spin

All this nonsense just shows that you actually haven't got a clue what you're talking about. You are certainly not dealing meaningfully with the Dura diatessaron. Talking about the glacis is fine for the dating of Dura Pap. 90, as an indicator for Pap. 24, but the latter was not found in the glacis, but under the embankment within the city wall. Why did you surreptitiously omit the fact that the date of the embankment under which the papyrus was found has a rather secure dating "after 254 and before 256-7" (p.6)? It's there in the source you are selectively quoting. By not quoting it you are doing yourself a severe injustice. How can anyone take you seriously when you blatantly manipulate the source material like that? You could not have missed it. In fact you've even cut and pasted it. The text cannot both be under the embankment and placed there after 257. It is inconsequential to this thread how long before that time the document was produced and palaeography is irrelevant here in ad quem dating. The most significant thing you have is the word "presumptive" and you ignore the rest, crapping on about 100% probability, because Toto mentioned the notion once and you cling to it like a pedantic blowfly on a prized dollop of faeces.

When you wake up from your daze and wipe the egg off your face, hopefully you'll regain some sense and stop talking nonsense. The topic is the ad quem dating of the Dura diatessaron which is supplied by the deposit under the embankment. All the rest is you wasting your breath.

mountainman

Yet another lone exemplar? No "christian" churches in Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Athens, Caesarea. No "christian"church-houses in Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Athens, Caesarea. But here we have way out at Dura, all dressed up like the "Shroud of Turin", a genuine and the lone exemplar "Christian House-Church".


Confirmation Bias




But why don't we see it plastered all over the streets and graveyards of Rome and Alexandria and Antioch and everywhere all over the entire Roman empire. Why did it just happen to turn up here all the way out at Dura? What other secure "XI" inscriptions and/or graffiti exist any earlier that the mid 3rd century? Arguably zero.


LONE early EXEMPLAR: Dating method of an early "Christian Fragment" other than via palaeography. (i.e archaeological terminus ad quem)

LONE early EXEMPLAR: Mural of Jesus H Christ in person. (Guaranteed!)

LONE early EXEMPLAR: Mural of the Apostle Peter. (Bonus Guaranteed!)

LONE early EXEMPLAR: Mural of the Woman at the Tomb (Extra Bonus Guaranteed!)

LONE early EXEMPLAR: "X I" inscription

LONE early EXEMPLAR: "X I" graffiti




ONE LONE EXPLANATION: "This must be "christian" is a classic case of Confirmation Bias.


Alternative Explanation?

No we don't need any alternative explanations other than the one Yale Divinity College provides? How could there be any other reasonable explanation for all these events here at Dura? These paintings are too early to be about Homer, so its just got to be Jesus and .. and .... NO, it is not necessary to consider for one moment there may be alternative explanations for this evidence. And no, it's not just 99% certain, it is 100% certain.

Yale Divinity college are expert witnesses.

Therefore all this is 100% Christian.

mountainman

The presence of Greek nomina sacra do not preclude an earlier Syriac original. For example one influential author of that epoch and that general area of the empire, who wrote voluminously in Syriac, and may have been immediately translated to Greek, is Bardaisan

I know that later 4th century Coptic uses nomina sacra, and that a fair amount of Christian related manuscripts (all later than the 4th century) are also preserved in Syriac. But I don't know whether these Syriac manuscripts use Syriac nomina sacra, like the Coptic nomina sacra are in the Coptic manuscripts.

aa5874

Again, you don't even understand what you are talking about.

I am quoting Carl H Kraeling's A GREEK FRAGMENT OF TATIAN'S DIATESSARON FROM DURA.

He is the one who admitted his presumptions.

See http://archive.org/details/MN41439ucmf_4

Toto

Not at all like the Shroud of Turin. The Shroud is an obvious fake, and is one of 40 similar fake burial cloths of Jesus, none of which have any chance of being earlier than the middle ages.

The house church at Dura was preserved only due to a unique set of circumstances.

Denialism

Toto

You know that Coptic is written in a variation of the Greek alphabet?

spin

You shouldn't cut off significant information and trivialize the argument you are not understanding. Read it again:

[t2]It presupposes a Greek tradition behind it (just as the other two do), but although the Greek form Ιησους provides an obvious candidate to explain the iota-eta, you must provide a functional alternative that explains the iota-eta, which will be extremely hard if you presuppose a Syriac original without a clear Greek explanation.[/t2]

The Syriac doesn't get you to a iota-eta nomen sacrum. If you have no significant way of explaining its existence, you have no explanatory power and your quibbling is useless.

spin

Actually not a lone exemplar. Both the diatessaron and the baptistry reflect a similar, if not the same, religion.

Bleeding about lone exemplars is merely saying that there is Intentional Design in the whims of what history leaves behind.

All this means is that you have no response. You cannot accept what it looks like even in an iconic context that strongly points to the religion we know as christianity and that gave the diatessaron which has a nomen sacrum ΙΗ which supports the initial. Toto's reference to denialism is apt.

Edit to be clear: there is no Syriac source for the combination iota-eta in the nomen sacrum. It requires a Greek name such as Ιησους. Can you find even one alternative??? In fact a search of the LXX for words starting with Ιη, gave only one word (232 times). You cannot explain ΙΗ through Syriac and the only example that appears in the LXX is Ιησους. No-one else has a name starting with the same two letters.

You may as well try to tell me that Mithraism sprang fully formed from the end of the first century with the appearance of the first known mithreum in Caesarea Maritima. Arguments from silence require to proponent to say why the silence is significant.

This stuff is just filler.

It's funny that you should try to impugn the evidence because it was found by scholars, some of whom were funded by Yale Divinity College. This was a joint effort with the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres. As a joint mission perhaps you might want to argue that the French who worked there at the same time as the Americans and who signed off on all things are also open to your attempt at ad hominem?

So, we have a text from Dura Europos which evinces three nomina sacra for which you have no explanation for, but you deny that christianity with the same nomina sacra has anything to do with it. We have in a context of a) a paralytic being healed and carrying off his bed, b) two people walking on water (one the same who healed the paralytic), c) three women going to a tomb, d) a woman at a well, and e) the good shepherd, all of which are known from christianity (even though the good shepherd is known elsewhere but with the others adds to the christian ethos),.. in that context the initials Χ Ι with heavy religious significance, initials which you have no explanation for whatsoever, and you want us not to consider Christ Jesus as a reasonable expansion?

You have no explanations, no evidence, nothing to justify your denialism. There is no benefit for you position. It seems like the scene from Monty Python where John Cleese negates everything that is said to him for want of a cogent argument.

spin

You need to quote things for their relevance. You simply failed. To remind you yet again, the topic was an ad quem indication for the diatessaron. That's in the o.p. That's what is supplied by the dating of the embankment found in Kraeling's monograph. That's what you are supposed to be talking about. Not the rest of your nonsense.

I'm glad you've discovered a source for the document. However, it is irrelevant to the o.p. where the document was produced, as is the palaeographic indication, given the archaeologically supplied terminus ad quem.

stephan huller

This forum is so funny. It should be renamed 'Welcome to Reality for Conspiracy Theorists.' This is just ridiculous. I sometimes think these people who quibble with reality are apologists pretending to be 'mythicists' or whatever else they claim to be. I can't believe there are people who aren't totally embarrassed by making an ass of themselves over and over again.