Sheshbazzar

The christians and Eusebius bequeathed to us their horse-shit, and we seek to seperate the straw from the shit. Guess what we will have left when all finished?

Duvduv

I am very curious as to whether anyone has done a thorough analysis of Eusebius's Church History to determine its reliability on comments about dating, about Constantine and Nicea, the so-called heretics, etc., and what comparisons have ever been made with the writings ascribed to Irenaeus and Tertullian, and even Origen for language, style, etc.

mountainman

It's cool. Am I to infer then that you would not absolutely preclude a date for the NT papyri at Oxy etc as late as 350 CE? This is the timeline I have proposed.

That's my point here - imperial support, legislation and active proselyting raised the status of the new testament canonical books from a comparitive state of perhaps almost utter obscurity, to the single most important Greek text in the entire Roman Empire. My point here is that given this political exposure and spotlight, anyone educated in Greek would immediately become extremely interested in the substance of the canonical new testament as revealed inside the Constantine Bible. It is therefore no suprise to find a mass of scribal copyist rubbish on the rubbish dumps of Oxy AFTER the publication of the Constantine Bible, BUT (in a comparitive sense) NOT BEFORE this time.



I am not addressing the historical reconstruction of the composition and preservation of the NT manuscripts prior to the 4th century. I am addressing the historical reconstruction and preservation of NT writings from the city of Oxyrynchus - and explaining the evidence of the Oxy papyri - as a phenomenom which can be confined adequately into a time period after Nicaea in the 4th century.



The point I am making here is that the codex technology is a technology that was first WIDELY exploited only in the 4th century, even though earliest mention is from Martial in the 1st century. Given this overview frame, it is more likely that if most of the papyri fragments are from codices, it is more likely to be a result of 4th century activity and technology, that any earlier century.


I think that the EVIDENCE of a mixture of canonical and noncanonical texts at the same site warrants further exploration that a cursory dismissal.

Prior to Nicaea the orthodox and the gnostic heretics appear to have been quite hostile to each other, and if they both lived together at Oxy then I can envisage Sunday afternoons at the Oxy Tip where they would literally throw their books at each other. Both of these groups were almost underground groups, and no pagan source (except Celsus and Porphyry - both via Eusebius) reports the existence and the nature of the conflict between these two underground groups.

After Nicaea the orthodox had the backing of the imperial government, and the possession of non canonical books was a crime against the Empire. If there were orthodox rubbish depositors they would certainly be on the lookout for gnostic heretic rubbish depositors. Here the orthodox christians are no longer underground, but the most prominent of all groups in the entire ROman Empire thanks to the conversion of Constantine. OTOH, not only are the gnostic heretics still underground (perhaps), but they are openly persecuted by the imperially sponsored orthodox canon followers, their books are searched out by the Christian army, and if any forbidden books are located, the citizen is executed on the spot. I dont see these two groups using the same rubbish dump.

It is therefore suggested that the city of Oxyrynchus was filled - and then overfilled and overfilled again to a city outside its walls - by the mid 4th century, with people who were NOT orthodox canon following Christian. It is suggested that the Oxy papryi are the product of a non christian community - we may call them pagans if you wish. Pagan demographics seem to be modelled at about 90% of the people about Nicaea. My suggestion is that the pagans fled Alexandria to Oxy and Nag Hammadi and elsewhere, and then attempted to come to terms with the contents of the canonical books (being preserved in the imperial scriptoria via Athanasius et al) and the non canonical books which were being burnt and destroyed as fast as they could be searched out and located.







My estimates are related only to the C14 results. I have written as essay entitled Radiocarbon Dating the Gnostics after Nicaea. In this essay I allow the canonical books to have been authored as early as anyone might wish to conjecture, and develop from first principles, the reasons by which I was convinced that the new testament non canonical literature can be viewed as a post Nicaean literary phenomenom. The publications I have used are cited in the essay.



I am standing back from the traditional methods of dating the saga of "Early Christian Origins" [a la Eusebius] and simply asking the question "If we did not have the valuable contribution of Eusebius for a reliable guide to the conflict between the orthodox canon followers and the gnostic heretical non canonical followers, what do the only two C14 dating results for the entire sage of Christian origins actually tell us? It tells us it was LATE LATE LATE.




But these considerations are not, I repeat are not, directed at explaining the dates of composition of the NT. I am responding to an entirely different question with these considerations - namely the question: Who produced the Oxyrynchus papyri and WHEN, and WHY. This entire response concerns an alternative chronological scenario for the Oxy papyri evidence that diverges from the chronology being furnished by the palaeographic dating - which is what we were discussing.




It's a starting point for those who work with the physical evidence.


This is not the case. I undertand very well that the authors of the NT canonical books had before them the Greek LXX, and that the authors of the NT noncanonical books had before them both the Greek LXX and the books of the NT canon. Their borrowing and adaptation, their mimicry I have earnestly studied. There is no doubt in my mind that the books of the new testament canon were authored FIRST, and then, SUBSEQUENTLY, the non canonical books of the gnostic heretics were authored.

The big question is when - even in which century - did these two sets of authorships first occur? I have mentioned above a recent essay that examines the chronology of the Gnostic books in an independent and objective fashion, in which the question of the century of authorship of the NT canon is left open. I find that the Gnostic material was the product of 4th century manufacture, as a direct polemical response to the appearance of the Constantine Bible and Nicaea.

mountainman

New evidence related to this question was published by Roger in an article entitled Philip of Side, Fragments. There are two relevant sections:

Fr. 5.6 [Supporters of Arius at the Council of Nicaea]
Anonymous Ecclesiastical History 2.12.8-10 [p. 47, lines 5-19 Hansen][160]



and Fr. 5.7 [The Arian Philosopher and the Simple Old Man]


From the first fragment presents a Council of Nicaea that may be described as a confrontation between orthodox Christians and large numbers of Arian-minded philosophers.

The 2nd fragment tells a moralistic story, although the simple old man may have been one of Constantine's centurions.

Maklelan

No, I would reject that late a date.

But that notion doesn't at all bear on when the New Testament was composed, and the fact that Christianity spread over the entire Roman empire is certainly evidence that Christian scriptures had not been reduced to utter obscurity.

Our conversation is about the claim that there is no evidence of Christianity prior to the fourth century. You linked to this page, and then stated, "I'll tell you briefly. Those who assert the positive case of the existence of the explicit "Christians" prior to the 4th century have the onus to produce the evidence." I have produced the evidence, and I have shown that your evidence is invalid, drawing from inappropriately applied methodologies and assumptions.

But why apply such a broad and presumptuous framework to these texts when they can be quite reliably dated by other means?

What about mixed canonical and non-canonical texts in a city dump requires explanation?

This reconstruction fills a lot of gaps with unsupported assumption and attributes quite a bit of positive evidentiary value to nothing more than the accident of preservation.

Then why did you say the dates were "conspicuously later than estimates being provided by the paleographic assessments"? Please link to these paleographic assessments or admit you were just making that piece of evidence up.

You have several problems, though. First, the Nag Hammadi codices constitute numerous documents from a range of dates. They do not all date to 348 CE. Next, the date of 348 is not achieved by radiocarbon dating, but by the presence of receipts for grain incorporated into the leather cover of codex VII (to thicken it) with explicit dates on them (333, 341, 346, and 348). The cursive script (much more easily datable) on other cartonnage is paleographically dated to around 360 CE, and this along with the receipts supports a date around 375, granting the assumption that those receipts would have been held on to for some years before being discarded and then used as cartonnage. I'm curious where you got your uncalibrated 348 date from. That doesn't match any C14 dating of which I'm aware. Additionally, you mistakenly call the results for the Gospel of Judas and the Nag Hammadi codices "uncalibrated," but the 220-340 range is indeed the calibrated range.

This is just atrocious scholarship on a number of levels. First, there is no value in asking the question of what the evidence would mean if we simply ignore all the other evidence. "LATE LATE LATE" doesn't mean anything in light of the fact that the enormous pile of early evidence just hasn't been tested. Second, that enormous pile of evidence is dated on very reliable grounds. You poo-poo paleography just because to do so makes it easier for you to dismiss evidence, not because it is unreliable. Even the authority to which you appealed in your effort to insist paleography was unreliable not only uses it regularly, and relies on it, but explicitly undermines your thesis with his own dating of multiple manuscripts. You've come up with a theory and you are literally arranging the evidence (the evidence you don't just state you're going to ignore) in a very particular and arbitrary fashion just so that it can be made to support your theory. That's not scholarship in any sense of the word.

No, that's not the question we're discussing.

When did you make that discussion up?

No it's not, and no body who works with "physical evidence" to verify historical models does so to the unilateral exclusion of all other evidence.

But that "physical evidence" you claim to be so enamored with directly and definitively falsifies your theory. The Tchacos Codex, which is a copy of an earlier Greek text, dates to the third century. Your claim that those are uncalibrated results is simply false. Every single publication that discusses the results explicitly states that those results are calibrated.

mountainman

Fair enough, we are in disagreement over this, and you have the support of the consensus. However the following statements that I am making were in direct response to the post # 200 entitled Five reasons to prefer a 4th century date for the new testament papyri .



Excuse the hyperbole. Lets call them obscure. My point does not depend in the least on when the NT was composed, just its status amidst the greek literature of downtown Alexandria in the year 324/325 CE.



My bolding.




I mean the C14 dates (4th century) are conspicuously later that the earliest palaeographic dates for NT literature in GENERAL (2nd, 3rd century) under discussion.



I think it was the gThomas from the NHC that was C14 dated 348 CE. It happened some time ago (70's?) and from memory I may have taken it from another source, perhaps R Lane-Fox, I'll check.



That was no mistake. As far as I can determine we do not have the final report from the University of Arizona showing the calibration curve. See below.






I was quite specific when I said ignoring one source - Eusebius. Hypothetically we have the ability to ask the question what if the one source Eusebius is corrupt. It's not a hard question to ask, and it is not out of bounds of being historically possible. The hard question is getting people to throw everything they ever learnt about Eusebius's Grand Story out the window for just ONE MINUTE of equal mindedness.


With bounds and limitations.


I am not in any way trying to denigrate the art of palaeography - I will not call it a science however. It is extremely valueable in its place, but in the case of all NT Related manuscripts it is being used as the PRIMARY DATING METHOD when such a role was never expected of it. It is part of a great array of dating techniques which are used together to arrive at a date. This is not happening with the so-called "Early Christian Papyri".




I was discussing, as per post # 200, Five reasons to prefer a 4th century date for the new testament papyri .


I put forward Five reasons to prefer a 4th century date for the new testament papyri .



I am excluding ONE SOURCE called Eusebius.

Anyone would think this was illegal.




The Tchacos codex is dated between 220 and 340 CE. My claim is that the original Greek text was written between 325 and 336 CE. Under a late date here, Constantine and Constantius destroyed the Greek originals, and the Coptic was preserved "out of town" at Nag Hammadi.



National Geographic has sworn their contributors to some form of silence which is a usual practice for a publishing company. My claim is that the final report from the University of Arizona showing the radiocarbon calibration curce and the compound calibrated date is not available. This issue was recently discussed in this thread. The arbitrator on all this is the final report on the C14 test by UA. My claim is that National Geographic may be sitting on it.

How many years after January 2005 might we expect a final report to be issued - and available to the general public - containing the details of the calibrated date for this item?


The date 280 CE plus or minus 60 years is a symmetric curve. A calibrated C14 curve is not symmetric, but asymmetric.

The following graph is the result of plugging in the radiocarbon age of 280 CE +/- 60 years and calibrating it.

I created the following calibration curve using this data, and I expect to see a similar curve from a final report from the University of Arizona, but things seem to be moving very slowly in Arizona for the last 7 years ......................

Duvduv

If Eusebius' reliability is called into question then much of accepted versions of Christian history go out the window, including everything associated with Nicea, Christian heresies etc. And then the next candidate would be Jerome. Anyway, since they were biased with their agendas, how could anyone trust anything they said? They weren't objective historians and didn't even claim to be.....

Maklelan

But the following is "Idea (3)" on your website:

Are you saying you dismiss that idea now?

As I've stated, we don't need the full spelling when we can tell from the context precisely what word is being abbreviated. The New Testament's use of the Old Testament and explanation of the meanings of these names makes it absolutely certain that Jesus and Christ are original. To continue to insist that we need the names fully spelled out requires you dismiss those conclusions, and yet you provide no argument. Rather, you imply that only having the names fully spelled out is good enough, which is a flatly illegitimate academic standard. We can tell what words were there. Demanding I find them fully spelled out is simply moving the goal posts outside the stadium to where you know the ball won't go and then blaming it on the kicker's deficiencies. That's not scholarship, that's manipulating the evidence to support your assumptions. If you disagree, instead of just retorting with another demand for the names fully spelled out, tell me why your standard should be upheld, and do it in detail. If you can't even support your own standard, you can't possibly expect anyone to accept it, and certainly not just on the strength of your conviction.

The C14 dates are not for NT literature, they're for Gnostic literature. You're trying to use copied Gnostic texts to triangulate the composition of the New Testament, which is just ludicrous. You would have to be able to establish some kind of termini for the New Testament texts based on the existence and nature of those texts alone to do that, but since they're copies of copies from a tradition that is split off from the broad Christian tradition, that's an utter impossibility.

In your "Critical Review" of her book you state that she asserts the bindings of the codices were dated to 348 CE, but you provide no reference for her claim, and elsewhere you state that dates relates to Codex VI. Certainly that date is not enough data to produce such a comprehensive statistical analysis. The Gospel of Thomas was found in Nag Hammadi's Codex II, which has no cartonnage. The 348 date was arrived at for Codex VII as a result of explicit dates on receipts incorporated into its own cartonnage. Looking around, I can only find references to Fox's date on your websites and discussion boards where you're trying to drum up support for your theory. I'll be at the library later today and I'll check on Fox's text.

You also have a problem with the fact that quotations of the Gospel of Thomas are securely dated throughout the third century, and some may predate that. As I've stated before, the Nag Hammadi codices, just like the Gospel of Judas, atre copies of copies that go back to texts originally written long before. The gnostic corpora did not develop anywhere near Nicea.

We have several different statements by the testers themselves saying it's the calibrated results are very tight, and that the dating is very firm. Are you saying they're lying about the calibration? Does the fact that an official publication hasn't come out really mean the results they share are uncalibrated, despite the fact that they say otherwise?

And that's ignoring quite a bit of evidence.

But there's no evidence that Eusebius simply made all that stuff up. The vast preponderance of evidence unilaterally supports the general accuracy of his citations. Why propose a hypothesis that goes against all the evidence? Are you trying to build up a theory that can then be leveraged against Eusebius' evidence? That's also the very antithesis of scholarship. You simply cannot say, "Let's ignore all this evidence, just in case."

Limitations that exist for the physical evidence you're citing as well. The scientists who tested the Gospel of Judas have stated that their dates corroborate the paleographic analysis, but do not replace or transcend them. Scientists acknowledge the subjectivity of what they're doing. Even you are trying to manipulate that subjectivity with your claims of uncalibrated data and the absolutely asinine idea that you can average the C14 data from two entirely distinct texts to try to come up with a dating for the development of the "codex manufacturing technology."

That's because you don't know the difference between the two, or their significant overlap.

Really? Please show me where papyrologists have explicitly stated the expected role of paleography in dating manuscripts.

And in pretty much every case I've found, C14 analysis served to corroborate paleographic analysis. In the one case I pointed out where there was huge disparity, the scientists actually stated that it must have been because of contamination of the C14 samples. Irrespective, paleographic analysis is not an inferior or preliminary methodology, and you cannot simply dismiss the dating because you have no C14 corroboration. That's not how this game works.

So now you are discussing NT composition?

And I have explained why they are no good.

And that's just as illegitimate as excluding ten sources. You have no reason to exclude any sources, and the sources you have not excluded support the general validity of Eusebius' quotations.

And your claim is precluded by the physical evidence. The chance that the Tchacos Codex was written after 325 is minuscule. The chance that the Gospel of Judas was originally composed in Greek and then translated into Coptic in the Tchacos Codex is non-existent. You have to allow for quite a few years for transmission of the original, for translation to be desired, and for this particular text to be executed. The scholars date the original Greek text of the Gospel of Judas to the second century, based on affinities with statements found elsewhere in that time period. The physical evidence absolutely precludes your theory.

Nag Hammadi is nowhere near where the Tchacos Codex was said to have been discovered. To suggest it really came from Nag Hammadi you actually have to show a relationship to the other, and hypotheses do not constitute evidence of a relationship. That's called circular reasoning.

So what? Are you saying the authors of the report, who have spoken with numerous journalists and scholars, are simply lying? What evidence do you have of this?

And what evidence do you have of this?

The range given was always stated as "between AD 220 and 340." That's a perfectly legitimate calibrated range. 280 is a median, not a mean. 280 +/- 60 yrs is your data, not that of the scholars. It is your own misrepresentation of how the data were presented that renders the curve symmetric.

Which basically means you are recalibrating an already calibrated range, which can only give you greatly skewed results.

Where did you get all the data? You cannot have just plugged in the number 280 +/- 60 years, otherwise all you're doing is calibrating the calibration curve.

mountainman

I have split these responses.

No. I am saying we approach that idea only after ideas 1 and 2.

The three ideas are these:


After listing the three ideas in more detail is the following statement

mountainman

My hypothesis is NOT that we are dealing with an authodox vs gnostic conflict going on for centuries 2-4, but that this conflct was very short and sweet and the victors c.325 CE rewrote the history of the conflict to make it appear that the conflict had lasted centuries.





From this essay - An alternative chronology for the lost authorship of the Gnostic Gospels


Your hypothesis is based on assuming as provisionally true Eusebius's testimony against his bitter enemies the gnostic heretics. Let's say we believe Eusebius in respect of the NT Canon. Why should we trust him to be honest in his presentation of the history of his arch-enemies?



What do they say about just one rotten apple in a barrel?

It is a core principle of the historical method that Any given source may be forged or corrupted.


Eusebius made up the handwritten letter that Jesus Christ wrote to King Agbar of Edessa. Eusebius made up the TF. IMO Eusebius probably made up the letter exchange between Paul and Seneca, and may have been involved with the production of the "Historia Augusta".

Eusebius was not averse to pious forgery, or for fabricating the very sources he would later present as an historian as genuine sources.

The "Church History" and other Eusebian output is self-referential and has the appearance of consistency with itself. When the archaeologists go looking for the pre-4th century nation of christians prior to Eusebius, with their churches and their texts and their Bishops and Presbyters etc, they dont find anything substantial and unambiguous.


But what if Eusebius actually lied in respect of the history of his enemies the gnostic heretics? My first hypothesis (Idea 1) is that "Eusebius was a liar" with respect to the appearance of the Gnostic gospels etc. The essay that heads my website attempts to demonstrate from the evidence that - irrespective of the date of the composition of the canonical gospels etc - the Gnostic material is a post-Nicaean literary reaction to the appearance of the Constantine Bible. The essay is here