cen31602

As I read iin early church history, especially in earlychristianity.com, it was in the middle of the 2nd century CE before ANY of the christian figures of the time even mentioned or quoted the NT gospels.... That raises a great question as to their dating that most XN scholars put at 70's for Mark, 80's for Matthew and the end of the century (90-100) for Luke and John. They would then be contemporary for many of the gospels and writings discovered in Nag Hammadi, and especially the gnostic ones... Why do the 'reputable' scholars do this?

Clivedurdle

Welcome!

Because everyone is attempting to fit everything into a historical jesus paradigm instead of looking at what is actually there?

Darwin turned thinking upside down, why does it feel so difficult to do this here? We probably are still at a pre darwin stage but the old goddit theory does not hold up!

Shinobi

So are you saying that the gosels may have been written around 200 years after the supposed events they describe, as opposed to 70? That's very interesting. I had always thought one of the biggest problems with the Historical Jesus position was that there are no contemperary records and the first writings appeard 70 years later. If they appeard 150-200 years later that's an even more damning predicament.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Shinobi,

You may find this article relevant, I wrote it a while back,

Evolutionary View of the Gospels,
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=53550

Best,

Yuri.

offa

All of the gospels were written before their authors died. The authors were alive in A.D. 33 when Jesus was crucified. The Jewish War of A.D. 70 has nothing to do with the gospels because the authors were dead by then.

offa

Kilgore Trout

I will agree with that. whoever wrote the gospels was alive when they did it.

Where do you get this from? What evidence is there that says the authors were alive in c.e. 33 and dead by c.e. 70? Are you just assuming that they were written by who they are attributed to?

Ulrich

Well, since the 2nd century CE is the time between 100 CE and 199 CE we are only looking at a maximum of about 70 to 170 years difference. The gospels are all mentioned by the church fathers in the early part of the 2nd century CE (120 CE, give or take), however, so we are looking at about 100 years after the historical events supposedly occured.

The reason 70 CE is given as the earliest date for the gospels is that Mark is widely accepted as the first of the Gospels, and Mark makes references to events that occured during the Jewish revolt against Rome in 70 CE.

Toto

What church father mentions the gospels in 120?

judge

Which specific writers before 150 a.d. do you expect should have quoted the already existing gospels?

MagiNoir

Jesus was illiterate and spoke Aramaic and I suppose so did his 12 boy friends.
Why were the gospels originally written in Greek?
It was all written in the third person so no eyewitness are quoted.
The idea that these multilingual educated guys followed a Jewish prophet around and got as few stories from him just looks too unbelievable. :huh: