mountainman

This is not a fallacious argument but is founded on fact, and thus founded on straightforward statistical probability.

The huge majority of published documents are originals, and a huge minority of published documents are "copies of centuries old originals". This is not only common sense but is clearly established by doing some sampling from any period in history that you wish to nominate. The numbers of "published original documents" exceed the numbers of "published centuries old copies" by many orders of magnitude. Will you not please acknowledge -- and cease in the obscuration of -- this fact?

Toto

To infidelic:

Yes, I read your post. I am sorry if I sound a bit testy.

The point of this thread is Pete's (mountainman's) insistence that C14 dating can be used to date the gnostic material found at Nag Hammadi to the fourth century. It is one of a series of Pete's threads that make illogical claims.

You seem to agree that the C14 dating only establishes the latest possible date for the compostion of the text. I think everyone agrees with this, except Pete.

Why do you want to perpetuate this thread? I think it is an abuse of this forum.

Toto

I think you are making my case for closing this thread.

The earliest copy of Josephus' work is from the 10th century. Are you going to argue that it was written in the 10th century??

mountainman

Of course not Toto because we know that Josephus authored these works in the 1st century (aside from the later possibly 4th century interpolations by a christian hand). Obviously if we know the author and/or the date of authorship these arguments I am following do not apply.

However the OP relates to "Gnostic Gospels and Acts" and are not in the same manner attributable to a specific author and neither can they be explicitly dated (otherwise we would not be having this "discussion"). In these cases where we do not know either the author, or where we do not know the date of original authorship, then things are nowhere near as simple as you have painted for the copies of the manuscripts of Josephus.

Who authored The Gospel of Judas and/or the Gospel of Thomas and when were they authored?
We just dont know! But we can reasonably safely say it was not Josephus in the 1st century
The C14 tells us that the publication in our possession was made in the 4th century.

My arguments are directed at manuscripts for which we do not know the author or the date of authorship.

Not only do the "Gnostic Gospels and Acts" fall into this category, but so do the books of the new testament canon. In such cases we may surmise that the manuscripts are either "original works" or that the manuscripts are "copies of centuries old works". The former surmise in the absence of evidence to the contrary appears to be statistically more probable in any random case. Does this more explicit argument make any more sense to you?

Toto

No.

Your argument appears to be based on some sort of muddled thinking. Perhaps if I knew more about formal logic I could put a particular label on it, but maybe this example will demonstrate which I can't take it seriously:

Statistically, the most common new books that are published today might be romance novels. This does not mean that The Big Short (or via: amazon.co.uk) is a romance novel. That conclusion would be just silly. But how is it different from deciding that a particular fourth century manuscript is original because most manuscripts throught the ages are original (if in fact they are)?

I will try not to respond to this thread again.

mountainman

You just dont get it do you Toto? My arguments are directed at manuscripts for which we do not know the author or the date of authorship. Anyone who understands this might like to try and paraphrase the argument. It seems that there is some problem in two way communication here.

darstec

Actually it establishes a date for that particular manuscript or fragment. But to carry your idea further, it is the same as saying that Macbeth could have been written in the first century CE because even if we have Shakespeare's own handwriting the C-14 dating only confirms the composition of that text and not earlier copies.

Without bona fide earlier copies confirmed by radiocarbon dating, the logical conclusion is that Macbeth was first written during Shakespeare's lifetime. Sure, he may have borrowed from other tales as he borrowed the story of Tristan and Isolde to create Romeo and Juliet, but then neither of those stories give evidence for real people either. Nor does the story of Tristan and Isolde confirm the date of Romeo and Juliet's creation. I think part of the problem in dealing with the NT is that there were probably no originals as we conceive of in these modern times. There may have been a kernel which was added to, elaborated, incised, edited, redacted, and interpolated to where they are now actual stories or whole letters.

How far back do we go to find an original? Is it Josephus? Is it the Septuagint? Is it the Hebrew OT? Or do we trace a story all the way back to the Epic of Gilamesh or Hittite clay tablets?

Mountainman is correct. There is nothing in the first, second or third centuries that have any scientific confirmation that paleographers are correct and not simply acting out of faith and belief. While I am not ready to agree that all of the stuff is manufactured in the fourth century, it is awfully suspicious we have nothing prior to that. My personal opinion was that the NT was first created after the first quarter of the second century and that some Gnostic texts and ideas were concurrent with those of Orthodoxy or maybe even preceded it.


P52 is the poster child for early NT evidence. But we now know that these very same paleographers have confirmed the exact same handwriting style used in another third century CE fragment. Furthermore the only uncontested complete word in that fragment is 'kai' the English word 'and'. So no other texts in the whole world besides the gospel of John uses the word 'and'? Paleographers would have us believe that is true. Maybe the fragment quotes an entirely different Hellenistic text that has nothing to do with that gospel except the author decided to include it in his gospel.

PS. Mountainman is not the only one to make comments in this thread. You might have noticed I've added a few prior comments of my own.

mountainman

Thanks very much again darstec,

The almost universal presence of the so-called "Christian nomina sacra codes" in the earliest "Orthodox" (Greek) and "Gnostic" (Coptic and Greek fragments) manuscripts of the books of the NT canon and non canonical texts respectively (leaving aside for the moment the "Christian LXX") strongly indicate the signature of an encoded textual authority in the hands of a single redactor --- at the earliest stage of the game --- which ever century that may have been.


A Conjectural Revisionist History of the "Gnostics"
as non christian Greeks c.324/325 CE in the Eastern Empire


IMO the evidence suggests that the only thing standing between the Gnostics simply being the last voice of the ancient non christian Greek "Academy of Plato" and the lineage of Greek "Religious slash Philosophical slash Metaphysical slash Mathematical slash Medical Knowledge" is the asserted indisputable authority of the first Christian historian Eusebius, in whom we trust with "historical matters" relating to both the pious and holy faithful and the vile and unbelieving heretics.

The authority behind the encoding of the name of the imperially favored god of the Roman Empire sounds like something which would fall under the role of the Pontifex Maximus. If the Emperor was within his rights to sponsor any god of his own personal choosing in the Roman empire, then the empire was bound by law to go along with the emperor.

We may still allow Eusebius to be an authority
of the history of the pious and holy faithful
while at the same time rejecting Eusebius as an authority
of the history of the vile and unbelieving heretics.

And this is the path I am treading in this thread.


I conjecture in this thread that the non christian Greeks particularly of the Eastern empire were thus lawfully bound to the "Pontifex Maximus" and to recast their wisdom in the name of the new and lawful imperially sponsored god, and they did, by authoring the "Gnostic Gospels and Acts" in which an "Historical Jesus_Code" is featured in various books devoted to the "Travels of the Apostles of the Historical Jesus Code".

The Gnostics as non christian educated Greeks authored the "Gnostic Acts and Gospels" in the 4th century as a reaction to the Nicaean manifesto of Constantine by which the newly sponsored and codified textual god was to be granted "the same essence status" (and not just a "similar essence status") as the Greek conception of divinity, which at its highest expression in Plotinus via Porphyry was nondual and which had been sponsored (via temples & coinage) in turn by all the Roman Emperors until Constantine suddenly appeared.

The above conjecture is reasonably successful in attempts to account for all the evidence available in the first 4 or 5 centuries, and particularly the newly entered evidence in the field of "Early Christian Literature", namely the C14 radio carbon dating citations discussed above.

lex

Fake Documents

spamandham

For the manuscripts under discussion, does anyone know what date paleography assigned prior to C14 dating? Someone please tell me they were dated via paleography *before* they were dated using C14. If not, what a tragic lost opportunity.