graymouser

A lot of recent threads here have made me wonder about one big question:

What corroboration is there that a single word of the New Testament was written before 100 CE? Internal dating (which seems the most common method) and claims of apologists notwithstanding, is there any reason to suppose a pre-100 CE origin of any NT text?

(For those curious, I use 100 because anyone involved with whatever original movement there may have been should have been dead by then.)

-Wayne

Toto

None

There are no documents or even scraps of documents that date before 100 CE. The internal dating is all suspect (see the thread on dating Paul's letters). Passages that refer to destruction and devastation are assumed by most scholars to relate to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, but might as well refer to the consequences of the Bar Kochba rebellion around 132 CE.

The German scholars of the Tübingen school who initiated the "higher criticism" concluded that the NT documents dated to the second century, based primarily (I think) on references to them in the early church fathers. Pushing them back to the first century has been a matter of apologetics, not new data.

Bernard Muller

Toto:
If we had some from the 1st century, that would be a miracle! If you look at the writings from antiquity, you are not going to find scraps which track closely the date of first publishing. Our oldest manuscripts of Josephus' works is from the 9th/10th century. That one example among thousands. We are not in modern times here!

Too bad that Paul did not think his letters would be scrutinized for dating. He had no idea! If he would know the world and his sect would kept going, and going, and going, he would have given some details about the dating. But he did not. That was not an issue then and the initial recipients of the letters knew when they were first written.

Jerusalem was all destroyed then and never rebuilt since 70. Where is the evidence of its destruction (again in 132-135) and its rebuilding after 70?
I would not consider my dating (roughly 70-105) as suspect. My site on that:
Gospels, internal & external dating

Since when these German scholars are the authorities on that matter? Or the reference for this "pushing back"? Even Doherty has one gospel written before 100.
These scholars also assume those works came out of the gate with a particular appellation, 'gospels', complete with alleged authors, and were considered so sacred they had to be acknowledged and commented upon immediately.
Also, many writers, with their works, got acknowledged by others much later. Such a case is Josephus, mentioned by Justin around 160 (and that work is contested). Late acknowledgment is the rule, not the exception for books from the ancients.
By the way, I am not an apologetic. I just studied the matter for years, not jump on some assumptions.

Best regards, Bernard

Cretinist

Toto is not saying the temple was rebuilt and destroyed again...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kochba

funinspace

The short answer is nada. The earliest fragments of texts are from the 130's to 140's if I remember right. The oldest near full copy of any book is from around 200-220AD. Everything else is internal evidence, and later quotes of quotes.

DK

Bernard Muller

Cretinist:
But GMark alludes to the destruction of the temple itself (14:58) and anything
stone on stone, great buildings, in Jerusalem (including the temple) (13:1-2). That happened in 70, not 132. What the Romans (Turnus Rufus) did before they rebuilt Jerusalem after 135, was to plow through the remaining foundations of the temple and adjoining areas.

Best regards, Bernard

Vinnie

""""""The German scholars of the Tübingen school who initiated the "higher criticism" concluded that the NT documents dated to the second century, based primarily (I think) on references to them in the early church fathers."""""

You obviously have some crucial methodological errors here. Speaking of apologetics, when an early church father references a gospel that is the documents LATEST possible dating, not its earliest. So when Justin Martyr writing ca 150 C.E. evinces knowledge of a harmony of Matthew and Luke we know these Gospels can't be dated any later than early 2d century. Mark predates both Matthew and Luke as well given the most probable resolution of the synoptic problem which is Markan priority.

The only plausible dating for Mark is ca 70 C.E. for internal reasons. Given developmental time we can roughly approixmate Matthew and Luke as 80-110 given Justin's attestation. One must grant at least a generation for development and harmonization.

My understanding is that Clement writing before the turn of the first entury attests to first Corinthians at least.

Oh yeah, I found Crossan, Koester and co. somewhat convincing on the PN in the Gospel of Peter. Independent of the canonicals and part of it may apparently have developed ca 50 C.E. (Crossan 'Cross that Spoke' and 'Who Killed Jesus').


Vinnie

Toto

But a latest possible date of the mid 2nd century is still in the second century. A date for Mark in the first century would mean that this important and influential gospel existed for decades without being mentioned by church fathers, which seems a little improbable.

I am not saying this is the solution to dating the gospels. I was only saying that this was the reasoning of those who dated the gospels to the second century. I do not myself have a convincing solution to the problems.

judge

Which church fathers might we have expected to quote Marks gospel prior to the mid 2nd century?

Kosh

ALL of them!