mountainman

They key criteria for calling any given source corrupt or a forgery (a criterion of the historical method) is its dating. Eusebius is used to date all the pre-Constantinian sources. What is the earliest ms for Eusebius?




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

stephan huller

This is the silliest argument yet. There are a number of factors in determining a forgery but above all else the person carrying out such an activity has to be able to read the texts in their original language.

Imagine having an 'expert' in court to determine whether a will was authentic and the person confessed he can't read the will because he doesn't understand the language. He'd be a laughing stock.

So you can't read Greek - at all. And you haven't demonstrated you've actually read all the writings of the period, let alone of the particular authors you've just mentioned (Eusebius, Irenaeus, Tertullian).

You're trying to claim that you can establish an authoritative case for forgery based on the claim that Eusebius is our only source of historical information about either man? But that's patently untrue.

Both the author of the Philosophumena and Tertullian mention Irenaeus and Irenaeus mentions other earlier fathers as do our our other sources independent of Eusebius.

So you have a badly constructed argument as the basis for your complete revaluation of history - and without you demonstrating that you actually have expertise in Patristic writings from the second, third and fourth century. Who's going to take this theory seriously?

NO ONE. Which is exactly the number of people you actually have buying into this laughing stock of a theory.

stephan huller

I'm not trying to nitpick but his name is 'Roger Pearse.' This sort of vagueness only exemplifies the superficiality of your methodology. The guy participates at this forum almost every day or every week and you can't even spell his name as a source for your Patristic writings. Why's that? Because you don't take any of this very seriously, so neither should we take your theory seriously.

You haven't read the very Church Fathers you are now trying to claim never existed. But you can't see that your opinions aren't resting on a solid foundation. It's your familiarity with the Church Fathers, not the Church Fathers themselves, which is superficial.

aa5874

You should know because you are the one who constantly accuse Eusebius of forgeries while you simultaneously admit there was a forgery mill.

Eusebius may have been already dead when Church History was composed if there was a forgery mill.

Please, tell us the earliest ms for any writing attributed to Eusebius and especially Church History, Life of Constantine - Oration of Constantine "to the Assembly of the Saints" - Oration in Praise of Constantine - Letter on the Council of Nicaea.

Based on the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals writings about Constantine may be all forgeries or manipulated.

The Nicene Creed appears to be a fundamental core of the Roman Church yet the Bishop of Rome, the Head Papal authority, at the time of Eusebius is MISSING at the Council of Nicaea.

The writings attributed to Eusebius appear to be manipulated and may not represent Eusebius or history.

DCHindley

What I was hoping for (and have yet to get) is a review of how scholars old and new had deconstructed Isidore the Merchant's collection of canon laws. What tipped them off? How did they identify Isidore's interpolations into existing documents, and how ultimately it was determined how and where the original sources were stitched together.

The product of Pseudo-Isidore was transmitted in more than one form, which raises the question of whether this was due to copyists transmitting what was important to them and omitting the rest, or perhaps an intentional dissemination in order to produce the appearance of antiquity in the sources.

Once we have that, I was hoping to see if we can discover similar traits in the NT and other purported early Christian documents.

To give an ideas of the complexity of the issue of Pseudo-Isidore, here is the Table of Contents from the book mentioned below:

Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages (ed Detlev Jasper & Horst Fuhrmann, 2001)
http://books.google.com/books?id=nhv...page&q&f=false

THE PSEUDO-ISIDORIAN FORGERIES, by Horst Fuhrmann 135

I. The Extent of the Forgeries 137
II. The Purpose of the Forgeries 140
III. The Individual Forgeries 144

1. The Collectio Hispana Gallica Augustodunensis 144
2. The Capitula Angilramni 149
3. The Capitulary Collection of Benedictus Levita 151
4. The Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals 153

a. Breadth and Form of the Manuscript Tradition. 154
b. The Misleading Texts of the Editions 155
c. The Sources and Their Editing 159
d. Structure of the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals and the Origin of Individual Pieces 161

IV. The Origin of the Forgery and Its Immediate Influence 170

1. The Earliest Traces 173
2. The Struggle between the Metropolitan Hincmar of Reims and His Suffragan Bishop Hincmar of Laon over the Effect of Pseudo-Isidorian Legal Citations 177
3. Reception in Other Realms: Lotharingia, Eastern Francia, Italy, Spain, England 178
4. The Contradiction: Many Manuscripts, Little Effect 184
5. Pseudo-Isidore in Rome 186

DCH

PS: This book is available from Amazon and from resellers for between $30 and $45 (US).

Roger Pearse

Stephan, I know that MountainMan is deeply irritating sometimes, but I think your posts cross the line into bullying. Nobody deserves that; and it won't work against the impudent anyway, only against those who do feel shame. Which means that, as a tactic, it's not one we should use.

The argument you make seems to be that nobody is allowed to put forward a theory of Christian origins unless they have read all of the works of all of the Fathers in the original, plus all or most of the scholarship. I can't imagine anyone who has ever achieved this. It's unreasonable to ask it.

MountainMan's claims are unreasonable because he sets out with a theory and then twists the data to fit it. Admittedly he doesn't know a lot of the data; but then the same is true for everyone. If he did pass your test, it still wouldn't show why his claims are wrong.

I do understand the frustration, and I have gone through this myself. But I always remember that, but for his interest in the Acts of ps.Linus, that text would not have been translated. So his theory has had some general benefit.

I wonder what this is.

Nobody has ever read this in modern times; or, rather, nobody apart from the man who made the renaissance Latin translation published in Migne. It has never been translated into any modern language (except for the bit on Psalm 51, which I had done and appears on my website).

Nobody has read this either. OK, there is a study of it, but the author of the study didn't translate it.

This is usually printed together with the Vita Constantini, and is in the NPNF.

We all know this one. And the manuscript is online as well.

Nobody has read these either, since the renaissance; although translations are said to be in progress.

The short (brevior) recension is at the end of book 8 of the Church History. The long version is on my site.

This must be a catena fragment. Nobody has read it.

De solemnitate and the Theophania are both on my site in English.

Another catena fragment. Again, nobody has read it.

The letter to the people Caesarea after the Council of Nicaea is included in his translated works, I think, or possiblty in Socrates or Sozomen. It exists in English anyway.

The letter to Euphration is the preface to the Marcellus works. The other two even I have not read.

Catena fragments - nobody has read them.

A translation of the Commentary on Luke (which is probably not Eusebian) is in progress at the moment.

Another catena fragment.

That's quite a big chunk for the first one; something odd there; is this the Eclogae Propheticae, perhaps? It's mostly OT quotations, I am told.

We all know this one. :-)

Another tiny bit from a catena.

I have this online.

Not sure what this is.

The PE is online at my site.

Buy my book! It contains translations of all these, and more.

Readily available, of course.

I certainly wouldn't claim to have read most of these, of course.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

NB: Irenaeus, The Proof/demonstration of the apostolic preaching, is also online at my site.

stephan huller

You know how much I like you, Roger. But I think there is a part of you that likes having this caricature of an 'independent researcher' mucking around on the internet with his hatred of Christianity so utterly transparent. It reminds me of those who won't say that in their minds at least the most compelling reason for Morton Smith's guilt as a forger is his 'loss of faith' proved by his development of 'hostile' theories about Jesus and the origin of Christianity (I was just reading this intimated at Hurtado's blog).

What you're failing to see here - partly as I said for selfish reasons - is that Pete is not an innocent. He isn't just 'a guy' who has come to an erroneous belief about Christianity. He is nothing short of a propagandist for a view that is wholly untenable.

The difference between let's say Morton Smith and Pete - a side from serious scholarship - is that I don't presume Smith's research to have been guided by hatred for Christianity as anyone who holds the forgery proposition must (even if it is claimed to be only Schadenfreude).

I really believe that the evidence led Smith to conclude that Jesus was a magician or whatever other 'blasphemous' belief he is accused of. With Pete by contrast it is clear that the evidence is not leading his conclusions. It's the other way around.

I think you have a hard time sometimes distinguishing between the two types of theorists. It is possible to look at the evidence and come to an unusual or unorthodox conclusion - I certainly agree with you. But in this case, Pete is not being led by evidence. He hates Christianity, plain and simple and marshals whatever word or sentence misquoted from a source that will further that end.

I am not saying this because I am 'insulted' by Pete's actions. I think the way he rapes the evidence casts a shadow over anyone trying to find new meaning out of old words.

And in this case, I don't claim to have read everything by Eusebius either. But I have read everything - or most everything - by Irenaeus and Tertullian at least once, some text more than one time.

My point isn't that you can't diverge from orthodoxy but rather you can't justify an attempt to overturn the accepted existence of the Church Fathers. Indeed Pete can't claim that he was 'led by the evidence' to this conclusion when even one fragment in an untranslated work might over turn his assumptions.

mountainman

Hi DCH,

It's not that I haven't been looking for the details of the detective story behind the discovery that these 9th century mass of writings were forged. I have posted what little I have found.

I have taken note of this book and before I think about buying it will spend another week or two conducting google searches in the public domain and through JSTOR. (I have JSTOR access via my membership of the state library in Sydney).

Keep well,




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

mountainman

This is a commonly held and often repeated mental misconception. In a world replete with multiple public domain professional translations of the underlying Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Arabic ..... sources, such sources may appropriately guide all investigators as to what these literary sources are saying (and what they omit to say).


He would have standing by a professional translator. The translator would translate the language into the language understood by all those in the court room. Notes would be taken. The process of justice would complete itself.




I know the odd Greek word. I travelled there in the 70's. My recent forays into the understanding of the Greek words "therapeutai" and "daimon" may be examined in the two threads Who were the Therapeute in antiquity? and Subversion of the Greek "daimon" [δαίμων] in the Gospels respectively. While it is definitely true that I learnt a great deal from the discussions (especially via the database resources Dr Jeffrey Gibson not only has at his disposal, but in his command of them), I still maintain that this learning was a two way street (until one thread was locked).



None of this is imperative in the investigation of forgery. You still do not seem to understand the most basic of criteria of the historical method. Namely, that any given source may be forged or corrupted. Hypotheses are at the basis of histiorical investigations. See Carrier and his Bayes Theorem with its input and output parameters. We can only ever INPUT hypotheses. We can only ever OUTPUT hypothetical conclusions.

I have read enough Eusebius, Irenaeus, Tertullian to make me sick. See my post above on this trinity of heresiologists.


Throw your authority strawman out the nearest window. I am claiming that the exploration of the hypothesis of forgery explains a great deal of the evidence in a number of areas including the political, the social, the religious (centralised state) and mass-movements in the 4th century. This hypothesis (same as any of yours) may only lead to hypothetical conclusions - which - wait for it Stephan - totally wrong. Exploration my friend is what we are here for in one sense.




There is a difference between a hypothetical conclusion and an authoritative case. When we get to the nitty gritty of the OP, as Dave has stressed, we will find that in the beginning someone had a hypothesis and followed this to a hypothetical conclusion. The process was handed on like an Olympic flame.



One key point to keep in mind is that the 4th century centralised monotheistic regime lead by the "Fearless Christian Emperors" had (almost) total control over the preservation and BURNING of literature. The only reason such almost miraculous manuscript discoveries (such as the Nag Hammadi Codices) have become a reality is that people purposely commited writing to Mother Earth.

Tertullian is hypothetically independent of Eusebius. Physically all T's manuscripts went over the desk of E. This is problematic for the hypothesis of their independence. The rest (with a few exceptions) is via Big E. (But also see aa5874's comments).


Only those who are interested in the investigation of the history of the first 4 or 5 centuries of the common era. Only those who are willing to consider what may be seen as "far out hypotheses" as possibly worthwhile for exploration.





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia