aa5874

It was NOT Irenaeus.

He did NOT even know who was the Governor of Judea when Claudius was Emperor.

Irenaeus "Against Heresies" is historically BOGUS and certain claims by Irenaeus are TOTAL fiction.

For example The LIST of Popes in "Against Heresies" is Fiction.

stephan huller

And the truth is that scholars are so stupid when it comes to recognizing that these 'ecumenical' compromises even exist. They so believe in their heart that these tradition they study whether they be Christian, Jewish or what else are holy and pure - that it came down from heaven like a dove. But the reality is that everywhere you look you see compromise.

In the Samaritan tradition the historical situation was that you had the Dositheans and the 'orthodox' (who knows what they were called) and you talk to a living Samaritan and they will tell you 'all the Dositheans died out and they have nothing to do with us' but then in the Samaritan collection of prayers there is a section where the prayers are explicitly marked as 'Dustan' (= Dosithean) and the living Samaritans will say 'we don't know what it means but its not Dosithean (!)

This is yet another example but these scholars who are Christians themselves don't want to see what has happened to the gospel of John. Almost all the synoptic elements that were originally in John have been stripped away. Why? Because this way the text can be reconciled with the synoptics.

Irenaeus's job was to reconcile Polycarp's lost Gospel of John with the Alexandrian gospel of Mark. He did this by shortening Mark (and then calling it 'cursory' and 'short' because it was 'prophetic') thus allowing for Matthew and Luke to develop as centos of this faux original text.

With Mark emasculated and John stripped of anything that conflicted with Mark Gaius's objections about the Marriage at Cana were neutralized as well as other conflicts that emerged in the lifetime of Polycarp. Like all ecumenical movements Irenaeus forced the different groups to work together by curtailing their original texts (i.e. they had to cross over and use other texts in order to 'rescue' familiar stories) and even then the original material was slightly modified and ultimately de-mystified.

stephan huller

No he was only reconciling the problems with John's original chronological conflict with the synoptics. There is no longer any specificity in the synoptic tradition that the ministry was one year long (cf Clement). You can still read the texts that way (especially Mark) but there is so much ambiguity that you can also see it 'agree' with John. The genius of Irenaeus.

Polycarp would have simply taken his one gospel and said 'it's my way or the highway.'

stephan huller

I never understand this argument you inevitably put forward in a discussion:

So what? Casey Anthony is a pathological liar. That still doesn't make her John Lennon's murderer.

Littlejohn

It may be that the source of that institution had been Greek, but it is undeniable that such an institution, at least in the second century AD, was also active in Rome, since you occupied also of the emperors deified after their death (see Octavian Augustus). It 's true that these priests, that is say the flamines, were also called 'pontifices', with the literary sense 'to do bridges', but there was only one 'Pontifex Maximus' at a time, whose job was to coordinate the activities of the flamines/pontifices and to establish the calendar of annual celebrative and cultual holidays

The 'Pontifex Maximus' could be any person of great prestige or the same emperor. In the second century A. D. the head of the Apostolic Roman church (the bishop) could be seen as a heathen pontiff, but never as a Pontifex Maximus, since that such an office was an exquisite pagan charge! Only towards the end of the fifth century, when all pagan cults were now suppressed, the head of the Apostolic Roman church was considered also 'Pontifex Maximus'.


Greetings

Littlejohn

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Littlejohn

Effectively It's difficult to refute such a hypothesis, given the lack of data to make a different reconstruction. However, there are evidences (even of mathematic nature!) that the works of Irenaeus were 'harmonized' (ie 'correct' and mystified) in the following centuries: exactly as happened with other fathers of the II-III centuries. Ergo, not being you able to determine in advance what Irenaeus actually wrote, it is difficult even to do reliable hypothesis on what, that is to say about the compilation of the canon.

However, there is the socalled 'Canon Muratori', whose wording is estimated at the close of the second century AD. Do not forget that Irenaeus worked mainly at Lyon, in Gaul, and then away from the main flow of the 'catholic-christianity', which it saw in the city of Rome on his real 'heart'. Therefore, the work of Irenaeus should be assessed especially under this respect.

Irenaeus certainly did not follow the approach of the 'fathers' of the Capital and of Asia Minor, the most closely contiguous to each other, and this subsequently took a necessity to heavy a 'harmonization' (mystification and corruption of the original work) of his texts, since he reported aspects, concerning to the jesuan story, much incriminating, as you can still find in his works, despite the savage censorship and mystification which went under his writings in later centuries! .. (especially during the pontificate of pope Damasus

Almost certainly, the fragment today known as 'Canon Muratori', was not subjected to 'severe' censorship (probably for 'accidental' reasons), otherwise certain things that had NOT to appear, today would not be present in it ...


Greetings


Littlejohn

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DCHindley

The problem I have with Irenaeus as the editor of the NT collection is that he is quoting and alluding to them all (I think with one exception) as if they were common knowledge. Now if mss codices containing the various book groupings (e=four gospels, a=Acts with general epistles, p=Pauline corpus, r=Revelation) are already in circulation, and Irenaeus approves of them, one way to encourage their use is to use them in his commentaries, which prompts readers/hearers to acquire copies of those mss as well.

This is significant, as the distribution of all possible collections of these groupings among the 3,158 mss catalogued in Aland & Aland's Text of the NT (pg 83), is thus:

Category	Total	Percent
e	2,123	67.2%
ap	273	8.6%
p	222	7.0%
eap*	150	4.7%
r	130	4.1%
a	87	2.8%
apr	76	2.4%
eapr	59	1.9%
ea	11	0.3%
er	11	0.3%
pr	6	0.2%
ep	5	0.2%
ar	3	0.1%
ear	2	0.1%
Total	3,158	100.0%

* Not in Trobisch's table. This is what I suggested David correct (mentioned only to allow me to drop his name once again)

The complete "eapr" mss are only 2% of the total! If this sample (the most important mss for NT textual criticism) is representative of the actual distributions of mss in antiquity (1st - 10th century), that means certain combinations were more popular than others. This suggests that the different groupings may have been published independently from one another. Since certain books tend to be in the e,a,p,r groupings (like 95%), it also seems likely that all four groupings of books originated from the same publisher, or we would expect to see variations of book combinations or order, or even content. Trobish also finds allusions in one or more books of each grouping to one book of each of the other groupings, linking each grouping together.

So, some publisher had almost no competition, or produced something that became so enormously popular that no other competing collections survived. Other books like Barnabas, 1 Clement, Diognetus, or even the Shepherd of Hermas, were sometimes added to the ends of mss or groupings, so these may have circulated separately and possibly come from other sources.

Since Irenaeus appears to be utilizing books already in circulation, I think Polycarp falls under the "likely suspect" category, mainly because he was Irenaeus' mentor and teacher.

While the Ignatian letters are transmitted separately from the NT mss, you will note that the Letter of Polycarp attached to the middle recension also displays the same tendency as Irenaeus of heavily quoting the NT books. This might be a collection that someone like Irenaeus would publish, and it would dovetail with the Marcionite controversy as has been discussed in the Parvus threads, and pay homage to his teacher.

DCH

PhilosopherJay

Hi Littlejohn,

Recent Scholars have argued for the Canon Muratori as a Fourth century document. It therefore doesn't fit into the debate at all.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

PhilosopherJay

Hi Stephan Huller,

My conclusion, as I recall, was that Irenaeus was a pseudonym for Tertullian. So, for me, saying that Irenaeus or Tertullian edited the New Testament, is the same thing. It is clearly an anti-Marcion prooftext, designed to unite different Christian sects against Marcionism.

Even the Catholic Church admitted partly to this 100 years ago: (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/m.htm):

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

stephan huller

DCH yes he quotes them as common knowledge but strangely he only knows about any of the texts after the original material preserved in Tertullian's Against the Valentinians was written. A very similar situation exists with respect to the Ignatian corpus. Texts are only cited by name in the latest recension (Irenaeus cites from the longest version of Romans in AH). We can consistently date the introduction of the “set” of NT documents to the middle of Irenaeus's career. I can go through Book One and demonstrate the later reworking