stephan huller

I am exhausted but:

1) I am saying that Cureton's Syriac short texts are one step removed from the originals

and

2) there is a work by someone called Donahue I think who made the case that Irenaeus's citation of Romans in AH is of the longer version. I noticed that myself but he wrote something about it in 1960 I think.

DCHindley

It looks like I can downliad the book as a PDF for $6.00, which is within my meager budget. I'll take a look at his critical evidence and get back.

DCH

renassault

I know what I'm citing. Just because Eusebius reports legends in one place, doesn't mean everything he says is false. This is what Stephan Hull was talking about earlier that you couldn't understand (though in his case he was cherry-picking what random parts of Irenaeus to be forgeries vs. real whereas I'm using reasoning). If anyone would actually prove (which they won't) that Paul used gLuke, then it would mean gLuke was written before 70 (which it wasn't, but its traditions certainly come before that), not that Paul lived after 70.

I never said Eusebius was not credible about absolutely everything he wrote about.

He reports a legend which he certainly believed to be true. That doesn't make all of his stuff unreliable. Think of it like a textbook with a typo. Just because it has one typo does that make all of it automatically wrong?

I really don't see how you've proven that. You claim because one part of Eusebius is a legend, the rest must be unreliable. If Eusebius told us (which he does) that Constantine was emperor in 325 does that mean he's wrong just because he reports some (very valuable) Christian legends?

I, along with any balanced scholar, can certainly say that Eusebius had access to Papias' works which makes his report about Papias knowing gMark quite credible. On the other hand, Eusebius had no such reliable information about Paul. I really don't see how you're not getting this.

stephan huller

Just defend my use of Irenaeus. Irenaeus reports on over twelve heretical groups. Does anyone really believe that he had firsthand knowledge of all twelve sects? How did he get that knowledge? The fact that most ancient historians compiled pre-existing information that is no longer available to us should make most reasonable people open to the idea that much of Irenaeus's information comes from second and third hand sources.

The fact that the Philosophumena reuses a number of reports of Irenaeus uncredited (the report on the Marcosians is openly derived from Irenaeus but notice that the author also notes that the Marcosians themselves take issue with the inaccuracies of Irenaeus's reporting).

Tertullian (Against Valentinus) recycles Irenaeus. Against Marcion is from some lost source (Books Four and Five are probably a Syrian author who used the Diatessaron). Against Marcion Book Three is from a lost work of Justin which lay behind Agaisnt the Jews. Tertullian's Against Hermogenes is obviously from a lost work of Theophilus of the same name.

The point again is that one can trust that there is something to the Church Fathers report albeit increasingly watered down with uncertainty. Some of the reports began as propaganda and nothing more.