Clivedurdle

Do we have any clear markers about what was written when? The Brunner thread comments he thought John was first.

If Marcion inspired the Pauline stuff, does that mean the "intracanonical" stuff is post 130?

What of Hebrews and Revelation? Might they be the earliest? Is Revelation originally Jewish and then adapted to xianity?

Is there a chart showing possible earliest and latest dates? How much of the dating is dependant on the historicist big bang model?

What of the extra canonical stuff? Is that also dated assuming the historical model?

Might te destruction of Jerusalem stuff actually be referring to Hadrian?

Doug Shaver

No, it's mostly guesswork.

Which is not to say that some people's guesses aren't better than others'.

mountainman

We have a very clear marker that what was written by Eusebius
was written in the fourth century, and that no other ecclesiastical
historian has ventured to go over the same ground (ie: the first
three centuries).

All dates seek relational historical integrity with the Eusebian
chronology according to the mainstream's acceptance that
what Eusebius wrote in HE and PG was not a fabricated story,
consistent of a mass of false references to non-existent christians,
with corresponding fraudulent interpolation of patristic historians.

The question is not whether you believe Jesus, or Paul, or Peter,
or John, or Timothy, or Marcion, or Origen, or Clement, or any other
writer and author in antiquity mentioned and referenced by Eusebius.

The question is whether you believe Eusebius, under Constantine.
I'll leave the guesswork about the Eusebian chronology aside until
this (IMO) mportant question can be assessed.

Historical knowledge about pre-Nicaean christianity appears to be
totally reliant upon the attestation of Eusebius. Would you buy a
used chariot from this guy? I certainly would not.

Yet mainstream is content to entertain scholarly guesswork (nothing
else, as Doug has pointed out) in regard to the Eusebian chronology
because the chronology (ie: dates) and historical basis and literature
were all delivered as one unprecedented package, by Eusebius, to
Constantine, and its all that we have.



Pete Brown

Clivedurdle

But I thought we had quite significant stuff earlier, like in Persia which was not under the Roman Empire and like various stuff relating Jesus to a fish. I thought we had records of gnostic churches for example in Southern France.

I think there are strong grounds to shift stuff well into the second century, and I would like to see if anyone has attempted to map all the datapoints avoiding guesses upon guesses like censuses and Herod and Pilate and John the Baptist,

Why does not Matthew above refer to Hadrian? Why is it assumed it relates to AD70?

Doug Shaver

I think your guesses are among those that some people's are better than.

post tenebras lux

To my knowledge, the only place in Persia where early christian evidence is claimed is at Duro-Europos, which was a Roman garrison town (and therefore 'under the Roman Empire'). However, the evidence there is slight: a wall painting that shows a man carrying a sheep (or similar), a piece of graffito (no idea what sort of graffito - nor where it was found - as no-one seems to know, but that doesn't stop apologists claiming it as evidence) and a fragment of something that was first thought to be part of Tatian's Diatessaron but is now - according to wiki - "A fragment of a narrative about the Passion found in the ruins of Dura-Europos in 1933 was once thought to have been from the Diatessaron, but more recent scholarly judgement does not connect it directly to Tatian's work."

How large a fragment, and what it actually says, I would love to know. But how large could it be if it was erroniously claimed as being part of a greek translation of the Diatessaron?

Further, whilst all the apologists I've heard like to claim that it was found within the city walls and in a rubbish dump that was buried under the roman fortifications of AD 256 - and that it is thus dateable, it was actually found - according to wiki, again - "among fragments of text recovered from the town dump outside the Palmyrene Gate, a fragmentary text was unearthed from an unknown Greek harmony of the gospel accounts -- comparable to Tatian's Diatessaron, but independent of it."

So, until they bother to carbon date it, we don't know how old it actually was, and until I know what the fragment actually said, I don't know if it's actually certainly of christian origin.

hatsoff

Agreed.

mountainman

Thankyou Doug, but from a scientific perspective, any such guesses
are termed "hypotheses" and are considered equal, at that level,
despite Orwell's "some are more equal than others".

Mainstream theory (of history) subscribed to by all "christian dogma",
and the majority of BC&H scholars, has as one of its primary hypotheses
(ie: guesses), the inference that the Eusebian chronology is a
true and accurate representation of the historical chronology.

All I am doing is questioning this inference Doug.

I believe I have a right to question it as an historian,
and attempt to offer an alternative history, which has either
an equal or a greater degree of relational integrity, than
the currently accepted "mainstream theory".

Best wishes,



Pete Brown
NAMASTE
http://www.mountainman.com.au/namaste_2006.htm

Doug Shaver

I don't think anybody is questioning your rights. Historians or not, we all have a right, if not even a duty, to question anything.

I don't know what you mean by "relational integrity." It looks like you might mean "coherence." Your hypothesis might have that, but I think it is too lacking in parsimony to be credible.

mountainman

Yes, consistency, but in a relational framework rather than
hierarchical framework. See "Relational Model of Data" as
applied to database systems theory.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsimony

A parsimonious approach does not guarantee to arrive at a correct
conclusion, and if based on incorrect working hypotheses or interpretations
of incomplete data, may even strongly support a false conclusion.

"When parsimony ceases to be a guideline
and is instead elevated to an ex cathedra pronouncement,
parsimony analysis ceases to be science."

http://samvak.tripod.com/parsimony.html



Pete Brown