Doug Shaver

If you have an ancient document, the date you're interested in is when it was written. Radiocarbon testing won't give you that date. It will give you the earliest date that it could have been written, but it will tell you nothing about the likelihood that it was written 50 years or 500 years later than that.

It is not prima facie unreliable. It has its uncertainties in practice, and they can be debated in any particular application, but the theory is sound.

Ben C Smith

That is the thing about Eusebian Christogenesis (nice term, spin) as expounded by mountainman. If a Christian papyrus were tested and dated to, say, circa 200, Pete could always claim that the papyrus sheet was manufactured in about 200 but the text on the sheet was written only later. (This would be no less a wriggling out of the obvious than his assessment of Dura-Europos is.)

Ben.

mountainman

Dear Ben,

We have had more than sixteen centuries to find one bit of unambiguous evidence in support of Mainstream Christogenesis despite the thousands and thousands of holy pious relics and the bones of dead saints that at one stage or another have been tendered (in good christian faith of course) as "authentic". Let's get real about this. What evidence is available and on the table for objective assessment, weighing, calibration and general information purposes? One suspected "house-church" previously at Dura-Europos, but now locked away at Yale in Hanger 256. Just who is wriggling out of what?

Best wishes,


Pete