avi

Thank you very much, No Robots. That link to Ruth Langer's excellent review is what makes this thread comprehensible.....(at last)

"Minim" (and I don't know if that word is Hebrew, Aramaic, or Yiddish--Juden Deutsch), apparently represents a derogatory term, used by Jews of Palestine, perhaps as early as the first century, to designate folks who were essentially "heretics", from a Jewish perspective.

Ruth Langer suggests that the earliest texts from the first century confirm this terminology, but then she references only Jerome and Epiphanius, a couple of post-Nicean Papists, writing about a century after Constantine.

Now that I know what a "minim" is, I will go back to the beginning of this thread and attempt to decipher what appears to be endless circling of the wagons.....I suspect that No Robots could write three sentences summarizing the entire thread.....
:notworthy:


avi

mountainman

Such a 4th century chronology should be expected due to a segregation of the populace after Nicaea that included special laws for the Jews - see the Codex Theodosianus for many examples. Each segregated bunch of "Christian heretics" are presented by the orthodox heresiologists as themselves surrounded on all sides by "Other heretics". As Christian heretics, the Jews were not alone. The recovery of the Jewish literary output of the epoch of the 4th century runs parallel with that of the Manichaeans, the Gnostics, the Neoplatonists, the neopythagoreans, and the other 80 odd types of heretics listed in Epiphanius's "Bread basket" of herecies and heretics.

The question how do we date the Jewish use of Notzrim is an interesting one that must examine the surviving sources. At the moment the provisional answer seems to be that the Jewish use of Notzrim dates from the 4th century.

stephan huller

But if the benediction only dated from the fourth century why call them notsrim? There is a tendency in the later rabbinic literature to confuse 'min,' 'Sadducee,' 'Kutim,' and 'Epicurean.' Notsrim seems to be of a different origin and not related to the strange interchangability of the other terms.

Again, my point is that notsrim has to be early because it doesn't make sense as a term for Christians in the age of Constantine. It only makes sense if comes from a time where Christianity was promoting the idea of transforming the nature of its initiates as we see in early Alexandrian Christianity (i.e. Clement, Origen etc.)

And I did provide an argument for dating the notsrim to the second century - Shabbat 116a. The term isn't use specifically but the minim (or in this case 'a min') are identified with the Palestinian government. The story says that the Gospel was used to decide legal cases in Palestine and a min sat as a judge and was so corrupt that he accepted a bribe to decide according to the Law of Moses. Again, the תפילת העמידה assume that the Romans and the heretics (another term is used from memory, I think 'minim') were responsible for the destruction of the temple. You go back a little further and you hit the term notsrim. You end up sounding like mountainman if you date the notsrim reference only to Epiphanius (or Apollinarus of Laodicea).

It is always useful to use the Samaritan experience as a yardstick for why there is so little original information which survives from before the age of Constantine. Abu'l Fath says quite explicitly that all the Samaritan books were burned and the line of high priest wiped out in the age of Commodus. More persecutions happened throughout the third century. There is a picture of Constantine burning the Alexandrian books (i.e. works associated with 'Arianism'). Then after the period of Constantine things got even worse for the Samaritans (the Jews actually fared a little better).

As I said we all start sounding like mountainman if we assume that the notsrim reference is only as old as our first witness. Something like 'notsrim' is witnessed as a name for Christians. That is available to us through a number of sources. It is also important to note that the Jews stopped using the term at some point. 'Kutim' or 'Sadducees' or 'Epicurean' or even 'minim' would have been more useful as a 'cover.'

IMO 'notsrim' is the a treasure from the earliest period. It derives from some firsthand knowledge of Christianity before the reforms of Irenaeus and Roman Christianity in the late second/early third century.

stephan huller

Actually I find this rather interesting so I will continue to write about this.

(a) you have 'Nazareth' being inserted into Christian gospels in the late second century to have Jesus associated with a homophone (not a gay dating service but a word that sounds the same but means something different) that becomes his place of residence.

(b) the Marcionites clearly understood the term to be religious in some sense and not a geographic place - cf Tertullian Against Marcion 4.8 "the Christ of the Creator had to be called a Nazarene according to prophecy" ... and then Tertullian says that the term refers to Nazareth the town but the Marcionites apparently thought it meant something else.

(c) you have the Mandaean priesthood being called 'Nasoreans' originally along with some legendary association with John the Baptist

(d) Jerome refers to the ἡ τῶν Ναζωραίων αἵρεσις in the late fourth century.

(e) the tradition about the benedicition and Samuel and the rest of the gang.

How could all of these things be accomplished by a conspiracy? Maybe mountainman can help straighten this out for us ...

mountainman

Also isn't Naassenes a portmanteau of "Nasoraean" and "Essenes"?

stephan huller

I think the Naasenes are identified as snake worshippers (one might even speculate Nahshon = נַחְשׁוֹן the ancestor of David who is said to have been the first to jump into the Red Sea when it was parted). It is worth pointing out that 'snake' has the numerological value of 'messiah' in Hebrew - something mentioned alot in the kabbalistic literature.

spin

Who has said the benediction only dated from the fourth century? Everyone I have read thinks of it dating back to early times, but it has been augmented by mention of notzrim. So there was a benediction, but it only talked about the minim.

How about the correct version of the first sentence: "my point is that notsrim has to be early because it doesn't make sense [to me] as a term for Christians in the age of Constantine." Of course, as Hamlet said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt about in your philosophy." Epiphanius specifically relates cursing three times a day to a heretical group called the Nazoreans. He locates them in places where Jews were sure to have come in contact with them. This particular cursing may have come about to stop conflict in synagogues where these Nazoreans may have tended to enter, thinking themselves acceptable Jews.

Help me out here. My Shabbat 116a is about saving texts from fires, orthodox texts, texts of minim, and others.

Incidentally, those others are referred to in my Shabbat 116a as Be Abedan (בי אבידן) and Be Nitzrefe (בי נצרפי), which could be deliberately corrupted from the house of Ebion and the house of Notzrim.

That's silly.

You plainly can't date the notzrim by the benediction written by Samuel haQatan. Epiphanius supplies a ballpark indication of when the notzrim were included in the benediction.

stephan huller

Okay, let me ask you - if you think that notsrim was added in the fourth century what was the original term it replaced?

spin

Not "replaced", but "was added to". The benediction just had "minim", rather than both "notzrim" and "minim", which would be the understandable response to the question, "Can any one among you frame a benediction relating to the Minim?"

stephan huller

Okay that's a common opion, and where did the fourth century Jews get the term notsrim from then?