preserve their own heritage?

This final point seems vindicated in a number of places where pagan texts are preserved in seemingly christian authored non canonical things. One example if the text of "The Hymn of the Pearl" which is preserved by putting it into the mouth of the Apostle Thomas, when he was sold into slavery and went to India with the Indian who purchaced him from Jesus Christ, the slave boss man. Most academics understand this separate text (The Hymn of the Pearl; The Hymn of the Soul) is a non-christian text. The question thus becomes, why would a christian preserve it, if other christians wished to burn it? The answer to this question becomes trivial, if we consider that the author of the Gospel of Thomas was not in fact a christian at all. That the entire text is just a parody of Constantine - ie: the slave-mentality apostles and their slave boss Jesus.

(NB: I do not have a proble with the gThomas being dated in the 4th century,
but I am sure others do have a problem with this at the moment, which is why I have attempted to confine analyses to the Acts of Philip, agreed to be a fourth century authored apocryphal act.)



Best wishes,



Pete Brown

mountainman

Let's try this from another angle then.

Let's suppose for example that a US president decided to reclassify the structure of the Duey Library system, by placing the Christian Religion under the academic discipline of philosophy, and, without notifying the public, coordinated a massive computerised switch in 12 months (another IT Boom). OK, a bit far fetched, but within the bounds of possibility. Notably however, there would be a great deal of public polemic, perhaps indeed focussed by a few key people opposed to this change. Would the reigning political party not then arrange to have this opposition dealt with by appropriate responses?

Now, switching back to the 4th century, the world was alot smaller. Power was focussed on one (or maybe two or three --- for a little while) man (and his army). The same type of thought crosses the mind of the 4th century boss. He has absolute and supreme military power; over the life and death of the people of the entire Roman empire. He is a warlord. He has a sword and he knows how to use it. He has been in the army since he was a kid and he has seen service as a hostage in the courts of the east under Diocletians's persecution of the Mainichaens. It was not pretty. SO the boss puts forward a stack of codices, prepared by Eusebius.

And calls a summit meeting at Nicaea, after a few well planned executions of chief priests from the opposition religions. All attendeed walk in to the summit meeting through a wall of drawn swords. To cut a long story short, the aftermath was Constantine's prohibition of temple service.
The business as usual sign had just been switched off -- for keeps. The pagans were thus instantaneously disspossessed of their heritage. They were pissed off.


Would authors write polemic against these actions?
Where is the polemic of the pagans in "christian history"?
What are the words of Arius? Nestorius? Julian? Zosimus?

Why was the Acts of Philip considered heresy?
Why did the 4th century christian angel slay 40 Jewish priests,
and thus gain many converts?

Satirical parody.

Muhammad executed two parodists when he obtained absolute military supremacy. I wonder what they actually wrote against Muhammad, and whether we will ever know. Similarly .... And Constantine makes it very very very very clear that he would like to know the whereabouts of that ascetic priest Arius, whom he suspects to be somewhere in Syria, writing bitter polemic against the christian church.


Best wishes,


Pete Brown

mountainman

The critical documents are in fact already in front of our eyes in the form of the apochryphal new testament writings and the codices buried at Nag Hammadi, particularly the sixth book, which is full of purely pagan and Hellenic references - treatises by Hermes to Asclepius, etc.

Interpreting christian origins as fourth century forgery explains the emergence and the literary character of the new testament apochryphal writings. Such writings could have been written by parodists, creating additional stories about the canonical cast and crew of the new testament. The available C14 citations are consistent with this.

But what is the mainstream explanation and history of the apochryphal NT literature? Well there is no concensus at all. Nobody has the foggiest idea. It is in the too-hard basket. Who wrote the NT apochryphal literature, when and why? Is this such a hard question?



Best wishes,


Pete