Diogenes the Cynic

Orthodox Freethinker,

respectfully, you really don't know what you're talking about with regard to where scholarship is on the dating and authorship of the Gospels. Your own sources are religious, not scholarly. As much as it may pain you to hear this, The vast majority of New Testament scholars (real ones, not religious apologists) have long ago abandoned all four authorship traditions for the Canonical Gospels as completely spurious. The books were originally anonymous and the authorship traditions did not arise until the 2nd Century. It is impossible for any of them to have been written by witnesses. The reasons we know this are manifold and much discussed in this forum. Please see this thread as an example.

All four Canonical Gospels are firmly and unequivocally established as being dated after the destruction of Jerusalem. The range of currently accepted dates is about 70 CE for Mark, 80's for Matthew, late 90's for Luke-Acts and ~100 CE for GJohn. None of them name their own authors and none of the authors claim to be first or even secondhand accounts of Jesus. They are shot through with factual errors, contradictions and obvious fictions. One of your alleged witnesses, Matthew, copies extensively from Mark and Q. Why would a primary witness copy from secondary sources? Why does Mark make so many geographical and legal mistakes? Why are ter so many contradictions between the Gospels? When was Jesus born? Matthew says it was no later than 4 BCE and implies it was around 6 BCE. Luke claims it was a decade later, several years after the death of Herod the Great. Why does John think that the expulsion of Christians from synagogues occurred during the life of Jesus?

Trust me. We can go on we these kinds of questions for pages on end, and take my word for it, you won't be able to come up with any answers that we can't shoot down immediately.

Now let me address this:
Good luck with that. Yes, if you can prove Jesus was God you will have proven Jesus was God. That is what we call a tautology. It's meaningless.
The Bible says that Jesus lied at least once.

Diogenes the Cynic

Matthew copied Mark, not the other way around.

Orthodox_Freethinker

What you've created is a false dichotomy. New Testamenet scholars who believe in the accuracy of the Gospels oftentimes do so because that is where the evidence has led them.
The scholars who work from the evidence rather than philosophical presumption often find the Gospels to be reliable sources of historical fact.
You can say what you wish about William Lane Craig (I happen to dissaprove of his involvement with the ID movement) but it is rather telling of the Jesus Seminar that Crossan did not even attempt to defend his assertions against Craig.

Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?: A Debate Between William Lane Craig and John Dominic Crossan
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080...books&v=glance

Peace.

Orthodox_Freethinker

Yes, according to the two-source hypothesis. That is still one hypothesis among others, one of them being Mattean priority. What is the testimony of those who actually lived when the Gospels were first circulated?

"Before the eighteenth century, the belief of many, including the Church Fathers Papias (c. 60-130), Irenaeus (c. 130-200), Origen (c. 185-254), Eusebius (c. 260-340) Jerome (c. 340-420), and Augustine of Hippo (c. 354-430), had been that Matthew was the first gospel to be written. Therefore, Matthew is the first gospel to appear in the chronological order of the four gospels in the Second, or New Testament. This traditional view of gospel origins, however, began to be challenged in the late 1700s, when Gottlob Christian Storr (1786) proposed that Mark was the first to be written."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markan_priority

Why was Matthean priority challenged? Philosophical presuppotion.

Peace.

Sven

Umm, you may note that the wikipedia article you cite gives the reasons why Mattheans priority was challenged. And it wasn't philosophical presupposition (asssuming that's what you meant). Do you ever read your own sources?

Orthodox_Freethinker

Yes, and I've read plenty of explanations for Markan priority. The problem is that if Matthean priority were incorrect, it wouldn't have been the sole position of the early Church.

Peace.

Iasion

Greetings all, Orthodox_Freethinker,

Regarding the Gospels, (not really on topic here),
there are 2 recent threads dealing with their reliability and dating :

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=117382

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=129153


Iasion

Amaleq13

What philosophical presupposition motivated the editors of The Catholic Study Bible to write the following?:

"The ancient tradition that the author was the disciple and apostle of Jesus named Matthew (see 10, 3) is untenable because the gospel is based, in large part, on the Gospel According to Mark..." (p6, NT section)

Julian

Wrong. A canonical gospel is one that was voted in as opposed to others that were voted out. By regualr people. Authorship had nothing to do with it. Many gospels bear the names of disciples yet are not found in the bible. Whether a gospel was 'actually' written by a disciple would be impossible to ascertain, to them as well as us.

Julian

Orthodox_Freethinker

There are diverse opinions in the Catholic Church just as there are in the scholarly community.
It is just as likely that Mark relied upon Matthew rather than the other way around, especially if Matthew was an eye witness. The earliest historical tradition points to the author of Matthew as being an Apostle of Christ and therefore, the burden of proof is on the one who claims otherwise.

Peace.