Duvduv

Hurrah they'll say!! Building an entire doctrine based on a scrap from a trash heap and faith in a few other unproven hypotheses.....

stephan huller

The claim that Christianity goes back to the first or second centuries is not 'built' from the Dura Europa discovery. Rather, the discovery demolishes any claim that Christianity was established any later than the second century.

aa5874

Your claim is fallacious. The Dura Europa discovery does NOT establish that Christianity was developed no later than the 2nd century.

The Dura Europa fragment establishes that there was another Gospel story that was different to the Four Canonised Gospels and was most likely composed before the 4th century.

stephan huller

Ummm. If Dura Europos was abandoned after its conquest in 256–7 CE and Tatian lived in the late second century and the gospel fragment discovered at Dura Europos is clearly one and the same with Diatessaron associated with Tatian, how doesn't the discovery at Dura Europos support at least a second century date for Christianity? Are you proposing that Christianity was invented at a military outpost in the middle of nowhere because this is where we found our earliest manuscript of the Diatessaron? I have previously voiced my displeasure with this idiotic 'our oldest surviving manuscripts' represent the oldest possible date for the text argument that is so popular around here. This cements the idiocy. The Diatessaron is older than the discovery at Dura Europa. The text wasn't 'invented' the day before the fort was overrun. So the document was brought here from somewhere else and the source of that lost examplar goes back to something even older - most likely in Rome or somewhere near a library or some culture. The evidence suggesting at least a second century date for Christianity stands firm.

Sheshbazzar

The 2nd century CE extended from 100 CE to 200 CE. The Dura Europa fragment, unless it can be proven to have been written prior to 200 CE, illuminates and establishes nothing regarding that earlier time period.

stephan huller

But that's the kind of idiotic logic that pervades this whole forum. Let me take another example. When I was recently in Bermuda I noticed that the locals had a very strange dialect. While it wasn't exactly the same as those of Newfoundland the lesson that it provided me was that isolated places preserve much older traditions, customs and habits to a greater degree than heavily trafficked places.

You can't argue that the Dura Fragment dates Christianity to the time of its discovery. It was in the middle of fucking nowhere. You can't claim that the fragment was produced the day before the destruction of the place. As such it had a life there for at least a generation before the destruction probably more and most importantly was not produced out of thin air at Dura Europos.



It came from somewhere. If we assume then that a Diatessaron like this was at Dura Europos at least from 225 CE then the text came from somewhere a generation before that. Since the text is a Diatessaron it almost certainly goes back to Tatian and the widespread use of the Diatessaron in Syria and the East. There is also a church at Dura Europos. The community belonged to a greater tradition.

As I said, once Pete's idiotic fourth century thesis falls apart - which it already had with respect to Dio Cassius and the Philosophumena reference to Marcia being associated with Christians - Christianity has to be explained. While that explanation is up for grabs it now stands to reason that there was a thing called Christianity at least from the end of the second century.

aa5874

Your statements about the Dura Europa fragment are highly illogical.

1. There is nothing in or on the fragment itself to show that it was an actual copy of Tatian's Diatessaron.

2. There is nothing in or on the fragment to show that it could NOT be produced in the 3rd century.

If your logical fallacies are allowed then whenever any fragment is found and dated then it can be assumed that it represents texts written at least a hundred years earlier.

So, for example, based on your f........fallacies, if a fragment of the Pauline Corpus was found and dated to c 50 CE then it must be assumed that Pauline Corpus was composed at least 50 BCE.

By the way, I was in Bermuda. Many of the "locals" are products of the slave trade. People from the west coast of Africa may have a strange dialect.

Sheshbazzar

I presented no such argument.
Where or when this fragment originated is undetermined. Your speculations about its originations lack evidence.

stephan huller

But the same slaves went to all sorts of islands and they all have different accents.

stephan huller

But if we at least pretend that Pete has stopped with the stupid for a moment. Why should the discovery of a portion of the Diatessaron be supposed to testify to anything other than the existence of Christianity around the time of Tatian? Are you guys such haters of Christianity that you have a knee-jerk conspiracy reaction to any fact or report that might come from the hand of a Christian?

Wait a minute. Shesh is here. The proper answer is 'of course.'