Clivedurdle

Ellegard argues sophisticated church structures are evidence of pre 1 AD dating.

Could we please not assume any dating - especially with suspicious relationships to censuses or Pilate - isn't it the equivalent of accepting dates in Genesis for the age of the earth?

Look at the evidence and work out where it leads - avoid preconceptions and assumptions!

Sauron

Such as which ones?

Which claims "poof away"?

Steven Avery

Hi Sauron..

My remembrance is claims such as the following, that these would not be a part of the nascent 1st century chruch:
a) widow care
b) church structure with bishops

I would have to go to my notes for more detail and additional examples, but that should give you the sense of the types of claims that are made in saying that the Pastorals are anachronistic as a mid-1st century writing. These very elements are part and parcel of the very early church in the Book of Acts (and also other epistles for b).

When I asked the late-pastoral folks about this weakness in their arguments, it was very hard to get a sensible response. Maybe we would do better here.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Doug Shaver

I fail to see how that addresses my question, so I hope you still intend to answer it. In the meantime . . . .

I do not accept the assumption implied by the phrasing of your question. You apparently assume that an apostle was by definition a witness to something.

The only apostles I know about are those mentioned by Paul. He claimed to be one himself, but I don't recall his mentioning the names of any others. He does not make clear what were the qualifications to be one.

Clivedurdle

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=1721429

Johnny Skeptic

<edit>Assuming that a man named Jesus died, was put in Joseph of Arimathaea's tomb, guards were posted at the tomb, and the tomb was found empty on Sunday morning, why should anyone assume that the supposedly risen Jesus was actually the risen Jesus? Mark 13:22 says "For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect." 2 Corinthians 11:14-15 say "And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works." A case of mistaken identity? Well, such a possibility cannot logically be ruled out.

Richbee

Hahahahaha

See 2 Timothy 4, and check out the language!

Note, 2 Timothy 4:11

"Only Luke is with me....."

Steven Avery

Hi Folks, actually I am still most interested in the hymms as evidence of an early high Messiahology. That is truly a fascinating topic and I still wonder if Richard Bauckham discusses it. If 'God Crucified' is available at my local stores I plan to buy it today, for a friend leaving for Singapore, and will check it out.

The diversion into many squishy-soft arguments against the Pastorals such as 1st century 'organised church organisation' was also interesting. Now we have this.
There is a general question whether most any of these 'sylistic grounds' claims would ever be noticed unless some scholar didn't do some statistical rigamarole and come up with a probabilistic conclusion in an arcane paper somewhere. I doubt if anybody here ever came up with such conclusions simply by reading the text.

And since writings are done using a variety of writing helps and assistants, and have diverse subjects and purpose and timings and conditions and tone it is very difficult to take the results as themselves probabilistically substantive for reaching the type of conclusions for which they are often used, such as theorizing a later forgery author.

And rarely, even disregarding the humongous built-in limitations, does it seem that any of this type of analysis is done rigorously, in terms of a scientific method and conclusions that are verified with comparable known writings.

I can imagine an author writing 2000 years ago

"oops I better not use that phrase, that will put me over the 18% threshhold of sharing from the Jude epistle"

"wow that's a great word, Luke, but you know, we already have 11% new vocabularly in this letter so lets recycle the alternative word from the Colossians letter, even thought it doesn't give as clear a meaning"

And in the rarefied world of such stylistic analysis a work can be attacked for being either too similar in style, supposed conscious mimickry, or too different, depending on the mood of the analyst. (That part of the argument against Secret Mark .. a book for which I have no sympathy .. seems quite tenuous at face, unless there is a truly overwhelming, obvious, flagrant mimickry.. I do not think that was not made clear in the thread here.).

2 Timothy 4:11
Only Luke is with me.
Take Mark, and bring him with thee:
for he is profitable to me for the ministry.

I'm not really sure the point of all this, however Nomad had a good discussion on this forum.

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php...51&postcount=1
The Pastorals
As a final point on this topic, it should be noted that 2 Timothy 4:11 lists Luke as Paul's only remaining companion, and that others have commented on the stylistic similarities between the Pastorals and Luke/Acts. Without necessarily endorsing the hypothesis that Luke was the amanuensis of the Pastorals, I do not think that this possibility should be ruled out. Keeping these objections in mind, I will now turn my attention to some of those stylistic differences.

Nomad gave an excellent presentation, I haven't yet looked for the 'concluding essay'.

For those following this forum closely, it is a huge irony that the argument used against Nomad is

"1 Timothy 5:18. The writer claims to be quoting scripture, and we have no other obvious scriptural references to "The laborer deserves his wages" than Luke 10:7."

Very good.. yes, that is the scripture reference from Paul, as we have discussed here in its own thread. Granted Nomad takes a far more difficult view, that 1 Timothy is not really quoting Luke as the scripture verse, so that is a big part of the thread.

Another argument is some arcane Robert Price higher criticism stuff, with the standard circular presups of interpolation, redaction, errancy, unaccepted authorship. Anyway, Nomad does an excellent job disassembling that attempt.

Has this essay by Nomad been placed somewhere in final form ? (Yes, I know his conclusions are different than my view. )

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

robto

If you're going to discuss the Christology of the "Pre-Pauline hymns", you have to read J.D.G. Dunn, Christology in the Making. Dunn (who is certainly no radical) argues that you have to look at these passages in the context of the times in which they were written, and not in the light of subsequent theology. If you do that, you find that none of them express a pre-existent Christ. (Phil 2:6-11 is the possible exception - Dunn seems to have changed his mind on this one in recent years.) According to Dunn, no NT texts mention a pre-existent Christ until John.

Richbee

Jesus himself said, he was before Abraham, O.K. you might quibble if it is from John's gospel.

And, there is Hebrews 1:1.

Can you find Jesus in the Old Testament?