mountainman

This stuff you will find to have been dated by "paleographic assessment".

Eusebius tells us of the Greek speaking "Christian Gnostics", and before Nag Hammadi (Coptic) turned up, Eusebius was our main source. I am suggesting that because there were no christians before the 4th century, there were no "christian gnostics" before that date -- they were pagan "Gnostics". The "Nag Hammadi Gnostics" were not necessarily "christian".

IMO "the Gnostics" were simply the Hellenic priests (of Asclepius, etc) whom were all in one form or another ascetic adepts, which is also one very central key theme covered in many of the non canonical christian literature. (And hence the claim that these same Hellenic priests wrote some of the seditious non canonical gospels).

And while they may well have been written in the Greek (after 324 CE) they could not be preserved in that language, and for that reason written again in the coptic and buried.


I probably need further evidence to appear. Perhaps further C14 results on NT related texts. We are in the situation where literally hundreds of NT related papyri fragments have been dated by handwriting analysis to the epoch before the fourth century, but we have not one NT canonical text the subject of C14 dating. The 2 extant C14 citations are for non canonical gospels (gJudas; gThomas).

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Minimalist

You can read this if you like...I imagine you won't.

http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/xtianpersecute.html

Minimalist

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner, Pete....busy weekend.


How would you account for the obvious retort of the writings of Origen, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Justin, etc....all of whom pre-date Constantine and all of whom, to one degree or another, seem to be unabashedly "christian?" Even if "they" were not your "Gnostics" it would seem to be clear that these ideas were rolling around. The problem is not one of carbon dating documents. It is that the ideas seem to be coalescing in the 2d century, well before Constantine.

This excerpt from the Gospel of Truth, for instance..... http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/got.html

certainly seems to be "christian" to a degree.

Roger Pearse

In view of the fact that even this revisionist web page -- hardly a collection of data -- lists executions for Christianity, and "systematic persecutions", I am unclear how it helps your case? It isn't enough to simply try to explain data away, you know. That's why I wanted to see whatever data you had.

I did enjoy reading the passage where the writer was trying to suggest that immediate execution for Christianity was equivalent to active toleration, tho.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

My thesis has it that the last three authors were Eusebius.
Eusebius fraudulently quotes Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian,
Justin, etc (ie: all the "church fathers") as if they were authors
other than himself. IMO they had no existence other than in
Eusebius' fiction. Eusebius may have used extant writings to
fabricate some of these texts, such writings being pagan.

Origen is a different case. Origin existed and wrote voluminously
on the Hebrew Bible. Eusebius here forges additional writings in
the name of Origen with respect to the new testament. See this
page on Origen and Porphyry. The Eusebian forgery of Origen was the direct
cause (IMO) of the "Origenist COntroversies" of the late fourth
and fifth centuries, involving people like "The Tall Brothers".

People walking out of the desert and into monasteries on
this time, with an old book of Origen under their arm, caused
all sorts of panic and consternation. Why? Authodoxy was
working with a Eusebian forgery of Origen, who never himself
(IMO) wrote about the NT. When his old (authentic) books
kept turning up, in which there was not one word about NT
related issues, people got very confused. Fortunately, the
tax exempt murderer and terrorist boss, the christian Bishop
Cyril of Alexandria, censored all this business, and endorsed
Origen as a heretic, and thus sorted out the foundation of
the true Christian Christology.


In response to Ted in another thread, I will shortly start a
new thread about this "Eusebian Fiction Postulate" which I
will attempt to explicate in detail. Since your questions
are essentially the same, wait for a full response there.





This is a Nag Hammadi tractate. What "seems" christian at
Nag Hammadi is still being put through the washing machine.
I have made notes on Robin Lane-Fox's commentary on the
Nag Hammadi Codices at this page

Fox says:

Eusebius, who tells us all we will ever know about the
(fictional) "gnostic christians" tells us they wrote in Greek.
The "gnostic christians" were part of the fabrication
(of the Galilaeans).


Nag Hammadi is a mixed bag of evidence.
IMO it evidences the "christianisation" of literature.
The stuff is carbon dated to the mid fourth century.
Since it was underground for 1600 years or so we
should treat is as "uninterpolated"

best wishes


Pete Brown