Toto

Actually no, but going on, and skipping over the bat kol digression

But where do these "story telling conventions" stop? Are the guards at the tomb a similar story telling convention, as skeptics would argue?

Perhaps Jesus himself, as the symbolic representation of the suffering of the innocent Jewish people at the hands of the Romans and their corrupt leadership, is a story telling convention.

Robert M. Price read the gospels, and by removing the literary, theological, and story telling conventions, was left only with the Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, with no way of finding a historical core at the center of the story.

sschlichter

I beleive Moses existed. quit giving me reasons not to beleive in Moses.

does it bother you that all your objections to christianity (regardless of whether they are true or false) also apply to Judaism?

show_no_mercy

Even if Moses didn't exist, someone wrote the Torah. On the other hand, if Jesus didn't exist, because Jesus himself is the message, then the message doesn't exist.

sschlichter

yes, someone wrote the Torah but it would not be true.

spamandham

I am attempting to apply a rigorous approach - an idea totally absent from Biblical historical study up until the Jesus seminar. If you wish to write me off as a crank simply because I find the idea that Gospels predicting the fall of the temple were written after the fall of the temple, or accounts that closely describe the Bar Kochba revolt as being penned no earlier than the Bar Kochba revolt, you're welcome to do so.

Or if you think me a tin foil hat wearer simply because I reject as abject bullshit the idea that both John the Apostle and Polycarp both lived to extremely old age and that John and other apostles put Polycarp in charge of the church when he was a boy, you're welcome to do so.

Or perhaps you think it unreasonable to seriously doubt the authenticity of a letter *first* attributed to Polycarp during the heyday of Christian pseudepigrapha, or to doubt the authenticity of letters attributed to other early church fathers in light of the fact that most such letters have been conclusively determined to be frauds, there is a strong motive for generating them, but the others have not yet been proven as such.

Afterall, I'm dismissing those who argue for early dating as apologetic wingnuts uninterested in serious analysis. So I suppose it's fair.

So, you've set an upper bound on the NT texts of 175. I had already set an upper bound of ~150, with a preferred date closer to 135. We seem to be in agreement then that mid 2nd century is not merely possible, but also plausible.

I'm pretty sure it didn't require decades to travel from one end of the empire to another. All indications are that such travel was commonplace, and fairly timely as well by boat.

In any case, we don't know which part of the empire any given NT text originated in.

sschlichter

there is an important disctinction between possible and plausible. We walk thru 3 or 4 (of 1000's) of pices of data, and you will only take one into account at a time.

Here are 2 peices of information that make your sugestion IMplausible.

One, p52 is dated from a range of 125-150 typically. this is the date of this copy, not the original. This copy is in Egypt. that means the book of John is before this copy, right? it is impossible that the orginal was not before this. it is plausible that it was years before since it is in Egypt and it is unlikely to have been written in Egypt.

This is the book that was written last. It is technically possible that they were written one day after another and shipped to a dump in Egypt straightaway but it is NOT plausible. This one piece of information makes early 2nd century plausible and later 1st century equally plausible. It makes mid 2nd century unlikely and late 2nd century impossible.

the fact that ireneaus is at the same quoting the book (not writing it but quoting it) in a defense of orthodoxy against those who are presumably able to verify his quotes from the other side of the known world is a separate piece of evidence that also pushes down into the early 2nd century. it precludes the late 2nd century but does not impact the possibility of the late 1st century.

for these 2 reasons alone, any relationship to the BK revolts is unlikely regardless of how many would-be authors writing as Paul in the late 2nd century.

bacht

Do you accept the possibility of layers of redaction? The fragment p52 only has a few lines of text. We don't know that it was part of the gospel as we know it today. For example it could have originated as a gnostic work which was revised later by Roman orthodoxy (I believe the general consensus is that the present text is somewhat disordered). Also I don't think gJohn is universally accepted as being the last gospel anymore, at least in its first draft. The Logos idea suggests a connection with Philo's Alexandria, maybe a separate Christian group from the Marcan community.

Toto

P52 is dated to a much larger range - 100 to 200 CE. Christian apologists try to date it much earlier, but there is no necessity for that.

J-D

But that's exactly the sort of correction I'm talking about. Somebody looks at the text, finds it inconsistent with their theology, and concludes that this must be the result of an error in the text, which should be corrected to what they 'know' to be 'obviously' true. Maybe they even suspect their theological opponents of having corrupted the text and see what they're doing as a reversal of that. None of this entails that they themselves don't sincerely believe in the essential historicity of the text.

That, of course, doesn't mean that we should believe that they were 'restoring' the text, but I don't see how to exclude the possibility that that's what they sincerely believed they were doing.

IamJoseph

Unlike Moses, millions have been killed and falsely accused of the most terrible crimes in history - with not an iota of evidence. That never seems to bother christians. Otherwise, why will someone care what is believed: Hindus, Buddhists and Taoists claim others are born of the devil and apes - and killed their Lord!?

Its also shocking to compare the evidence for Moses with the Gospels - the former marks the most proven writings and the latter the reverse. My point is - you cannot accuse someone of such crimes based only on belief, and not care whether its true or false. A falsehood and the Holy one cannot abide together. :wave: