forum notes - Ehrman blog - real Nazareth

Steven Avery

Administrator
Ehrman blog
Texts and Towns that Allegedly Didn’t Exist (So Did Jesus?)

https://ehrmanblog.org/texts-and-to...23816ab1f24cff63dbe81833f112c3#comment-122321

And mirrored on Facebook - Pure Bible
https://www.facebook.com/groups/purebible/posts/1323042854454267/?comment_id=4187062524718938


Luke 4:29 (AV)
And rose up, and thrust him out of the city,
and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built,
that they might cast him down headlong.

For those who believe the New Testament text, this does not remotely fit the plains and rolling hills Nazareth. And I've been to Mount Precipice and that is preposterous. :)

The spot that fits Nazareth the best is Har Nitai, close to the main area of Jesus and New Testament activity around Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee. Har Nitai and Arbel have sheer cliffs, fascinating archaeology and Arbel has a history as an execution spot.

From a gentleman named Frederic Parpinel in Italy:

Holyland Pathways
Har Nitai as Nazareth
http://www.holylandpathways.com/
Har Nitai, Caesarea Inscription, 24 priestly courses . . . .

Frederic has added important elements, especially involving the priestley courses.

A gentleman named Kevin Kluetz, in AZ, did the pioneering study on this around 1995, using his Army Ranger skills to search out the region.

Some of the material from Kevin, which will hopefully be resuscitated and expanded.

The Real Nazareth
http://web.archive.org/web/20090806051045/http://geocities.com/athens/parthenon/3021/nazareth.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20091027180119/http://www.geocities.com/athens/parthenon/3021/naz1.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20091021151822/http://geocities.com/athens/parthenon/3021/naz2.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20091021151822/http://geocities.com/athens/parthenon/3021/naz3.html

Pure Bible Forum
Har Nitai as Nazareth
https://www.purebibleforum.com/inde...-in-region-support-har-nitai-as-nazareth.534/
(note the map of Nazareth to Capernaum)

Steven Avery
Dutchess County, NY, USA
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
Not yet posted - wait a bit

Misquoting Jesus gives a very abbreviated account, focused on the Trinity issue (many scholars believe that the Trinitarians were discomfited by the verse in the early centuries, seeing it as Sabellian) and does not make any attempt to look at the full evidences or even the historical back-at-forth involving Erasmus, Lee, Stunica and Valladolid.

Erasmus had a very difficult time trying to counter the evidence from Jerome's Prologue to the Canonical Epistles. With Jerome writing about the verse being dropped from the transmission, the fact that the text was in Latin but not Greek mss. becomes less important.

Erasmus clearly would have known the Cyprian citation in Unity of the Church, yet quietly kept it out of the conversation. The hundreds of bishops affirming the verse at the Council of Carthage of 484 AD was apparently not yet available. And Erasmus even alluded to the grammatical issue, the solecism in the short Greek text, in his discussion of torquebit grammaticos.

And the Latin evidence was massive, so why remove the text from the Latin edition? Also Erasmus did in fact keep the verse in his Paraphrase of 1521 and the earlier Ratio Verae.

1518 Ratio seu methodus compendio perveniendi ad veram theologiam.

Steven Avery
Dutchess County, NY USA
 

Steven Avery

Administrator
Your thoughts on Jerome?

This is a first-person writing, matching his style and knowledge, and exists in the earliest known Vulgate manuscript. Clearly, there is a circular argument that can be used. (Jerome could not have written that about the heavenly witnesses, because the verse ... blah blah.)

Waiting for proper time
https://ehrmanblog.org/how-the-trin...e1aefd0d551576b4d57c34ff57b061#comment-122389

=====================================

Also, your thoughts on Jerome?

This is a first-person writing, matching his style and knowledge, and exists in the earliest known Vulgate manuscript. Clearly, there is a circular argument that can be used. (Jerome could not have written that about the heavenly witnesses, because the verse ... blah blah.)

If you really want to claim the Prologue is not Jerome, could you give specific reasons?.

"... in that place where we read the clause about the unity of the Trinity in the first letter of John. Indeed, it has come to our notice that in this letter some unfaithful translators have gone far astray from the truth of the faith, for in their edition they provide just the words for three [witnesses]—namely water, blood and spirit—and omit the testimony of the Father, the Word and the Spirit, by which the Catholic faith is especially strengthened, and proof is tendered of the single substance of divinity possessed by Father, Son and Holy Spirit."
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
Hi Professor Ehrman,

This sounds like an unusual circular reasoning explanation, because it involves invisible allegorizing. That is, Cyprian is making a hugggee mental leap, and transference, without telling his readers. They are left in the dark.

So, can you give other examples of invisible allegorizing ?

Where the writer makes a flying leap jump of allegorizing without any explanation to his readers?

Or is that unusual explanation unique to Cyprian and the heavenly witnesses?
In which case it would be classic special pleading.
A one-time explanation of convenience.

The Lutheran scholar Franz August Otto Pieper (1852-1931) understood this perfectly:

"Griesbach counters that Cyprian is here not quoting from Scripture, but giving his own allegorical interpretation of the three witnesses on earth. 'The Spirit, the water, and the blood; and these three agree in one.' That will hardly do. Cyprian states distinctly that he is quoting Bible passages, not only in the words: 'I and the Father are one', but also in the words: 'And again it is written of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.' These are, in our opinion, the objective facts."

Similarly Scrivener "safer and more candid...".

Thanks!

Steven Avery
Dutchess County, NY, USA
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
How about unexplained, unconnected allegorizing, invisible to the reader.
Any other examples?

Bart Ehrman
"There was a common interpretation that the Spirit, the water, and the blood who “are one” was actually referring to the trinity. "

Do you have any evidence for this "common interpretation" beyond a combination of circularity and special pleading?

Yes, I have read Raymond Brown.
His writing is cautious, dancing, even humorous:

"as we turn to Cyprian (d. 258), another North African.26 In De ecclesiae catholicae unitate 6 (CC 3, 254) Cyprian states, “The Lord says, ‘The Father and I are one [John 10:30],’and again of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit it is written, ‘And three are one.”27 There is a good chance that Cyprian’s second citation, like the first, is Johannine and comes from the OL text of I John 5:8, which says, “And these three are one,”
in reference to the Spirit, the water, and the blood. His application of It to the divine trinitarian figures need not represent a knowledge of the Comma,28
28 Somewhat favorable to Cyprian’s knowledge of the Comma is that he knew other Latin additions to the Greek text of I John ....

In the 20th century Friedrich Buchsel (1933), Franz Pieper (1950), Edward Hills (1956), and Walter Thiele (1959) all believed that Cyprian was quoting the heavenly witnesses from his Bible.

Yet, you cannot even consider the prima facie reading that it is a reference to the heavenly witnesses? Are you trapped by a tyranny of the perceived and uninformed consensus?
 

Steven Avery

Administrator
How about unexplained, unconnected allegorizing, invisible to the reader.
Any other examples?

Bart Ehrman
"There was a common interpretation that the Spirit, the water, and the blood who “are one” was actually referring to the trinity. "

Do you have any evidence for this "common interpretation" beyond a combination of circularity and special pleading?

Yes, I have read Raymond Brown.
His writing is cautious, dancing, even humorous:

"as we turn to Cyprian (d. 258), another North African.26 In De ecclesiae catholicae unitate 6 (CC 3, 254) Cyprian states, “The Lord says, ‘The Father and I are one [John 10:30],’and again of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit it is written, ‘And three are one.”27 There is a good chance that Cyprian’s second citation, like the first, is Johannine and comes from the OL text of I John 5:8, which says, “And these three are one,”
in reference to the Spirit, the water, and the blood. His application of It to the divine trinitarian figures need not represent a knowledge of the Comma,28

27See also Cyprian’s Epistula 73.12
(CSEL 32, 787) where the same “three are one” statement is applied to God. Christ, and the Spirit without a reference to
Scripture.
28 Somewhat favorable to Cyprian’s knowledge of the Comma is that he knew other Latin additions to the Greek text of I John ....

In the 20th century Friedrich Buchsel (1933), Franz Pieper (1950), Edward Hills (1956), and Walter Thiele (1959) all believed that Cyprian was quoting the heavenly witnesses from his Bible.

Yet, you cannot even consider the prima facie reading that it is a reference to the heavenly witnesses? Are you trapped by a tyranny of the perceived and uninformed consensus?
 

Steven Avery

Administrator
This one is 200 exactly


How about "unexplained, unconnected allegorizing, invisible to the reader."
Any other examples? Or only Cyprian.

Prof Ehrman
"There was a common interpretation that the Spirit, the water, and the blood who “are one” was actually referring to the trinity. "

Bart, any evidence for this "common interpretation" beyond circularity and special pleading?

Yes, I have read Raymond Brown.
Cautious, dancing, equivocal, humorous:
"good chance" "need not represent"

"There is a good chance that Cyprian’s second citation, like the first, is Johannine and comes from the OL text of I John 5:8, which says, “And these three are one,” in reference to the Spirit, the water, and the blood. His application of It to the divine trinitarian figures need not represent a knowledge of the Comma,28
28 Somewhat favorable to Cyprian’s knowledge of the Comma is that he knew other Latin additions to the Greek text of I John ...."

In the 20th century Friedrich Buchsel (1933), Franz Pieper (1950), Edward Freer Hills (1956), and Walter Thiele (1959) believed that Cyprian was quoting the heavenly witnesses from his Bible.

So, can you consider the easiest interpretation ... a reference to the heavenly witnesses?

Are you trapped by a tyranny of the perceived consensus?
 

Steven Avery

Administrator
Raymond Brown for Ehrman

If we try to go back beyond the evidence of our extant MSS.,12 It is not clear that the Comma was included in the text of I John when St. Peregrinus edited the Vulgate in Spain in the fifth century.

To the period before 550 belongs a Prologue to the Catholic Epistles, falsely attributed to Jerome, which is preserved in the Codex Fuldensis (PL 29, 827-31). Although the Codex itself does not contain the Comma, the Prologue states that the Comma is genuine but has been omitted by unfaithful translators. The Prologue has been attributed to Vincent of Lerins (d. 450) and to Peregrinus (Künstle, Ayuso Marazuela), the fifth-century Spanish editor of the Vg. In any case, Jerome’s authority was such that this statement, spuriously attributed to him, helped to win acceptance for the Comma. . (1982 p. 782-783)

SA Questions:
The Peregrinus idea was soundly trounced - Chapman and Bludau, so why did Ayuso try it again?
And why does Brown not give us a source for the wild idea of Vincent of Lerins.

====================

Vincent of Lerins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_of_Lérins

Peregrinus
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Catholic_Encyclopedia,_volume_11.djvu/728
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11664b.htm

====================

MY NOTES

Chapman and maybe Babut demolished the Peregrinus theory long ago, it is surprising that Ayuso tried a rehabilitation.
Brown gives us nothing about the substantive issues, indicating only the rule of circularity.

Witness of God is Greater
Künstle is wrong in attributing to him (Peregrinus) the Pseudo-Jerome's prologue to the Catholic Epistles.
• Chapman, "Peregrinus" in The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911.


====================

Grantley credited Chapman properly.

Künstle, 1905, 27-28,... attributed the preface to Peregrinus. Chapman, 1908, 262-267, refuted Künstle’s attribution to Peregrinus

Martin, 1887, 218, and Bludau, 1905a, 27-28, suggested that the preface was written by Peregrinus; this suggestion was questioned by Chapman, 1908, 266-267, and Bludau, 1921, 132-135.

Serious doubts attend the authenticity of a document claimed as the most important early witnesses to the authenticity of the comma: the prologue to the Catholic Epistles


====================

Pure Bible Forum

RGA - BCEME - new questions that arise after March, 2021
Grantley's Wild Summary of the Vulgate Prologue Authenticity
https://www.purebibleforum.com/inde...s-that-arise-after-march-2021.1772/#post-6974

the Metzger charade - trying to keep Latin mss out of both Vulgate and Old Latin discussions
https://www.purebibleforum.com/inde...f-both-vulgate-and-old-latin-discussions.869/

Vulgate Prologue - super-evidence
https://www.purebibleforum.com/index.php?threads/vulgate-prologue-super-evidence.56/



====================

Fickermann points to a hitherto unpublished eleventh-century text which says that Jerome considered the Comma to be a genuine part of I John— clearly a memory of the Pseudo-Jerome Prologue mentioned above.

John Chapman has a wild reference to Victor of Lerins through Eugipius for the Prologue
https://books.google.com/books?id=XYpAAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA287
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator

The paragraph from Raymond Brown:
“To the period before 550 belongs a Prologue to the Catholic Epistles, falsely attributed to Jerome, which is preserved in the Codex Fuldensis (PL 29, 827-31). Although the Codex itself does not contain the Comma, the Prologue states that the Comma is genuine but has been omitted by unfaithful translators. The Prologue has been attributed to Vincent of Lerins (d. 450) and to Peregrinus (Künstle, Ayuso Marazuela), the fifth-century Spanish editor of the Vg. In any case, Jerome’s authority was such that this statement, spuriously attributed to him, helped to win acceptance for the Comma. . (Epistles of John, 1982 p. 782-783)”
The Peregrinus idea was countered by John Chapman in 1908, “dispose of this notion”. Grantley McDonald in Raising the Ghost of Arius says it was “refuted”. He says “Serious doubts attend the authenticity” yet he never gives any arguments against authenticity.
Jean Martianay (1647-1717) had tried to give reasons for the Prologue to be non- Jerome, his arguments were shredded by David Martin, the French Huguenot writer. Antoine Eugène Genoud (1792-1849) saw those attempts as “frivoles”.
There are no strong arguments against authenticity. Especially after the Fuldensis discovery which eliminated the argument of appearing in late mss.
In recent years there has been an attempt to say that Jerome only translated the Gospels (and maybe Acts) but this has great difficulties, especially since Jerome asserted translation of the full NT in multiple quotes.
And there is the circular argument … based on the modern textcrit “consensus” that there could not have been such manuscripts .. circular to the max!
 
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