Ben C Smith

That is an intriguing position. I was aware of the fool-speech link in 2 Corinthians, but was blissfully unaware that it was being used against the very historicity of the events (though I have read, and have tended to agree with, some scholar who pointed out elements of overt exaggeration in the passage).

I shall mull over this possibility for a while.

That is not motive. If 2 Thessalonians is an imitation, then 2.4 is evidence that the imitator knew Paul wrote (at least 1 Thessalonians) before 70. (But I myself tend to accept 2 Thessalonians as genuine; I reject Ephesians, Colossians, and the pastoral epistles.)

I would think that conforming his words to whatever he knew about the historical Paul is practically synonymous with being a Pauline imitator. Is it really unusual for a literary imitator to make it look like the original author wrote the piece?

Ben.

Ben C Smith

I look a bit odd anyway.

I am completely undecided.

True.

Thanks.

That sounds like the basic outline of the reign of Nero, but Suetonius also presents Tiberius and Domitian in much the same way. I do not know enough about it all to tell how much of this is literary presentation and how much is a real historical trend for Roman emperors to begin well and end badly.

Cult is fine if we do not pour into it all the modern connotations of that word (Branch Davidians, brainwashing, Moonies, and so forth). I do tend to translate Greek and Latin words with their English cognates, a habit for which my Greek and Latin professors regularly chastised me in college. But I never could shake it.

You are correct. Good catch.

Ben.

Amaleq13

How do you hope to make this differentiation?

Ben C Smith

Same way as any other fragments of an otherwise lost work.

But my only point with darstec was that we have quite a few more than 5 or 6 fragments of Papias to look at. Agree or disagree?

Ben.

Ben C Smith

In the spirit of synoptic scholarship, I have just uploaded a page comparing our three texts. It may come in handy here or there.

Ben.

S.C.Carlson

That's right, though I think some of the standard collections of Papias include many bogus ones, but some are legit.

The bogus ones include: the Medieval Manuscript on the Four Maries (actually should be attrib. to Papias of Lombardy (fl. 1053)); the Anti-Marcionite Prologue for John; the Catena for John; and the two scholia attributed to Maximus the Confessor.

Your page presents the long form of the Papias on the death of Judas as quoted by Apollinaris. However, there is a shorter form of the quotation that for a variety of reasons is more likely to be from Papias than the longer one.

Stephen

Ben C Smith

Very much agreed.

Again agreed.

I hate to do it to good old Balthasar, but agreed.

Hmmm. I had not really considered these in that way.

The second quotation from Anastasius looks odd to me (the one where Papias is named in a group that interprets paradise spiritually as Christ and the church). The first quotation from Anastasius may also be of the same ilk. Or perhaps both of these just belong to the category of misinterpretation of Papias, rather than fabrication.

I have always wondered about the textual issues behind that quotation. Who writes about it and where?

Good points all; thanks.

Ben.

Amaleq13

How? With no extant known works by an author for comparison, how is the identification obtained? Independent attribution of the same fragment?

IIRC, we have about twice that number of passages attributed to him.

Ben C Smith

Independent attestation is certainly a factor. Other factors are the relationship of the one quoting the lost work to that lost work, the availability of that lost work both to the one quoting it and to his readership, the reliability of the one quoting the lost work in quotations more easily confirmed, the ability to discount the most likely candidates for forgery, the greater or lesser passage of time between the lost work and the quotation, the discovery of traces of the alleged quotation in unattributed allusions or instances of (what we would call) plagiarism, and general plausibility.

What is your preferred methodology for distinguishing genuine fragments from spurious? I am always interested in learning new tricks of the trade.

Ben.

Amaleq13

I don't have one. I was just interested in learning the "old" tricks.