Duvduv

Shesh, it's important, however, to give consideration as to how things happened beyond polemics. If everything was invented in the 5th century, why didn't the inventors singularly create texts that did not contradict each other or suggest alternative ideas and doctrines?
What events led to "orthodox" Christianity to be adopted as the state religion to the automatic exclusion of the other sects?

Duvduv

The fact is that that there are FOUR different gospel stories without any evidence of any similar gospel to any of those four complete stories, which have similarities among one another.

There are also epistles which do not agree with one another, and Acts which is different from the epistles and from the gospels.

Therefore, even if there was a lot of tampering with texts, including intentional and unintentional interpolations, it is necessary to try to account for all these differences under either scenario that they were or were not produced by some centralized line of authority or scriptorium in the 4th or 5th century.

There are no first hand records at all of a sect that followed only GMark and GLuke or GJohn and GMatthew or a sect that rejected the epistle to the Colossians and Romans, or which held that only the epistle to Galatians was authentic, or which argued that Paul only wrote a total of 6 epistles and which never heard of the others. And there is no first hand evidence of any group accepting the four gospels but not the epistles or vice versa.

Therefore, it may seem to be the case that both the epistles and the gospels each came out as a SET. And if so, what does this mean in terms of all the contradictions and discrepancies among them??

Sheshbazzar

Duvduv, Other than the statement about not believing 'that Constantine ever said or wrote all of that fawning Christian crap attributed to him by church writers...'
my tongue was stuffed firmly in cheek.
I was simply taking the view that aa has been advocating to its extreme, thus the "Disagree aa?"
ie There was -something- well before the 2nd or 3rd centuries, that all of this had long been building upon. The original anonymous Epistle latter attributed to Clement was an early NT glimmer of this.

I believe that what became the so called the NT religion grew and evolved by a totally natural process over a period of some 6 centuries beginning with the availability of The LXX Greek language Bible in the 4th century BCE, and its introduction to Hellenistic society of the word "christos" as the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew 'mashikah' 'anoint' & 'anointed'.
Hellenistic consideration and acceptance of (the term) "Christos" as it occurred in Daniel 9:25-26, created a emerging "Christos" expecting messianic cult among Hellenized Jews and the Greek speaking gentiles that associated with them, one that was strongly influenced by various gentile religions and was slowly and quite clandestinely developing its own, more 'inclusive' peculiar set of religious ideas and ideals that diverged ever further and further from that insular and exclusionary form of belief and practice which had long characterized the 'Jewish' form of religion practiced and taught by the Jerusalem priesthood.

The political events of the first century finally provided the opportunity for this long fomenting Hellenistic Jew/Gentile ger Toshav dissatisfaction with the rules and restraints of 'Jewish Legalism' to finally boil over and come out into the open without any effective opposition.

With the Jerusalem Temple destroyed and its Priesthood scattered and its hegemony brought to an end, and no longer in any position to suppress this religious rebellion, it was the perfect opportunity for the long dissatisfied and disaffected 'Christos' cult to put forth their centuries of Hellenistic Jewish/Gentile developed midrashim ('explanations') which perfectly suitable for the times, gave vent to these long festering frustrations, and which laid all of the blame and guilt for Israel's woes and fall from favor at the feet of the long despised and now at the last, overthrown Temple priesthood national hegemony.

Over the next 4 centuries these Hellenistic Jewish/Gentiles rebels, 'A new generation with a new explanation' slowly coalesced into a new, and a much more dangerous to human liberty form of Hellenistic Gentile/Jewish religion (-an internal reversal of the controlling faction)
This Gentile faction was well acquainted with popular Gentile philosophy and was more than willing to syncretize, accommodate, and integrate much of its best and emerging philosophical/theological thought, (Logos anyone?) even to the extent of proclaiming recent past pagan philosophers to have been 'Christians' who simply didn't know it.
They soon inserted themselves (or their 'converts') into the seats of political power and took rule over the nations.

This is what was going on in the 4th century. (and through the 7 centuries before)

All of this did not just suddenly spring full-blown into being in the first or second century CE. The seeds had been planted, and the roots and the BRANCH were well established, and that rebellion reflected in the NT 'sayings' were in place, long before the fictional 'Jesus of Nazareth' was ever 'born' or heard of.



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mountainman

The C14 dating of gJudas tells us that the gnostics were manufacturing Coptic gnostic non canonical material between 220 and 340 CE. This dating reliably disconfirms a 5th century invention.



I cannot find any unambiguous evidence for the Greek LXX until the time of Origen in the 3rd century. The Ptolemaic "legend" of the 70 scribes is just that - a legend to glorify the LXX. There are a few palaeographically dated LXX fragments in the epoch BCE and before Origen, but this evidence by itself is not compelling. When you track the history of the appearance of the Ptolemaic LXX legend, it first appears as a letter cited by Josephus. Eusebius much later has the 3rd century CE "Bishop Anatolius" recount the story of the legend of the LXX.

There is little doubt that the Hebrew Bible existed (DSS). Mainstream opinion follows the hypothesis that the letter of Aristeas in Josephus was not forged, and that if it was, it was forged well before the 3rd century. Having said this, many commentators declare this Aristeas Letter a forgery, but of the 2nd century BCE. These hypotheses IMHO may be in error. I think that the Greek LXX may not have been available on planet Earth until as late as the 3rd century. There was a thread on this earlier (looking for evidence).

Sheshbazzar

Is it your contention that the LXX fragments found among the DSS are not authentic and from before the time of Origen in the 3rd century CE?

Many more references can be cited but the question remains the same.




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Duvduv

Shesh, your reply to me seemed rather abstract and pretty general, rather than specifically to the issue of how the various texts would have actually emerged as they did by the fifth century. Plus, Mountainman's referencing the gnostic texts would seem to suggest that despite claims ofpersecution the gnostics were not inhibited from producing their texts which don't seem to indicate knowledge of a great struggle about orthodoxy and the canon.

Indeed, where are there any polemics from the gnostics against the orthodox and their campaigns against the gnostics or their texts?

mountainman

I collected a tabulation of physical evidence in the thread In which century does the earliest evidence of the Greek LXX appear?:

[T2]{r:bg=lightgray}{c:bg=slategray;ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}

Century
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Evidence for the Greek LXX
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Notes
||
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}281-246 BCE
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Rule of Ptolemy II Philadelphus Letter of Aristeas
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Forgery in Josephus
||
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}170-130 BCE
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Estimated forgery of the Letter of Aristeas
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Also see "TF"
||
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}2nd Cen BCE
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Papyrus Rylands 458
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}(assigned palaeographically)
||
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}1st/2nd BCE
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Greek papyri in the Qumran
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}LXX translations?
||
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}050 CE
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{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}P.Oxy 3522 - Job 42.11,12
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}(assigned palaeographically)
||
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}037-100 CE
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Titus Flavius Josephus aka Joseph ben Mattathias
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Interpolated?
||
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}100 CE
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}P.Oxy 4443 - Esther 6,7
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}(assigned palaeographically)
||
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}150 CE
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{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}P.Oxy 656 (150 CE) Gen 14:21-23; 15:5-9; 19:32-20:11;24:28-47; 27:32-33, 40-41
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}(assigned palaeographically)
||
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}185-254 CE
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{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Origen and the Hexapla
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{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Which Origen?
||
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}312-339 CE
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{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Eusebius got most, if not all, of his information about what Christian writings were accepted by the various churches from the writings and library of Origen
|
{c:ah=center;b-b=2,solid,black}Hmmm ....
[/T2]

There are other papyri to be added, but all of them without exception appear to have been dated paleographically.


I do not really doubt that they are authentic Greek fragments. But I have at least 2 reservations:

(1) Do they match the text of Origen's LXX, which is AFAIK the one used in the earliest bibles, and

(2) However I am cautious to uncritically accept dates for these fragments via palaeography as the sole methodology of dating. There are some pics of some of these fragments in the original thread, and one must always allow some room for error.

The case that the Greek LXX existed in the epoch BCE or before the 3rd century CE appears to rely on palaeography alone. There may be other evidence not being taken into account, and if so ...

Now the palaeographers could be right, or they could be out a little. It is NOT a science and it is not infallible. C14 would be highly regarded as an arbitur, but there's no test results to be found. Therefore I dont find the case to be proven, that the Greek LXX is the product of a 3rd century BCE legendary scriptorium gig.

Sheshbazzar

What? There is plenty of evidence that there once were multiple strands of traditions, some survived and were expanded, some were rejected and suppressed, and some were through needful compromises, blended together from this source and that, and thus became uneven and inconsistent but nonetheless defended vigorously.

What would you expect? People are people, and just like now everyone had a belief or an opinion, or just wanted to duck and survive for another day.
Some had the political or military power to force their opinions on others. Some ran for the hills and kept their thoughts and religion to themselves.
Or like spin put it in another thread here;
You wish me to identify exactly whom believed or thought what at which time, based upon religious documents that show clear signs of being heavily edited and redacted.
It like looking into a bowl of punch at a party and attempting to identify whom in a crowd of hundreds that have visited the table may have added some vodka, whom some Seagram's, and whom some Schnapps, and all of these various contributors have long since left the party and the punch has been stirred and taken from and added to time and again.

There was a whole lot of sh...er...stuff going on in that big first through fifth century 'party'. There were many conversational groups each with their own thing going on, some others would hear this or that and accept it, someone else would hear something they didn't like and become thoroughly pissed. There were more than a few knock down and drag out fights where the losers were never to be heard from again.

The overall thing can only be described in generalities. You pluck out an ice cube, or a slice of lemon, a lime or raspberry from that punch bowl and it will never suffice to describe the punch, neither will putting a dozen such pieces together.
Where is this, where is that, where is something else? these kind of questions will never end and most simply cannot be definitively answered.
If the information isn't there, or those that held it never shared it and no longer exist, it is not recoverable.
What were Jimmy Hoffa's last words? Who you going to ask? Do you think you can ever find a source or an answer that is not open to question?

That is the way it is with the NT writings and their 'history'. You may solicit a lot of popular opinions, but the books have been 'cooked', and the eggs have been well scrambled and baked into the soufflé, you cannot turn them back into eggs now.

You can only content yourself with one of two things, pretend that you believe the Bible stories and don't question them or their sources too closely.

Or accept that they are comprised mostly of religious fables, and not expect them to follow logic, or to accurately represent any valid accounting of history.

Sheshbazzar

The link does not seem to function.

It was a simple question that I asked earlier;

mountainman

Prohibited texts were burnt, their preservers executed. Search and destroy missions by the army for texts were in vogue. See VC

The orthodox heresiologists dwelt in style in the cities.
The NHC were manufactured a long way outside of Alexandria.


See the mass migrations of the 4th century to the desert.
The city of Oxyrynchus has an extended city outside the walls.



There are polemics in the NHC.