avi

You may find this interesting.

Here's another, also quite well written.

This requires academic affiliation to access, but the idea is clear from the abstract.

avi

stephan huller

Why does it matter whether Mani acknowledged his indebtedness to Marcionitism? If you agree that such a relationship existed then the idea that later Manichaeans 'invented' their association with Christianity is dead in the water. If you don't agree with the idea that such a relationship with Marcionitism existed, on what grounds do you disagree with Lieu and Gardnier?

Please stop engaging in a futile debate about the Coptic language. I don't think you get it and your making yourself look foolish splashing around in the water the way you are. Just accept that Greek terminology made its way into this language which ultimately derived from the language of the Pharaohs. The Greek words were not added by the scribe. I should you some examples in modern Coptic iconography. Coptic absorbed Greek words and concepts before the introduction of Christianity to Egypt. But Christianity was seminal in the influencing later Coptic.

If you want to hold that Coptic never had Greek words or that BECAUSE you believe that Christianity was only invented by a conspiracy of malcontents in the court of Constantine, THEREFORE Greek theological terminology from Christianity only entered the language at the time of Nicaea you will give every Coptic language expert a good laugh.

Are you suggesting that the conspiracy of Constantine ALSO invented Coptic or deliberately injected or encouraged the absorption of Greek words OVERNIGHT into the native Egyptian language in order to assist with their conspiracy? How was this done? Who did it? And for what purpose?

I really think you should quit while you are ahead. To just keep developing ever more conspiracies to explain away every objection to the original conspiracy theory is simply implausible. Even you must see that?

Toto

It is really quite unfriendly to post links and force me to download stuff to find out what they say.

Your first: "You may find this interesting" LINGUISTIC BORROWING INTO COPTIC Inaugural conference of the DDGLC project.

Is there a point here that you want me to look it? These are abstracts of papers about Coptic borrowing. Have you decided that there was in fact a significant amount of Coptic borrowing from Greek?

Here's another, also quite well written: Interval Estimate of Language Diversion Times. I don't know know this relates. to the issue at hand.

Measuring language divergence by intra-lexical comparison.

What divergence are we talking about?

stephan huller

Is there a point to this thread any more? Why don't the followers of mountainman just admit that they aren't being guided by the evidence and we can all move on?

The bottom line is that they are no different than religious people. They like the idea that a conspiracy created Christianity and they ignore evidence (like Mani) which makes it manifest how foolish their beliefs really are.

This is like arguing with Jehovah's Witnesses ...

avi

Happy thanksgiving Toto.

1. Let's look at the quote, again:

My point, which you consider an "error", was that the Coptic language is NOT related to Greek, anymore than Japanese is related to English.

As Toto pointed out, Alexander of Macedonia conquered Egypt, and imposed Greek on them. The Coptic language, (as divergent from the IndoEuropean family, including Greek, as Japanese is from English,) borrowed MANY Greek words, just as the Japanese today, think of the word "hoteru" as a Japanese word, not a deformation of the English/French word, hotel.

The Coptic language has a phonetic alphabet, comprised of elements of the Greek alphabet, coupled with another half dozen symbols, NOT FOUND IN GREEK, just as Japanese, employs ROMAN letters, to write words for foreigners to comprehend, though they use Hiragana and Katakana for themselves, when representing the grammatical ending of verbs, for example.

Scholars investigating fragments of papyrus attributed to Mani, whether by translation from Syriac to Coptic, or by way of a Greek intermediary, have IMPROPERLY embedded, in their English description of the significance of the Coptic text, Greek (not Coptic) words, claiming residence for these words in the fragments unearthed.

Some members of this forum remain confused, judging from recent comments on this thread, about the distinction between "loan" words, and "native" words.

Let us review the excellent example, provided by Toto.

ENGLISH: philosophy

GREEK: φιλοσοφία

Is it clear to EVERYONE on this forum, that "philosophy" is an ENGLISH word? It is NOT a Greek word, even though, we all understand, it is DERIVED from Greek, and spelled almost identically with Greek, and pronounced almost the same as Greek.

I hope that is understood.

Is it also clear that φιλοσοφία is a GREEK word, not an English word.

Then, finally, is it not also crystal clear, that were I to insist that φιλοσοφία is an English word, I hope everyone on this forum would jump up and down, and protest that it is most certainly NOT an English word, no matter how many times I write that it is an English word.

What makes "hoteru" a Japanese word? Why is it wrong, if I insist that "hoteru" is really an English word?

Yes, "hoteru" is DERIVED from English. Yes, philosophy is DERIVED from φιλοσοφία.

But, NO, "hoteru" is NOT English. NO, φιλοσοφία is NOT English.

αναστροφη is NOT Coptic. It is Greek.

δικαιοσυνη is NOT Coptic. It is Greek.

It doesn't matter how many times you criticize me, for my obvious ignorance. The fact that these two words are Greek, not Coptic, will not change.

2. Linguistic family divergence is the topic of one of those references, which Toto felt had been unkindly referenced in my previous post....

3. Had I decided that significant linguistic borrowing from Greek had taken place by native Coptic speakers? I never disputed that fact. never. Not once on this forum, not once on this thread. It was always an improper criticism of my point-->i.e. that the scholars excavating Coptic documents, claimed to have unearthed text containing GREEK words.

My point is very simple: The Greek word αναστροφη, may have EXACTLY the same pronunciation, and PRECISELY the same meaning as the Coptic word anastrofi, and may INDEED represent the precursor to anastrofi, but THAT FACT, DOES NOT, and CANNOT RENDER αναστροφη, a Coptic word, EVEN IF EVERY SINGLE PHONEME of anastrofi is represented by a Coptic letter, identical with the same GREEK symbol representing the SAME PHONEME in αναστροφη.

avi

stephan huller

But what does any of this have to do with the question of the earliest Manichaean manuscripts confirming what is present in the testimony of their enemies - namely that Mani claimed to be the paraclete and apostle of Christ? Why not set up a thread about all the questions you have about the Coptic language? (I bet that reading on the book on the subject would quickly answer 99% of your questions; it's amazing how quickly knowledge does that).

stephan huller

And I think a better example is the influence of French on the original Anglo-Saxon language to make English after 1066. Just add to what we know, the idea that the French language was associated with a new religion that most of the population of England adopted and from which the English language borrowed all its core theological concepts. I think that's a better example of the borrowing from Greek in Coptic.

stephan huller

And please provide even one example of a language developed artificially by a foreign power and successfully IMPOSED on a subject population. This has never happened in history and never will. How did this 'artificial invention' of Coptic manage to find its way into early fourth century documents produced by the Manichaean sect?

Do you realize how foolish this proposal is? Is there ever an end to the conspiracies? One on top of the other they are layered. And it is utterly transparent to everyone that these aren't theories which you have come to from familiarity with the original subject matter. They are just desperate attempts to keep an untenable theory alive.

How is this ridiculously complex and utterly unlikely theory WITH NO EVIDENCE to support it a more likely scenario than the model suggested by people who know what they are talking about?

mountainman

Is it a fact that religious people are characterised by their opinion that there is surely a right and wrong answer to every question, and that they - the religiously opinionated people - have the right answer?


Certainly it is a fact that the orthodox Christian heresiologists fabricated a "Christianized" historical account of the very popular and well known Persian Buddhist-like religious leader. I think most academics now acknowledge that the earliest (4th century) anti-Manichaean polemical histories authored by "Hegemonius" (a complete unknown, but what a name eh!) and Ephrem S. are fabricating a ficitious connection between Mani and Christianity.

On the other side of the coin, the jury is still out on whether the 4th century Manichaeans themselves, "Christianized" Mani in order to confoorm to the absolute will of the Christian Pontifex Maximus Constantine following Nicaea.



As far as I am aware, the Manichaean manuscripts from the east, which include a number of historical accounts, are looked at by academics to be the most reliable accounts of his history. These Manichaean accounts provide a great detail about the names of Mani's apostles, and about Mani's travels and his eventual crucifixion in the Persian capital.



I dont rate this as an answer. I think it is quite reasonable to think that Eusebius had read at least some of the books of Mani. There appears to have been a Manichaean monastery in Rome c.312 CE, and as far as I know Eusebius could read Syriac, since he translated a letter written by Jesus in Syriac to Greek, for the benefit of the skeptical greek populace of the 4th century.

avi

evidence, stephan????

Responding to my post 465, which seeks to clarify my rationale, for writing this:
Toto and stephan Huller jointly confabulated that I failed to appreciate the significance of Greek loan words in Coptic, a non-sequitur, having nothing to do with my point:

Why is a scholar, Professor Gardner, attempting to explain the significance of the Coptic text found in fragments, unearthed in the Egyptian desert, presenting to us, GREEK words, as if they were found in the fragments? Both stephan huller and Toto responded that, in my ignorance, I had misunderstood, that these were actually Coptic words, which merely resembled Greek words, but were not genuine Greek words. I cannot explain their respective failures to acknowledge their errors on this point.

I can, however, explain the answer to Stephan's next question:

First: we don't know whether Mani made such a claim. That's the entire point of Professor Gardner's research: To identify Mani's thinking, as expressed in his writing, which Professor Gardner claims, resembles the epistles of Paul.

Secondly: It is illogical, and improbable, that someone knowledgeable about the Gospels and Paul's epistles, would claim to be BOTH an apostle, and THE PARACLETE. The two are mutually incompatible. One is a human, the other is a deity, a component of the Christian myth of the triune god.

Third, and for me, most important: What little we know about Mani, is based upon analysis of ancient documents/fragments, therefore, it is critical to excavate, examine, and analyze these papyrus fragments in excruciatingly compulsive fashion: this especially precludes introduction of information which would induce misunderstanding, such as Professor Gardner has done, by writing Greek words, claiming that they were observed in the text of the Coptic fragments.

Absent faith in the research protocols, how can we accept the conclusions of the author? I do not operate on the basis of faith. I wish to insert my hand, and feel the wounds.

avi