rationalskepticism.org

RealityRules wrote:Sure but the fact there seems to be remnants of Celsus referring to or enumerating a number of gnostic-Christian sects in the 2nd century would seem to be relevant.

Of course the remnants of Celsus in Origen do seem to be relevant. They represent evidence that needs an explanation, and they are NOT the only literary evidence extant in the "Early Church Fathers" which need explanation. A complete listing of such evidence would look something like the following ...

Summary of Literary Citation Evidence for the Mainstream chronology of the "Gnostic Gospels and Acts etc"

The historical evidence concerning at least some early authorship (12 books) of the non canonical books is to be found in the writings of the first Christian historian Eusebius. This literary evidence may be briefly summarized by listing the 12 books as follows, and represents sources supposedly in the writings of Clement, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Justin Martyr, Hippolytus.

The Gospel of Peter:

Eusebius cites Origen, Justin Martyr and Serapion as mentioning this text although in the case of Justin, MR James comments that “the evidence is not demonstrative”. Eusebius has an unknown Serapion report that he walked into a Gnostic library and “borrowed” a copy of this text.


The Gospel of Thomas:

Eusebius cites Hippolytus (155-235), Refutation of all Heresies, v. 1-6., as mentioning something similar to the received text, and cites Origen as mentioning some text of Thomas. Eusebius cites saying (No. 2 in the gThomas) as quoted by Clement of Alexandria (Miscellenies ii. 45. 5; v. 96.3), as coming from the Gospel according to the Hebrews. There is certainly some ambiguity here.


The Gospel of Judas:

Eusebius cites a mention of this text in Irenaeus’ “Adversus Haereses” [I.31.1] however some integrity issues have been noted with it. For example, the text is described by Irenaeus as being linked with such villainous persons as Cain, Esau, Korah, and the Sodomites, rather than with the traditionally respected person of Seth. One commentator writes “Perhaps Irenaeus was simply misinformed or deliberately confused the two as a rhetorical strategy. At any rate, it is a strange divergence that demands clarification.” [Review of Deconick, Arie Zwiep] There is further ambiguity here


The Infancy Gospel of Thomas:

Eusebius preserves a citation from Irenaeus who quotes a non-canonical story that circulated about the childhood of Jesus. Many but not all scholars consider that it is possible that the apocryphal writing cited by Irenaeus is, in fact, what is now known as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. There is room for doubt


The Infancy Gospel of James:

Early knowledge of the “Protevangelium of James” is inferred from the preservation in Eusebius of mention by Clement of Alexandria and Origen. An inference is not the same thing as unambiguous evidence.


The Vision of Isiah

Mentioned by Origen, Tertullian, Justin Martyr ?


The Apocalypse of Peter

This is not the Gnostic text! Mentioned by Clement (Eclogues 41,48,49) - but there is no extant text


The Gospel of Truth

This is the NHC text; some consider it to be mentioned by Irenaeus ?


The Apocyphon of John

Mentioned by Irenaeus ?


The Sentences of Sextus

Sextus appears to have been a Pythagorean. Some think it is quoted by Origen, Contra Celsum, viii. 30; Commentary on Matthew, xv. 3)


The Acts of Peter

Attributed to Leucius Charinus, along with the Acts of Paul. The other books attributed to "Leucius" are: The Acts of John, The Acts of Andrew, the Acts of Thomas, and possibly also The Acts of Andrew and John, The Acts of Andrew and Matthew and The Acts of Peter and Andrew. Notably, most of these are first witnessed by Eusebius, with the exception of the Acts of Paul.


The Acts of Paul:

The chief and final literary citation is from Eusebius’ often cited Latin author Tertullian, in his De baptismo 17.5. This appears as the only early instance in which information is provided concerning an author of apocryphal writings. Note that the manuscripts which preserve Tertullian's De baptismo are quite late, the earliest being the 12th century Codex Trecensis.



As for those (women) who appeal to the falsely written Acts of Paul in order to defend the right of women to teach and to baptize, let them know that the presbyter in Asia who produced this document, as if he could add something of his own to the prestige of Paul, was removed from his office after he had been convicted and had confessed that he had done it out of love for Paul.

The 4th century interpolation into Josephus, known as the "Testimonium Flavianum", is regarded by many as a critically positioned forgery, with respect to the history of the NT Canonical Books. This above "Testimonium Tertullianum", it is suggested, should be regarded as a critically positioned forgery, with respect to the history of the NT non canonical books. Jerome’s novel addition to the Christian tradition - that the author of the Acts of Paul wrote in the presence of the apostle John in the 1st century - is a plainly fraudulent misrepresentation, and has been soundly rejected by many academics.

So not only are the references in Origen to Celsus relevant, but they do have a raft of further references which I have listed out above. We cannot deny that this literary evidence does exist, and has been carefully preserved by the church organisation in their archives supposedly since the 4th century when Eusebius gathered it all together.

The mainstream hypothesis of chronology simply accepts these references as being genuine. The dogma then and today was essentially that the "Early Church Fathers" were the authorities on the historical conflict between orthodoxy and heresy in the Christian literature of these first three centuries.

However there is a core criterion in the historical method by which any given source may be forged or corrupt, and I am treating the literary sources preserved by the church organisation (between the 4th and 19th century) as corrupt. The basis of this evaluation is the historical fact that this organisation was utterly corrupt. With all the atrocities and inquisitions that this organisation has undertaken, with all the murders, executions, tortures, etc, this organisation would not blink an eye to consider the possibility of forging their own literary material to support whatever pseudo-historical accounts they wished to produce.


Where does that leave us?

If the above references are treated as interpolations and/or forgeries by the 4th century (or later) church organisation then we are left to try and evaluate the chronology of the non canonical books by the physical evidence which has turned up quite independent from the "church archives" in manuscript and codex discoveries, such as the Nag Hammadi Library (NHL), the papyri fragments from Oxyrynchus and the recent (2005) C14 test on Codex Tchacos (containing the Gospel of Judas).

With very few exceptions, the vast and dominant percentage of this literary material is dated around the mid 4th century. The exceptions are two or three papyri fragments which have been dated by palaeography before 325 CE. However recent academic articles have argued that the practice of palaeographical dating should not preclude a 4th century upper bound. For example see ... The Limits of Palaeographic Dating of Literary Papyri: Some Observations on the Date and Provenance of P.Bodmer II (P66) By Brent Nongbri, Macquarie University [2014]

https://www.academia.edu/6755662/The_Li ... er_II_P66_

Abstract

Palaeographic estimates of the date of P.Bodmer II, the well-preserved Greek papyrus codex of the Gospel of John, have ranged from the early second century to the first half of the third century. There are, however, equally con- vincing palaeographic parallels among papyri securely dated to as late as the fourth century. This article surveys the palaeographic evidence and argues that the range of possible dates assigned to P.Bodmer II on the basis of palaeography needs to be broadened to include the fourth century. Furthermore, a serious con- sideration of a date at the later end of that broadened spectrum of palaeographic possibilities helps to explain both the place of P.Bodmer lI in relation to other Bodmer papyri and several aspects of the codicology of P.Bodmer II.

All this therefore leaves us with the conclusion that we do not really have any physical evidence of these "Gnostic Gospels and Acts etc" [more generally the non canonical books] prior to the appearance of the centralised monotheistic state Christian cult and the Constantine NT Bible codex c.325 CE


THE CHI-SQUARED STATISTICAL TEST
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson%27 ... uared_test

The question is how much physical evidence has to discovered and recognised to be post Nicene in order for people with some measure of common sense to actually ask the question "What if these literary citations preserved by the church organisation are false flags"? (ie: the church sources are forged and corrupt).

There are now discovered more than 20 codices containing non canonical material (including Gnostic Gospels and Acts) which have been dated to the mid 4th century. If we were to set up a CHI SQUARED statistical test, according to the mainstream theory (which follows the "Church Fathers) we should expect some evidence to be unambiguously dated to the 200 year epoch 125-324 CE. If we assign a 50% probability of finding a text dated in the 200 years between 125-324 CE, and 50% probability of finding a text dated in the 100 years between 325-424 CE, the it's like flipping a coin. We should have at least some heads (prior to 325 CE) along with some tails (after 325 CE). The problem is that the coin keeps returning tails with no returns for any heads. After 20 flips of the coin we have a sequence of 20 tails.

How many more manuscript discoveries of gnostic literary material dated to the later 4th century do we require before we realise that maybe we should never expect the coin we are flipping to ever return heads.




Sorry about the length of this post RR, but you have made an excellent observation, and one which is held to be true by most if not all of the mainstream biblical scholars about the evaluation of the evidence underpinning the mainstream chronology of the non canonical material. I have attempted to outline the entire body of such evidence, and to explain why I feel it is both responsible and well within the bounds of the historical method to treat the literary sources preserved by the church organisation as corrupt and forged.