Ben C Smith

For whatever it may be worth, I have my own brief reconstruction and analysis of 7Q5 on my site, and I agree with the near consensus that it has nothing to do with the gospel of Mark.

Ben.

mountainman

Dear Toto,

I have always admitted the possibility of being refuted either in whole or in part however in discussions here such evidence has not been forthcoming therefore, by what process, means or evidence to you boldly assert that "Pete is wrong"? I await your assessment.

Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Dear Avi,

I am of the opinion that your argument is one from authority. You have no evidence external to that authority. It is not simply a matter that I remain unpersuaded by such an argument from authority, you need to understand that all I am doing is following the evidence in our possession concerning the field of ancient history for the period from the first century to the fifth century or our common era.

Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Dear J-D,

Have you by any chance studied the Syriac documents from the ex-archbishop of Constantinople, one Nestorius, over whose name a controversy has been identified? Do you happen to know what Nestorius reveals in these long lost documents? And BTW, by long-lost, I mean that these documents were unearthed in recent times (ie: within the last 150 years). As such they reveal a contrast the knowlegde previously assumed.

When you have famiiarised yourself with the source material, perhaps you may feel inclined to discuss it. I have a summary of the material concerning Nestorius at this page entitled Arch-Bishop Nestorius of Constantinople - Political and Textual Revelations, c.435 CE .


Our position J-D is that these groups included the Greek academics of the East who shared Julian's conviction that the new testament was a fiction of men.

Another article that may be of interest in your research concerning Nestorius is this one entitled Cyril's Admissions - Cyril Against Nestorius: Various Blasphemies and Heresies (429 CE)


Why would the christian arch-bishop of the city of Constantine be recording for posterity and for the sake of history the satire of cannibalism against the canonical christian doctrine? Why would Cyril be trying to burn this knowledge? Can you discuss these questions J-D?


See specifically ....

NESTORIUS - The Bazaar of Heracleides
Newly translated from the Syriac
by G. R. DRIVER, M.A. & LEONARD HODGSON, M.A.
Fellows of Magdalen College., Oxford, 1925


Best wishes,


Pete

J-D

No, I haven't. I asked you whether you could tell us about evidence. I don't see how your posing a question of this kind constitutes evidence.No, I do not, but again I do not see how your posing a question of this kind constitutes evidence.What I am asking you is whether you can direct attention to evidence for the assertion you made about the attitude of the Greeks of the fourth and fifth centuries to the New Testament. I took a look at your material but could see no such evidence. Perhaps I overlooked something. Can you point out the relevant bit?

I do notice in that material the following:

'The Arians confess that he [that is, Christ] is half God and half man of soulless body and of created divinity;'

On the face of it, that does appear to be different from the view you attribute to Arius.No, Pete, your position.Sorry, which groups?I took a look at that, too, but I couldn't find evidence relevant to the assertion under discussion. Can you dilate, please?No. I do not know the answers to these questions. But I do not see how they bear on the question I asked you.Why? What does it say?

avi

A. Thank you Toto, for pointing out my GROSSLY negligent Error.
Apologies to Pete.
I am wrong.
I should have looked at that reference more carefully.
Very Sloppy.
In retrospect, this evening, after spending two hours searching in vain on the internet for ANY data about radiocarbon dating of the Rylands P52 papyrus fragment, I have found NOTHING.
Nada.
Zip.
Holy Cow. It looks like that guy Herrell just improvised.
Wow, am I naive.

NOW, finally, I can understand what Pete was trying to explain to me, yesterday, or day before, in response to my earlier challenge to him, on the radiocarbon date of P52.
Here's the point:
It was simply inconceivable to me, that this fragment, reputed to be the oldest extant representative of the new testament, WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ALREADY TEN TIMES OR ONE HUNDRED TIMES, analyzed by either traditional carbon dating, or by the newer, and more accurate method: Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS).

As can be appreciated from this photograph, there is ample space at the top of the fragment, available to snip a tiny fragment for purpose of establishing a date for the papyrus, though, that of course, would not verify the age of the ink....

Regarding Toto's comment that Pete is incorrect, I would agree with Pete, that one needs evidence rather than blanket assertions, to confirm or repudiate anything.

I was very impressed with Ben's analysis of the Qumran cave material. Bravo. Well done. Yes, thank you Toto, and Ben, for your respective elegant responses to my clumsy suggestion that the Qumran fragment represented Mark. Wow, really shabby, on my part. Sorry.

I just cannot comprehend why the Ryland's fragment and ink have not yet been dated, properly, with AMS.

I now agree with Pete on this one point: We have no idea, today, about the date of creation of the Rylands library fragment P52. I certainly have zero confidence in the handwriting analysis, papyrology, especially after reading Ben's excellent travail.

mountainman

The source was a public rubbish tip. This is not the same playing field as a sealed box with a date on it. Much contamination from the environment may well be reflected in the analysis of the sample taken. Since I made that statement (above) about the potential real-estate available on Pnn for C14 analysis, I have understood a little more about the C14 process itself, and the nature of the contaminants which can raise the estimate considerably.

There are a number of C14 reports on the Vatican which make interesting reading. Here is a reference involving The Catacombs of St. Callixtus.





Best wishes,


Pete

avi

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating requires two different corrections to the ostensible age of the material analyzed, based upon:

A: background correction due to differing plant metabolism:
looking at the chart provided, one observes that various living plant materials absorb carbon differently, over time,and as a consequence, the age correction for plant material, in a worst case scenario, averages 135 years plus or minus 115 years. There are so many papyrus fragments, it seems to me that one ought to be able to determine, with greater precision, the error correction for this particular plant material.

B: The second type of error correction involves the quantity of 14C in the atomosphere (for the plant to absorb, as carbon dioxide) at particular locations around the planet. North Africa is specified in this article, as minus 135 plus or minus 85 years. Even in the worst case scenario, this still leaves us SUBTRACTING at least fifty years, rather than adding any years to the calculated result of AMS investigations of Egyptian papyrus fragments.

With regard to laboratory instrument contamination, this study summarizes the Fourth International Radiocarbon Intercomparison survey, and offers world wide data from thirty different AMS laboratories, showing that the same sample of wood gave remarkably comparable age results, demonstrating good consistency among the several laboratories, in spite of laboratory contamination, or instrument background. n.b.: pMC = Percent Modern Carbon, i.e. contamination with carbon unrelated to the carbon of the source material. Modern Carbon is defined as carbon within the past two hundred years, since 1950 (which is time zero, for radiocarbon dating purposes)
In summary, there are many sources of error, and contamination, so that it is difficult using only a single specimen, to establish a date using AMS with absolute precision or accuracy. "Precision" here refers to the confidence one has in the date measured, i.e. how little, or how much, range, expressed as plus or minus n number of years, one must furnish to the ostensible date of origin of the article under investigation.

Handwriting analysis, (not 14C analysis based on AMS,) on three different, unique manuscript fragments, from three different Egyptian locations, all of them containing excerpts of the gospel of John, supports the traditional view, that gJohn existed no later than the middle of the third century CE, i.e. at least two decades before Constantine's birth.

name..........date unearthed....location at present....?date of origin (C.E.)
Beatty p45.........1931................Ireland........... ......mid third century
Rylands p52......1920................UK................... ....mid second century
Bodmer p66......1952................Switzerland.........early third century

If the handwriting folks are correct, Pete is wrong. The logical approach, in my opinion, to resolve this issue, is to perform AMS on each of the three unique fragments. Any one of the three papyrus documents, could be fraudulent, or contaminated, or inadequate, or the investigating team could somehow err in attempting to establish the date. But, it is improbable that three different investigations, on three different pieces of equipment, in three different countries, analyzing three different papyrus fragments, P45-Beatty, P52-Rylands, and P66-Bodmer, would all three give the same false dates, incorrectly suggesting appearance in Egypt, more than half a century before Constantine's well documented interference with elaboration of the Christian dogma at Nicea, circa 325. One requires this AMS data, to repudiate Pete's hypothesis.

The problem with arguing, (correctly, in my view) as Steve pointed out, that Ulfilas was an Arian missionary, living outside the range of Constantine's influence, is that all the history books, upon which we rely to learn anything about Ulfilas, have also been edited/redacted by the Roman church for more than one millineum, with many book burnings (and editor burnings as well), so that the shape of the resultant history would be conformant with trinitarian teaching.

mountainman

Dear avi,

We must not forget that all these handwriting analysors, despite their classical training and paleographic skill, were without exception working with the hypothesis that the history tendered by the inventor of christian ecclesiatical historiography, Eusebius, was true and correct. I am disputing this claim.

Moreover it is expedient to state that the very integrity of these paleographical citations with respect to the field of ancient history has not yet been critically examined and questioned. At the top of the list of questions IMO is that related to the true chronology of these papyri fragments. We now know that the host city Oxyrhynchus underwent a population explosion in the mid fourth century, and that at this epoch we might readily expect a large number of such fragments. In fact, these are many fourth century
(and later such fragments) which are far more explicit citations to their chronology by the presence of dates on the documents.

My thesis has it that the population explosion of many cities in the wilderness, such as that at Oxyrhynchus is explained by a political situation of common people, and members of the aristocracy seeking refuge from whatever Contantinianism was. Ammianus tells us a little about this, as do selections of the Extracts from the Codex Theodosianus (313 to 453 CE) .

My thesis sees Pachomius and the Tall Brothers as non-christians. The relationship between Pachomius and the Nag Hammadi codices strengthens my position.




Yes, I do agree that such AMS data would refute the thesis, and I welcome a third C14 test.

YES, It is critical for readers to understand that the specific form of historiography that was invented by Eusebius presumably during the years 312 to 324 CE was expanded and passed down by his christian ecclesiatical continuators in the service of the christian emperors following Constantine. The history of Mani, for example, perhaps mentioned by Eusebius in HE, is expanded by Augustine at the end of the century. My thesis has it that Mani existed and was executed, and his followers persecuted, firstly in Iran and then under Diocletian in the ROman empire c.292 CE. But Mani was nowhere near a christian. The documents of the Manichaeans were burnt before the doors of basilica doors for centuries, because they did not mention Jesus. Same as the old writings of Origen. Same as the writings of the arch-bishop of Constantinople Nestorius. Finally have a look at what Sir Isaac Newton notes on the morals of Anathasius as his followers.


Best wishes,


Pete

mountainman

Jeffrey,

Did you notice this is a list of tax-exempt bishops? How many of these people were physically appointed as bishops by the Bishop of Bishops, and self-perceived Thirteenth Apostle? How many of this list? The second bishop personally screened and examined attendees at the military supremacy council of Antioch according to Fox. War is a racket Jeffrey, and despite it being the fourth century, Constantine was very much at war. The list of yours is entirely lop-sided.

Best wishes,


Pete