The Darkener Age

I've long had an interest in that "Late Antiquity" / "Dark Age" dichotomy. Late Antiquity for Syrians; Dark Age for Europeans... and Greeks... and Iranians. Fun times for Vikings, Arabs, and Avars tho'.

The Dark Age and, for that matter, the Arabs and even the Talmud didn't come out of nowhere. I am pondering how Late Antique thought led into this total collapse of reason and international trust, finally of peace. In that light, let's consider what the Copts were doing.

Maybe Ehrman is right about an Orthodox Corruption Of Scripture. But that's only because Greek and Latin scripture got copied in Greek and Latin. The Copts had their own orthodoxy whose adherents made their own copies: at least two major editions of Sahidic Mark are known. If those copies don't survive we must consider for our first explanation that Sahidic overall did not survive as the Copts' main tongue. So: how did Sahidic-speaking Egyptians do, as transmitters of ancient lore.

Athanasius warned us in "Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter", ed. Perikles-Petros Joannou, Fonti, Fasciolo IX: Discipline générale antique (II^e–IX^e s.), vol. 2: Les canons des pères grecs (Rome: Tipographia Italo-Orientale S.Nilo, 1963), 72 that his contemporaries churned out work after work of lies.

Here's Alin Suciu on the context of Berlin 22220, Mirecki's Gospel of the Saviour. It turns out that Athanasius was right, at least about the Sahidic monks. Chalcedon occasioned - in reaction - a new Nile of forged New Testament literature. Usually the miaphysites laundered their tripe through sermons claiming textual support from documents found in the Jerusalem area; some of those sermons being pseudepigraphal themselves, foisted upon Cyril's opponent John Chrysostom for one (ironic) example. All very Morton Smith - which has made many scholars wonder if Smith himself was running a parody.

As the late liar Harry Reid would say it worked, didn't it. Imagine if the Copts had expended this energy on mathematics, astronomy, and hydro-engineering. Imagine if they'd just transcribed their own Demotic library - and despair.

What I am saying is that, as of the time of the Talmud, was also the time of Chalcedon; few hands were clean. If Jews thought contemporary Coptic clerics (for one) were a gang of devious and disgusting liars, and unintelligent at that given they couldn't even lie well - frankly, they'll hear no argument from this blog.