stephan huller

Well maybe there is another explanation

stephan huller

Now that I got that rant off my chest the parallel will be put here in a few minutes.

DCHindley

You mean ... you didn't recognize your own table? I simply reformatted it and broke the passages down into bite sized pieces to enhance the correlation between them.

Unfortunately I cannot find my copy of the Adamantius dialogue. It went missing sometime in the last 2 years. I even reviewed it on this board.

Methodius and Maximus agree about 80% of the time almost verbatim (It doesn't bother me that each uses the same words in different grammatical configurations).

ORTHOD. How, then, do you say it was	'How then do you say
that He left the qualities of evil as they were?	that He has left the qualities of the bad as they were?
Was it that He was able to do away with them,	Was it that He was able to annihilate them also,
or that, though He wished to do so,	but had not the will;
He was unable?	or that He had not the power?
For if you say that He was able,	For if you say that He had the power
but disinclined to do so,	but not the will,
He must be the author of these things;	that He is responsible for them,
because, while He had power to bring evil to an end,	because though He had power to bring evils to an end,
He allowed it to remain as it was,	He permitted them to remain as they were,
especially when He had begun to work upon matter.	especially at the time when He began to operate on matter.
For if He had had nothing at all to do with matter,	'For if He had taken no care at all about matter,
He would not have been the author of what He allowed to remain.	He would not have been responsible for what He permitted to remain.
But since He works upon a part of it,	But when He began to operate on a certain portion of it,
and leaves a part of it to itself,	but left a portion as it was,
while He has power to change it for the better,	though He had power to change that also for the better,
I think	it seems to me
He is the author of evil, since	that He incurred the responsibility of causing it,
He left part of matter in its vileness.	as having left a portion of matter to be mischievous
He wrought then for the ruin of a part;	in the destruction of the part
	on which He operated.
and, in this respect,	'Moreover in regard to this part
it seems to me	it seems to me
that this part
was chiefly injured	that the very greatest wrong has been done:
	this part,
by His arranging it in matter,	I mean, of matter which He so arranged
so that it became partaker of evil.	that it now participates in evils.
	For if one were to examine the facts carefully,
	he would find
	that matter has now fallen into a worse condition than its former disorder.
For before matter was put in order,	For before it was arranged in order,
it was without the perception of evil;	it might have had no sensation at all of evil;
but now each of its parts	but now each of its parts
has the capacity of perceiving evil.	becomes sensible of evils.

But the remaining 20% can be really different from one another.

ORTHOD. Well, then,	'Well then,
the connection of these names with substance is owing to its accidents.
	if substance is a kind of concrete body,
	and this requires nothing in union with which it may begin to exist,
	and if evils are actions of some agent,
	and if actions do require something in union with which they begin to exist,
	evils cannot be substances.
For murder is not a substance,	'But if evils are substances,
nor is any other evil [a substance];	and murder is an evil [substance],
but the substance receives a cognate name [i.e., "Murder"]	murder will be a substance:
from putting it into practice.	yet surely murder is an action of some one,
	and so murder is not a substance.
	If however you mean that the agents are substances, I too agree.
For a man is not (spoken of as) murder,	For example, a man who is a murderer,
but by committing it he receives the derived name of murderer,	in respect of his being man [he] is a substance:
without being himself murder;	but the murder which he does is not a substance,
	but a work of the substance.
and, to speak concisely, no other evil is a substance;
but by practising any evil, it can be called evil.
Similarly consider,
if you imagine anything else to be the cause of evil to men,
that it too is evil by reason of its acting by them,
and suggesting the committal of evil.
For a man is evil in consequence of his actions.
For he is said	'So we say in one case
to be evil,	that the man is evil,
because he is the doer of evil.	because of his committing murder,
	and in a contrary case
	that he is good,
	because of his doing good.
	And these names
Now what a man does,	are attached to the substance
	in consequence of its accidents,
is not the man himself,	which are not itself:
but his activity,
and it is from his actions
that he receives the title of evil.
For if we were to say
that he is that which he does,	for the substance is not
and he commits murders,	murder,
adulteries,	nor again adultery,
and such-like,	or any of the like evils.
he will be all these.

DCH

stephan huller

It gets even worse. Pretty apparently saw the agreement with Maximus and then repeatedly identifies this as Methodius because he assumes that Maximus used Methodius despite Eusebius's explicit testimony that Maximus was at least a century earlier. Let me repeat - Pretty sees the parallel between Maximus and Adamantius and no parallel between Methodius and Adamantius but identifies the parallel between Maximus and Adamantius and identifies it repeatedly as 'Methodius' even though the parallel exists only in Maximus.

stephan huller

Yes the differences in my mind mean that the relationship between them isn't direct. This isn't simply Methodius using Maximus or Maximus using Methodius but corruption in a lost original text that ultimately produced Adamantius too. I may be crazy but I see arguments used by Irenaeus appearing in certain sections too. I am starting to think that the ur-text might go back into the second century. It's very early. Notice that Maximus doesn't identify the opponents name. A lot of the subject matter is reminiscent of Tertullian's Against Hermogenes and Against Hermogenes probably went back to an original text written by Theophilus. The question of the relationship between matter and God was a big deal and it seems that Christianity in the second century was very, very much influenced by Plato. It is essential to Christianity and that's why I don't understand the label 'Platonist Christian.' All the great Greek thinkers from the second century were Platonists. I ignore Ignatius because it's corrupt.

stephan huller

Thanks for going into greater detail - line by line. I was going to do that later but it is good to reign in my undisciplined nature. I will have to go down to the microscopic level in the second attempt. Just getting through this is tedious enough.

stephan huller

The original treatise is Marcionite not Valentinian. The obsession with the origin of evil and God's relationship with evil is a dead give away. The odd thing is to explain where and why the Valentinian identification developed. Adamantius can be seen to originally directed wholly against Megethius and then Marcus, Droserius, Valentinus and Marinus came later in order to obscure the clear picture that this text gave us of Marcionitism. But why did Maximus give us a 'chunk' of that text as On Matter or whatever it was called? Why did this text become developed as a work against Valentinus in Methodius and finally how did the Dialogue of Adamantius retain the Valentinian identification of this section? Hard to say. It has been established that Rufinus's Dialogue is second century because of the reference to persecutions 'corrected' into a post-Constantine reference in the Greek text. Still how do we get from a lost anti-Marcionite text to Maximus to Methodius to Adamantius and why?

stephan huller

It is also interesting to note that there is at least one instance that the argument of the Orthodox or Maximus becomes transformed into an argument for Valentinus or Valens in Adamantius.

stephan huller

It's official. Most everything that has been written about this phenomenon is wrong. Adamantius doesn't just follow Methodius. After the initial section (which is not cited by Eusebius with respect to Maximus) it almost never agrees with Methodius at the expense of Maximus. There are plenty of times it cites material from Maximus which does not appear in Methodius. As such history has to be rewritten.

Clivedurdle

I wonder if this is a more general problem. Is a cosmology of religion needed?

What if we imagine religions as akin to galaxies, but actually in close proximity because they continually crash into each other like branes and cause sparks, like sunni versus shia, protestant v catholic, catholic versus cathar...

Do we continually look at a religion instead of asking how did they evolve?