aa5874

But, the earliest mention gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke or John is after Justin Martyr.

You really cannot show that the "memoirs of the apostles" was a writing convention employed by Justin when he consistently referred to passages from the "memoirs of the apostles" without ever mentioning a single author.

And, Tatian's "Diatessaron" is an indication that there were no named Gospels.

It may be that the "memoirs of the apostles" were later given authors sometime after Justin Martyr or Tatian's Diatessaron.


Actually Justin did not supply any numbers for the gatherings. "All" may not mean widespread gatherings but may signify the custom of the group.

If you read Justin Martyr you will notice that he consistently mentioned passages from the writings of prophet Isaiah, the prophet Jeremiah, the prophet Ezekiel, the prophet Daniel, the prophet Micah, the prophet Zephaniah, the prophet Habakuk, the prophet Amos and Moses.


Well, if the church fabricated a false history of Jesus believers, then I would expect those who fabricated the alternate history would contradict Justin Martyr and Tatian.

Justin Martyr did not mention any writer named Matthew, Mark, Luke or John as the writers of gospels. Justin Martyr did not mention Acts of the Apostles, a letter writer called Paul, Peter, James, John or Jude.

But, he did mention the memoirs, the Acts of Pilate, the revelation of John and Marcion.

It appears to me that Justin Martyr's history is different to the other church writers, and we know that some church writers like Eusebius are confirmed fiction writers.

I cannot confirm that Justin Martyr is a fiction writer and the history from Justin does not follow the fiction from Eusebius.

But, there is reason to believe that there were interpolations and forgeries with respect to any writings with the names Jesus, the disiples and Paul.

The memoirs may have been only two versions of the Jesus story. You cannot prove that the church writers could not have fabricated, added passages to the memoirs of the apostles or interpolated words that that were substantially different.


I do not have to produce a copy of the memoirs of the apostles. You cannot produce an original writing of the church fathers.

I just have to show you that Justin Martyr did not mention any named gospel, or any letters from Paul, Peter, John, James or Jude.


Well, there are the following by Justin Martyr, First Apology, Second Apology, Dialogue with Trypho, Discourse to the Greeks, Hortatory Address to the Greeks, On the Sole Government of God and On the resurrection.

These writings will provide the evidence.

Sheshbazzar

All written before the anonymous gospels were assigned names by the latter church, and by the same writer who had no way of knowing what names a latter church would eventually come to call the gospels by.
Justin would NOT have mentioned any writers named Matthew, Mark, Luke or John as being the writers of gospels, because at the time of his writings the church had not yet assigned these names to these otherwise anonymous gospels.
At that time, although they were popular with and accepted by the church, they were still only unnamed "writings" (plural) or "memoirs" (plural) of the Apostles (plural)

You admit that Justin made some 30 quotations that match verses found within the gospels. When I said "substantially the same documents..." that allows that latter additions and interpolations did occur.
However, the basic plot and story line is after all, all that was needed to bring the church together from -Sunday- to Sunday to hear the "Sunday Resurrection" tale that was being read.
Without the gospel stories, there would have been little reason for the existence of "Christians", or for Christians to be coming together on Sunday's to hear such memoirs being read.
Justin's account indicates that this was being regularly done even before the latter church got around to creating and assigning the monikers of "Matthew",
"Mark", and "Luke" to the memoirs.
So now it is no longer just a single document titled "The Memoirs of The Apostles"?
but "two versions of the Jesus story"? Again, if there was at the time of Justin's writings "two versions of the Jesus story" that were being read in the church's on every Sunday, then those "Jesus stories" were the reason for that then present church's existence, -before- any gospel creations, additions or interpolations by the latter church.
And if "the memoirs may have been two versions of the Jesus story", exactly what is it that precludes "the memoirs" from as easily having been three, four, five, six... or more "versions of the Jesus story"?
We know by the writings of The church Fathers that many versions of the gospels were in circulation long before the church finally settled on the well known four.

You are the one that has all along been claiming the existence of a single Book called "The Memoirs of The Apostles" but cannot produce such a book, nor any record of such a book ever being in general use by Christians, or included in any of the Christian canons.

I am not a Christian, so in this there is no motive on my part to be defending Christianity or its beliefs
From the first, my position has been that your premise of the existence of a single book titled "The Memoirs of The Apostles" is only based on an idiosyncratic and badly flawed reading of Justin Martyr's works.
I have pointed out that your reading into Justin the "evidence" that you desire to support your view, is not supported by any known external evidence, or scholarly opinion.
You cannot supply the book.
you cannot supply any contemporary supporting evidence for said book.
you cannot supply any external or internal latter Church evidence for said book.

This leaves,
Are you able to supply us with the names, and the citations from the works of the well known academics who have written about this book titled "The Memoirs of the Apostles"?

Nope, true, you do not have to produce, or provide anything proving your claim. But if you do not, your claim remains only an unsubstantiated and evidence free personal opinion.

Until you come up with something beyond what appears to be only your own badly flawed reading of Justin Martyr's statements, you may expect me to to continue in the raising of objections.

show_no_mercy

The fact that Tatian, a student of Justin, had to actually make a distinction from "Memoirs of the Apostles" with his Diatesseron means that Justin's "Memoirs" wasn't a single tome. If "Memoirs" was a single document, then the Diatesseron wouldn't have been needed for harmonization; this harmonization would already exist in Memoirs.

Memoirs was more than likely just a collection of [four] anonymous gospels.

aa5874

You cannot prove that there were four un-named gospels called the "memoirs of the apostles" by Justin Martyr. And you cannot say, with any certainty, when the words Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were actually affixed to the gospels.

.
Do you understand what the word "MAY" means?

You do not understand my position.

It is simply this.

The writings of Justin Martyr do not reflect the same history of Jesus believers as the authors of the Acts of the Apostles, the letters of Peter, Paul, James, John, Jude, and the church writers, including Ignatius, Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius and others.

The evidence is right there in the writings of Justin Martyr.

Now, the Church History by Eusebius appears to be filled with blatant fiction.

The history of Jesus believers as presented by Eusebius appears to be erroneous.

The fiction and errors in Church History is aligned with or also found in the works of other church writers except Justin Martyr's writings.

Justin Martyr writings MAY be more compatible with or MAY be representative of the true history of Jesus believers.

The evidence is right there. Justin Martyr's writings and the other church writings are the evidence.

The evidence has been produced.

Sheshbazzar

No, and I have no desire to. I believe there were quite a few more than four.
Like you, I would say that the evidence indicates that it was some time latter than Justin Martyr's time.

May have been a -dozen- or more gospels, so yep, I understand what "may" means.
Nor you, mine
Surprise, I agree with you on all of this.
And I agree with you on all of this, -although- I would leave out the "MAY"
Yes, Justin's writings do provide evidence that the latter church introduced a lot of changes, and forged many NT writings, no question there.
Justin's writings also indicate that there were active Christian church's during his time, and that on Sundays they were accustomed to gather and listen to readings from the accounts of the Apostles, and from the writings of the prophets....but that by far was not the end of what he has to say about Christian practices in the following paragraphs of the same work(s).

However my objection was never over the fact that Justin's writings reveal many discrepancies in the latter church's claims.
From my first post in this thread, (post #12 above) my objections have been confined to the single matter of;
My objection then, has not at any time been against those other conclusions that you have reached regarding what is evidence against the latter Christian church .

My objection here, from the beginning has centered on only one thing, and one thing only; and that is that there is insufficient evidence for the existence of any early Christian Book named "The Memoirs of The Apostles" for me to honestly and validly employ any reference to such a book while engaged in any debate with Christians about the early church's conduct.
They will be able to point out that there is no evidence of any such book by that name ever found within any of the Christian canons, or writings, not that it was "rejected" or "omitted" , simply that there is no record of it ever having existed in the first place.
And there is no evidence of any early Christian writer ever interpreting these references within Justin's writings to mean that there ever was an -individual Book- named "The Memoirs of The Apostles", it is not even accounted of as being one of the "lost books".
Thus, unless some actual new evidence for it turns up, or a titled and credibly ancient text of it is discovered -for the first time in history-, it remains only a literary phantom, based only upon a late, peculiar, and non-Christian reading of Justin Martyr.
The Christian church has no reason to ever accept any such reading of Justin, it being contrary to the Church's official (maybe false-but none the less, accepted) history that in the early church there were four distinct and well known gospels, not just one single book by a name that The Church has never recognised nor accepted.

I hope this clarifies my position, I do not oppose your conclusions about Justin's writings, I just do not find support for the existence of a singular Book, which although it could have existed, there is no unassailable evidence that it did, making any reference to it unfit for debate or exposition.

aa5874

But, the name of such a writing, the Memoirs of the Apostles, is found in the writings Justin Martyr.

Are claiming that Justin Martyr's writings has no evidential value? Or is it that you think the writings of Eusebius are more credible?

Eusebius in Church History implied that gMatthew was written in the Hebrew language shortly after the death of the so-called Jesus by a disciple called Matthew. It now appears that gMatthew was not written by a disciple and was written very long after the supposed death of Jesus, no earlier than the fall of the Jewish Temple.

The history of Jesus believers from Eusebius is not credible, yet church writers propagate the almost identical erroneous history as Eusebius, except Justin.

There are hundreds of writings that were not canonised. Even Eusebius claimed that the 2nd epistle of Peter does not belong to the canon.
Non-canonisation does not in any way reduce the significance of Justin's writings where he never mentioned any writer called Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John as gospel writers even though he quoted many, many passages from the Memoirs.

You seem not to understand that if the Memoirs of the Apostles was recognised as a single book existing in the 2nd century that this may have been seen as a contradiction to the Church History.

Now, you think that the church manipulated some canonised letters, do you think that you can find the evidence for whatever you think was manipulated? Can you find any early christian writer who claimed the writer Paul, for example, preached a spiritual Christ only?

It is very difficult to find information that contradicts the church, but at least there is Justin's Memoirs of the Apostles.

The evidence has been found that counters the Church History by Eusebius.

Julio

Sadly, there was a [possible] crime committed by one of the ferocious & vociferous enemies of truth, when the “Chronicles” of Hegesippus were destroyed, where, possibly, much of the REAL history of the first church was recorded.
Since it is Eusebius who mentions that historian's books [chronicler], and we have to assume that he had the collection [5 books] with him at the time he was writing his “history” [a liar by nature], he gave no attention to keeping them for posterity.
Therefore: maybe he committed that crime.
[And later he was made a saint!]

kcdad

John is multi-authored compilation of the saying of Jesus and some narrative stories (not in any particular order). It was written some 70 years after the death of Jesus and some 30-40 years after the destruction of Rome. It is not a book to be considered authoritative about any historical fact about Jesus, other than THIS is how some of the followers of the early church wanted to explain the meaning of this man's life.
The Gospel of Mark is the same. The Romans needed to edit, add and remove much of the "holy" writings of the early church.

Time for you to get back on your meds... what you call a keen reader, I call a smart ass.

A critical reader reads WAS and IS still educated, for educated.
A critical reader reads CHANGED LOCATIONS or SITUATIONS, for went.
There is no inference to be made about whether or not someone is still or has stopped educating and whether or not someone is still or has stopped going anywhere.

"Mother went to the store." Yesterday and she is back? An hour ago and is still there? One time several years ago and never has left the house since.

I was educated at the University of Iowa. I got my degree back in ... cough cough... and go back every once in awhile to visit. I am constantly applying the lessons learned there to further my education... even associating them with my having been educated at Cal State LA and Illinois State University, although I haven't been back to either of those institutions for several years.

So I am educated. Not past tense, present tense. I will always be educated and continue to be so. FUTURE tense. And when I die, I intend to be EDUCATING. Infinite present tense.

kcdad

Could it be that Martyr simply meant the known gospel accounts and letters and called them "the memoirs"?

Sheshbazzar

No, it is not. that is only an -unsupported assertion-, a 19-20th century interpretation that is being forced upon Justin's writings.
Repeating this assertion over and over does not make it into a fact.
You have not provided one single shred of actual evidence supporting this assertion.

Justin Martyr's actual writings have a lot of evidential value.
But the imaginary words of an imaginary "Book" that you do not have, and cannot produce, have NO evidential value at all.
Where in this thread have I been discussing Eusebius with you????
What Eusebius and the church latter wrote is a different consideration, than examining the meaning of what Justin wrote.
Canonisation or non-canonisation is not the point, First, because there was no such thing as an authorative "canon" of NT scripture at that time,
And second, there is NO such "Book" known of, or known to be used by all the church's, If there had been, someone besides Justin, would have at sometime at least listed or mentioned it.
The list of writers that should have (but didn't), remains a blank page.

No, you seem to not understand that you have thus far refused and failed to provide any evidence for the Book you are claiming existed.
And you cannot provide it, because the Church of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th centuries and after, has never recognised, or written about the existence of any such single book, so there is no such evidence to be found.

The fact that certain Johnny-come-lately 20th century critics would like to "recognise" the existence of such a book to support their pet theories, cannot change the fact that the early church never recognised, listed or employed a book of that name.
There are Justin Martyr's writings, THEY do contradict some of what the Christian church now teaches;
There is NO SUCH THING as "Justin's Memoirs of the Apostles", he didn't write any such book, nor did he record that there ever was any such book used by the churches. He also explicitly refered to "Gospels" (plural) and quotes from Christian writings such as The Gospel of The Hebrews, The Gospel of Nicodemus, and many un-named others.
But if any should wonder what Justin intended by writing memoirs of the Apostles, here is what he writes;

The bottom line on all this is that some, in attempting to reject Christianity, go beyond reason.
Setting aside for the moment that book that you -don't have- yet think "disproves" Christianity.
Look at Justin's actual writings! he writes extensively of the beliefs and practices of the early Christian church that was active in his day, and of which he himself was a member.
One that practiced baptism, and Eucharistic ritual (First Apology ch. LXI & LXVI) and Sunday worship (ch. LXVII) "Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because....... Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead."
So while you may employ Justin's writings to discredit some of the latter church's claims and teachings, His writings fully establish that the basic beliefs and practices of the Christian religion were already well established at the time of his writing, around 150 CE.
These basic beliefs and teachings were therefore, NOT the creation of Eusebius or the latter church,
(Discredit or disallow any of Justin's testimony, and it also loses its credibility and effectiveness for uncovering the sins of Eusebius and the latter church)

So, no matter how much you jump up and down, and dance around, to discredit Eusebius and the latter Christian church, Justin Martyr's writings were and are Christian through and through.
Sure there were then various Christian sects, with different "gospels", and practices, but no more so then than there are today.
Justin could state that "Christians" rest and worship on Sunday, The Lord's Day, yet today there are several Christian denominations and various other Messianic sects that observe Saturday as their day for rest and worship, and some of these differ from each other in a thousand other points.
Some very strict, require the recitation of and adherence to much church doctrine, dogma, and rigmarole, while others are very lenient, requiring almost nothing at all of their members, yet all are recognised as being members of the Christian religion.

I think I should clarify, that I do not believe that Justin was using our "canonical" versions of the gospels, he appears to have employed an eclectic mix of "sayings", "gospels" and other unknown and lost writings, his quotations and usages only loosely relate to the versions that are presented by the latter church as being the orthodox church's authoritative versions of the gospels.
So to a degree, I am agreeing with you, that The Gospels (as we now have them) were not as Justin knew them, but were extensively reworked, edited and interpolated by latter church writers.

I have spent much too much time on this subject, if we cannot reach a mutual agreement, then we will just have to resign to the fact that the subject of the existence of this book is one thing that we honestly disagree on.