Vinnie

P.S. Even if the chain of evidence is accurate, we don't know for sure that Papias was referring to the Gospel of Mark as we know it. It could have been a substantially different "proto-gospel" or even another work altogether.

First, when Eusebius references Papias he is sure to separate him from the original apostles. He denies Irenaeus' connection that Papias had any ties with the Lord's original followers. He had an axe to grind with him over his end-time views and one of his goals is knocking down Papias. Thus Eusebius invented the Irenaeus quot only to knock it down and invented the end time views of Papias only to knock them down?

To these belong his statement that there will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, and that the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this very earth.395 I suppose he got these ideas through a misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts, not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures.

13 For he appears to have been of very limited understanding,396 as one can see from his discourses. but it was due to him that so many of the Church Fathers after him adopted a like opinion, urging in their own support the antiquity of the man; as for instance Iranaeus and any one else that may have proclaimed similar views.397



But to suggest that Eusebius fabricated all this only to insult Papias is hard to swallow. The "Eusebius created Papias" argument fails miserably. It can't get started as the material looks nothing like a forgery. Eusebius argues against it and disconnects Papias from hearing the apostle John!

Also, why does Eusebius fabricate Papias? Why not someone even earlier? Why not somebody known? If he couldn't because they were known, was he in any position to then fabricate quotes from Irenaeus?

As for another Mark, you are just speculating the possibility of unessecary texts--and ones that are attributed to Mark. One wonders with a couple of texts under Mark's belt, why none appear attributed to Silas?

As noted, Eusebius who appears to have access to Papias' works says that he is talking about the gospel of Mark. We have a bunch of other circumstantial evidence (others after him in 2d c. making the same connection, that his comments fit Mark) and Matthew and Luke's use of Mark undercuts claims of a Mark unlike our Mark. If Mark was written and then altered in such a fashion that two evangelists used a similar version of this unoriginal Mark, the text must be located probably too early to be plausible.

I have surveyed the evidence of Mark's textual stability here:

All that can be argued is that Mark was originally made in stages before GMark used by Mt and Lk. But as noted, if Matthew and Luke had access to Canonical Mark and copied it wholesale before Papias, in what sense are we arguing some proto-Mark was referenced by Papias? Its obvious that this Mark we know of had popularity enough to be used and referenced--as opposed to this unknown, undocumented, unexcavated, unquoted text from antiquity.

Vinnie

http://www.vincentsapone.com/writings/gmarktext.html



I agree their is room for error and we would know more if we had the text of Papias. But unlike Q we have someone who actually claims to quote from it and quotes Irenaeus on it and refers his readers to consult it.

Just out of curiousity, what type of position was Eusebius in in respect to fabricating a passage out of Irenaeus?

Ben C Smith

Jake, let me strive for greater clarity on the issue of a material realm.

What I am advocating, pending further evidence, is a natural ancient cosmology, so natural that it could be seen as an extension of geography. Thinking like ancients, we live on the earth, below us is the underworld, above us is the air, above that the firmament, and above that the various layers of heaven.

If we find an ancient text that says that person X ascended into heaven, where he ate a fine meal, married a decent gal, and had lots of children, so be it. I take heaven to mean heaven, somewhere above the firmament, employing a natural cosmology.

But that does not tell us much about Jesus in the epistles, since it is never said there that he was born in heaven, lived in heaven, or died in heaven. The question is where we should place the activities that are ascribed to him. In the epistles he speaks, he eats, he is born, he dies. Where does all that take place?

If your answer is that it takes place on the earth (whether it actually happened that way or not), then we are in agreement. If, however, your answer is that it takes place somewhere else, then I will ask for evidence, some kind of real parallel.

Michael Turton once opined that, for Paul, Jesus must have done those things somewhere other than earth, since he never says that they took place on earth. This, I think we can all agree, is a clean reversal of the burden of proof. When I tell about the day I got married, I never say that it happened on earth. Ever. Earth is just the natural place for getting married.

I am not trying to shape the evidence in advance. I am just looking for some kind of evidence that will let us take certain usually earthly activities as having allegedly happened somewhere other than earth.

I will not deny that Paul places some earthly-sounding things in heaven. For example, he says that Jesus is sitting there at the right hand of God. But he tells us that. He does not leave it to us to guess that Jesus is presently in heaven. What would strike me as exceedingly odd is if he left us to guess that the crucifixion (for example) took place somewhere other than earth, the usual venue for crucifixions.

Ben.

rlogan

You have an astonishing ability to produce volumes of pretentious arguments masquerading as critical analysis when it is mostly billowing smoke intended to cover up the most obvious problem.

I invite any reader with just the slightest bit of sense to look at Eusebius' Church History , produced as the official canon at a time initiating vicious state suppression of competing doctrine - repleat with destruction of documents, persecution of heretics - indeed ultimately the execution of those who dared utter words contrary to canon...

http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-0....htm#TopOfPage

What preposterous tripe to treat this as if it were even remotely in the same hemisphere as historical documentation!

All this blather about statistical probabilities without the slightest consideration of what we know to be the most salient fact: that major differences of opinion about even the most basic features of "Chirst" and therefore his "history" were rampant in the first few centuries until savage state dictatorship over thought mercilessly stamped out - for centuries - competing versions.

There is no more critical figure than Eusebius for acting as the secretary of the official state religion - a concept so reprehensible, so demonstrably odious for society that it is prohibited at the most fundamental level in civil law: our constitution.

Instead of approaching this with even the slightest recognition of the grave problem at issue, we have instead this pretentious statistical "argument" - which is not true in general, by the way. It is a special case for when all events are mutually independent. But it simply has no place in the discussion anyway because the real question is the mileau and motivation underlying Eusebius' writings.

And then we have the material itself. Good lord - preposterous garbage with the God-man on earth. Sure, sure - texts taking an apologetic stance towards the existence of one special superman above other superstitious nonsense - yea, that is where we need to find our history.

I admit that this makes me angry. To look with an electron microscope so that you cannot see the elephant in the room.

spin

Gossip has connotations I would like to have avoided. (As you said, "Few words are completely synonymous; almost always there's always some differences in connotation. "Gossip" has the connotation of "talk of a personal, sensational, or intimate nature"; "hearsay" doesn't have that connotation.")

Perhaps you should get out your New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and read it on the word "hearsay". It's definition reads: That which one hears or has heard someone say; report, rumour, common talk. Note that it doesn't mention "talk of a personal, sensational, or intimate nature". It only supplies one citation for the word: "Not many knew of the scandal other than by hearsay." Would you say that the writer had your legalese in mind when it was written?

I talk a lot about evidence here, but do you usually get any idea that I am talking from a strictly legal sense?

It seems more to me like you bit because your expertise jargon was encroached upon.



You mean that I didn't partake in legalese?

This is quite an illuminating exchange:

Amaleq13: As interesting as this semantic tangent has been, could it be that only those who use the term in a technical sense as part of their job/training were confused by it?

S.C.Carlson: No, as far as I can tell, spin has no legal training, yet he was confused.

It's alright, S.C.Carlson, you don't have to admit you were wrongheaded when you showed that Pavlovian conditioning runs deep.

I know why Gamera took this line -- as an adjunct in his quest to play my guys are history or none are. I don't understand why you joined the chorus.

What I am amused about is that you (like Gamera) jumped at a phrase which you took out of context. Once this was pointed out, you then felt the need to minimize the damage by attacking the rest of the expression, once again out of context. It's clear that you were too busy jumping to read what was said. Talk about "evidenc[ing] a lack of being serious".

Why not admit that you went overboard at the sound of a bell and get on with whatever it was you were doing while we were trying to deal with the difficulties of making sense of the Papias data?


spin

Amaleq13

"Spoken" like a true lawyer.

In the present context, I understand both to essentially mean "rumor" or "secondhand information".

Confused about the technical, legal definition of the word but he seemed to be operating by the same understanding I express above.

Meanwhile back on topic...

S.C.Carlson

"Secondhand information" is probably the most neutral term that does not bring in unnecessary and distracting connotations.

I'm not so sure. Spin coupled the term "hearsay" with the exaggerated statement "when you can't give the data any chance of being viable" (emphasis added). Using "hearsay" instead of "secondhand information" gave his hyperbole an extra push. By using a term with an unnecessary zing, he knew he playing with fire; he just got burned by it. That's all there is to it.

Stephen

S.C.Carlson

"Strictly" -- more hyperbole? You should have stopped with the hyperbole when you were behind.

Stephen

Vinnie

Of course the other sie of the debate will view your comments as reflecting a seething hatred of Christianity which colors your judgment. Instead of psychoanalyzing and masquerading vacuous incredibility claims why not stick to arguments. If you think Eusebius forged Papian material, present an argument. I put up a new page and made a link to it in another thread on this subject.

As you well know, it is not a valid argument to claim Euseius did not support separation of church and state and therefore, is odiously a forger of Papian material. One, two or eighteen red herrings will not an argument make.

Vinnie

spin

The OP:
The Papias material has yet to be established as a historically validated source of information. A brief chronology of the evidence is:

• 180 (circa) - Irenaeus (born 130) wrote his Heresies, which today tell us that Papias heard a John, that he was a companion of Polycarp and that he wrote five books.
• 325 (circa) - Eusebius (born 275) wrote his Church History, including references to Papias and this Papias's writings

Irenaeus is the earliest reference to Papias, a person who we are told (by amongst others Vinnie) from various speculations based on what Eusebius tells us two hundred and twenty years after the subject's reputed floruit lived circa 105 CE.

Eusebius was a collector of church traditions of varying qualities. For instance, he quite earnestly used the apocryphal letters of Abgar (HE 1.13). He also tells us that Philo became acquainted with Peter in Rome in the reign of Claudius (HE 2.17.1) and mistakenly sees Philo describing a form of christianity (HE 2.17.2ff). In fact he says: "But that Philo, when he wrote these things, had in view the first heralds of the Gospel and the customs handed down from the beginning by the apostles, is clear to every one.".

One has to sift Eusebius's traditions very carefully before attempting to take them as history. This has obviously not been done with regard to the Papias traditions. Instead, if one questions the material, one is labelled "skeptical", as though that were a bad thing. However, the logic of the current thread, with its lazy certainty based on Eusebius's grab bag of traditions, is a testimony to the sort of gullibility people evince when they don't show a modicum of historical nous.

We have not established the validity of the Papias traditions, yet they are assumed for this thread. It's time that anyone who wants to use the Papias material be honest and do the work to show that there is some reason to especially trust it amid a collection of material known to be of varying dependability.

(It might be interesting to set up a list of questionable materials in Eusebius in order to bring his use into bounds of good practice.)


spin

spin

No, an effort to reduce your quibble-space.

I'll have to assume you now don't understand the expression at all.

To use material in historical discussion one usually either takes it from a source that has proven reliable, or one makes a case for the reliability of the specific data. This Papias stuff, from a not particularly well reputed source, was introduced without any attempt to show its viability.

I'm sorry that this situation is so hard for you to understand.

I can understand your burning desires, but you are up a garden path wasting your own time for nothing to gain. You have fallen all over your own jargon and shown that you have missed the comment.

If you want to make amends for your sad performance, you might take the time to try to press a case for using the Eusebius cited Papias traditions as having some historical viability. Or will you concede that it has been introduced here "when [one] can't give the data any chance of being viable"? The onus is on those who use the material to show that there is justification for using it. It's relevance must be demonstrated. Can you demonstrate it, or will you concede that it isn't sound?


spin