mountainman

This reference bears no relation to the new testament,
with the exception of the book of Enoch, from which
pre-CE literature, the authors of the fiction of the
christian literature drew substantial inspiration.

I am aware of only two carbon dating test results that
have been published on manuscripts or papyrus fragments
related to the new testament, and have already detailed
these above.

If you are aware of any other new testament related C14
test publications, then please advise me.



Pete Brown
http://www.mountainman.com.au/namaste_2006.htm
NAMASTE: “The spirit in me honours the spirit in you”

Vivisector

You're absolutely right, and this is why I mentioned upfront that it wasn't exactly what darstec was asking for.

I can't say that I am. Moreover, I can't imagine many - if any - ancient NT manuscripts being radiocarbon dated anytime soon.

Cheers,

V.

Doug Shaver

That is not what Paul himself wrote. He called James the "brother of the lord." Nothing the compels the assumption that he meant "male sibling of Jesus Christ."

Maybe, maybe not.

There are others, if you lose the assumption that "brother of Jesus" = "brother of the lord."

Julian

I completely agree with this. I suspect that the reason that the Marcionites ultimately failed was that they rejected the OT and with it their claim to antiquity and they became just another new religion.

Julian

No Robots

I would encourage people to read Julian's text for themselves, and see if they come to the same conclusion that you do. Here is one more quotation:

Yet Jesus, who won over the least worthy of you, has been known by name for but little more than three hundred years: and during his lifetime he accomplished nothing worth hearing of, unless anyone thinks that to heal crooked and blind men and to exorcise those who were possessed by evil demons in the villages of Bethsaida and Bethany can be classed as a mighty achievement.

This is a clear indication that Julian affirmed Christ's historicity, and that knowledge of him predates Eusebius.

RPS

It may not be compelled, but it's the most parsimonious explanation. What evidence is there that Paul meant something other than a common understanding of "brother of the Lord"?

Vivisector

It's true that the midpoints of the paleographic and radiocarbon ranges don't exactly coincide. On the other hand, the paleographic and radiocarbon 2-sigma ranges do usually overlap, and range intersections fall above and below the 1:1 line with roughly equal frequency. It's interesting to me that in the cases of three documents having known dates, radiocarbon dating consistently indicates younger documents.

I agree to both.

I might have missed your earlier point. I understood you to be suggesting that people ca. 4th CE may have been trying to produce documents similar - in terms of script - to those from around 150 years prior. Your comments on margin of error and infrequency of changes in script style suggested to me that you were saying 4th CE script wouldn't look all that different from ca. 250 CE script. It raised the question to me, what's the point in faking script from a timeframe with a similar script?

I think I see your point. On the other hand, I can't recall a case where a NT text was accepted or rejected in ancient times on the basis of script. I could be wrong, but I don't think any of the rejection/acceptance criteria that have been documented included considerations of script.

Out of curiosity, are there any variants that do not include the text that you consider could have been an interpolation?

That's true, but I'm just not seeing evidence that there's a coordinated effort to guard against the discovery that the documents are younger than reported - if this is what you're suggesting.

I'll have to get myself smart on the Glozel find. I did look at the link you provided, though. My initial reaction is that, unless I've missed something, none is suggestive of deceptive script being used in the time in question (about 4th CE). I'll grant you fraud, and plenty of it - it just seems it took different forms.

Cheers,

V.

Clivedurdle

Turn that around - orthodox xianity suceeded by going a step further than Marcion and explicitly tying itself to Judaism - a successful strategic move!

Clivedurdle

Why is not the most parsimonious interpretation that brother of the lord is another term for member of the group?

McD

It's not an assumption. It's a reasonable inference.

I was a mythicist for about half of the 20 years I have been an atheist, and during that time, I didn't hold to untenable positions such as these. The real reason I turned from being a JMer to an HJer is that I realized that all of the JMers I knew were terrified that if they admitted Jesus existed, they might then be forced to admit him into their hearts. I felt no such fear, and to me it seemed to be far more parsimonius to presume that there was a Jesus.

I wrote a letter to GA Wells after reading Did Jesus Exist, Who Was Jesus and The Jesus Myth and told him that I love his work but that I disagreed with him and that I thought that there "probably" was a Jesus at the root of the original cult. He wrote me back -- a two page handwritten letter -- saying that he had recently come to the same conclusion, and that he was writing a book about it.

Ironically, I came to be an HJer (though not a very enthusiastic one) from reading his books and he came to the same conclusion from reading Fr. Raymond Brown and Burton Mack. Wells apparently is even less enthusiastic an HJer than I am.

EDIT: I am editting this to mention that I didn't read Wells' books as much as I devoured them. I read all of them at least twice and I had marginal notes scribbled all over them.