#41
Jan 20, 2013
#41
Euthymius,
Regarding the Council of Carthage in 484: this was not one of the ecumenical councils, so one shouldn’t expect it to be listed where that category is covered. Try looking in other parts of your
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, consulting some of the movers-and-shakers who were at the 484 Council of Carthage, such as Huneric and Eugenius. (Be sure
to take spelling-variations into account if you are conducting a digital search; for instance, search for “Hunneric” as well as “Huneric,” and for “Vigilius Thapsensis” as well as “Vigilius Tapsensis.”)
E: “How come this “Council” isn’t mentioned in the Oxford Dictionary?”
I dunno. Maybe it is, but you’ve been looking in the wrong place.
E: “And, in addition, where is the list of all the ‘real scholars’ that support Avery’s claim in all
of this nonsense? All from the 19th and earlier centuries?”
We have the Latin account of the 484 Council of Carthage, composed by a participant. How would statements from recent scholars make this more credible than it already is?
E: “The Latin volume Avery cited – “
See John Moorhead’s English translation of Victor of Vita’s work. Quite a bit of it can be consulted in preview-mode at Google Books.
E: “The preface notes that the earlier manuscript concerning this supposed "Council" dates from only the 9th century.”
And the earliest full manuscript of Justin Martyr’s
First Apology is several centuries younger than that.
Does the account, complete with a list of the hundreds of bishops in attendance at the council, look anything like a forgery to you?? Do you have any grounds to suspect an interpolation other than the idea that a text that utilizes the CJ cannot be genuine because it utilizes the CJ?
E: “For whatever reason, this “Council” is apparently
not so highly regarded by the “real scholars”” –
Because most “real scholars” are unaware of it. Metzger avoided specifically mentioning the 484 Council of Carthage in his
TCGNT. The “real scholars” only know that “In the fifth century the gloss was quoted by Latin Fathers in North Africa and Italy as part of the text of the Epistle;”
they are not told that the CJ was specifically cited in Latin at a council at Carthage in 484 attended
by 466 Africa bishops, led by Eugenius, in order to demonstrate their grounds for believing in the Trinity, in opposition to the Arian doctrine that was, at the time, state-sponsored by the Vandals there. But that is the event to which Metzger hazily alluded.
Brandpluckt:
Regarding the Unitarian writer J. Scott Porter’s attempt to downplay the 484 Council of Carthage: a close reading shows that he does not question the historicity of the council or that the CJ was utilized at the council. He only mentions that
(a) Vigilius Tapsensis, one of the bishops in attendance, is more likely to be the author of the record of the council than Eugenius himself,
(b) Vigilius Tapsensis wrote other compositions in which he used, as his pen-name, the names of earlier writers, and in two of these other compositions he also utilized the CJ.
Porter merely suggests that a case could be made that the Council of Carthage, plus the testimony of Vigilius Tapsensis (or Thapsensis), should be reduced to the weight of a single witness (i.e., he suggests that the 13th, 14, and 15th witnesses to the CJ in Porter’s list amount to one witness). Now, it might be counter-suggested that Porter, as a committed Unitarian, has attempted to
minimize this piece of evidence by resorting to speculation and less-than-candid verbiage, so as to draw readers away from the natural conclusions that Eugenius, the leader of the Trinitarian African bishops, was the one who presented the CJ,
and that all the Trinitarian bishops in attendance, via their affirmation of the decree, assented to its authority. But of course that would be ad hominem, and we just can’t have that; no; our natural inclination should be to assume that the Unitarian writers of the 1800’s were models of scientific objectivity, and never tried to skew the evidence.
B: “WR kept [cautioning against some lines of reasoning when facing] well-prepared defenders” of the CJ.
By which I meant that if you object that the CJ has hardly any Greek-manuscript support, a novice CJ-supporter, or a casual bystander, will find that intimidating, but a well-prepared one will fire back,
“So? Readings in NA28 in Acts 16:12, and I Peter 3:10 have no Greek manuscript support whatsoever. Lots of readings in NA28 are supported exclusively by one manuscript. The CEV’s reading in Acts 20:28 has no Greek support. The text of Mark 1:41 in the 2011 NIV is based on a reading found in only one Greek manuscript. The NET, in the Old Testament, frequently abandons the Hebrew text, and adopts readings for which there is no Hebrew support. You cannot deny that Hort, without whose effort to replace the KJV we wouldn’t be having this discussion, believed that primitive errors have resulted in the corruption of all Greek
manuscripts at numerous places in the New Testament, including First John 5:10.
Our listeners might somehow get the impression that you admire the brilliant scholarship that supports a reading in First John 5:10 for which there is no Greek manuscript-support, but regard as absurd the very idea that a reading in First John 5:7, for which there is some late Greek manuscript-support, is original. There is no way that you can say that the lack of early original-language manuscript-support for a reading is automatically decisive against it, unless you wish to condemn these other works, which you seem to routinely regard as the best that modern scholarship has to offer. Is that all you’ve got? ‘Hardly any Greek manuscripts contain these verses’? Then you don’t have much.” If you want to only engage novices, or if you want to give a well-prepared CJ-supporter a platform for this sort of response, then by all means, ignore my advice.
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
=====================================================
Jan 21, 2013
#44
Euthymius,
E: “Duhhh....
how
can it be the “wrong place” when the
entry is “Carthage,
Councils of”, and lists various Councils dating from 251 through 534 ?”
(You're not using an abridged edition, are you?) One way might be if the editors made a decision to
differentiate between Councils that produced some sort of doctrinal declaration
intended to be binding upon all of Christendom, and Councils that did not; the
latter group would be called, instead, a conference of bishops.
E: “I have no grounds to suspect that
document or Council as being authentic in view of
all other
scholars seeming to
reject its authenticity.”
You mean scholars like
(1) Phyllis Jestice, author of the 2004 book Holy People of the World: A Cross-Cultural Encyclopedia at books.google.com/books?isbn=1576073556 who mentions the 484 Council of Carthage on page 263?
(2) Vincent J. O’Malley, author of Saints of Africa, who mentions the 484 Council of Carthage on page page 91?
(3) The producers of the Ecole Glossary listing at
http://ecole.evansville.edu/glossary/victorv.html
(4) Charles Joseph Hefele at
http://www.cristoraul.com/readinghall/W ... 2/214.html
? (This, after just a few minutes of searching on the internet.)
Most scholars, in the course of summarizing church history, tend to give only scant attention, if any, to
the history of the North African church in the late 400’s, perhaps because the
historical trail in Vandal-controlled territory essentially comes to a dead end,
thanks to Belisarius. The North African history of the area
that was under Vandal control tends to be a low priority among
textbook-writers. But the specialists routinely acknowledge the historicity of the 484 Council of Carthage; I think that the most that can be said for the claim that there was no Council of Carthage in 484 is that there are some researchers who would prefer to call it a conference of bishops, rather than a council. Afaik, you are the only person who has questioned the basic historicity of this event as if it involved hundreds of unicorns instead of hundreds of bishops.
E: [WR: “Metzger avoided specifically mentioning the 484 Council of Carthage in his TCGNT.”]
This couldn’t perhaps be because of the virtually
universal non-acceptance of such a Council as authentic?
No, because
Metzger, being a competent scholar, would not have denied the existence of such an obviously historical event as the 484 Council of Carthage. But,
being as competent a propagandist as he was a scholar, he minimized its importance and declined
to mention it by name, since it features the CJ in use at a council (or, conference of bishops) where the Trinitarianism-versus-Arianism dispute was the focal point.
E: “It apparently can’t be demonstrated
that
any modern orthodox Trinitarian scholar is exactly jumping
wildly to endorse the historical existence or the statements of that Council
either?”
See above. Perhaps
what you have demonstrated is that the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian
Church needs some work, and is not the exhaustive volume that some seem to think that it is.
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
==================================================
Jan 22, 2013
#47
Brandpluckt and Euthymius,
Brandpluckt,
I don’t grant that “the entire conservative wing of the
church” has rejected the CJ. The KJV -- CJ
and all -- remains very popular. But, to
get as close as I can to answering your question: it looks to me like the CJ has been rejected by
most branches of the conservative Christian church for three reasons:
(1) its lack of high-quality attestation among Greek manuscripts,
(2) its nigh-exclusive affinity with Latin manuscripts, which implies that it originated in a Latin transmission-stream, and
(3) acquiesce to Unitarian or Unitarian-influenced propaganda on the part of non-Unitarian textual critics who do not want to appear biased or unscientific. (To me, reasons #1 and #2 are sufficient. And I don't think that #3 has been generally pivotal, just existent.)
B: “There were protests of the removal of the CJ in the RV. But no major translation placed it back in.
Why?”
Well, that’s easy enough: the people who disliked the removal of the CJ kept on using the KJV; they had little or no interest in creating a new translation. After the RV and ASV fizzled, most conservatives kept on using the KJV.
B: “If you could,
explain how Porter's Unitarianism made his documentation inaccurate. I am
assuming that you have evidence to the contrary?”
Inasmuch as I lack the ability to read Porter’s mind, it is
impossible to demonstrate that his Unitarianism produced inaccuracies in his
documentation.
B: “Does the "miracle" in the "historical"
account of the Council concern you?”
No.
Euthymius,
E: Why then is there
nothing in the ODCC regarding even a "conference" of this type?
I dunno.
E: [After I provided quotations from Phyllis Jestice, Vincent J. O’Malley, the Ecole Glossary, and Charles Joseph Hefele, mentioning the 484 Council of Carthage]
“And these people are so widely recognized that their works are regularly referenced in other sources relating to church history? Frankly I never heard of any of them, nor have seen any of their names or works referenced in any published church history or
historical theology material.”
What exactly are you saying?
That the only
real scholars are ones that you have heard of
already?? Or that the writers I listed
are, one and all, presenting an event that never happened as if it happened?? It seems to me that “I never heard of that
writer” is not exactly a persuasive demonstration that there is some deficiency
in anything that the writer has written.
E: “Seems like this
is about as good as Riplinger citing her “Harvard graduate” fellow who happens
to totally support her KJVO position...and at best shows you can Google as well
as Avery.”
You must be joking.
First you ask for references, and then mock them (without any reasons
given) when I give you four easily accessible ones.
But surely if I listed inaccessible ones, you would object that they are
too obscure to prove anything. As for your comparison to Riplinger's pseudo-reference:
Phyllis Jestice is a Stanford grad, currently
teaching at the University of Southern Mississippi.
She’s an award-winning researcher; read all about it at
http://www.usm.edu/history/faculty/phyllis-jestice
Hefele was a respected Roman Catholic prelate in the late 1800’s, and his work on the Church Councils was a standard
in its time.
E: [When I mentioned that the
specialists routinely acknowledge the historicity of the 484 Council of Carthage] “Where are those "specialists"?
Certainly not in a few Googled citations.”
Jestice is, and Hefele was, a specialist. What you should be asking, Euthymius, is,
“Where are the writers who claim that the 484 Council of Carthage never happened?”.
E: “What about the
remaining majority of all other scholars in the field?”
What about them? Do
you have a single statement from any of them saying that the 484 Council of Carthage
never happened? If you do, please present it.
E: “Again, you keep
trying to clutch at straws, merely to "assist" the KJVOs in their
futile quest.”
In the case at hand, I don’t think it’s the KJV-Onlyists who
are having difficulty acknowledging historical facts. Here are a few more of those straws:
(1) The Catholic Encyclopedia’s entries for “Eugenius of Carthage”
(
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05602c.htm ) and “Victor Vitensis.”
(2) The page at
http://www.voskrese.info/spl/XvictorVita.html
; the paragraph begins: “Victor of Vita, the author of
Historia persecutionis Africae provinciae (translated as
The History of the Vandal Persecution), was a priest at Carthage who later became bishop of Vita. He refused to attend the 484 Council of Carthage, a joint Nicene-Arian synod, at which Eugenius of Carthage put forth Nicene Christianity.” The author is
Karen Rae Keck, a professor at Texas Tech University.
(3) At
http://www.ancientlibrary.com/smith-bio/1194.html
is a page-scan from
Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. See the entry that begins,
“EUGENIUS, an African confessor, not less celebrated for his learning and sagacity.” Notice the reference to the
stormy council that occurred in Carthage in February of 484.
(4) At
http://www.fpcjackson.org/resources/chu ... andals.htm
notice the paragraph that begins,
“In 483, Huneric summoned the Catholic Bishops to hold a conference with the Arians in February of 484. 464 bishops assembled themselves, though some of the ablest had been detained or intimidated by Huneric.”
Perhaps
you will say that these resources are too new.
In that case, turn to page 106 of
Orme’s Memoir of the Controversy of the Three Heavenly Witnesses (the page-number might vary in different editions, but in any event, the text is searchable at Google Books); there
Nolan mentions the 484 Council of Carthage. On page 187,
Wiseman mentions the bishops who attended the 484 Council of Carthage. On page 48,
Gibbon refers to the 484 Council of Carthage. On page 52,
Travis mentions the 484 Council of Carthage. On page 77,
Michaelis describes the 484 Council of Carthage. On page 94, the 484 Council of Carthage is described in a letter by
J. Benigne, bishop of Meaux. On page 146,
Oxlee mentions the statement of the decree issued at the 484 Council of Carthage, and, in case Oxlee’s opinion is rejected because it comes from Oxlee, also consult Unitarian
Ezra Abbot’s reference to the 484 Council of Carthage in the appendix, on page 183ff. These statements come from people who have made special investigations of the evidence; some of them favor the genuineness of
the CJ and some of them vigorously oppose it, but none of them deny the historicity of the 484 Council of Carthage.
So,
the score so far:
Number of writers who affirm the historicity of the 484 Council of Carthage: 16.
Number of writers who state that there was no such meeting in 484: none.
E: [WR:
"Metzger, being a competent scholar, would not have denied the existence of such an obviously historical event as the 484 Council of Carthage."] Then perhaps he should have mentioned it somewhere else besides his "propagandist" Textual Commentary -- if so, where?
As far as I know, nowhere.
Are you suggesting that because Metzger avoided specifically naming the
484 Council of Carthage, we should
conclude that it did not exist? I know
that the influence of Metzger’s TCGNT is very strong, but to define the
historicity of an event by asking,
“Did Metzger mention it?” would take things
to a whole new level.
This is becoming amusing.
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
==============================================
Jan 23, 2013
#50
Euthymius,
You know how, in Dante’s
Divine Comedy, the deepest portion
of hell is so hot that it’s cold? This
discussion is so amusing that it’s sort of sad.
It should be obvious that there was a Council of Carthage
that took place on Feb. 1 and Feb 2 of 484.
This was a local council, and it involved the participation of an
unknown number of Arians, plus hundreds of Trinitarian bishops. The Trinitarians did not walk out as Frazier claims; instead, as Hefele states, they were
“driven with blows from the place of assembly.” Nor should Frazier’s second mis-statement,
that no one ever read the Trinitarian bishops’ declaration, be taken seriously, since the Arian leader Cyrila’s claim was merely a maneuver to avoid
discussion; it was after this objection to Latin
discussion that the formal document was presented. As for his third objection, regarding the date of the manuscripts, it amounts to nothing but an aspersion of last resort; he has no reason to mistrust their contents. What must he think of the Old Testament text, if he considers a MS from the 900’s, describing events in the late 400’s, to be too far separated from the events it describes to be reliable?? The entry for
Victor Vitensis in the Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church, at any rate, disagrees with Frazier about
this, stating that Victor’s account is
“of special value as giving not only a trustworthy account of the historical events, but also a vivid picture of the political and religious civilization of the country.”
Thus regarding Frazier’s first three claims, to touch them is to destroy them. We now come to his fourth
claim: “Even
if the wording of the Comma as it
appears in the declaration were actually there, again it is in Latin, and we
already know that a Spanish-oriented Latin version of the Comma was in
existence about a century earlier, so
no major surprise if it
were to show up in Latin in North Africa at that time.”
But there’s no “
if,” Euthymius. The wording is actually there. If Frazier has some evidence to the contrary, let him present it. We both know he can’t. He has tried to do two things:
first, minimize the evidence by pretending
that the accounts of the Council might not say what they obviously say.
Second, minimize the implications of the
evidence, as if we really know no more, after
observing that a small army of
North African bishops gave their support to a prepared document in which the
Trinity was affirmed on the basis of the CJ in 484, than we did before; he
tries to guide his readers to the conclusion that since we already know that
Priscillian quoted the text of First John with the CJ around 383, this evidence
from a different locale, in a context in which the CJ was prominently cited in
a setting in which, had it not been widely accepted, it would be exceptionally
vulnerable to be challenged, does not augment the case for the CJ at all.
So quickly we reach his fifth point – which is not even a
point: “All the blather about the so-called ‘Council of Carthage’ in reality proves
nothing, nor
does it help settle or support
any of the KJVO claims regarding
the Comma.” Not only does he descend to name-calling, but he also fails to differentiate between the establishment of
evidence, and the establishment of its implications. If he only aimed to show that the evidence
from the 484 Council of Carthage does not prove that the CJ is genuine, that
would be one thing. But he has attempted
to make a case that the 484 Council of Carthage
never happened, and his attempt is an abysmal failure, and the reason why it
fails is that the facts are against him.
E: “I am saying that
the broad or even huge consensus of scholars of church history and/or
historical theology are
not exactly trumped by a handful of
Googled citations” –
Holdonasecond. You
don’t have any such thing as a huge consensus of scholars supporting your claim
that the 484 Council of Carthage never happened. Now, feel free to spin the events: call it a conference; call
it a ruse by Huneric to get the Trinitarian bishops all in one place. But you can’t serious say that it didn’t
happen; nor can you seriously say that there is a scholarly consensus that the events did not occur, and that Eugenius did not present a written document that cited the CJ as clearer-than-the-light (or, one might say nowadays, plainer than day) support for the doctrine of the Trinity. The consensus to
which you refer is entirely imaginary!
I’ve mentioned 16 authors who affirm the historicity of the 484 Council
of Carthage. Show me the articles you have compiled – not by Frazier, but by scholars such as Hefele or Jestice or Keck – that say that the CJ was not used at the 484 Council, or Conference (no need to quibble over
nomenclature) of Carthage.
E: “Duuhhh once more,
and asking for evidence from silence.”
On the contrary: I'm
objecting to
your resort to argument from silence! You are clearly treating an apparent silence
on the part of some writers (especially the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian
Church) as if it implies “
prima facie evidence that they
don't
accept the Carthage 484 Council as ever having happened.” Right?
Right.
E: “You really have to work
extremely
hard to explain the widespread ‘conspiracy’ among all these scholars to
avoid
mentioning this supposed Council, even while allowing all others to stand intact.”
“All these scholars?”
Would you mind providing a few samples of the names on this long list of
scholars you have collected? How many
have you contacted to ask if they think that the 484 Council of Carthage ever
happened? Not a single solitary one, I
strongly suspect.
E: “What
reason
would there be for the ‘conspiracy’ to avoid such mention?”
Whereas I suspect that
Metzger avoided specifically mentioning the 484 Council of Carthage because he perceived that doing so might draw readers’ attention away from where he wanted to take them, in the case of most scholars and historians, no doctrinally motivated conspiracy is necessary: it’s simply a matter of editorial prioritizing. As I mentioned already, North African church history in the late 400’s is a bit of a dead-end road since Belisarius
destroyed the Vandals in the 530’s. You
can’t expect single-volume works to cover everything thoroughly. I don’t think there is any information in the
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church about Theodelinda, for example, but
that does not mean that she did not exist.
Look to writers who specialize in her era and locale, and you
will find accounts of her accomplishments.
Likewise, consult writings that focus especially on the North African
church – such as
O’Malley’s Saints of Africa – and you will find
references to the historical event known as the 484 Council of Carthage, and
you will see, if you explore the sources, that the CJ was part of the written
exposition of the Christian faith that was presented there by Eugenius, with
the backing of hundreds of bishops.
E: “Your continued
protests on this point make
no sense whatever” –
On the contrary, I consider them quite lucid, and I think
you will too, if you consider them thoughtfully.
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
=========================================================
Brandpluckt,
First, regarding Wiseman’s theory that the Old Latin
originated first in Africa: are you presenting this as an exhibit of incompetence? More effective samples could be chosen, since many others in the 1800’s, and on into the 1900’s, thought
along the same lines. To this day, some
researchers think that the text of Codex Bobbiensis, an “African” Old Latin MS,
is genealogically anterior to all other extant forms of the Old Latin.
But let’s not get distracted: my purpose for citing these authors is simply
to show that when one considers the writings of individuals who have looked into
the evidence pertaining to the CJ, whether they were bright or dim, and whether
they favored the CJ or opposed ithe CJ, it is clear that they regarded the 484
Council of Carthage as a historical event.
Abbot casually mentions “the four hundred bishops assembled
under Huneric at Carthage” and although he questions Wiseman’s citations of Tertullian, Cyprian, et al, he does not press the issue regarding these bishops.
Many thanks for the quotation from Michaelis:
“In this manner the passage having gained admittance into one or more Latin manuscripts written in Africa, it had the undeserved good fortune to be quoted in the Confession of Faith presented at the end of the fifth century by the African bishops to Huneric, king of the Vandals. And as these bishops became martyrs, and were said even to have performed a miracle, the passage, in consequence of its having been quoted in their Confession, not only acquired celebrity, but was stamped with authority.”
That Michaelis regarded the 484 Council of Carthage
as historical, and that he affirmed that the CJ was part of the exposition
faith presented there, cannot be questioned.
Thanks for the correction that what I referred to as a
statement from Oxlee was really from Burgess.
It remains a statement by a specialist, which is all I wanted to show
that it was.
Returning to Abbot: of
course it is not a ringing endorsement; Abbot knew how to frame evidence to
favor his position. But nor is it a
denial of the historicity of the 484 Council of Carthage. It is simply an obfuscation, a loose end to
which, as far as I can tell, he never returned.
B: [Wiseman’s statements] “will impress the academic world!”
Again: I am not trying
to present each and every specialist as a supergenius; I am looking through
their writings to see if any of them deny the historicity of the 484 Council of
Carthage. And, as far as I can tell,
not a single specialist, regardless of theological background, and regardless of whether he
supports or opposes the CJ as part of the text of First John, ever denies the historicity of the 484 Council of Carthage.
Is this your impression as well?
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
============================================
Jan 24, 2013
#54
Sawbones,
S: "Let's take the Council of Carthage in 484 as a given."
Yes; let’s say farewell to the revisionist-attempts to say that there was no
such meeting.
S: "Let's also assume that the attending Trinitarian bishops gave their
endorsement (for whatever that may be worth) to the inclusion of the
Comma
in the materials they left with the attending Vandals."
Or at least, let’s assume that Eugenius and the ten Trinitarian spokesmen believed that the other 436 Trinitarian bishops would, if given the opportunity, echo their affirmation of the authority of the CJ.
S: “Now, whether the Trinitarians were
martyred, or whether or not any miracles were performed, just how does any of
this constitute any sort of proof to the Comma being part of the autograph of 1
John 5?"
It doesn’t. But it
does add to the case that
the CJ was the dominant
reading in the Latin text of First John used in North Africa
in the late 400’s. (This is relatively early evidence – earlier than 95% of the Greek manuscripts of First John, I
reckon.) And, when
combined with Cyprian’s testimony, if Cyprian’s statement is simply interpreted as a slight
misquotation of the CJ, with
“Son” stated in place of
“Word," -- instead of interpreting his statement as a somewhat opaque and juggled allegorical interpretation of First John 5:8 -- then, when combined, these two pieces of evidence may be
used to show that the main Old Latin text of First John used in North Africa contained the CJ from the mid-200’s on into the late 400’s; this was no medieval accretion as far as the Old Latin text of North Africa was
concerned.
If that is established, then the next question must be,
from where did the Old Latin text of First John in North Africa acquire this feature?
Setting aside the question of genuine-or-not, this is an interesting little puzzle in its own right, especially in light of
Cornwall's deduction of a Greek source underlying one Old Latin form of First John 5:7-8. At the beginning of this discussion, I believed that the CJ originated as an interpolation based directly on Cyprian’s statement; I am willing now, however, to interpret
Cyprian’s statement as an inaccurate quotation of something he found in his Latin copy of First John. Which simply means
that Cyprian’s copy of First John contained an interpolation before 5:8. But still, the question of its origin is interesting.
Btw: I recommend to everyone that you download the five-volume
"History of Church Councils" by Hefele (translated into English by a few different translators). All five volumes can be downloaded as PDF's (although volume 4 is a bit elusive).
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
=========================================================
Jan 26, 2013
#60
Euthymius
et al,
I just wanted to chime in to make sure everyone understands that the statements that I previously attribited to Robert V. Frazier were not-altogether-precise summaries of what he has said about the 484 Council of Carthage. Frazier's views are more accurately on display in his own comments, here and over at CARM.
E: "Given that the existing Old Latin manuscripts (except it-ar) have some form of the Comma present, and that it continued to be recognized within the later Latin tradition, I fail to see how much the supposed "Council of Carthage" document actually adds to the issue."
RVF seems willing to grant that a majority of the 461 bishops who attended the 484 Council of Carthage, including Eugenius, their most illustrious leader, accepted the CJ as a genuine part of the text of First John. I'd say that adds to the issue: from observing a smattering of Old Latin support for the CJ in the 400's, we have now deduced the existence of a small army of Latin witnesses favoring the CJ, from North Africa, Sardinia, and elsewhere.
Yours in Christ,
Waterrock
