aa5874

It may be totally under-estimated, since we know that Christians had in their possesion or made references to text that simple vanished. Almost all of the writings deemed "heretical" by the Church fathers in the 2nd century have disappeared.

andrewcriddle

The Celsus opposed by Origen may have been a Platonist not an Epicurean
see for example
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03490a.htm

Origen may possibly have been confused as to the identity of the Celsus whose work he was refuting.

Andrew Criddle

Freethinkaluva

The Gospels, as we have them do not appear in the literary or historical records until the mid/late 2nd century.

Roger Pearse

Most of the 4th text of Macarius Magnes does not appear in either until the late 19th century, tho, in case there is some kind of silent point being made here.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Huon

The dating of the gospels (and the apocryphs) has nothing to do with the existence and the dating of a writing of Macarius Magnes.

Huon

Another question, related with the dating of the received and apocryphal gospels.

Who exactly, needed a written gospel ? I think that the illiterate Christians did not need a written text. They had priests, who could tell them the good news. And these priests were litterate. And the priests needed books to remind them of the main points of their religion. And the bishops had also their word to say : this is orthodox, this is heretical.

BTW, did Jesus Christ write a gospel ? :notworthy:

Solitary Man

Special pleading? We have tax receipts that never show up in literary or historical records... I think your methodology is biased.

Roger Pearse

I must be misunderstanding your point(s), then; but it would be easier to address if you would make them explicitly. The point to which I responded rather suggested silently that the date of a text could be determined with reference to first citation; in this case you make a statement which is plainly true but of uncertain relevance to either your previous point or mine. So I really am unsure what you believe that you are saying here?

As far as I know ancient texts are all examples of the genre 'ancient literary text' and data about them is (and must be) determined in precisely the same way for them all. If there is a reason why the NT texts should be treated differently, purely because of their contents, then of course it could be discussed. Is there?

A thought occurs to me here: someone is bound to invoke conspiracy theory -- "the bible must be treated differently because the dirty rotten christians are bound to have ... something or other". I would only comment that we must exclude this kind of 'reason' -- we can always imagine a political or religious reason for such a thing for any text.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

A lot of confusion surrounds this sort of thing, I agree.

But we should note that tax receipts are documentary, not literary, texts. These have a very different life-cycle, and by nature they are almost always autographs and almost never quoted in literary texts.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Solitary Man

If I understand some of these JMers correctly, even if we had the autographs of the gospels, it would prove nothing. This is actually fairly correct, since fictional material could have been written from the start. It's the particular methodology that I'm attacking as being unscholarly. And then there are some literary documents we have that have never been quoted in other literature, some of which we found at Nag Hammadi, and most of the Sectarian Scrolls.