Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Metacrock · 10-12-2001, 01:45 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Toto:
I have just finished reading the Infidels Book of the Month for August, by Alvar Ellegard, Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ. Ellegard discusses some disputes that we have had here in the past on dating the Gospels

First, in regard to the argument that there are fragments of Mark that can be dated to 50 C.E., or at least before 68, which was developed by Carsten Thiede, and is propounded by Nomad. (Incidentally, I have just re-read that thread, and I am not sure why Nomad thinks that he has any case at all.)

Ellegard demolishes Thiede’s arguments on pp185-186. He states:

1. Thiede’s arguments have been almost universally rejected by experts in New Testament manuscripts. Ellegard notes that he himself has written a book on the use of linguistic statistics to determine authorship, and he agrees with the skeptics. The fragments are too small – about a dozen not very clear letters, distributed over four lines of text – to allow any firm conclusions.

2. However, even if Thiede’s identification of the fragments as Markan is accepted, his conclusions do not follow. The fragments were discovered in Cave 7 at Qumran; that cave is unusual in that it, along with Cave 4, contains Greek manuscripts. But beyond that, all of the identified manuscripts from Cave 7 are in Greek. Thus it can be argued reasonably that Cave 7 has a different history from the other caves. It might well have been used as a hiding place by Christians after the Bar Kokhba rebellion – which hypothesis is supported by the fact that Thiede has found three other fragments in the cave which he identifies as belonging to 1 Timothy and 2 Peter, which scholars typically date well into the 2nd century.

3. Further, even if the passage is from Mark, it may be part of an early text that was used later by the compilers of Mark’s Gospel. The passage contains no distinctive words, and could fit a number of different contexts, or be part of a text about someone other than Jesus.

Now that that has been taken care of, Ellegard presents some interesting arguments for dating the Gospels to the second century. He dates some early Christian writings to around 50 C.E. or at least to the first century, including Paul and the pseudo-Pauline letters, 1 Clement (which he dates to 60 C.E.), the Pastor of Hermes, the Didache, Barnabas, the letter to the Hebrews, and the Revelation of John. He finds a consistency of style and language among these, and a view of Jesus that ignores all of Jesus’ human characteristics.

Ellegard speculates that the early Christians were a offshoot of the Essenes, based on some common features – referring to themselves as the Church of God, and their members as "Saints", the use of a calendar that differed from the Jewish lunar calendar, etc. The Essenes revered a Teacher of Righteousness, who had lived in the past; Ellegard theorizes that around 30 C.E. some members of the Essene community started to have visions of the Teacher, and these visions were the basis of the new religion. Paul also identified his visions with the Teacher, which would explain his references to Jesus as a man born of woman, but with no other details of a life that presumably was very close in time to his own. Ellegard believes that the early church was headed by James, Peter, and Jude, whose names were appropriated by the writers of the Gospels for Jesus’ disciples, but who had no more personal knowledge of Jesus than Paul did.

Ellegard sees the Gospels as fictional accounts written in the second century for the political purposes of the 2nd century church. He believes that they were inspired by Ignatius’ struggle against the Gnostics, and the Gnostic docetics in particular. He finds a different vocabulary in the documents he dates to the second century. The second century documents refer to "disciples" who knew Christ personally, where the first century documents talk about apostles, meaning only those who were preaching the new religion (Paul and Peter were both Apostles in this sense.) The second century documents use the word synagogue to refer to a building, while in the first century documents, it means only a gathering of people.

Ellegard postulates that Ignatius invented the historical Jesus. Ignatius is the first to mention the figures of Mary, the mother of Jesus, or to connect Pontius Pilate or John the Baptist with Jesus, in his letters dated around 110. The Gospel writers then expanded on this base to create historical novels, fleshing out Ignatius’ plot line. Ellegard therefore dates all of the Gospels after Ignatius.

This is an exceedingly brief overview. I recommend reading the book. Some parts of this theory may seem to be conjured up out of whole cloth, but that is probably inevitable given the gaps in real information. I can’t say that I am completely persuaded, but Ellegard’s theory does explain some things that are otherwise a puzzle. And his discussion of Gnosticism is worth the price of admission.

You might wonder how this fits in with the mythicist case put forward by G. A. Wells or Earl Doherty. Doherty’s site contains his review of Ellegard’s book, with a response by Ellegard, and a reply to that by Doherty. Doherty takes a more conventional view of dating the Gospels. He assumes that Ignatius picked up references to this historical Jesus from the different communities who developed the Gospel of Mark, so that Mark and Matthew precede Ignatius.

MEta =>Look, the vast majority of scholars date all the Gospels between 70-90.

see Luke Timothy Johnson the New Testament Writtins and Helmut Koester Ancient Christian Gospels there are many other sources, that's common knolwedge. but those two will do. Both liberal, both highly respected scholars.

Vorkosigan · 10-12-2001, 04:54 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Metacrock:


MEta =>Look, the vast majority of scholars date all the Gospels between 70-90.

see Luke Timothy Johnson the New Testament Writtins and Helmut Koester Ancient Christian Gospels there are many other sources, that's common knolwedge. but those two will do. Both liberal, both highly respected scholars.

Why don't you address Ellegard's arguments?

Michael

10-12-2001, 07:17 AM

I have looked through but not read Ellegard's book in detail. It came out much earlier in the UK. Some initial problems I had with his theory were:

- he seems to think that Clement/Barnabus etc are early due to similarities to Paul. But it seems to me that the closeness is less likely to be the fifty year time gap and more likely to be the fact all are letters.

- while it is possible to explain away many of Paul's references to Jesus, the best explanation by far remains that he was talking about a real man whose brother and disciples were still around. Any other paradigm raises more questions than it answers.

- Ellegard's radical rearrangement of the order of the early documents also means that practically all scholarship on the sub apostolic church goes out the window. While such a shift is possible, it means that he has many more loose ends to tie up than he does in his book. Church hierarchies, missionary work, relations between Latin and Greek churches etc all spring to mind.

- Orthodoxy did not seem to have had the power to effect the complete turn around of the Jesus myth to reality in the time available leaving no trace of the original tradition. This is a problem in common with all Jesus Myth theories.

- Ellegard picks on Ignatius but the only reason to do so is his letters happen to be preserved. Countless other figures could have filled his place if it was their writings that survived. This suggests a less than critical process in Ellegard's research and a lack of understanding about the processes that led to particular works surviving.

- Papyrus fragment p52 rears its ugly head to any attempt to date John after about 110AD. Papias also would have got the very recent past wrong if the Gospels were as late as Ellegard believes.

- Q would have needed to exist for about 100 years before being superceeded by L and M. This makes its lack of survival or any hint of it quite remarkable.

- DSS scholars have throughly debunked the idea that there was anything other than casual cross polonisation by Essenes with early Christianity. The fact that no DSS can be demonstrated as literary predecessors of early Christian writings kills the idea of a close relationship.

I might have some further thoughts if I look at the book more closely but its unlikely as term has started.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Toto · 10-12-2001, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bede:
I have looked through but not read Ellegard's book in detail. It came out much earlier in the UK. Some initial problems I had with his theory were:

- he seems to think that Clement/Barnabus etc are early due to similarities to Paul. But it seems to me that the closeness is less likely to be the fifty year time gap and more likely to be the fact all are letters.

Bede - thanks for actually looking at the book before commenting!

Ellegard finds a number of linguistic similarities between Paul, Barnabas, and Clement that he does not find in later documents. (Of course, he is a linguist.) Why would the letter format have dictated the choice of words?

Quote:

- while it is possible to explain away many of Paul's references to Jesus, the best explanation by far remains that he was talking about a real man whose brother and disciples were still around. Any other paradigm raises more questions than it answers.

I think that any paradigm leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Ellegard makes a very good case IMO that there were no disciples around who knew Jesus - the 12 disciples were a second century literary construct. The 2nd century gospel writers were familiar with wandering teachers who had disciples, so they assumed that Jesus would have had disciples. But there is no list of 12 names (or any coherent list of names for disciples.) There were the pillars of the Jerusalem church and there were apostles, bu the apostles were like Paul - those who were preaching the Gospel.

Quote:

- Ellegard's radical rearrangement of the order of the early documents also means that practically all scholarship on the sub apostolic church goes out the window. While such a shift is possible, it means that he has many more loose ends to tie up than he does in his book. Church hierarchies, missionary work, relations between Latin and Greek churches etc all spring to mind.

This is an interesting point, but I'm not sure that I follow. I assume you mean that redating Acts would require this?

Quote:

- Orthodoxy did not seem to have had the power to effect the complete turn around of the Jesus myth to reality in the time available leaving no trace of the original tradition. This is a problem in common with all Jesus Myth theories.

I think we have discussed the time needed for myth formation before. I think that there are many traces of the original tradition in Paul's letters, the gnostic traditions and the non-canonical gospels. And of course, a lot of heretical literature was burned or not preserved.

Quote:

- Ellegard picks on Ignatius but the only reason to do so is his letters happen to be preserved. Countless other figures could have filled his place if it was their writings that survived. This suggests a less than critical process in Ellegard's research and a lack of understanding about the processes that led to particular works surviving.

I am not sure how this follows. Ignatius was preserved because he was a very important church figure, I would assume.

Quote:

- Papyrus fragment p52 rears its ugly head to any attempt to date John after about 110AD. Papias also would have got the very recent past wrong if the Gospels were as late as Ellegard believes.

I don't think that a date of 100 or 110 would be incompatible with Ellegard's theories.

Quote:

- Q would have needed to exist for about 100 years before being superceeded by L and M. This makes its lack of survival or any hint of it quite remarkable.

Q is a theoretical construct in any case. Why is it so remarkable that it didn't survive? A lot of documents didn't survive.

Quote:

- DSS scholars have throughly debunked the idea that there was anything other than casual cross polonisation by Essenes with early Christianity. The fact that no DSS can be demonstrated as literary predecessors of early Christian writings kills the idea of a close relationship.

I think this is one of the most speculative parts of Ellegard's thesis. He has to assume that the Essenes had evolved in ways that are not necessarily reflected in written documents, and that they were a diverse group.

Quote:

I might have some further thoughts if I look at the book more closely but its unlikely as term has started.

Thanks for your input.

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10-12-2001, 07:17 AM	#23
Bede Guest Posts: n/a	I have looked through but not read Ellegard's book in detail. It came out much earlier in the UK. Some initial problems I had with his theory were: - he seems to think that Clement/Barnabus etc are early due to similarities to Paul. But it seems to me that the closeness is less likely to be the fifty year time gap and more likely to be the fact all are letters. - while it is possible to explain away many of Paul's references to Jesus, the best explanation by far remains that he was talking about a real man whose brother and disciples were still around. Any other paradigm raises more questions than it answers. - Ellegard's radical rearrangement of the order of the early documents also means that practically all scholarship on the sub apostolic church goes out the window. While such a shift is possible, it means that he has many more loose ends to tie up than he does in his book. Church hierarchies, missionary work, relations between Latin and Greek churches etc all spring to mind. - Orthodoxy did not seem to have had the power to effect the complete turn around of the Jesus myth to reality in the time available leaving no trace of the original tradition. This is a problem in common with all Jesus Myth theories. - Ellegard picks on Ignatius but the only reason to do so is his letters happen to be preserved. Countless other figures could have filled his place if it was their writings that survived. This suggests a less than critical process in Ellegard's research and a lack of understanding about the processes that led to particular works surviving. - Papyrus fragment p52 rears its ugly head to any attempt to date John after about 110AD. Papias also would have got the very recent past wrong if the Gospels were as late as Ellegard believes. - Q would have needed to exist for about 100 years before being superceeded by L and M. This makes its lack of survival or any hint of it quite remarkable. - DSS scholars have throughly debunked the idea that there was anything other than casual cross polonisation by Essenes with early Christianity. The fact that no DSS can be demonstrated as literary predecessors of early Christian writings kills the idea of a close relationship. I might have some further thoughts if I look at the book more closely but its unlikely as term has started. Yours Bede Bede's Library - faith and reason

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