mountainman

State your logic

stephan huller

What needs to be said more than what I said? You don't provide evidence. Just open ended assertion which doesn't really prove anything.

This is what you do, day after day.

It's incredible that you continue to do this day after day and don't feel embarrassed about it. The one thing doesn't necessarily follow from the other. Stop wasting everyone's time here.

Toto

Nothing logically prevents it, but nothing requires it. You can't just imagine that you have the evidence you need.

Andrew previously stated "There doesn't seem to have been a post-Hippolytan ... Christian tradition about Marcia to influence the epitomes of Dio Cassius."

mountainman

I asked you to state the logic of your position on the OP
and instead you misrepresent the logic of my position.

I guess your position is that its "common knowledge" that Cassius Dio mentions Christians. But what is the logic behind it, especially the interdependence to Marcia tradition in the "Refutation ....".

mountainman

I am aware that we are dealing in likelihoods only.



Well I don't quite understand what he means by that.

Perhaps he will clarify the logic here.

stephan huller

I am not misrepresenting your position. The only argument I can see is that there are problems with the dating of the manuscript. An epitome is still a witness to an original testimony. A testimony confirmed by another completely unrelated manuscript the Philosophumena and indirectly again through Irenaeus's testimony that the Imperial court of Commodus was favorable to Christians (and thus by implication receptive to Marcia's favorable disposition toward the sect), Eusebius statement that the Church experienced a golden age under Commodus etc.

Your only argument against the twin testimony of Dio Cassius and the Philosophumena is to attack the dating of the manuscripts. In other words, because we don't have the autograph copy of anything we can only date the testimony reliably to the oldest manuscript. This is an absurd position and one that one would buy into unless they had an agenda to destroy evidence to clear the way for an even more implausible ambition - the desire to see Christianity 'invented' at the time of Constantine.

I wouldn't even describe this as 'circular logic.' Circular logic is a step up from this. This is the kind of logic used by people in the southern states to justify the inferiority of blacks (I remember seeing books like this 'on sale' at my university library - skull size and thickness as proof of mental incapacity), or Nazis to 'prove' certain things about Jews. As soon as you see something that contradicts your theory you brush it aside claiming a conspiracy of some sort acting to uphold the opposite position. It's ridiculous.

andrewcriddle

I meant that later writers do not seem to have made use of what Hippolytus says about Marcia and the work itself was largely forgotten with very few copies surviving.

The epitomiser of Dio Cassius might in theory have had access to Hippolytus Against Heresies but it is in practice unlikely.

Andrew Criddle

mountainman

You continue to misrepresent what I actually state.

This is what I stated above:

mountainman

The epitome was ordered to be prepared by Michael VII Doukas, Byzantine emperor from 1071 to 1078 CE. As such John Xiphilinus would have had in theory the entire literary resources of Byzantium at his disposal. I therefore do not see it as unlikely at all that Xiphilinus had access to Origen's Hippolytuss Against Heresies.

If anyone in the world had access to Origen's Hippolytus' Against Heresies in the 11th century it would have been the Byzantine Emperor.

stephan huller

I'm sorry. I over estimated the weight of your argument. I apologize. This is an even weaker, waste of time argument. Really? 'What is there to prevent' is the scope of your thesis? Really? 'What is to prevent?!!'

I can't believe that you are wasting everyone's time here. 'What is to prevent?' is an empty statement. A prosecutor might say 'what would prevent person X from using a revolver to kill person Y assuming they could be demonstrated to have been within a close proximity of one another. But you are seriously suggesting that the fact that there were two documents in the Greek speaking world at the same time in history - that makes for a persuasive argument?

You and I live within a 12 hour plane ride of one another. There are roads and cars and a massive infrastructure that make it possible for us to exchange papers and ideas even faster.

Your point is that with one unknown and ignored theological manuscript at the remote monastery at the top of Mount Athos and a historical manuscript from ancient Rome residing in Constantinople, modern Istanbul that 'that's good enough' for a possible causal connection? Really?

Then on top of that you have figure a motive for someone having done this. Do you have a motive? Of course not.