aa5874

The question of the OP is specific--"How secure is the terminus ad quem chronology of Dura Fragment 24?".

The background information provided by Carl H Kraeling exposes all the Presumptions with respect to dating, provenance and "terminus ad quem" of fragment 24.

1. It was impossible to date Fragment 24 from known paleography evidence.

2. There was no way of knowing the Provenance of fragment 24.

3. The dates provided for the capture and final destruction of the city was PRESUMED.

4. The place of origin of the archetype of Fragment 24 was based on imagination.

See chapter 1 of A GREEK FRAGMENT OF TATIAN'S DIATESSARON FROM DURA by Carl H Kraeling.

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

Carl H Kraeling would continue to make more assumptions in other chapters to support his presumptions and imagination.

Presumptions, imagination and assumptions do NOT require evidence.

The terminus ad quem for fragment 24 is not really secure.

By the way, it is virtually impossible to have a 100% probability based on admitted presumptions and imagination.

Fragment 24 shows that there was another Jesus story and that the story was probably known before the 4th century but cannot show that it could NOT have been composed AFTER c 256-257 CE.

spin

Stop blathering. You have no knowledge of logic at all, it seems. The document in question was found under an embankment with a quite secure dating of 256-257. That means that the document isn't more recent than the embankment, ie 256-257. Ad quem arrived at. Nothing you have said has any impact on this.

And continuing to crap on about 100% probability is smearing the egg all over your face. I have not supported the notion. You are wasting your time in your rut. It is the 256-257 dating that you are supposed to be dealing with. Wake up.

Duvduv

.....you're right.....anything that even challenges the mainstream on its own turf should be prohibited by a constitutional amendment, or at least banished from public forums.

And the same people who are intolerant of having their ideas challenged will undoubtedly be the same ones deciding what IS and what iS NOT a "conspiracy theory".

By the way, was the determination of the Christian canon by UNKNOWN persons (unknown to ANYONE in the last 2000 years) considered to be a conspiracy of a handful of individuals with no coercive power to have their views adopted without question?

watersbeak

In my opinion, this insight by Toto, is crucial to the debate. There are two positions expressed. Side A, the vast, nearly entire world, quantity of investigators believes, that this papyrus had lain undisturbed for 15 odd centuries, underneath a mountain of rubble, which itself, had lain, "UNDISTURBED". Side B, believes, and I agree, that the evidence does not support such an opinion.

First, the buckets of earth NOT examined by Mary Hopkins;
Second, the annhilation of Dura Europos by an arch enemy, apparently DID NOT lead to the total destruction of the defensive wall, underneath which, this fragment was supposedly located. If one of these well informed forum members had been the leader of the Persian army triumphantly entering Dura Europos, would he/she not instruct his/her officers to LEVEL the city, if only to search for recently buried treasure? I know I would.

I wish to inquire from those far better educated than I am, whether there are some other cities in the ancient Roman empire, which suffered a similar military defeat, but which apparently retained militarily significant walls, post invasion?

I imagine, perhaps incorrectly, that there were many such defeats during the thousand years of Roman imperial ambition. But I know of not even one such city, where the triumphant archenemy left intact, an important defensive military structure, for the Roman army to reuse, upon return, five, ten, or twenty years later.

I suspect that the entire city had been leveled, by the Mesopotamians. I have no proof of this. I don't even know of other cities which had been "leveled to the ground" by the opposing army. Maybe I am completely wrong.

Then the question arises, if they had leveled the wall to the ground, who rebuilt it, and why? I can offer opinions, but I have no proof.

well, maybe it was, indeed. How curious though, that the militarily significant embankwent had not been destroyed, and how curious that similar finds, other "Christian" scraps, were not found anywhere else in Dura Europos, and how amazing that of all the buckets of earth, from this excavation, Mary Hopkins just happened to find the one bucket with a noteworthy discovery. Serendipity indeed. What are the odds of finding, in examining a single bucket of rubble, a document of religious significance?

I fear that this is NOT fundamentally different from the shroud of turin. I think that the "quite secure dating" is a hoax. How many scholars disputed the FIRST shroud of Turin?

Sam

stephan huller

What a wonderful tactic it is for the four ===== to come to this thread - and this forum generally - and keep posting moronically repetitious statements in the face of certain evidence that Christianity existed at the beginning of the third century. Wow! By ignoring reality here maybe one day you will take over the world.

aa5874

Again,you don't know what you are talking about.

I quoted DIRECTLY from Carl H Kraeling's book A GREEK FRAGMENT OF TATIAN'S DIATESSARON FROM DURA by Carl H Kraeling.

It is the author himself who made PRESUMPTIONS at page 5, 6 and 7 of the 1st chapter.

The date of the capture and final destruction of the city was PRESUMPTIVE.

Juma

Come on. Without C14 test there is no certain dating of this document.

spin

(Those were the days.)

Rather than further rabbiting on, you really do need to respond to the post I wrote in response to your previous post.

spin

Says the guy who very carefully omits consideration of the obvious fact that the embankment provides a good terminus ad quem for the fragment. You're just being funny now.

Cherry-picking is a waste of time. Your selections don't deal with what is going on here. Wake up.

So what? Does that change the terminus ad quem provided by the embankment? Of course not.

Ultimately there is more evidence than Kraeling admits to. The siege dates itself by the coins found with the death soldiers in the countermining tunnel mentioned earlier in the thread with citation. Wake up, boyo.

stephan huller

The fucking wall collapsed at an extremely specific dating. Please explain what issues you take with historical reality. What alternative hypotheses are you proposing? Let me guess, you don't have any but don't like being 'bullied' by the evidence. Don't be a zuzu. Wake up and smell the coffee.