fredhsu

Asimov's Guide To the Bible contains a very detailed list of dates and events.

Asimov's Guide To the Bible (or via: amazon.co.uk)

groomanl

Why do you use BCE and CE instead of BC and AD? All of history is divided at the coming of Christ, and his reign has never been surpassed. The usage of BCE and CE are commonly regarded as a God-hater's attempt to distant and rewrite history without calling into focus God's redemptive work in our world.

Josephus may list John the Baptizer's death being in AD 37, but Biblically this would be in error. John the Baptizer's death was approximately 6 months prior to that of Jesus.


In Lee Strobel's book, "The Case for Christ," he interviews Dr. Craig Blomberg who is widely considered one of the nation's foremost authorities on the biographies of Jesus. Since Acts doesn't tell us the time of Paul's death, he assumes that it is because it hadn't happened at the time it was finished. On this basis, Blomberg dates the Book of Acts as being no later than AD 62. Because Acts is a continuation of the Book of Luke, this necessarily means that Luke was written prior to this time. Since Luke draws from the Gospel of Mark, this positions Mark to have been written even sooner than that, making his gospel written probably sometime by the late 50's AD.

Paul's writings were probably late 40's AD until the late 50's or early 60's AD.

The Apostle John's authorship is not in question. His death occurred by 96 AD, so there again, his Gospel would have been written much earlier. Irenaeus writes that John penned his gospel while living in Ephesus, sometime prior to his exile on Patmos. Another early indicator of his writing is that the oldest fragment of the NT (from the Gospel of John) dates back to about AD 125. It was in use, being copied, and distributed among the early believers well before the time that secularists date it.

None of the Gospels mention the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, and this too is seen as an early indicator of when they were written.

Toto

Hi groomanl: you're new here. BCE and CE are standard use these days. Many of the people who use them are Jews, Christians who want to be inclusive, and secularists. You are the first person I have heard assume that this notation indicates "God hating" or is an attempt to rewrite history.

O K. . .

Lee Strobel has not persuaded anyone who hasn't started out a believer.

Be careful of citing him around here: his reputation is fairly low. Start here:

Review of Strobel's Case for Christ

The argument that Acts must have been written before Paul's death because it does not mention it is a convenient rationalization, but can't be supported. Most scholars date Acts to somewhere between 100-150 CE.

But the gospels clearly do mention the fall of Jerusalem, as a "prediction" attributed to the Jesus character.

groomanl

Hello Toto. Thanks for the greeting and for the warning.

These anonymous scholars that you cite, are they liberal or conservative? My guess is that they would be liberal, and would deny that Acts was written by Luke, the 1st century physician who was a traveling companion to Paul of Tarsus. A reason they might cite a later date would be to discredit or cast dispersals on the authoritative nature of that book in particular or on the Bible in general.

In The New Bible Dictionary edited by JD Douglas with contributing editor FF Bruce, pg 10, the earlier date is also cited and preferred. This seems to be the most coherent time frame for as one reads the Book of Acts, it almost seems that the author is writing it as he travels with Paul. A later date like the one you suggested would be problematic to its authenticity.

Yes, the Gospels record that Jesus predicts the fall of Jerusalem, but their lack of mentioning it as having happened (as Jesus said it would) indicate that the Synoptic Gospels were all written and in circulation at an early date, prior to Av 9, AD 70.

Clivedurdle

How strong is a hypothesis that most of the New Testament was written and edited into a final form post 130, and then finalised in the 300's?

Before 130 there were various writings that were not clearly xian - Hebrews and Revelation especially.

Did a confusion of titles occur? Lord Jesus Christ - Jehovah Saviour Messiah - a list of titles - became a person?

The term xian found earlier is only a generic term for messiah follower superstitio member.

spin

Scholars, modern scholars, not apologists.

Acts is really a collection of works including an "acts of various apostles", a "martyrdom of Stephen", an "acts of Paul", a "journey with Paul' (the We passages), and a number of smaller efforts, including an underlying Semitic influence and a church influence. This means that there are signs of different writers of various segments and at least one compiler and another reviser.

FF Bruce is certainly no longer in the forefront of biblical scholarship, having generally written over 50 years ago in a climate of mindless fundamentalism which he didn't belong to, but could hardly express an unfettered schlar's opinion based on the evidence.

I have shown elsewhere on this forum that it is impossible to date Paul from the Pauline corpus. Acts, which conflicts sharply with the Pauline corpus, cannot be used as superior to that corpus for dating purposes.

Besides, The New Bible Dictionary (1962) certainly is not the forefront of modern scholarship.

This is typical of the Jewish tradition. People write texts retrojected into a period and allow the reader/listener to understand what happened next. Writers centuries after the fact often talked about going into exile, but the return is usually not included. Retrospective prophecies are a manifestation of the genre. You can glean nothing about a text which has a character talking about an event as if it were coming.


spin

Roger Pearse

Not where I live they are not. No-one not on the establishment payroll would dream of such a thing.

Did anyone ever get asked to vote on whether they wanted to change our date-system? I have rather a dislike, in my ignorant way, of societal changes made by backstairs conspiracies. Don't you?

I feel that we should resist this sort of thing, regardless of whether we agree with it or not. We might be next!

Not least since the system originated in Israel among Jews, I believe, and was introduced by them to the US. Curiously the Moslems haven't noticed this yet. I expect that there will be fireworks when they do!

Is removing Christianity from public life a value-neutral exercise? (I think this point has been made frequently online, although you may not have seen it).

If we look at the data, we have some obvious reasons to suppose composition in 61 AD.

Most (but not all) histories are written soon after the latest events recorded in them. Acts ends with Paul in prison. It is impossible to imagine that his release would not be mentioned, had it happened then, since that would be a triumph! Likewise his martyrdom for the faith; or the criminalisation of Christianity; or the destruction of Judaism. All these events happened very soon after, and radically altered the attitude of Christians, recorded in Acts, to the Roman empire -- see the very different attitude in Revelation, written after.

At the same time, both Mark and Luke were in Rome, and Luke had time on his hands waiting for the trial. No doubt this explains the verbatim use of material taken down by Mark -- for all we know they had pizza together every night. At any other period of Paul's career, composition would be less easy since he was moving about.

I can't see how any other date is really plausible.

Which of course means that they must postdate 70 AD; except that it doesn't unless we presume (a) Jesus was not divine (petitio principi) and (b) that no-one humanly could have predicted that Jerusalem would get sacked (which is absurd).

But if we write the history of Christianity on the basis that Christianity isn't true, and so Jesus couldn't have predicted anything -- and how is that an objective basis? -- then such weirdness apparently follows.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Clivedurdle

it aint necessarily so.

spin

Toto was referring to scholarly circles, which take into consideration that not all scholars are christian. Jews don't find BC and AD particularly relevant. Neither do people of other faiths. Neither do non-religionists. That's why scholars use BCE and CE.

Yes, go on, Roger, please look at the data!

Do you think Arrian's account of Alexander was written soon after the latest events recorded in the work? What about Tacitus's Agricola? Suetonius's Divine Julius or any of the other lives? What about the lives written about by Plutarch? Perhaps the history of Judith was written soon after the events. There is quite a sizable list of works that simply don't fit this mold.

Would you argue that many of the works about Solomon, because they don't mention his death, were written before his death or even around the time of his death or within a few hundred years of his death?

Arguments based solely on the terminus post quem (the earliest possible date before which it is impossible) are guesswork, for the date doesn't indicate when something was written, just after which point, not saying how long afterwards.

The evidence requires you to look at the genres available including accounts of people long dead and not to retroject your sentiments into the analysis.

But then, what is your source?

...to anyone who already believes...

You make this so dramatic, as though you were a witness yourself. But in fact, you are more musing than anything else, aren't you Roger?


We can see that!

Fine, the terminus post quem may not be such after all.

What we are left with is the external evidence. The first clear knowledge of gospel material would seem to be Justin. The first clear knowledge of Acts? Later again. This stuff is not the material to build history on, for we have no stable pegs to hang it on.


spin

Malachi151

I agree 100% with this, but I think that this prediction would have been made at least close to the time of this event, as events on the ground were leading to this conclusion. In fact I think it was probably more likely that this would have been written shortly before it happened, when an astute observer could see the writing on the wall.