Clutch

Well, Metacrock, asking a question is normally understood as a rather direct admission of lack of information. If "f[l]aunt" is your preferred term, so be it.

My question, to repeat, is this: "does anyone know of any principled attempt to come up with a generalization about [the circulation and travel time of ideas and writings in Roman provinces]"?

Okay. I entirely believe that Koester says this. Now, can you answer my question?

A quote from Koester would hardly suffice to prove this claim. In any case, if it's so utterly basic, you should find it especially effortless to explain the reasoning. No large fonts, strange colours, or charges that I hate religion, please: just explain the reasoning behind 10 years, 20 years, or any particular such estimate.

Since I said absolutely nothing of the sort, you can stop worrying about it.

Really? Merchants coming in from the Orient, from Egypt, from Greece and Asia Minor, didn't talk of such things? The evidence for this claim would be very interesting; I look forward to seeing it.

Well, on one hand surely there would be a lot of interest in the region to hear the details of what happened that day when the sky went dark, there was an earthquake, the saints rose from the dead to go home, etc. But set that aside. Suppose we grant this claim of yours arguendo. How then do you suppose Koester comes up with his figure of 10 years? I'm no expert, but it looks like the inductive base applicable to this case is going to be pretty small.

This is just a non-sequitur. Of course that's one way that a narrative can travel. But "produce" is not "disseminate". Communal production of a gospel in no way means that the dissemination of the gospel is a matter of the spread of the community.

"Get set up"? "Make a living"? Er... and have a career? Cut down the tallest tree in the forest with a herring? So far as I can see what would have to happen is: someone would have to write it down. 10 years?

Indeed. Hence my pointing out that, nevertheless, "poets and playwrights became famous in their own lifetimes in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, didn't they? Trade and other kinds of travel were common, weren't they?"

If anyone has any insight on my original questions, I'd be grateful. Thanks.

Vorkosigan

Meta, you can abuse me and the other regulars who know you all you want, but Clutch is a published philosopher and scholar who has never insulted you and deserves respect for his brains and accomplishment. Not to mention courage in sticking a toe into this catfight.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Sorry, man, none of my sources has anything definite.

Vorkosigan

Toto

The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences, edited by Richard Bauckham contains a chapter titled "The Holy Internet" by Michael B. Thompson, which argues that the early churches were in constant communication, based on the Roman roads and shipping routes. Christians were called upon to spread the word by preaching and writing. News did not travel at internet speed, but could travel from one end of the empire to the other within months. Thomas estimates that the gospels could have been written within a few years of each other, rather than the usual 10 years that has been the conventional assumption.

Diogenes the Cynic

I think the ten years assumption is only for the gap between Mark and Matthew. Luke and John are dated by other means.

How long does Thompson think it took to make copies and disseminating them more widely than the churches on a select route?

Amaleq13

Your apparent inability to follow what is written from thread to thread is getting tiresome, Metacrock. In fact, you appear to have lost track of the claim you are supposed to be trying to support (ie that the "core story" is historically reliable). Whether this is due to your age or the fact you have too many things going on at once, it makes it very difficult to have a discussion. I fear this effort is doomed.

Reread the thread and note the specific examples cited. One that really stands out is when you clearly assume the Gospel story is historically reliable to establish that the Gospel story is historically reliable. That is textbook circular reasoning yet you declared it to be a standard method of all historians.

You have yet to provide the "good reason" for the assumption. This is just a big circle without it.

Their names are not evidence and that's all you cited so far. It isn't even "almost" firsthand. Papias' sources are either disciples of the apostles or disciples of disciples of the apostles. As you later noted in your post, Clement is not firsthand either.

Here is your circular reasoning. It is entirely circular to suggest that the PMR should be considered evidence of the PMR's historical reliability.

For the third time, what is the basis for this alleged "rule of thumb"?

If you are unwilling or unable to defend your claims, don't waste IIDB bandwidth with your assertions.

I'm sure you know that this is not necessarily true. The strength of an argument of silence corresponds to the expectation of something other than silence. This isn't really relevant, though, because I'm not making an argument from silence. I'm simply noting that you are filling Paul's silence with information from the Gospel story and claiming consistency. That is flawed reasoning.

Regarding your attempts to argue for the historical reliability of the core gospel story:

These are apparently the only "elements of Paul" you've got that can be used to support the historical reliability of the Gospel story.

That does not answer my question.

Already addressed. Reread the thread.

What "multiple sources"? You've referred to multiple subsequent variations of a single story. That is a single source.

I already made it clear this is not an assumption I make.

Who disputes the things above that you are willing to reject as historical?

If it can't actually be examined, it isn't really evidence. It is hypothetical. More importantly, however, it is what you are trying to establish is historically reliable so it cannot be used as evidence to reach that conclusion without applying circular reasoning.

Then reread the goddamned thread, Metacrock. This is ridiculous.

Regarding Peter, you wrote:
He is a leading apostle. There is no justification for retrojecting the role of disciple into Paul's letters.

I'm not suggesting we should expect Paul to retell the gospel story. I'm suggesting that we should expect Paul to mention more of it than he does if it was so widely told at such an early date. At the very least, we certainly have very good reason to expect him to mention Peter's betrayal or, for that matter, the fact that all of the disciples fled initially.

That is not obvious. He could just as easily be a leader because he was the first to claim to have witnessed the risen Christ.

How do you know it was exposed to the unbelieving public?

How do you know there were no challenges?

No wonder it doesn't make sense to you. You didn't read it carefully enough. I'm not making that assumption at all. In fact, it is founded on the exact opposite assumption that Mark's Gospel was only told to those who had already accepted the gospel Paul preached. We know that Paul's gospel was preached in public and that it obtained converts. We do not know the same is true for your PMR even if we assume it existed at the same time.

I'll have to look for the full versions of variations of myths since you only provide the changes but I question your claim that a collection of invariant core points cannot be identified in any of them.

Peter Kirby

There are at least two interesting figures here. First, the amount of time that it would take for a document to go from point O (Origin) to some point P if there was little "down time" (for example, a letter for which a duplicate is made the same day and which goes on a boat the next day to arrive at the port seven weeks later for a total time to delivery of 50 days). This is a figure which is more easily found (of the two).

Second, the amount of time that it would take for it to be more likely than not that the document would reach point P. There are at least two important factors here, the distance of point P from the origin (measured along the routes that communication takes place) and the average throughput of communications and the priority of the document to be sent along said routes. For example, suppose that the Book of Revelation was written on the island of Patmos in the Aegean in 95 A.D. The seven churches mentioned as recipients would have the highest priority for receiving copies, and they are not a great deal of distance away. Still, making a copy as long as Revelation is a laborious process. One might say (arbitrarily perhaps) that a month's time is the average it took to one of these cities. After that, Rome was both an important church and is mentioned in the text, so the ETA might have an average of six months or so. Meanwhile, although there were Romans in Britain and the boat trip could be made in a few months, I would expect the probability of arrival to be much more than ten years, because of its low priority in the Christian world of the time.

Just being geeky...

best,
Peter Kirby

Toto

I've never seen any reason given for dating gLuke to ~90 CE other than the 10 year gap - except for skeptics who date it to the 2nd century based on presumed influences from Josephus.

Thompson seems to think that all churches were on select routes. I would not endorse everything he says; he accepts the usual dating of the beginnings of Christianity and the historicity of Acts as far as Paul's travels, and thinks that there were Christian churches between 30-70 CE, which I tend to doubt. He also seems to think that gMark was actually written by Mark based on Peter's preaching. But his observations about communications in the Roman Empire seem solid.

He says in his conclusion,

Diogenes the Cynic

Hmmm...he also thinks Mark predated the destruction of Jerusalem.

I think that Thompson is massaging his thesis by cherry picking a lot of best case scenario hypotheses to better frame a preconceved conclusions. I;ve seen worse, he's not patently ridiculous or unreasonable but he's definitely pushing a wishful case.

The case for Luke knowing Josephus is pretty strong, by the way. Have you read it?

Metacrock

have you not seen Textual critics allude to the 20 year assumption? That's par to of the dating of John Rylands. They figure it had to go form Jeruslaem to Egypt. I can't believe you don't know about that. It's just a standard rule of thumb. find a textual critic and ask him.