mountainman

Rubbish. If you actually examine the papyri citation, starting with
the Irenaeus related fragment P.Oxy. 405 what is forthcoming is the
principle that P.Oxy 405 is dated on the basis of its handwriting, not
because it is able to be dated by some other means to the 3rd century.


Dont bet.




Pete Brown

PhilosopherJay

Hi Pete,

In the Cambridge University Library and Wikipedia P. Oxy 405 is listed as a Third century (250 C.E.) fragment from manuscript 4413, as an unknown theological fragment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri
http://gpbc.csad.ox.ac.uk/list_texts...&searchterm=15

Do you know who ties it to Irenaeus and on what evidence?

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Roger Pearse

The fragment wasn't recognised as a portion of Irenaeus, when originally published. This began:

405 consists of seven fragments written in a small neat uncial hand, which is not later than the first half of the third century and might be as old as the latter part of the second. ... 405 is interesting on account of a quotation from St. Matthew iii.16-7 describing the baptism, which is indicated by wedge-shaped signs in the margin similar to those employed for filling up short lines...

It is interesting to see this attempt at marking a quotation.

A subsequent article by J. Armitage Robinson in the Athenaeum Oct. 24, 1903, p. 548, identified it as a fragment of the lost Greek text of Irenaeus Adversus Haereses, book 3, chapter 9. It is described in detail in the Sources Chrétiennes edition of Irenaeus (SC 201, 1974, pp127ff).

On the date, the SC says:

Our papyrus can only be dated by paleography. According to Grenfell and Hunt, whose judgement has been confirmed later by C.H.Roberts [1], the uncial of the papyrus belongs to the beginning of the 3rd or even the end of the 2nd century. This means that little time separates the copy of our fragment from the composition of the work.

1. Cf. C.H.Roberts, "An Early Papyrus of the First Gospel", in Harvard Theological Review 46, Oct. 1953, p. 235. -- Id. "Early Christianity in Egypt" in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 40, 1954, p. 94.

Here is a nice picture of the papyrus, which cost me $20 and which I'm probably not allowed to show you so won't remain online that long. A layout of the page appears in the SC on p.131.



and a larger one.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Julian

I am not sure what you are implying here. My point was merely that we have writings that pre-date Eusebius. I am away from my sources so I am not sure what the dates are for any Greek MS fragments that we might have. The Latin version is from the 4th or 3rd century, probably earlier rather than later. Although the Greek quotations from Epiphanius would be too later to avoid accusations of fraud by Eusebius the same could not be said about any quotations by Hippolytus. Epiphanius does quote in Greek rather than Latin. The Latin translation also seems to be pretty wonky (to use a technical term) although I have not ascertained just how much they differ from the Greek since I haven't studied this in detail. The NT quotes differ between several works by Irenaeus indicating that the scribe may have substituted a 'local' set of variant readings. This was fairly common and one of the reasons why patristic sources are not all that valuable in textual criticism, i.e. the NT quotations frequently reflect the bible version in use by the scribe in his time and place as opposed to the original quotes by the author.

In short, we have Irenaeus' text in a decent copy, certainly decent enough that we have little need to discuss fraud by Eusebius.
Tertullian seems to be the first major church father to use Latin.
Fourth or third, actually, possibly in Africa but I need to do more checking.
I will need to consult some paper volumes at my house before I can go into more detail on this. I will also need to compare some Latin and Greek fragments to check translations. More later, then.

Julian

PhilosopherJay

Hi Roger,

This is great. Thank you very much for it.

The material after the wedges are apparently the quote from Matthew 3.16-17 which we indeed do find in "Against Heresies". There appears to be only six or seven words outside of the quote that are reconstructable. Even if we assume that we have correctly identified the quote from the half dozen words before and after the wedges and all six or seven of these words outside the wedge quote match six or seven words found in "Against Heresies," and unlikely to be found anywhere else, it is impossible to say that this is a fragment from "Against Heresies" rather than a comment on Matthew that was later incorporated into the work.

We have three possibilities:
1. The words outside the wedged qospel quote have been misreconstructed to appear to be from Irenaeus' "Against Heresies" and the fragment has nothing to do with our present copy of the text.
2. The words outside the gospel quote have been correctly reconstructed, in which case this is either a) a fragment from a 3rd Century or late 2nd Century version of "Against Heresies" or b) a fragment from a work that was later incorporated into "Against Heresies."

An examination of the source article by Robinson and Roberts could perhaps let us decide between 1 and 2, but in no case could it allow us to decide between 2a and 2b.

Thus this tiny fragment provides no proof that Eusebius did not forge or interpolate into the "Against Heresies"text or that the present "Against Heresies" text was written by Irenaeus in the Third or Second centuries.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

PhilosopherJay

Hi Julian,

I assume your conclusion that "we have Irenaeus' text in a decent copy, certainly decent enough that we have little need to discuss fraud by Eusebius" is based on your proposition that "we have writings that pre-date Eusebius. Besides the debatable fragment provided by Roger, what other evidence is there?

I await the evidence with anxious anticipation, but please take as much time as you need to supply it. I realize that it often takes a great deal of time and energy to backtrack over material that we might have encountered many years ago and from which we drew certain conclusions. I often encounter this unfortunate situation.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Roger Pearse

You're welcome!

Well, I can only say that I don't think that we can invent otherwise unknown works, merely in order to evade the witness of a papyrus.

I don't think so. It's on the same bit of papyrus. There isn't a lot of reconstruction here.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

mountainman

Greetings Jay,

Roger delivered the information. The key feature
is that the source of the dating to 250 CE is the
professional estimation of a nineteenth century
paleographer (handwriting expert).

My estimation of that fragment is that it was thrown
into the Oxyrynchus tip in the fourth century, shortly
after it was written.

Best wishes,



Pete

PhilosopherJay

Hi Pete,

For the moment, I am not even looking at the paleographic dating evidence. First, we have to establish that this is a text that bares some real relationship to the text of Irenaeus' "Against Heresies".

"Against Heresies" contains, I would guess, some 500 NT quotes. If one gets a fragment with a NT quote, the odds are not bad that it will be found somewhere in "Against Heresies" What I am trying to understand is how on the basis of the six or seven partially visible words not contained in the quote, anybody can be sure that this is a quote from "Against Heresies."

Look at it this way. I am digging through the garbage and I find these word fragments in a pile of garbage:

by surprise
rumblings
be coming
deny
morning
the rumors
a man accused

I can proclaim that these words are part of a newly discovered first century Gospel.

It might be. However, the words actually come from today's US News and World Report story on the resignation of the United States' Attorney General.


There appears to be no actual manuscript copy of Against Heresies in Greek. So Robinson must have translated the Roman text of 'Against Heresies' 3.9.3 into Greek and pronounced that his translation matched the half dozen or so visible words he found in the fragment P. 405. It is far more likely that the translation was made to match the visible text than that he first made a translation and then translated the fragment.


Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

mountainman

Hi Jay,

You make a good point about the conjectural attribution
of a fragment of a jumble of words in the Greek (written at
an unknown date, but thought to be 2nd/3rd C based on
a 19th C analysis of the greek handwriting) to an author
who may never have had existed for all we know.

It is indeed the greater leap of faith to name the author
than to guess the date of the writing. And by a huge
margin! A major figure of uncertainty must necessarily
be associated with the unexamined presumption that
the fragment was written by the Eusebian Irenaeus.

It just goes to show what little evidence actually
exists from the field, to solidly support the conjecture
of the existence of prenicene christianity outside its
own literary tradition.

Best wishes,



Pete