Roger Pearse

Is this perhaps written under the common but mistaken impression that (a) the council of Nicaea decided the canon of the NT and (b) Eusebius of Caesarea was one of those who made an arbitrary choice of books from a wide selection?

If so, neither is correct. Some notes on the Nicaea idea.

I don't know which 'sacred sources' you have in mind. But it has been suggested that 99% of ancient literature has perished, much of it before the final collapse of the western empire. This has to do with the collapse of the society that gave it birth, the very limited usefulness of these texts in the subsequent centuries, and sheer mischance.

One reason why copies of literary texts rarely exist prior to around 350 AD is a technology change that occurred in that period; from the papyrus roll to the modern book form in parchment (or codex). Naturally older copies tended to be discarded in the face of the nice new and much easier to use codices. Papyrus is anyway fragile, whereas parchment is eternal. Quite a number of works and parts of works probably perished at this time, if they were not copied forward into the new medium. For instance, the compiler of the Theodosian legal code, in 451, complains in his preface that works by earlier 2nd century jurists like Ulpian and Papinian were even then only accessible to him in excerpts.

Fragments of papyri do exist from Egypt and a tiny handful from elsewhere. Papyrus codices were attempted, and a handful have survived, where climatic conditions permit, and have become known in some cases.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

S.C.Carlson

Anything is possible but not all things are probable. Historians do their work based on the evidence. Where's the evidence that Constantine suppressed alternate forms of NT? In fact, the evidence that does exist contradicts the idea. Textual critics have identified two distinct text-types for the NT that were both in existence by 200 (the "Alexandrian" and the "Western"). Neither of these text-types were suppressed by Constantine or by anyone else in antiquity.

Stephen

Gamera

A different Foucault, but I think we're on the same page as far as historiography is concerned.

Gamera

No, the opposite: all records are equally the result of agendas. So you can't bracket off "historical documents" for the "texts of Christian apologists" along those lines.

We have texts. We can evaluate them for reliability based on various factors. But one of the factors is not pristine commitment to history vs an agenda. There are no such documents of the former type, which is what the initial post suggested.

Gamera

Well, I've provided that with the commentary of on the Acts of Paul and why it was rejected.

Most of the rejected texts involved commentary of one sort or another of the type suggesting forgery or some other defect in the text. I don't think any fair minded person can claim that the church fathers didn't apply some rational, objective standards to their analysis of rejected texts (though they also applied standards about inspiration which are by definition not rational but which mostly applied to accepted texts).

My admittedly rough review of these commentaries suggest various threshold questions were addressed -- is the text a forgery, has the text been tampered with, do we know its source. If the text survived the threshold analysis, which was pretty objective in my book, then the issue of the text's inspired nature was considered, which by definition was not objective.

But the threshold analysis seems very revealing to me, especially given the closeness in time to the text of those making the analysis.

Amaleq13

Since I mentioned Acts of Paul when I originally asked you to support your assertion and requested something other than that and provided this same response the first time you merely repeated it back to me, why would you possibly think it helpful to repeat it again?

Gamera

Because after I gave you one example you repeated your rebutted claim that there is no "objective" analysis of the reliability of the texts at issue by the church fathers.

You seem to have forgotten the commentary on the Acts of Paul, so I reminded you.

But honestly all you need to do is go to the Early Christian Writing website and review the background section of each text and you'll find "objective' analysis by the church fathers in most cases.

Amaleq13

I gave you the example of Acts of Paul and then I repeated my question as to whether you could support your assertion. It is difficult to rewrite history when the posts are available for review.

mountainman

Not one single fragment of papyrii on this list has been
carbon dated, and the dating of these fragments are all
by means of paleographic assessment, or handwriting
analysis.

Elsewhere in this thread above ...

That these fragments of text witness the existence
of pre-Nicaean NT is an inference of the handwriting analysis, and
of no other scientific assessment, at the present time.


Pete Brown
www.mountainman.com.au

Roger Pearse

Tertullian, De baptismo 17:5:

[5] quod si quae Acta Pauli, quae perperam scripta sunt,
exemplum Theclae ad licentiam mulierum docendi tinguendique
defendant, sciant in Asia presbyterum qui eam scripturam
construxit, quasi titulo Pauli de suo cumulans, convictum atque
confessum id se amore Pauli fecisse loco decessisse.

But if certain Acts of Paul, which are falsely so named,
claim the example of Thecla for allowing women to teach and
to baptize, let men know that in Asia the presbyter who com-
piled that document, thinking to add of his own to Paul's
reputation, was found out, and though he professed he had
done it for love of Paul, was deposed from his position.

Evans' text and translation (1964).

All the best,

Roger Pearse