rlogan

Gender discrimination originates with men. Not with the Jews.

I'm surprised you hold to a thesis that gender discrimination is uniquely Jewish. It certainly isn't. There are countless candidates for the origin of Christianity if you are staking it on gender discrimination. (Setting aside for the moment that women were Church leaders in early Christianity)

Moreover, a larger problem is that Jesus Christ fails on a number of decisive grounds as the Jewish Messiah. The quote-mining from Isaiah and etc. in the gospels represents some really bad midrash if it is Jewish in origin. It's excusable in terms of pirating Jewish scripture, sure. But it certainly does not follow Jewish thinking.

So you have to do more than pair up similarities. You have to address why it is that in Jewish thought the Messiah is the King of Israel, he brings peace to the world, rebuilds the temple, brings the Jewish back to Israel, etc. etc. and Jesus Christ does none of those things.

Pretty much everyone up here wears a hat, but nobody is a Jew. It's just cold. Sexual taboos exist in just about every culture on earth. Dietary restrictions are also extremely common. Are vegetarians Jewish?

Ceremonies in buildings? My goodness, what religion, club, society, or fraternity doesn't do that?

Oh yes - the early Christians themselves!

Take this in good cheer and sincere discussion please. Nothing wrong with bouncing ideas around and there's no animosity here with me.

mountainman

Hey there avi,

Many thanks for posting this information - I had not heard of this manuscript discovery before now and I was interested in all the links you included, and others outward from there. All an interesting excursion into another manuscript find related to "Christian Origins" and its impact and chronology.

I was interested to read the comments and the article at evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com. It appears to have been written by the same Peter Head to whom Stephan suggested writing concerning the C14 analysis on the Tchacos Codex discovery containing the Gospel of Judas (and another 2 texts). He makes some comments and responses to questions:

However the general early consensus appears to favor the theory that these manuscripts could have been produced in accordance to the local legend, since the C14 dating analysis corroborates this date.

It is said he travelled from Constantinople in the same half decade (450-499 CE) that saw the ex-Archbishop Nestorius also leaving the city (for Egypt?), but as a heretic in the eyes of the orthox Bishop Cyril of Alexandria. It is not impossible that this Abba Garima took a Greek Constantine bible with him (perhaps there were still a few left here and there after more than a century).

The dead giveaway are the Eusebian Canon tables, which also appear in some of the oldest Greek codices, conjectured by many to be either a copy of, or one of the original fifty Greek "Constantine Bibles". These canon tables are essentially "Ready Reckoners" for looking up who said what about the HJ, and who agreed with whom about what was said about the HJ, etc, etc, etc. Eusebius himself these tables were invented by one Ammonias. I take this to mean the Alexandrian dockworker and grain sack carrier - father of neoplatonism - Ammonias Saccas.

Anyway, thanks again for the post avi. Much more research will be applied to this Ethiopian translation of the Greek bible, and it will all be interesting for those who are attempting to reconstruct the activities of the late fifth century.

Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Helena was not the first but the second pilgrim to the "Holy Land".
The first who "toured the Holy Land" was Constantine's mother-in-law, Eutropia.


Maybe he looked at it as a "family business"?


Yes, Constantine had no qualms in executing both male and female relatives, and establishing the boy's own basilica and bishop club in the cities of the Roman Empire. As far as I can see it, he conducted this as a military operation to secure the territory as he went. We must remember it all started in the north west twenty bloody years earlier. He personally appointed his "Bishops" who would very soon have more power than the magistrates. He had dismissed the Praetorian Guard, perhaps as early as 305 CE, and instead surrounded himself on all occassions with a select group of barbarian chieftains.

As far as gender equality in the saga of "Christian Origins" goes, we have to wait for the day that the unknown author of the non canonical Gnostic Acts of Paul and Thecla is named and dated. Our reporter Photius spat the dummy and choked over this and other books of "Leucius Charinus" which were before him centuries later. When did the Gnostic heretic "Leucius" write? Thecla was the Gnostic champion of women's equality in a Pauline world. But all this was most heretical! The Acts of Paul and Thecla was banned. No more performances of this anymore in the Greek theatres of downtown Alexandria --- all part of Constantine's systematic lock-down and prohibitions on the non Christian culture. One might almost say the non "Canon culture".

IMO nothing to do with gender equality, more to do with gold and thus power over the army and thus power over the technology of codex production and thus power over the dreams and the heritage of the conception of science or mathematics or divinity or medicine or literature or even history, within the ancient Greek civilisation, over which Constantine ruled like an Alexander the Great, like an Ashoka the Great, like an Ardashir the Great. Except I think Constantine became corrupted by absolute power over more than three decades. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (from 324 CE onwards). A despot. I cite evidence in the Nag Hammadi Codices rendition of a fragment of Plato's Republic. Which part of the Republic? The very end of the Repubic, at the end of the book, where the land is being ravage by a monster. The monsters of Plato's ancient fables "have now become natural creatures", and are loose in the Republic presented in the Nag Hammadi version. Once they existed as many fabulous monsters in tales, but now they have become a single monster.

Toto

Do we know what the earliest church practices were? The evidently involved getting up at sunrise and singing hymns, which is hardly Jewish, having a ritual meal together, which seems similar to Mithraism, baptizing new converts, which might be relating to a Jewish practice. They did not involve Jewish dietary restrictions, sacrifices at the Temple, or general ideas of ritual cleanliness.

A lot of the sex segregation in Jewish custom seems to be related to ritual cleanliness.

Unless they rest squarely with the mystery religions, or paganism.

Toto

See this previous thread The Meaning of Deaconesses in Pliny

judge

Have these gospels been translated into english?

avi

Thank you Toto, for the link.
Yup.
Right on schedule. DCHindley to the rescue, yet again:

Great job DCH!

Also noteworthy, in my opinion, from that very interesting thread (thanks, vid!) is this excellent point made by aa5874, in post 43:
and this brief but very relevant point in post 35:

My conclusion is this: Pliny's letter seems inauthentic. But, if it were judged by those with more skill than I possess, (most everyone else!!) to be legitimate, I would continue to protest, that the Latin does NOT correspond to the English word, Deaconess. The Latin, original, text does correspond to the English word, servant. Accordingly, I deny that Pliny's letter repudiates my contention that gender segregation is derived from Jewish, not Christian practices. I believe, maybe incorrectly, that, at least since Constantine, Christianity has encouraged gender equality, so, if I am correct, then this isolated Ethiopean church has preserved some ancient traditions, pointing back to the original split with orthodox Judaism.

Arguing against my persective, of course, is the fact that there were also a fair quantity of Jews living in Eastern Africa, especially Ethiopia, at the time of the arrival of Pere Garima from Syria. The locale chosen by Garima may well have been a Jewish colony for a thousand years before he showed up on the scene in the late fifth century.

avi

avi

I was wondering, somewhat similarly, whether or not, the team that cleaned, and "restored" these precious, ancient, goatskins, photographed the text, so that we could compare the text with Codex Sinaiticus, or, with Vaticanus, when that finally reaches the internet.

I am doubtful that Garima possessed one of the 50 Constantine Bibles, for, in that case, we should have encountered at least something by Paul. Accordingly, it would be very interesting to compare the text of Garima with Codex W, supposedy, by palaeographic analysis, created about the same time, fifth-seventh century.....

avi

judge

Might have to find someone who understands Ge'ez

mountainman

Someone mentioned on evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com that
Is Paul absent from this Ethiopic text?

In any case, how do propose a transmission of the text prefaced by the Eusebian canon tables in any other manner other than a translation from a Greek source that passed across Eusebius's desk?