DaBuster

For once I agree with aa5874, although I’ll need to see his equations before completely buying into his “inversely proportional” theory.

Dating the gospels isn’t just a game played by pedantic history freaks; accurate dating would provide a useful filter in establishing the gospels credibility, or lack thereof. A date of 70 for Mark’s gospel leaves open the possibility that the author of Mark was an eyewitness to at least some the events reported in that gospel (assuming an HJ, of course); a date of 150 makes it impossible. Obviously proximity in time doesn’t speak to the veracity of the account – a gospel dated to 33 CE could still be a complete work of fiction. The composition date is simply one more piece of evidence to be weighed when considering the claims made within the document itself.

Ben C Smith

None of the earlier fathers even suggested that Mark himself was an eyewitness to any of the events in his gospel. That hare was not set running until Mark was imagined to be one of the 72 (or 70), as we find, say, in Epiphanius.

What is at stake in an early date is the living voice, that is, the potential for being acquainted with or interviewing eyewitnesses. Assuming gospel events in the late twenties or early thirties, the living voice should be pretty close to dead by the end of the first century.

Ben.

ETA: It does not seem likely to me that Mark was thought of as one of the seventy until after Eusebius, who in Church History 1.12.1 catagorically states that there existed in his time no catalogue of the seventy; he lists a few suspected of being members of the seventy, and these include Barnabas, Sosthenes, Cephas, Matthias, and Thaddeus. Notice, no Mark.

aa5874

Some are terrified to make such an admission.

But, how come you agree with me and still don't see the equation?

Credibility decreases as time increases.

The writings of Josephus are prime examples of credibility as a function of the inverse of time.

DaBuster

Sorry, aa, the request for an equation was the engineer in me trying to be funny. I guess I’m either much too subtle or not nearly as clever as I think I am (most probably the latter). Next time I’ll have to add – the horror, the horror – emoticons to make my intentions clearer.

And of course the author of Mark’s gospel makes no claim as to being an eyewitness. Thanks for pointing that out, Ben -- that was just a sloppy response on my part. I guess I need to think twice before playing with the big boys…..

Malachi151

Wrong.

#1) Trying to date a work to a certain date "in order to" establish some point is just purely bad scholarship. That's what creationists do. The date is the date, period. You don't start out with what you want the date to be and then try to get it there, that's what the fundamentalists do to fit their agenda.

#2) When the work was written HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE "CREDIBILITY" OF THE WORK, PERIOD.

It doesn't matter if the work was written in 33 CE, that does nothing to bolster the case for its historical accuracy. We have works written hundreds of years after the information that they record which we deem historically reliable and of course something written within the same year as the account it portrays can be completely false.

The reasons for not accepting the work as historical have nothing to do with when it was written, they have to do with the CONTENT of the writing.

#3) And, as I've already pointed out, a date of ~70 CE actually lends support to arguments AGAINST historicity. The war between the Jews and Rome, resulting in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, provides the perfect impetus and context for a fictional story with the qualities that we find in the Gospel of Mark.

The Gospel of Mark makes perfect sense as a fictional story written in reaction to the destruction of Jerusalem. However, if you start to claim that it was written in 100 CE or 120 E or 150 CE, etc., then a reason for writing the story goes away and you are left with "a biography of Jesus" as the only reason for which the story would have been written. Around 70 CE there are OTHER reasons to have written the story in the first place.

Not only that, but a later dating of Mark causes all kinds of other problems for Jesus historicity.

If Mark was written around 70 CE, for which there is every indication, then that solves many problems regarding how a standard story of Jesus became established by the early 2nd century.

However, if Mark wasn't written around 70 CE then you have to come up with some OTHER explanation for how a standard Jesus story was already established by that time, and if there is no fictional account like Mark to fill that role, then that puts more weight on the idea that "the real life of Jesus" is the set of information around which that standard narrative coalesced.

In other words, look at all of the facts.

1) We have a passage written by Tacitus from 109 CE that talks about a Christos that was killed by Pilate.

2) We have at least three other Gospels of the same basic character and narrative written some time before 150 CE as well, really more like prior to 120 CE.

3) We have other narratives written about Jesus coming from the early 2nd century.

4) We have church fathers from the 2nd century which all agree on the basic narrative of Jesus life and death.

Possible explanations for this are:

A) No Gospel account was written until around 100 CE to 150 CE. Thus the basis for these similarities had to be either other accounts or direct recollection of the real life of Jesus.

B) The Gospel of Mark was written around 70 CE, giving it time to became the basis for the "legend of Jesus" and thus all narrative accounts of the life of Jesus are based on this single fictional story.

C) Other stuff...

In other words, Mark having been written around 70 CE is the only explanation that gives the Gospel of Mark enough time to have been the source of influence for all of these other accounts about Jesus that we see springing up in the early 2nd century. If the Gospel of Mark wasn't written around 70 CE then you have to either come up with some other source or you have then then start trying to discredit the dating or authenticity of dozens of other accounts, i.e. you then have to argue that the Tacitus passage is not authentic, that the other Gospels were written later as well, that works like First Apology from Martyr are actually much later, etc., etc., you have to shift everything back, for which really there isn't no evidence to do.

Mark being written around 70 CE, however, solves all of these problems and is able to account for a completely fictional origin to the Jesus story. Without that early dating it becomes much, MUCH harder to argue of the Jesus story being fictional. So, by moving the dating of Mark back you actually make a stronger case for the content of Mark being historically accurate, because if Mark was written after or around the same time as all of these various other accounts of the life of Jesus, then that means that they are all reporting the same account from a variety of sources, which increases the likelihood of historical accuracy.

However if Mark is written long before all of these other accounts then Mark becomes the single source of information that inspired all of these other accounts in the first place.

So, as you can see, the fact is that a later dating of Mark would actually support the historical validity of the Markan narrative, not argue against it. An earlier dating of Mark, or rather the accepted dating of Mark, actually provides the basis for arguing that there is zero historical credibility to the Markan narrative.

As I said, I've explained this all in more detail in the links I provided.

Edit:
Here is an image to kind of illustrate the point:


Don't worry about this being accurate, its just conceptual.

In Scenario A the Gospel of Mark is the source for all of the other biographical accounts of Jesus, an GMark is also dependent on Paul, who has no biographic information.

In Scenario B GMark is written later, so it cannot be the source of all the other accounts, but one can still argue something similar to A just without Mark being the source, some other "mystery account" is the source, but then you run into the same situation as in A, just with an "unknown" source, but this really accomplishes little in explaining anything.

In Scenario C GMark is written late and there is no "mystery source", so "the life of Jesus" become the common source for all of the accounts.

The other scenario of course, which is the one that apologists often claim, would be a scenario that looked like a combination of A and C, where Mark is around 70 CE, but it also goes directly back to Jesus as do the other accounts.

But the point I'm making here is that if you move Mark back then you have to accept either B or C, there is no possibility of A, and really you have to accept C if you move Mark back. If you accept B then there is no reason not to accept A in the first place, and all of the evidence points to A over B anyway.

Roger Pearse

Well, all the data we actually have says he died then. There is nothing to suggest otherwise.

We don't have any form of 'tradition' about this; using the word, as people do, is a bit of a misnomer, IMHO. After all we're talking about texts, here.

I have no idea whether this is the current "scholarly consensus". But such a date cannot be right, unless we can believe that someone writing a work like Acts in 110 can fail to mention the death of Paul, Peter, the persecution under Nero, the change in status from legal to illegal, the destruction of the temple and deaths of vast numbers of Jews. Compare the tone of the work about Rome to that of Revelation (=Babylon), for instance, written after those events.

Surely the work naturally locates in 61 AD neither earlier nor later, at a time when Paul was in Rome, in custody, and all his people were hanging around with time on their hands, wondering what happens next.

Of course since Luke is verbatim identical with passages of Mark, yet the ancient writers tell us that Mark was not completed until after the events above, this gives a problem with dating Mark. That's why people start talking about ur-Mark.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

aa5874

But, aren't you dating gMark at around 70 CE "in order to" establish some point?

You are actually claiming that only your dating can be correct and all other dates cannot be right, just to suit your outcome.

However, Justin Martyr did not mention any gospel called gMark, and did not say that gMark was read in the churches and Justin is estimated to have written about the middle of the 2nd century.



This is complete nonsense. The Pauline Epistles, if found to have been written for the first time in the 2nd century, or outside the lifetime of the supposed author, then the authorship would instantly lose credibility.

DaBuster

Huh? Whose post were you responding to? It couldn’t have been the one quoted, because my post says nothing about working to what I “want the date to be”. All I was trying to say is that knowing the date – whatever it may be – could be of use in establishing (or, more accurately, denying) the credibility of the gospels. As for “the date is the date, period”, well, there’s the rub – unless you’re privy to some astounding new data on the provenance of GMark, we don’t really know the date.

Exactly.


You sure do throw a lot of dates around for someone who seems to be arguing that knowing the date of composition of GMark would be of no help in analyzing the text.


Interesting.

aa5874

This is incredible. You have NO idea of the current "scholarly consensus" yet you claim the date CANNOT be right.

I would appear that you REALLY have some idea of "scholarly consensus" on the dating of Acts.

Toto

We have texts written well after the fact saying that Peter and Paul died in the Neronian persecution, but these texts appear to reflect tradition rather than direct reporting.

The Acts of the Apostles is not a comprehensive report on the world. It is an upbeat, inspirational story about the origins of Christianity and how it spread to Rome, incorporating elements from popular culture (sea voyages! adventure!) It completely ignores the divisions in the church and any dissent between factions. So it is not unbelievable that someone writing this sort of story would ignore all of the unhappy incidents you name.

But they know what happens next. The church goes on to triumph. There is no sense in Acts that anyone has any doubt or wonders what will happen.