@josephzizys if you look back you will see that I specifically pointed out that I admired your attempt at least to lay out principles for your determination of early versus late. I apologize that this post has caused such anger to arise in you and led to such unkind words. 
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Not sure which unkind words your refering to @yeshe.tenley but feel free to take them with that grain of salt you where talkimg about, I mean no lasting harm to you or to others I criticise, but sometimes i do get carried away. Please know that i value your contributions here, however I will not hesitate to ‘clap back’ if you ruffle my fearhers.
Specifically, I do not believe that was at all accurate nor kind.
You might not like my criticism but you should understand what it is and is not. I am not criticizing your sincere attempt at intellectual study of the construction and historical context of the Pali canon or the agamas. As an intellectual exercise I think it is just as well motivated as many other intellectual exercises. I too share such curiosity and I do not lament anyone trying to honestly study it in an objective way. It is admirable that you lay out specific principles that guide your understanding. I specially pointed out your attempt to do this stood in contrast to my mind with the lack of it in other scholarship. I also very much appreciate the outputs of your scholarship: the lists of parallels and so on.
When it comes to religion versus scholarship I am aware of the differing motivations that can take place. Those who do not have a religious view are much less likely to bring religious view in as part of their priors through the back door of their scholarship. Which isn’t to say that those who practice are inevitably biased in their scholarship. Maybe it is even more important for them to set out and be clear about objective principles they use to guide their scholarship than those with non-religious view.
Those without a religious view are also capable of bringing in underlying bias through the back door of motivated reasoning. Which again is why I admire your attempt at listing objective principles because at least you’re putting out your priors for all to see: your attempt to shut the proverbial back door.
I disagree with the certainty you evince that your particular list of objective principles are necessarily the right ones.
I disagree that any method of scholarship can lead to an objectively quantifiable certainty of conclusions.
I disagree that any method of scholarship should lead to certainty over the authenticity of dhamma that should be practiced.
Perhaps. I intended the above statement as an honest sentiment. I guess I was hoping that those on this forum might care about me and have some compassion for it. I don’t have a lot of dhamma friends in my non-online life. It was my impression that this website was meant as not only a place for scholarship but also a place for friendly people and dhamma friends to talk about dhamma and share support and encouragement.
It certainly is @yeshe.tenley and I hope you can forgive me for being harsh with you, as I say, I appreciate your contributions here, and am interested in your ideas regarding logic and Buddhism.
Nevertheless, this is one of those threads that was explicitly made to explore a scholarly debate about the evidence for the 12DO as a composite list. You decried it as stressful and made an argument as to it’s unsuitability for the community here, ostensibly on the grounds that it might impact the confidence of religious practitioners. This argument has been made before on this board, even in this thread, and it is a bad argument. It stifles scholarship and critical thought in the service of people who find critically thinking about their religion so frightening that they lose confidence in their practice. Well, those people can simply mute or ignore anything that they can’t handle, and allow those of us who actually gain confidence from critical inquiry to go about our business.
I should not be required to stop thinking and speaking because it makes someone else uncomfortable.
While this remains a place to study the EBT’s that is what I will continue to do.
Once again, this is definitely the case and once again, I appreciate your contributions.
It is true that this thread stresses me out and I do fear others will be dissuaded from faith in dhamma. I will take your clap back as a reminder to work to abate my fears and not let them cause the unwarranted casting of aspersions on others.
Setting that aside, I also criticize the relative lack of rigor in the definitions of what constitutes evidence and principles for knowing in the critical textual analysis and historicity I see on this forum. As you hopefully know now that was not aimed in your direction. Nor was it aimed in any particular persons direction. I see your list of principles as a good faith attempt at providing some level of rigor towards objective principles for ways of knowing the historicity of the canon.
If threads like these continue - as I’m sure they will - I’d like to encourage more agreement or debate on a consensus for a list of objective principles. If such agreement or consensus cannot be found, then the next best thing to my mind would be transparency of priors and ways of knowing accompanying any purported textual analysis of the historicity of the canon. I’d like to encourage others to follow your example in this.
A relative minority are well versed in the techniques of historicity and critical textual analysis. Many take the uncertain conclusions that can accompany this field for certainties even with the admirable hefty caveated language of scholars. When you combine that with religious practitioners who are not as well versed or who are more comfortable following the word of their spiritual leaders I see fertile ground for non-beneficial consequences. Non-transparency with priors and a lack of rigor with principles can act as exacerbating factors.
I’ve tried to be careful and kind in the above criticism and not to let my fears cast unwarranted aspersions. Please let me know if I’ve failed.
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There was a bunch of suttas in MN that appeared to not have parallels until scholars published the table of contents of the Sarvastivada DA that was discovered. Turns out many of them are there instead of in MA. I’ve seen very close parallels of Theravada suttas quoted in the Sariputra Abhidharma, as well. To my knowledge, none of those parallels are documented in SC’s database currently. We don’t actually have a complete listing of all the existing parallels to work with at this point, let alone worry about the ones that have been lost. As I said before, there’s alot of basic work that’s not been done yet. People need to realize that they don’t have all the data at hand to form conclusions at this point.
So, we might want to hold off a bit on deciding whether suttas that appear questionable should be judged unauthentic. It’s easier to look at the ones that clearly are authentic because they have multiple parallels that match well, as you say. My only caveat about that is that there are cases that look like later developments that became a general consensus. It’s just not an easy thing to sort out without a systematic study of parallels in multiple languages to tease out the non-obvious patterns.
The texts that don’t have parallels are in an undetermined limbo to me. It’s like they say in archeology: “Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.” Unanswered questions have to wait for new discoveries to hopefully clear them up.
Judging whether a sutra is presectarian I think requires that we have a Mahasamghika canon to discern what was added (if anything) after the first schism. But … we don’t have that. The Ekottarika Agama is the closest thing to that kind of source. And it is rather fascinating to read and compare to Theravada suttas. Sometimes they are very close!
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Very true, and enough data to form accurate conclusions may not appear any time soon.
So perhaps a more important issue is how to practice with out the certainty.
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But thats my point! The discovery of new evidence improved the bonifides of the suttas in question, before there was doubt, after, that doubt was lessened. therfore we should acknowledge that suttas with known parallels have a better claim to authenticity than those that dont.
None of this has anything to do with my practice. I am intersted in the material itself. How it developed, how it evolved, what philosophies it supports, to what extent, and where, none of it is practice related for me, I am interested in the study of early buddhist texts because they are fascinating, not because i need them for practice.
I can see four possible interpretations for this:
- You are secure enough in your practice that your scholarship has no effect
- You don’t practice your scholarship
- Both
- Neither
Fascinating. I wonder if this is one of the undeclared 
My point was that before that was discovered, they would have been questionable if we assumed suttas without parallels were not authentic. It’s only because parallels were discovered that we change our minds about them, but they had parallels the entire time.
If we had a Dharmaguptaka canon, most of the suttas in the Theravada canon that still lack parallels would probably have parallels. The two canons are nearly identical to each other. So, my assumption is that suttas missing parallels probably had parallels that are lost. Some may not, but on balance they are more likely to have had some kind of parallel somewhere. This makes the whole argument about parallels or no parallels moot. The real issue is the contents of suttas and how sectarian traditions changed them, not whether they have parallels or not.
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Suppose, in a highly simplified and not realistic scenario, that the Pali Canon contained 10,000 suttas, and another Parallel Canon contained 10,000 suttas. Now consider the venn diagram of these two canons, where the intersection is those suttas which are common to both.
Suppose there were 1,000 suttas in the Pali Canon with no parallel, 9,000 with a parallel, and 1,000 in the Parallel Canon with no parallel. In this highly simplified scenario, suppose that a sutta which is in the intersection is known with 100% certainty to be authentic, but a sutta not in the intersection is known with 100% certainty to be inauthentic.
In that case, without knowledge of the Parallel Canon, any particular sutta in the Pali Canon has a 90% chance of being authentic. Upon finding a parallel, this probability shoots up to 100%. Also suppose that finding/translating suttas in the Parallel Canon takes a very long time
The takeaway is that one can maintain two things at the same time, and not be in contradiction:
- Any particular sutta in the Pali Canon, even if a parallel has not been found yet, is still 90% likely to be authentic
- Finding a parallel to a particular sutta raises the probability that the sutta is authentic.
Its basically number 1 @yeshe.tenley my “practice” is simply to try not to lie cheat steal lose my temper or get sh*tfaced, read the dhamma (all schools), and meditate.
I mean, in some sense my interrogation of the EBT has to have an “influence” but its not going to alter the above, maybe just mostly on how tightly i grasp the texts as being “what the buddha said” which is probably beneficial for my type, but i acknowledge might not be particularly helpful for people more prone to losing faith.
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We could say though that the suttas which find a parallel in the EA are very, very early. If they have a Sarvastivadin version too then even better.
What does it mean “very, very early”?
Or kill people. And remembering to talk to the animals rather than eat them.
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You can add one more explanation for the existence of such a variety of descriptions for DO - from A NOTE ON PAṬICCASAMUPPĀDA by Ven. Nanavira:
Paticcasamuppāda is, in fact, a structural principle (formally stated in the first Sutta passage at the head of this Note), and not one or another specific chain of sankhārā. It is thus an over-simplification to regard any one given formulation in particular terms as paticcasamuppāda. Every such formulation exemplifies the principle: none states it.
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This is/was a great thread. I have a question which is slightly off-topic (but kinda not) which I didn’t see addressed above:
Was the phrase *dvādasa nidānāni (my guess at what a Pāli reconstruction of “the twelve nidānas” would look like) late? What’s the first attested appearance of the term or, better yet, the application of the appellation nidāna to the twelve links? Does anyone know?
Thank you.
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Not sure what’s meant by ‘reconstruction’, but that’s indeed what the Pali means.
No one knows which texts are earliest, although there is plenty of conjecture.
The middle ground might be to have suspicions and discussions but not hard views.
The links below cover a few of the beliefs and views that people held fast to but were abandoned when more information came to light.
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