missus_gumby

Carin Nel -- you forgot to mention that some the material in the post above is not of your own fair hand.

It is from http://www.christianity.co.nz/eye-6.htm

... you also forgot this (from the same site):

I'm sure you meant to do the right thing, but forgot.

Missus Gumby

mithy73

I don't see how this helps establish anything.

Speculation.

Only if you blatantly ignore the implications of the term "handed down to us".

Which may in itself be a literary device: "Theophilus" simply means "Lover of God".

Based on what?

Based on what?

Er.... hang on. On what basis do you assert that Luke arrived in Palestine in 30?

How old would Mary have been in 57? Seventy-five? Eighty? How likely is it that a first-century Jewish peasant woman would have lived that long - irrespective of the question of whether she would have imparted personal details about herself to Luke?

That's debatable - some have asserted that the "we passages" are a literary device.

Paul, however, wasn't an eyewitness, by his own admission.

Sven

He was already reminded at least twice on other occasion to be aware of copy right. Apparently, he simply does not care.

Carin Nel

Absolutely! I appologise!
My sources were:
Dake's Annotated Reference Bible

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/rusty...testament.html

http://www.christianity.co.nz/eye-9.htm

http://www.christianity.co.nz/eye-6.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Go to the four Gospels – Authors, eye-witnesses, Dates, Evidence (internal , external as well as historical and archaeological evidence.

Regards,
Carin Nel

Polycarp1

First item: the term Gospel (evangelia) as used in early Christian writings was almost never a referent to a book, but rather to the "Good News" of Jesus's Atonement and Resurrection, taken by Christian converts to be a means of salvation. (Whether or not there is any truth in that understanding does not affect the historical fact of what it meant. Ergo, the Scripture quotes given earlier about "the Gospel with Paul taught," etc., do not mean a book but a theology.

The technical title of each of the Gospels is, "The Gospel of Jesus Christ According to Saint Matthew," "...Saint Mark," "...Saint Luke," and "... Saint John the Divine." While this is generally held to construe authorship, it might also have been used to describe the originator of the tradition recorded, the first source for the contents.

Second item: Roger Pearse seems to be hung up on the distinction between the Apostles and their following, as described in the Gospels and Acts, and the authors of the four Gospels. That figure A may have existed does not necessarily make him the proprietor of all that legend may have ascribed to him; the historical researches into the King Arthur legend complex and its historical roots should be a good secular parallel example. In other words, "Matthew Levi," tax collector turned Apostle, and the person who produced the final canonical "Gospel According to Matthew," may or may not have been the same person, and very likely were not.

As Diogenes is aware, I came up with the Powell hypothesis completely independently of Powell, and have explained it in two other Internet sites in the past.

Third item: It is a valid though weak argument in doing the dating of the Gospels to presume that they must all postdate 70 AD owing to the references to the destruction of Jerusalem. The reason is that it assumes the total invalidity of predictive prophecy. In my personal opinion, it is definitely the way to bet, because the narratives seem to assume that everyone reading them is aware of the fulfillment of Jesus's prophecies about the fall of Jerusalem. However, in discussing matters Biblical, I consider it wise to keep an open mind, and suggest only that the date is most probably after 70, because....

The ongoing assumption of scholarship is that Mark was in fact written first, because it gives the most mundane, basic account of the three Synoptic Gospels, which Matthew and Luke embellish. The alternative construction, that Mark produced a "Reader's Digest Condensed Matthew," makes little sense except to those wedded to the idea that Matthew as we have it must have been written first. It may also be noted that the ending of Mark is either abrupt or lost.

IMO, the likelihood is that Matthew Levi, elderly apostle, wrote or dictated a collection of teachings of Jesus, the Logia document referenced by Papias, and that he did so "in the Hebrew language." (There are an interesting set of arguments as to whether this was in fact Aramaic, not Hebrew, which are purely a sidelight to what we are dealing with here.)

Again IMO, the Logia document was in fact the hypothetical Q source of sayings tapped into by both canonical Matthew and Luke.

The first gospel-as-we-know-it to be produced was undoubtedly Mark, with the most mundane portrait of Jesus and the one most devoted to his actions as opposed to his teachings. It's traditionally ascribed to John Mark, youthful companion of Paul and Barnabas referenced in Acts.

An otherwise unknown editor in Antioch took Mark and used it as a frame on which to place the Matthew/Q teachings, rendering them freely into Greek and grouping them largely into five main "sermons of Jesus" (e.g. the Sermon on the Mount of ch. 5-7, the Eschatological Discourse of ch. 23-25). A strong tendency to portray Jesus as the promised Messiah and fulfillment of supposed Old Testament prophecy, sometimes twisted all out of its original meaning, was another element in its production, including an Infancy Narrative told from the perspective of Joseph. Since it drew on the Matthew Logia collection, it came to be known as the Gospel According to Matthew.

Meanwhile Luke, the physician companion of Paul, or someone writing under his name, did a similar portmanteauing of Mark and the Logia Matthew/Q, adding in other material which he had collected, including an Infancy Narrative with a focus on Mary. I believe it is safe to assume that Luke is the more accurate witness as to the time and meaning of teachings from Q where Luke and Matthew differ (often). There is a very early teaching that Luke befriended Mary the Mother of Jesus in Ephesus in the course of his travels and became quite close to her, including allegedly painting her portrait (which gives rise to another intriguing side discussion not germane here).

John Bar Zebedee, one of the Sons of Thunder, is alleged to have settled in Ephesus and to have died a natural death at a very old age. Presuming him to be ten years younger than Jesus and surviving until about the age of 90 makes him a potential author of the Fourth Gospel. However, it is written in fluent scholarly Greek with a solid knowledge of the Logos theology of Philo Judaeus, something he might well have learned before producing it but also militating against the ascription to him as author. Rather, he is most likely the source from which the shadowy figure "John the Elder" mentioned as distinct form the apostle obtained the factual information and much of the theology incorporated in it. It is clear that the Fourth Gospel is a vehicle for philosophical and theological thought rather than a fact-based document, simply from an analysis of the symbolic language of the contents. An editor's hand is also visible here, notably in the appending of chapter 21.