Geetarmoore

Right, but I (and many others, it seems) can see no convincing reason to early date it. This is the source of the conundrum, I suppose...

I realize that the late-daters are on the non-popular side of popular scholarship; So you've got that going for you for now, anyway..

Thanks.

yalla

I wondered about the confidence level of the dating of the possible dating of a gospel based on the dating of Papias.
So I googled "Papias" and got these 4 references on the first page or so.

From Wiki:
"It has been usual, however, to assign to his work a date 130-140, or even later. No known fact is inconsistent with c. 60-135 as the period of Papias's life."
From early Christian Writings:
"Eusebius, in spite of his desire to discredit Papias, still places him as early as the reign of Trajan (A.D. 98-117); and although later dates (e.g., A.D. 130-140) have often been suggested by modern scholars, Bartlet's date for Papias' literary activity of about A.D. 100 has recently gained support.."[about A.D. 100
From Catholic Encyclopaedia:
"Of Papias's life nothing is known......The work of Papias was evidently written in his old age, say between the years 115 and 140."
From Early Church:
"PAPIAS, Bishop of Hierapolis in Phyrgia. He was born probably between 70 and 75 A.D., and died, perhaps, A.D. 163.1 No fact save his episcopacy is definitely known about him....wrote in Greek, about A.D. 130, An Interpretation of the Sayings of the Lord, ..."

3 points.
-Virtually nothing is known about Papias.
-The sources, for whatever reasons, give an 'active' date for Papias in a range of 100 CE to [latest] 163 CE.
- His work "is known only through fragments quoted in later writers.."


It seems to me that to use Papias as if he provides a solid marker in time for dating a gospel is stretching the data, or lack of, to a point it cannot bear.
cheers
yalla

Roger Pearse

Well, there is a natural date to all of these texts, which is the period in which the early church arose. One has only to read the second century texts to feel the difference.

Every great man has his disciples, after all; although these days it is Judas who writes the biography...

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Gamera

Exactly. The standards people throw out relating to NT material would essentially erase all ancient texts and make them the work of later interpolators.

Gamera

Sigh. You've missed the point (again). By definition there is only one holograph. We have lots of copies as a matter of empirical fact. So the odds of any extant mss among them being a holograph is small.

Sorry that bothers you, but it's just raw numbers.

Diogenes the Cynic

Not only that but it's highly dubious that Papias was referring to the Canonical Gospels of either Mark or Matthew anyway. He doesn't quote from them (or at least, Eusebius doesn't quote Papias as quoting from them) and the descriptions he gives don't match the Canonicals at all. In the case of Mark, he says that Peter gave a verbal memoir of sorts to a secretary named Mark, who wrote down Peter's anecdotes "in no particular order." This description does not match GMark for any number of reasons and there is no reason to identify the canonical book with Papias' alleged Petrine memoir.

Papias also says that Matthew compiled a collection of "sayings (logia) of the Lord" in Hebrew. If such a book ever existed, it was not Canonical Matthew.

Papias cannot be used as a terminus ad quem for either gospel because it is highy questionable (and that's putting it kindly, in my opinion) that he was actually making any reference to them.

andrewcriddle

Hi Julian

My argument is that if Matthew and Luke are both reasonably well known during the reign of Hadrian, (I could have mentioned other evidence eg Basilides probably used Luke), then they were probably written during the reign of Trajan at the latest. If both Matthew and Luke were written during the reign of Trajan and used Mark then Mark was unlikely to have been written later than the reign of Domitian and may be substantially earlier.

I happen to agree that arguing solely on the basis of knowledge of the Gospels by other writers one would probably date Mark (assuming Markan priority) c 85 CE Matthew c 100 CE and Luke somewhat later.

However i/ these are very rough guidelines and IMO internal evidence supports dates rather earlier. ii/ even if one is relying solely on knowledge of the Gospels by other writers; dating all the Gospels in the 2nd century seems definitely unlikely.

Andrew Criddle

gurugeorge

My understanding was that the copies we know about that increase over time come from a much later period (isn't it after 400 or so?) - do we know that there's a smooth gradual progression of copies from roundabout 100 CE onwards say, or is it not rather the case that we just don't know how many copies were floating around until we come to an exponentially-growing flood roundabout 400 CE?

(Not sure about this, might be mixing some things up, but I thought it worth pursuing - hopefully you or someone else might be able to illuminate here.)

Gamera

Clearly, the assumption is that more and more copies were made as the church expanded. We have evidence of that from a later period. Is it a good assumption for the early church? I think it is. The church seemed to grow quickly. The texts would need to be disseminated to more and more localities, so copies were likely needed and made. But opinions differ.

Sheshonq

Why is that the natural date? Other than being convenient, that is?

Which can be accounted for by a host of other reasons.