Top blogging, second quarter of 2024

 I'm not sure if I did a first quarter roundup or not.

Anyway, here goes.

Not all of these were posted in the past three months, but all of them are the top 10 reads of April-June.

No. 10? A follow-up to earlier blogging about one particular new thread of stupidity at r/AcademicBiblical. That's the laughableness of Marcion as First Gospeller.

No. 9? Nearly 20 years old, but a goodie, and part of a strain of thought from me. "More proof the Buddha was no Buddha."

No. 8? Just outside the start of this quarterly window, but my latest thoughts on, yes, Morton Smith was the forger of Secret Mark.

No. 7? No, not a shock to me that many Catholic churches are reversing the clock on things like "nudging" women to wear veils, Tridentine masses, etc. 

No. 6? "A Cerberus of Templeton-prize type ideas" indeed describes the book "The Blind Spot."

No. 5 was more r/AB idiocy, as there really is not proof for the claim Yahweh was originally a Northern Kingdom Omride deity, and the reasoning leading up to that was really stupid, and I have the receipts.

No. 4? God, this one was real stupidity from someone who's been at r/AB for three years, but whom I had missed before last month. NO NO NO and Not.Even.Wrong, Chris(sy) Hansen, 1 Clement does not talk about Peter and Paul getting offed by internal Christian discord.

No. 3? From last year, but newly popular because I posted it to another biblical criticism subreddit. I stood Josiah and Deuteronomy on their heads, starting with a piece by Paul Davidson of "Is That in the Bible," and then heading to a deep read of an Idan Dershowitz monograph about Moses Wilhelm Shapira.

No. 2? Not quite as old as the Buddha, but updated more recently. Keep saying good-bye to alleged atheist and definite cultural Catholic and papal flak-runner Tim O'Neill of "History for Atheists."

No. 1? My full takedown review of Bart Ehrman's "Armageddon," as Bart has written three consecutive dreck books and can he get worse?

"A quarter of a quarter of a quarter" — the real number of "bona fide" Catholics

An interesting story in Texas Monthly about state attorney general Ken Paxton vs El Paso's Annunciation House as a migrants' refuge. But, the "quarter of the state" following Catholic teachings? More likely "a quarter of the quarter," if that.

For example? Gov. Greg Abbott, like many a wingnut Catholic, is a Conservative Cafeteria Catholic because he doesn't follow the Vatican's official stance against the death penalty. And, of course, there are plenty of Liberal Cafeteria Catholics on reproductive issues. I know that, among national Catholic politicians, there's only two I'm aware of — Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey and Michigan Congressman Dan Kildee (I knew his dad) — who walk the walk on both. So, it's more likely "a quarter of a quarter of a quarter." Yes, that means 1/16 of Texas Catholics follow Rome on all major doctrinal issues.

I've just mentioned the two biggest.  Those two together, with ancillary issues, make up the first of the seven pillars of Catholic social justice. 

The second is about the family, including marriage. We know Francis the Talking Pope opposes gay and lesbian marriage. Could be a few conservatives that support it. About all liberals do, of cours.

No. 4? The poor? Many non-leftist Catholics are essentially Catholic neoliberals, so this is a further split.

Ditto on No. 5 on the rights of workers. Many librul but not leftist Catholics reject the likes of a Dorothy Day.

Laughableness about putting Marcion as the First Gospeller

 I may not quite be done with responding to stupidity at r/AcademicBiblical, as the Marcion fellation continues there.

A post there last month had a commenter link to Markus Vinzent's "Marcion's Gospel and the Beginnings of Early Christianity."

I find three problems in the first 10 or so pages..

One, like some other materials I've seen posted there, and not all Marcion-related, Vinzent strawmans on what he says others have proposed for dating of New Testament books.

I myself have, re the canonical Gospels, considered Luke to be written at the end of the first century. Yes, that is still first century, but just barely, and I'm open to a few years later than that. John I have always dated second century, and don't think it reached anything even close to its current form until no earlier than 125 CE.

Other books of the New Testament? Does anybody believe the Pastorals or Second Peter, at a minimum, are second century? I think they are, that Jude also presumably is, that Acts is, and that the three Johannines may be.

So, strawmanning, Prof. Vinzent.

Second, even if Marcion DID write first, you STILL have to solve the Synoptic Problem, and Marcionite Priority in and of itself does nothing to do that.

Third, the degree of credence that Vinzent gives to Papias' credibility looks laughable. That's especially when, on the other hand, he pretty flatly rejects Irenaeus' take on Marcion.

That said, per his Wiki page, Vinzent has plenty of other ideas which it would be charitable to only call them "idiosyncratic." Per his strawmanning above, I'm not inclined to be charitable, so I'll call them "thrown off" instead. Further explication of Marcionite Priority has him not explaining why Mark doesn't have birth and resurrection narratives, for example, and also why it doesn't show the "expansiveness" that younger gospels do in general vs older ones.

==

I last wrote about this just a few months ago; I think that Pytine/Poutine was one of the instigators a few days ago, like he was then.

No, Tacitus didn't write about Nero persecuting Christians

When I got in discussion with Nero biographer John Drinkwater about Nero, I eventually wrote a follow-up piece, suggesting that odds were 60 percent this was an interpolation by Sulpicius Severus, 30 percent that it was Tacitus doing a double bank shot, retrojecting from knowledge of Christians at his time back to Nero, and 10 percent chance this was actual history.

Well, after a discussion with something who had posted in r/AcademicBiblical? Chrissy Hansen and I chatted, and with this, while they agree no actual persecution happened, their doubling down on the bankshot and refusal to consider the interpolation idea?

(Note: This is part two of what will be a three-part monologue disputation against Hansen. Part one, about dating of 1 Clement, is here.)

I reset my odds now at 80 percent interpolation, 20 percent bank shot, and 0 on actual history.

Hansen first claimed, in her comment, that 1 Clement, stripped of legendary accretions, is about Peter and Paul being killed by fellow Christians, nonetheless, in response to me, claims that the Tacitus is not an interpolation. (I think the 1 Clement idea is — well, I first thought it was very interesting, then not so much.) But back to Tacitus.

I offered as a sidebar the Option B, that, if genuine by Tacitus, it's still a double-bankshot smear, projecting back from his own interactions with Christians, of what was a non-event, so that he could smear Nero even more than Christians.

As for said person's claims rejecting the interpolation idea? They note that the Correspondence of Paul and Seneca mentions the Great Fire earlier. Two counterpoints: First, on a late dating, only about 20 years earlier. So, it's in the same milieu, even if earlier. Second, the 11th letter of said correspondence is generally believed to be by a second forger than most other letters. Severus himself? Third counterpoint? As mentioned above? Tertullian regularly cited Tacitus, so why not here?

Finally, if you've read both, Severus just reads a lot like Tacitus.

Said person does reject an actual persecution, so they're solid there.

I raised the Tertullian and Celsus issues, and got pretty much a handwaving response.

That one is rather easily explicable. The Annals does not look like it was ever completely finished by Tacitus, or did not receive the full editing required, and so it also wasn't distributed nearly as widely. In fact, Tacitus' works in general were largely ignored, and the Annals was probably just in disrepair. So this isn't surprising nor indicative of much.

We'll agree to disagree. As I said in response, at the time of Severus, Jerome references all 30 books of Annals plus Histories. And, Tertullian wrote no more than a century later. And, got more handwaving in return:

Handwaving, half-truths and more.

Jerome is also writing after Sulpicius, so the Annals were at that point becoming known to Christians, so Jerome isn't surprising or pertinent there. 

And as we know, from the late second century to the early fourth century, Tacitus' works were actually in disrepair and the Annals was not read either by Christians or by Greco-Roman authors. It was just a text almost entirely unknown until there was a revival effort to try and bring his works into public eye (by pagans specifically). Read more

First, Jerome is relevant because it shows he knows them all, and he was enough of a historian for that era to probably have looked at all of them. And, ergo, it directly refutes the "and as we know" of the second paragraph.

I had debated about direct-quoting, even with the first exchange, but this confirmed in me to direct quote both. Especially because it gets even worse after that:

No, actually it doesn't. It shows that from Tacitus' writing, until 250 years later, there is no knowledge the Annals even existed.

And as a case in point, you can read Anthony Barrett's book Rome is Burning, which specifically notes a Roman emperor actively went out of his way to rejuvenate Tacitus' works because they had fallen into disrepair and obscurity. This was the Emperor Tacitus (reigned in 275 CE to 276), who specifically ordered Tacitus' works be revived.

As Barrett notes, even in the sixth century, Cassiodorus still refers to a "certain Cornelius [Tacitus]", using distanced terminology that implies his readers probably would have no familiarity, again speaking to Tacitus' poor reception.

Both Sulpicius and Jerome are writing *after* Emperor Tacitus' attempt to revive his ancestor's work. So no, nothing here is incorrect and is in perfect alignment with the historical record. The Annals were a habitually neglected source, and it was only after Tacitus' reputed descendant the Emperor Tacitus revived his reputation that the Annals started coming to people's attention. Thus, around 70 years later, Sulpicius finally reads the Annals and sees that passage, and Jerome finally knows of them later.

OK, an Emperor who is in the middle of the The Imperial Crisis, aka The Decline of the Third Century and reigns 6 months really has time to puff his namesake? And, certainly doesn't have the reign to make it happen, even if he ordered it? And, the Anthony Barrett who barely touches 4 stars with one book, and can't crack 3.5 on most? And, a handwaving interpretation of what Cassiodorus meant, while continuing to reject my comment about Jerome?

Elsewhere, via another comment, linking to a piece of hers? She claims Tacitus is dependent on Pliny. Then, we're at an Aristotelian recess. Why didn't Pliny mention this elsewhere, as in his letter to Trajan, if nothing else? Even if that were, in turn, dependent on Christian tradition, it would have been a place for Pliny to interject it.

Anyway, I promised Crissy the last word. On Reddit, not here. My last word here? Why am I arguing with someone with less academic background than me, who's getting dishonest puffing on r/AcademicBiblical to boot?

And, here's why I think that Correspondence piece can't earlier than 380 CE on the 11th letter. Yes, Christianity was legal before that under Constantine. It didn't become the state religion until 380 CE, under Theodosius I's Edict of Thessalonica.) Obviously, despite failings here and there, the Correspondence knew better than to reference a comment from Tacitus if a legitimate one existed.) Before that, no Christian writer would have felt safe blaming Nero. But, once the gloves were off, people besides Severus could simply have reference Tacitus without creating an interpolation, if the actual Tacitus had written something.

(Update: Per my review of a Melvin Goodman book, this isn't the only bit of suspiciousness from Sulpicius Severus, either.)

And, this leads to me offering further thought on the WHY.

After making Christianity the state religion, Theodosius launched the first attacks on paganism. A Sulpicius Severus would have written his own piece, as well as "dropping a dime" inside Tacitus as alleged proof, in support of these attacks.

"Look at the old Rome! Since the start of Christianity, it has persecuted us!"

Rather than the approach of the biblical gospels and Acts, to have gloves fully on vis-a-vis Rome, it was now time to take the gloves off in service of the New Rome.

A Cerberus of Templeton-prize type ideas

This is a moderately expanded Goodreads review, that may get expanded more economically and posted on my main blog as well. The nature of the header will be clear soon enough in the review.

The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience by Adam Frank
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I interested by the title and the subject matter when I saw it at my library.

Was also apprehensive seeing one of the co-authors. The dust jacket reminded me of what I already had read years ago: Marcelo Gleiser, a second of the three heads of Cerberus on this book, won the 2019 Templeton Prize.

Decided to take it home. First, I researched all three authors. And, if not directly and avowedly so, first and foremost, re this book, all three buy the idea of Gould’s NOMA, or non-overlapping magisteria. I do not. Neither do many other scientists who do NOT practice scientism (which is real, but I knew that long before this book) and who are NOT Gnu Atheists.

On Frank, the NOMA seems very true, but, per more critical reviews of other books of his, this is based on a narrow definition of religion. And, of course, if you define "religion" as "old mythology," it's easy to go down the NOMA road. With Gleiser, when a previous book of his is titled “The Dawn of the Mindful Universe,” enough said. Thompson’s “Why I am not a Buddhist” actually looks decent as far as it goes, but he needs to push harder on the reality of both ancient Buddhism and modern New Agey distillates of it being, yes, religions. Shut up, Bob Wright and fanbois.

OK, so decks cleared.

The key is in the first chapter, where the trio lay six principles that cause “The Blind Spot.”

And, even before I got through, a trio of words came to mind. They are: Stereotyping, handwaving and whataboutism.

Before we dive in on each of the six, two other things:

Titling the first section, after a rhetorical question, as “A Guide to the Perplexed” kind of lets the cat out of the bag for those who know the reference. I assume it’s primarily to E.F. Schumacher’s book. (It has “A” and Maimonides has “The”) with its references to things like “smallism.” When he talks about things like the “evolutionist doctrine” (sic) he sounds exactly like our authors. Although the trio don’t mention things like the “great chain of being,” ideas behind it are behind them, too. Above all is the idea that Homo sapiens needs to be “recentered” in the universe.

The idea that someone like Steven Weinberg might be right, and that we’d be better served philosophically dealing with that reality never crosses their lips or fingers.

If that isn’t enough, before we get to the principles, the authorial trio show themselves to have a big old boner for Husserl. He’s discussed, I think, more than all other 20th-century philosophers combined. In other weirdness there, Chalmers gets more mention than Dennett and the alleged “hard problem of consciousness” gets more discussion than any idea of Dennett. So does Galen Strawson’s version of panpsychism. (Citing Whitehead early on might be a clue as to the trio’s angle.)

Why Husserl? Although the word “bracketing” is not used, “epoché” in his sense is used quite liberally. And, in a much more smooth sense than that of the old joke, “and then, god,” the pause of the epoché, or the “step outside” of bracketing, leave that entirely open.

Now, the six items and my thoughts on: Sterotyping, handwaving and whataboutism.

1. Bifurcation of nature. “Color is only an illusion” stereotypes serious modern philosophy of mind discussion about whether qualia exist, and for that matter, the foundation of traditional empiricism (wrong as it may be for various reasons).
2. Reductionism. Not all reductionism is bad, only greedy reductionism, per greedy reductionist Dan Dennett.
3. Objectivism (not the Ayn Rand version). Like reductionism, there are greedy and non-greedy versions of this.
4. Physicalism: See the trio lapping up on the “hard problem of consciousness” above. Note that elsewhere in the book, they’re careful to avoid the claim that, on issues of mind, they’re not epiphenomenalists. What then, are you? Some “tertium quid,” per John Randolph?
5. Reification of mathematical entities. Mathematical Platonism, as the idea is more commonly known, may well be wrong. But, just the fact that it is wrong, if it is, doesn’t push humans back to a pre-Copernican center of the universe. This may not be exactly what they mean by reification of mathematical entities, but I think they’re wrong otherwise.
6. Experience is epiphenomenal. (Here, not using it in the mental dualist version of epiphenomenal, to which I referred above.) Again, total ignorance, or willful kicking, or a bit of both, just as in item 1, of serious modern discussion on philosophy of mind. Thompson is himself a professor of philosophy; his signing off on points 1 and 6 right here guarantees the book is no more than 2 star.

At that point, it’s checking the index time and grokking. While climate change is mentioned on 10 pages, it really doesn’t get that much discussion. The word “ecology’ is not in the index. Nor is Schumacher! (There is no bibliography, as a side note.)

They do talk about the Gaia hypothesis, and both James Lovelock and Lynn Marguils. She? A 9/11 truther (and false flagger). An AIDS denialist, at least on HIV causing it, and that’s of relevance given the authors’ use of COVID to bash that “good old time fundamentalist science.” And, a rejector of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Symbiosis comes off as something she was looking for precisely because she saw it as a rejection of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and then moved on from it when it was incorporated.

While I’m here? Their info about greenhouse gas science’s start is incorrect. An American woman scientist first postulated the idea 50 years before Arrhenius.

Barry Commoner is referenced briefly. Murray Bookchin not at all. No Wendell Berry, etc etc.

Had the book actually had a chapter on modern ecology, with some in-depth discussion on “recentering humans” and how this would actually avert a sixth mass extinction and a climate crisis (the real problem is overly-human centered neoliberal capitalism), I would forgive its philosophical tendentiousness enough for two stars. If it did a lot more than that, I’d give it three.

The real issue isn't "human centering" or lack thereof. It's capitalism, especially modern neoliberal versions. And, that has humans VERY centered, and, that's the whole problem. Various recent popes have issued pleas for economic social justice and called out the worst of capitalism. Protestants? Fundagelicals have done no such thing. Jews? Probably some sort of splittage.

Anyway, with that, the last jig is up. The trio doesn't want to recenter Homo sapiens, they want to recenter Homo religiousus and some form of religiosity, spirituality, and ultimate metaphysical ground.

As is, this is not a whole lot more than a stylized, intellectually-veneered version of holding one’s breath, Templeton style, especially with the presumption in the subtitle that science is ignoring human experience. It isn't, and neither are philosophers. And, at an average rating at the time of my post of 4.10 stars, it’s overrated anyway. But, it's not worth reading through for a crushing review like I gave Sapolsky. 

Speaking of Sapolsky, one last look at where the trio is wrong on criticizing philosophers.

I've been thinking recently about how memories come up "from the vasty deep," to use the whole poetic phrase.

Who summons them?

If the trio wants to claim it's some conscious "I," I'm giving them a cyber-kick in the nads right now.

The reality is that no such thing happens. Memories pop to the surface of our individual consciousnesses — I can't say of their own free will, because that implies a free will behind them, and "of their own accord" even seems to imply a willer behind that. Per Dennett's "subselves," while rejecting his multiple drafts, as that implies a draftsman as I see it, an impersonal "sea" casts up memories upon the shore of whatever our consciousness is at the time like so much flotsam and jetsam.

And, with that, I turn to the first six of Susan Blackmore's ten meditative questions.

1. Am I conscious now? 2. What was I conscious of a moment ago? 3. Who is asking the question? 4. Where is this? 5. How does thought arise? 6. There is no time. What is memory?

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Did Peter and Paul get offed internally, by internecine Christian disputes? Almost certainly not, and let's deconstruct the bad reasoning

A VERY interesting comment on r/AcademicBiblical, that, if one strips away legendary interpretations of 1 Clement, Peter and Paul may indeed have faced that.

Or may not. We'll get into this below.

So to start, let's look at the possibly very interesting comment:

So then in 1 Clement 5 and 6, it discusses other violence caused by jealousy that has impacted Christian families, at which point Clement says in 7.1: "These things, beloved, we write unto you, not merely to admonish you of your duty, but also to remind ourselves." In short, Clement is admonishing Christians for the previous acts. So what are those previous acts? Well, those also include the deaths of Peter and Paul. 

Scholars have attempted to argue that 1 Clement mirrors Tacitus on the Neronian Persecution where he writes of a great multitude being killed (πολύ πλήθος) and this is argued to be paralleling Tacitus, Annals 15.44 where he writes that a large crowd were killed (multitudo ingens). But this is probably incorrect, the primary reason being that Clement is not talking about a singular event but an accumulation, i.e., he is saying that the deaths of Peter and Paul can be added to sequentially other previous deaths. Thus, this is not a specific event being referenced. Likewise, scholars argue the introduction of the letter may refer to the persecution of Nero or Domitian, but Bernier and others have reviewed the opening and found it is actually kinda just typical of a delayed letter. 

So, there is a good case Paul and Peter were killed by fellow Christians. This would explain also why Luke-Acts ignores Paul's death, because Luke-Acts is obsessed with trying to present the early church as a more or less united front. Christians killing each other is as far from this as one gets. We also know early Christians were not violence averse. The portrayal of both Paul and Peter is that the former was a persecutor himself, had it out against perceived false teachers, and Peter dismembered a Roman guard, killed two people for not giving him money (which some early Christians even interpreted as being extreme, like John Chrysostom), and also some portray him as killing Simon Magus. We also know Peter and Paul also greatly disagreed with each other on multiple fronts (see Galatians 2). So we even have a potential motivation for a lethal intra-community conflict.

There you go.

But? Problematic, as it turns out, as is the commenter in other ways.

First, let's be upfront with the overblown claims.

Annias and Sapphira weren't killed for not giving Peter money. First, they and others gave their money to the church, in the story, which in reality didn't exist. Second, they weren't killed for not giving money; the story is about ALL their money, or not. Third, they weren't even killed for that; they were killed for lying about whether this was their "all" or not. Acts 5 makes that clear!

On the second one? Peter didn't "dismember" the guard, at least not as the word is understood connotatively. The guard doesn't end up like Monty Python's Black Knight; he loses only an ear.

Self-touted independent "scholar" Hansen is getting all sorts of stuff wrong in combination with misinterpreting or overinterpreting. Not surprising.

On the third one? If you're plumping for an early date (late 90s CE, the "conventional" date) you just petard-hoist, since at least in writing, the story of the death of Simon Magus doesn't make its appearance until the Acts of Peter, dated late second century.  OOPPPSSSSS. More on that below.

In addition, standing an "orthodoxer" on his head, Clement citing Titus, and apparently 2 Peter, is proof of its lateness based on their lateness! 

Beyond that, Hansen offers no support for this being an "accumulation," at least not here, just an assertion.

Kind of going down the Jesus mythicism route, Chrissy Hansen appears to be doing Candida Moss (with whom I agree on martyrdoms, or lack thereof) on steroids, and claim that 1 Clement talks about internecine Christian battles leading to both Peter and Paul being killed by Christian subgroups. But, as noted above, wrong. Hansen claims that it reflects a culmination of a list of deaths. But, if you accept Candida Moss that early era martyrological deaths of Christians are likely legend, and you know that Acts' story of Stephen is ahistorical, WHAT "accumulation"? We could have Jesus in Luke 11:51, but that's all Tanakh deaths, and I read Hansen as presenting this as Christian deaths. 

Speaking of? There's two MORE problems, at least.

They begin with the fact that this "issue," whatever it actually is only runs in Chapters 4-7 of 1 Clement. Second, per this translation, the most modern of the three at Early Christian Writings, we have issues in chapters 6 and 7.

First of all, who the heck are the "Danaids and Dircae" in chapter 6? They're originally women from Greek myth. Per this site, Clement is supposedly referring to Christian women martyred in the style of their deaths. I find that doubtful, to pivot back to Moss. Clement claims these women are part of "a great multitude of the elect [who] furnished us with a most excellent example." That's Martyr Hagiography 101, and in short, further undermining of the idea that anything in Chapters 4-7 allegedly in semi-current times to author is actually historical.

Second, chapter 7:

These things, beloved, we write to you, not merely to admonish you of your duty, but also to remind ourselves. For we are struggling in the same arena, and the same conflict is assigned to both of us.

That struggle today surely isn't talking about violence unto the point of death at Rome or wherever the actual provenance of 1 Clement was, and ditto at Corinth. Methinks that level of violence would have been picked up 40 years later by Celsus. Rather, per the end of chapter 6, it appears to be about envy and strife in general. Paul talks about being "displayed" in the arena in 1 Corinthians 4 and fighting wild beasts at Ephesus in 1 Corinthians 15. Even if the second is literal, the first is not. To me, it's clear this is a metaphorical struggle in 1 Clement 7.

If Hansen claims otherwise, they're not even close to being a "scholar."

(Up above, the orthodoxer's appeal against this representing an empire-wide persecution and thus as support for early dating means nothing, as there was no such persecution until the third century.)

So, I think thought at first the 1 Clement idea is at least somewhat interesting, and Hansen even has a video about it. Is it plausible? Probably not, and certainly not as Hansen presents it as far as details. Probable? Most likely not, again, especially with the above caveats.

I'm not saying it's 100 percent IMprobable, but the OP on this post, talking about it, does raise issues. I've noted elsewhere that I reject traditional dating of 1 Clement, which may be 130-140 CE, so her interpretation, and that of David Eastman to the same end, may be iffy there, too. And, with that much later of a data, this idea then becomes early Christian urban legend. Eastman offers no suggested date for 1 Clement and appears to accept Tacitus, a very likely interpolation, at face value on Neronian persecution. This started my debate with Hansen which I have eventually ended. (Also at r/AcademicBiblical, ex-Mormon plumps for a conventional date. Shock.) As part of that, I've circled back on earlier writing to update my thoughts on the Tacitus passage being a very likely interpolation.

Hansen (edits from original) also is .... interesting elsewhere. Hansen apparently thinks Shushama Malik is the real deal. I don't. See here for her take. Elsewhere, Hansen gets puffed by KamilGregor, who I don't think a lot of, but, he notes she has NO academic biblical background. See here for publishing CV. Great.

Chrissy Hansen is an example of an independent researcher with no formal degree in Biblical studies and she currently has eight(!) academic publications in Biblical studies listed as forthcoming. In 2022 alone, she managed to publish six journal articles (and in good journals, too).

OK? Not OK. Gregor doesn't disclose that he's a co-author with her at least once. That itself is an ethical issue, and I've already had other reasons to dislike him, too. And, given that at least one of the journals is specifically geared to contributions from people with no academic biblical background, how peer-reviewed are they? They're NOT "academic," by definition, so scratch that.

That's enough there for starters; I'll have a full post about these sidebar issues in another month.

Back to Hansen's original claim.

Let's start by diving in more on the dating.

1 Clement 5 repeats claims that are, in many ways, dependent on the Pastorals, especially 2 Timothy, vis-a-vis Paul's final struggles. (I have long thought of 2 Timothy as being a novelistic short story of pathos and bathos, like a more tragic O. Henry piece.) In addition, re dependence on the Pastorals, or at a minimum, reflecting the same time in early Christian history, it talks about bishops and deacons in chapter 42, and a rule of succession for dead ones in chapter 44.

And, since the last quarter of Acts is non-historical and Paul wasn't a Roman citizen, he had no "appeal to Rome" as a hole card. His desire to get to Spain was surely nothing more than that. Yes, 1 Clement says "farthest limits of the west," but this only gets more spelled out for the first time in the Acts of Peter and the Muratonian Canon, both late second century. Also, here, it comes off like an "A to Z" thing, like Deuteronomy and 70 angels for the 70 nations of the world.

So, that's backup for me agreeing with other scholars (I see what I did) on a late dating for 1 Clement. The pastiche nature of later chapters, which do reflect books like Shepherd of Hermes, is additional reason for that.

And, even if it IS earlier? That's still a nothingburger of Christian legend, per what I said about Acts. Paul in all likelihood never got to Rome in the first place. And, if that's a nothingburger, so is the rest of 1 Clement 5.

Next? While 1 Clement 5 could be read as Peter being killed by inter-Christian strife, it seems more of a stretch on Paul.

There's other problems with that chapter.

When was Paul "driven into exile"? His time in Damascus ended with an engineered escape, not a driving into exile, and nothing else comes even that close. With Peter, to the degree Acts is historical, it mentions nothing about "many labors" for him, and thus we're in legendary territory here.

Rather, it seems more likely that this is all ahistorical, and the author of 1 Clement is simply "spitballing," looking for more modern examples of internecine territory.

Per my thoughts on the end of Acts' ahistoricity, it's possible Paul DID break the temple proscription, bring a goy in, and either get lynched or crucified. Peter? Maybe he got killed along with James. Or killed in the scrum of the Jewish revolt. But, neither of those would be internecine Christian violence.

But, the radical idea of this Hansen person, that Paul and Peter offed each other? Laughable. And, the claim that 1 Clement offers serious support for that? Even more laughable. (I am surprised that Hansen didn't invoke the idea I have about Paul's demise in Acts, and say that Peter was behind it. I might halfway believe that.)

It's like Robert Eisenman perusing the pseudo-Clementines and coming up with bullshit. And, since he's a semi-mythicist, Hansen ought to oppose that, too. 

Oh, while I'm here? That idiot Carrier thinks 1 Clement was written in the 60s. The "orthodoxer," inverted above, crushes such stupidity.

Oldest manuscript of Jesus' alleged infancy found

 Of course, the word "alleged" is nowhere in the CBS News story about the discovery of the oldest manuscript fragment of The Infancy Gospel of Thomas. (Without the "alleged" or similar up front, the story is kind of clickbait.) Official news release from Humboldt University in Berlin, which had the manuscript in its possession without knowing what it was, is here.

The two key takeways?

First, this manuscript was dated 4th-5th century; the previous oldest IGT manuscript is from the 11th century. This is only 13 lines, so not of much use in text criticism.

Second? It's in Greek. Authors say that confirms Greet as the language of the original.

Because of the date and language, it's also cited by the authors as confirming second-century authorship.

What that shows is that, beyond the Protoevangelion and the various Pseudo-Acts, that "wild" stories about Jesus were developing fairly early in the Christian tradition. The fragment at hand, for example, includes the story about bubbe Yeshu creating clay sparrows and clapping them into life.

A broader takeaway, which ties to desire for specific dating of composition of IGT? The pericope at hand would indicate that Christians, on "work on the Sabbath," thought this was an issue for mocking Jews; indeed, the entire Gospel seems to have Jewish-Christian separation as its main focus. Any early church fathers calling it Gnostic are almost certainly referring to the Gospel of Thomas.

A third takeaway, not specific to the IGT? There's probably still other manuscripts of biblical books, or at least of church fathers, still floating unidentified in the archives of universities and research institutions.