spin

You can happily say this in all your anti-scholarly naivete. The rest of us try to get the facts.

watersbeak

Thanks, spin.

Any dates on those documents?

I can envision at least five large scale military campaigns undertaken in Eastern Syria, after Julian, and before Timur the lame.

Any one of those could have involved encampment at the former Roman Fortress, with rapid erection of a protective wall, using the rubble from the previous wall. Why would an army of a few hundred seek to construct a wall to protect themselves from the Western border? I suspect you know the answer.

I don't deny that it is possible that the wall was left undisturbed for 15 centuries, I just don't find it plausible, given the ferocity of attack by Mongols, Turks, Egyptians, and Romans, among others, invading Eastern Syria, seeking control of the Euphrates, during those fifteen centuries.

Any geological evidence found in those "mud bricks" at the top of the wall? I would have thought, probably incorrectly, that the Roman Legionaires defending Dura Europos, would have ordered the townspeople to create a supply of bricks to be used on constructing a proper defensive fortification, long before the ultimate attack. Such bricks would have been properly BAKED, not mud. Mud bricks sounds to me, like a hasty afterthought, as would have been appropriate for an invading army, seeking refuge from arrows directed toward the men, gathered around the campfires.

I think it highly improbable that Dura Europos' strategic location on the bluff above the river, would have gone unnoticed by fifteen centuries of invading armies.

Sam

stephan huller

Oh God. This insufferable. Four people with cognitive difficulties can hardly be thought to represent a consensus

aa5874

You don't know what you are talking about. You are not credible. You promote fallacies.

It was absurd to claim 100% probabilty that the Dura fragment was not composed after c 256-257 CE

Now, you claim that 14000 coins were found at Dura. You forgot to mention the actual condition of the coins.

You very well know that it is NOT the quantity of coins that are found but the quality--it is the condition of the coins that really matters.

See http://ddc.aub.edu.lb/projects/archa...ytus08/17.html

Michael I. Rostovtzeff: Res Gestae Divi Saporis and Dura

In effect, it cannot be proven that none of the coins could not have been minted after c 256-257 CE when all identification of some coins were completely eroded.

mountainman

A C14 test on the Dura Parchment 24 would not be hard to perform and obviously represents an INDEPENDENT controlled experiment related to the dating of DF24. But I cant see this happening. The problem appears to be one of overcoming the resistance of those who think that such an independent test is not required, since they already ascribe a 100% certitude to the terminus ad quem of DF24 via the archaeological report.



Carl Herman Kraeling (1897–1966), theologian, historian, and an American archaeologist, earned his B.D. from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1926 and taught New Testament Studies at the Yale University.

I don't think Kraeling is going to pass any "overriding bias test".


Kraeling relies on Hopkins.

Hopkins essentially relies on the hearsay of his workmen.

He did not witness the fragment being unearthed.
His wife (or someone else) "found it in a basket".


No mention is made of any enthusiastic but unsuccessful searching of the excavation site for further fragments.


And yet nobody interrogated the workmen involved to determine a more precise location of the find, or to conduct a personal review of that precise location just in case the fragment was not alone.

These circumstances of the fragment being found "in a basket of finds from the excavation of the embankment" is a type of hearsay , and it must reduce the certainty of any terminus ad quem by some margin from the 100% as ascribed by Kraeling.

Would a 90% security for the terminus ad quem date of the Dura Fragment 24 be some form of "middle ground"?

Or are these 100% certainty rednecks unwilling to consider any other alternative possibilities?

mountainman

Syriac nomina sacra

My precise question. The Greek non canonical literature was translated to Coptic and Syriac (and other languages) before it was meticulously searched out and destroyed wherever it was found in the empire, by the rulers of those who preserved the Greek canonical literature in the extremely well appointed scriptoria of the Christian Emperors of the 4th and 5th and subsequent centuries.

The Coptic material preserves the Coptic version of the Greek nomina sacra.

The question is does the Syriac do the same.

After reading through that thread I cant see a final answer was provided.

I don't know the answer(s) to this question.

OVER

stephan huller

Heaven forbid he taught "New Testament studies." Next you'll be telling me about a doctor studying at medical school! We don't want that.

I think you have declared all out war on reality.

stephan huller

I think you want to get rid of anyone who knows how stupid what you are suggesting really is. The leaves you with aa, duvduv, and watersbreak/avi. At last, a gathering of wisemen!

mountainman

the justification is trivial:


Hypothetical Syriac One Gospel Original

1: Someone invents One Gospel in Syriac.
2: Someone invents a Greek translation.
3: Someone invents the Greek nomina sacra.
4: The Dura Parchment 24 is copied from 3
5: Someone invents the Four Gospels

For the record, AFAIK at the moment the process is thought to be as follows:

Hypothetical Greek Four Gospel Original

1: Someone invents Four Gospels in Greek.
2. Someone invents the Greek nomina sacra.
3. Someone harmonizes the Four to One.
4: The Dura Parchment 24 is copied from 3






FWIW my working hypothesis is that we are dealing with a 90% probability
that the Dura Parchment 24 is dated prior to the mid 3rd century.



90% is my final offer spin. As you know I have moved from somewhere below 50% to this present admission of 90%. That's quite a change of position for me and I have thanked everyone. I think its time for you and a few other people to get down off that 100% pie-in-the-sky ivory tower you're all sitting on. In the business of ancient history NOTHING IS CERTAIN.

mountainman

No I don't.

The earliest extant manuscript evidence is encrypted.

The "sacred names" have been universally suppressed via codification.

Even by the heretics!