comments:
but even if I had used any of the A.I. apps out there, what of it as long as the sources are sound? well, for one thing, it's not allowed here. at least not for writing your actual post. research, etc, okay. it's sometimes sketchy, but you can get some good information from it if you know how to ask, and are diligent about checking those sources. the issue with religion in particular is that there is just a lot of misinformation out there about religion. there's no telling what's in the training data. But your attempt to belittle me and deflect from my premise does not disabuse those of us that have read that we possess a written testimony from an early believer, a believer who lived within one generation of the living memory of messiah and the apostles, who specifically discusses the origins of the apostle's testaments. yes, i've read it too, in the context of eusebius, who says of him, But Papias himself in the preface to his discourses by no means declares that he was himself a hearer and eye-witness of the holy apostles, but he shows by the words which he uses that he received the doctrines of the faith from those who were their friends. (HE 3.39.2) eusebius, you see, actually had copy of the five volumes of papias, and has read it. you have not. i have not. because it doesn't exist anymore. and eusebius, the person who preserves the words you're relying on, thinks he didn't know the apostles. It is worth while observing here that the name John is twice enumerated by him. The first one he mentions in connection with Peter and James and Matthew and the rest of the apostles, clearly meaning the evangelist; but the other John he mentions after an interval, and places him among others outside of the number of the apostles, putting Aristion before him, and he distinctly calls him a presbyter. This shows that the statement of those is true, who say that there were two persons in Asia that bore the same name, and that there were two tombs in Ephesus, each of which, even to the present day, is called John's. It is important to notice this. For it is probable that it was the second, if one is not willing to admit that it was the first that saw the Revelation, which is ascribed by name to John. And Papias, of whom we are now speaking, confesses that he received the words of the apostles from those that followed them, but says that he was himself a hearer of Aristion and the presbyter John. At least he mentions them frequently by name, and gives their traditions in his writings. (ibid, 5-7) eusebius thinks that papias's john was not the apostle, and reports that there were two johns in ephesus, and that papias's john may the same guy who wrote revelation, but was not the disciple of jesus. That Philip the apostle dwelt at Hierapolis with his daughters has been already stated. But it must be noted here that Papias, their contemporary, says that he heard a wonderful tale from the daughters of Philip. (ibid, 9) similarly, he didn't know philip; he knew his daughters. The same writer gives also other accounts which he says came to him through unwritten tradition, certain strange parables and teachings of the Saviour, and some other more mythical things. To these belong his statement that there will be a period of some thousand years after the resurrection of the dead, and that the kingdom of Christ will be set up in material form on this very earth. I suppose he got these ideas through a misunderstanding of the apostolic accounts, not perceiving that the things said by them were spoken mystically in figures. For he appears to have been of very limited understanding, as one can see from his discourses. But it was due to him that so many of the Church Fathers after him adopted a like opinion, urging in their own support the antiquity of the man; as for instance Irenæus and any one else that may have proclaimed similar views. (ibid, 11-13) eusebius thinks he was kind of a dolt, and perpetuated misunderstandings. this is the immediate context to the passage you're referring to, HE 3.39.15-16. so yes, there are those of who have read this. have you? You can argue about what "logia" means. no you can't. it's a clearly defined genre. You can argue about whether "Hebrew dialect" means Hebrew or Aramaic. sure. it probably means aramaic. people in antiquity did not distinguish between the two, when it comes to the language that the jewish people spoke/wrote. what it wasn't, was greek. You can argue about whether our surviving Greek Matthew is a translation, a revision, an expansion, or a later edition. you can argue some of those, but it would be a foolhardy argument. the reasons we know matthew was originally greek are extremely sound. What is not legitimate is pretending that Papias was talking about some completely unknown Matthew unrelated to the apostle traditionally associated with the Gospel. again, we don't know what papias was talking about. we don't have the rest of his works to see if he ever quotes our gospel of matthew, and names it as "matthew". his five volumes of the exposition on the sayings of the lord have been entirely lost to history. what is not legitimate is seeing that he uses the name "matthew", and that our gospel uses the name "matthew", and assuming they must be the same thing. if they are, his tradition is wrong because matthew is not a hebrew/aramaic logia, and it's one more misconception he's perpetuating. if they aren't, that helps you even less. They were not isolationist, you don't go out into the dead sea wilderness to be part of society. Mainstream academia relegates them to being a mere “sect” of Judaism both josephus and philo, contemporaries to the essenes, call them a sect. of course, their descriptions of that sect don't match the qumran community exactly, and it's questionable about why. they may be trying to portray them more like greco-roman stoics. they may be talking about something else. which is the reason i used the phrase "community at qumran" above, and not "essene". "anti-saducee" btw is my appraisal, and your chatbot has picked up on the suggestion and treated it like consensus. the qumran community, btw, considered themselves saducees. they split from the priesthood, whom they considered illegitimate, and considered themselves the real tzadoqites. their founder, who may be mythical, is called moreh-tzedeq ("teacher of righteousness") and their expected messiah is called melki-tzedeq ("king of righteousness"). i know you've picked up on a suggestion here be cause "saducee" is my idiosyncratic spelling as i don't believe in doubling up letters from single letters in hebrew, but still want to use the more common greek derived title people recognize instead of the more semitically correct "tzadoqite". the delta is doubled in greek, Σαδδουκαῖοι, thus the common english spelling of "sadducee". people who actually know what they're talking will generally use the accepted spelling, not my idiosyncratic one. They were anti hasmonean and the hasmonean priests were... ? This is like saying that if Micheal Eric Dyson wrote a book and he dies in a fire bringing it to his publisher and only fragments of it survived, one of which has the phrase “Sagan’s book that influenced me was written in the Galician dialect.” It would be asinine to say “since we no longer possess his full manuscript, we can’t know for sure that he was referencing Dr. Carl Sagan. Yes there is a possibility that he could be referring to a different Matthew, but given the context of his five volume book, that was about the religion of Christianity itself, specifically focusing on the teachings of the messiah and his earliest followers. great, i've read several of sagan's books. they're in english. he was a native english speaker, and wrote them in english. if all we had was that sentence, we would rightly question whether he's talking about carl sagan, or maybe... someone like peter sagan who's from slovakia, and area that used to be called "galicia". now, he did write a book, and there's a german version, but it appears to be a translation. they also speak german in the region that used to be galicia. so maybe it's that? do you see the problem? Although only fragments remain, it is well established that his book was not just an evaluation of the texts nor was it a catalog of lost Christian literature. He was discussing traditions connected to the messiah that specifically mentioned the writings of both Mark and Matthew. The burden is on the skeptic to explain why, when Papias says "Matthew," we should assume he means some otherwise unattested document by some other Matthew that doesn’t exist to the authors of that time rather than the Matthew known throughout the gospel tradition. very chatGPT. i've already explained why: his description doesn't match our document. he talks about a hebrew logia, we have a greek narrative. either these are different books, or he is mistaken. now, you might be able to lean this towards "he is mistaken", give a) eusebius's testimony about how he confused apostolic teachings, and b) the fact that he work was largely considered irrelevant and redundant. like if he was expositing on sayings we didn't have, that would be interesting and worth keeping. and it kind of look like those are the bits that were kept, so maybe the other stuff is all just... canonical gospel stuff. but, who knows. we can't read it.