Johann_Kaspar

No, it is not. As much as the pagan temples were destroyed. It is not necessary to burn books to make them disappear. Even the early "xian" books disappeared, such as the work of Papias. And from all other Jewish writers of that time, what is left? Key periods even disappeared from Roman writers...

Johann_Kaspar

How do you know? Dominant? Maybe you are aware of the number of copies circulating in the Empire at the time of Eusebius? Would be nice if you can share this knowledge with us.

andrewcriddle

What seems probably to have happened in the tangled affair of Origen Pamphilus Eusebius Rufinus and Jerome is this.

Eusebius and Pamphilus produced a 'Defence of Origen' involving selected quotes from Origen arranged under headings with brief commentary.

This work was intended to show Origen to be orthodox by the standards of Pamphilus and Eusebius and hence laid considerable emphasis on defending Origen against the idea that he blurred the distinction between Father and Son in the Godhead. The original work had several quotations showing how Origen clearly distinguished the deity of the Father from that of the Son.

Unfortunately after the council of Nicea this part of the 'Defence' had the effect, in its original version, of presenting a clearly unorthodox Origen. Maybe an Origen more opposed to Nicaea than the real Origen would have been.

When Rufinus translated the 'Defence' he rewrote these problematic passages in order to present an Origen orthodox by his standards, ie an Origen who agreed with the Council of Nicaea. When challenged by Jerome he produced an unconvincing explanation.

Jerome uninhibitedly attacked Origen for his views, Eusebius for defending those views and Rufinus for fudging what Eusebius said Origen said.

Because Pamphilus was a martyr Jerome had to be more careful in criticising him and varies between a/ excusing Pamphilus in the light of his subsequent martyrdom for defending Origen and b/ claiming improbably that the 'Defence' was all Eusebius's work and Pamphilus had no responsibility for it.

Because the 'Defence' only survives in a few fragments and in the 'doctored' Latin translation of Rufinus the above although probable is not certain.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

My point is that unless a work is previously almost unknown (which was not the case with Josephus) then in the absence of a deliberate programme to replace earlier versions with the revised version, the revised version will only slowly become the main one in use.

If the deciding factor is simply that those who are aware of both versions generally prefer the revised version when making a new copy then the revised version will eventually take over. However it will probably take several centuries.

A deliberate campaign (such as occurred to replace the Diatessaron with the separated Gospels in Syria) will work faster. However we have no evidence of such a campaign and at the time of Eusebius's first mention of the TF he can hardly have expected such a campaign to be an option.

Andrew Criddle

Bede

Vork,

We will have to agree to disagree. My final statement was intended to be provocative but was not rascist. Rather the reverse.

B

Toto

Provocative in a very unpleasant way. Not exactly racist, but it does appear to accuse your opponents of a sin comparable to racism.

I think that you, Bede, are in the position of defending something that has been accused of perjury, and you want to raise the burden of proof high enough so that few documents can be "convicted" of perjury - as if Christian documents were poor, defenseless members of a minority group struggling for their civil and human rights, rather than the historic tools of bullies and theocratic thugs that others see them as.

To carry your criminal analogy a bit further, this is not a criminal court where every defendent or document enjoys the presumption of innocence and conviction can only come after the accuser bears the heavy burden of conviction beyond a reasonable doubt. (And you may know that, in the American legal system, this burden of proof allows many guilty parties to go free in order to avoid convicting even one innocent man.)

This is more like a civil procedure where decisions are made on the preponderance of the evidence. And part of the evidence of forgery is that the document comes from a milieu where forgery was common.

You would not want to convict a man of murder because he merely lives in a society where murder is alleged to be common. But that's not what we are doing. This is more like a case where a man shows up with the deed to your house, and you contest its validity, and you show that the deed was printed by a press that runs off forgeries, among other pieces of proof.

andrewcriddle

I have a suspicion that continuing this part of the thread will produce more heat than light, but I'll try to be constructive.

I don't think the real issue is the burden of proof. If it was I would entirely agree that we should make decisions here on the preponderance of evidence rather than require proof beyond reasonable doubt.

IMO the issue is 'guilt by association' the idea that it can be part of the evidence that someone committed a particulat act, that they are members of a group among whom similar acts are claimed to be frequent.

Even in civil cases IIUC many jurisdictions would be reluctant to admit such evidence, fearing that it may have a prejudicial effect far outweighing its probative value.

In this particular case, it is doubtful IMO whether general claims about the frequency of forgery among early Christians are particularly relevant to the specific claim that Eusebius of Caesarea forged the TF. (Although claims of other forgeries by Eusebius are, if justified, obviously very relevant indeed.)

Andrew Criddle

Toto

"Guilt by association" is very unfair when you are judging people, because we believe that each individual must be treated on his or her own merits, and we believe this so strongly that our legal systems exclude evidence that might in fact have some relevance.

These early Christian documents are not individuals with rights. They are historical artifacts, and we are using whatever evidence we can use to evaluate them, since we have so little evidence to start out with.

I have seen some Christians articulate a standard that an ancient document must be presumed to be accurate and truthful absent evidence of fraud or forgery. At the very least, I hope we can agree that there can be no such presumption given the amount of forgery and fiction in ancient documents.

Bede

Well Andrew worked out what I was saying. Eusebius is an individual being accused of forgery without any real evidence except that other Christians forged stuff. So did pagans (ever read the Augustan History and Corpus Hermeticus?) but somehow that doesn't come up here so much. The only thing unpleasant about what I said was that it showed up some biases for what they are: prejudice against Christians (dead or alive).

AFAIAC, until some real evidence against Eusebius is presented then the matter is closed.

B

Alf

The problem is that given that it is a forgery how on earth can you assert that it at all was about Jesus?

Even if you do claim that it was a real passage, it could have been about some other person and then the christians substituted the name "Jesus" and added the "The Christ" and the other BS.

Also, in your web page you say that "incidently it is the same people who advocate Jesus-as-myth who claim the passage is a complete forgery". You could also have said "incidently it is the same people who believe in an authentic jesus people who claim TF contain some authencity".

I just want to point out your bias on this.

Alf