Julio

OK, thanks. But by the year 140 CE Marcion had in his hands the canonical gospel of Luke, or a shorter version thereof [without the Nativity]. Is then Luke older than the complete canonical Mark?

Sheshbazzar

I have reservation about rendering "the memoirs of the apostles" as "The Memoirs Of the Apostles" as though Justin was necessarily referring to the title a single work, rather than to the reading of the collective accounts of the apostles.
(and again, one could force even this into reading as "The Collective Accounts Of The Apostles" and posit that I also am here referring to the title of a singular work or "book".)

I perceive already that most Christian opponents will object to such a reading of Justin Martyr's statement, likely also pointing out that the immediately adjoining "the writings of the prophets" is not transformed into " The Writings Of The Prophets" as being a title for any singular text that was being read in place of the prophets individual accounts, the memoirs of the prophets.

One ends up trying to defend the existence, and widespread employment of a book called "The Memoirs of The Apostles" without any evidence for such a book, other than a peculiar reading of a statement made by Justin Martyr.
To effectively posit and defend such a interpretation of Justin's words requires additional evidence.

Can you produce a copy of this alleged text that you are calling "The Memoirs of The Apostles"?
Or produce unmistakable written evidence of the early church fathers ever listing, or citing a book under the title of "The Memoirs of The Apostles", as being canonical, or as being considered for inclusion within the Christian canon?

At the present, so far as I have been able to determine, the only evidence for the existence of a book titled "The Memoirs of The Apostles" rests entirely upon a questionable reading and interpretation of Justin Martyr's statement about what was being read on Sunday's. I understand it to mean the readings from the individual Gospels.
If you can provide concrete evidence indicating otherwise, I am open to such.

Julio

OK, fine; interesting. But please elucidate me on the how would they [the local roman Christian groups] get hold of those “readings”? Where would they get them from? Or, was Justin referring to other “churches” elsewhere, in Alexandria, or Palestine?

aa5874

Well, what we have are conflicting statements or information that do not mesh.

Justin Martyr did not mention any gospel called Luke nor any writer called Luke who was a disciple of Paul. Neither did he mention Acts of the Apostles or any passage that is similar to Acts of the Apostles.

However about 30-40 years after Justin writings, Irenaeus wrote about the the authors of the gospels as if the gospels were written since the 1st century and that the authors of the gospels were already known and their writings regarded as sacred scriptures before Justin.

yalla

John marsh is the author of a Pelican commentary on "Saint John".
He seems fairly convinced that CH 21 is a "later hurried editorial' work probably written by a different author.
"Later" because the gospel finishes at 20.30/31, in Marsh's words "Having come to the end of his gospel John adds a few words..."[re the deeds of JC].
Also "For in every way, except for the presence of Ch 21, John ends at 20.31"
'Hurried' because of apparently careless anomalies. For example Ch21 v.14 refers to a third appearance of JC after the resurrection yet there has already been three such described in Ch 20 at verses 14,19 and 26.
Furthermore, the disciples fail to recognize JC in Ch 21 despite having met him previously, according to Ch 20.
A different author because in the short Ch 21, only 25 verses, 28 Greek words occur that are unique to that chapter ie do not occur in the previous 20, thus suggesting a different author with different style/vocabulary characteristics. He addresses the point that 6 of these words are possibly explained by the fishing incident thereby entailing unique vocab but that still leaves 22 unique words a large number for such a small sample.

spin

This is Irenaeus's opinion. Does he, writing in 180, reflect what the real situation was circa 140, or does he assume that the text of Luke he now has was the source of Marcion's gospel of 40 years earlier?


spin

Julio

"However about 30-40 years after Justin writings, Irenaeus wrote about the the authors of the gospels as if the gospels were written since the 1st century and that the authors of the gospels were already known and their writings regarded as sacred scriptures before Justin.”


Well, how do we otherwise know that Irenaeus writings were also not tampered with when copied?
We have much evidence in the writings of those days of a massive “interpolation” in the sacred stuff and/or other related writings.
Marcion, as an example, was a victim of that “crime”, as was Basilides [and his gospel] and Valentinus, [victims of Tertullian & Co. fighting “heresies” on behalf of the Roman bishops] among others.

aa5874

Justin Martyr mentioned the Memoirs of the Apostles many times in First Apology and Dialogue with Trypho.


Dialogue with Trypho CVI
And earlier in 'Dialogue with Trypho" CVI Justin consistently always referred to any passage that now appears in the Gospels as from the memoirs or the memoirs of the apostles and did not make any reference to the memoirs as having four specific apostles as authors.

By the way, Mark and Luke were not apostles, Justin Martyr memoirs were probably not believed to have been written by Mark or Luke.

It is interesting to note that Justin did mention or believed that an apostle called John wrote a revelation., yet never mentioned Matthew, Mark, Luke, John as gospel writers or Paul as a letter writer.

Dialogue with Trypho LXXXI
It would seem that if Justin was aware of gospel writers with the names Matthew, Mark, Luke or John he would have mentioned their names. Justin mentioned over 30 passages from the Memoirs without ever mentioning a single name, yet only mentioned a few paasages from revelation and promptly at the first opportunity, mentioned John the apostle as the author of the revelation.

Julio

Good point. I was trying to find on the Internet a picture of the “colophon” at the end of John’s gospel, to see if that could help in this matter. I have a picture of that last page of a manuscript somewhere here at home in my files, but I cannot find it at the moment.

Sheshbazzar

Which, sans evidence any other usage, or mention of any book -titled- as "The Memoirs of The Apostles" in any other early church Father's writings, indicates to me that the -phrase- "the memoirs of the Apostles", was simply a writing convention employed by Justin when referring to that group of NT writings which were;
1. Again, I point out that Justin's "all" implies the existence of rather widespread group gatherings, "all" customarily listening to readings from a collection of religious manuscripts.

2. You have not provided your reason for not likewise interpreting the -phrase- "the writings of the prophets" as "The Writings of The Prophets" indicating a single distinct text, rather than readings from the collective Books of the prophets.
As it stands, you are treating the two phrases in entirely different fashions. There must be an explanation and a defense for treating them differently, as they both occur in the same sentence.

3. And this relates back to 1 above, if "all who live in cities or in the country gather together" .. and these Christians were coming together every Sunday to hear readings from a single-book- that was well known and accepted under the -title- "The Memoirs of The Apostles" ,it is highly unlikely that no church Father (other than Justin) would never make any mention of any book by that title.
To me this indicates that none of the early church Father's ever interpreted Justin's report in the fashion that you have been positing.

4. Justin's not mentioning any specific names for the "memoirs" that were being read appears to be evidence that these anonymous writings had not yet at that time been assigned the traditional names that the latter church came to ascribed to them.
If they were not yet known by these names, there would be no reason to expect Justin to employ the name titles that would only become familiar in a latter church.
This does not preclude that the documents themselves were substantially the same documents as what latter became known by their present well known names, as quotations by Justin from them also indicates.
Without any well known individual "names" for these early Gospel texts, "the memoirs" would simply be Justin's "catch-all" phrase for these books that at that time, still had no other well recognised titles.

You are presenting a claim that a Book titled "The Memoirs of The Apostles" was employed by Christians in the early church.
The church, and church history has no record of any such individual book (other than -your own- peculiar reading of Justin, and you were/are not counted among early Christian church writers)
Thus, for you to uphold the validity of such a claim, it is incumbent upon you the claimant, to appeal to the writings of the early Church Father's to produce the needed cooberating evidence that the early church ever employed any book known by that title.
You need to produce a copy of this alleged text that you are calling "The Memoirs of The Apostles"
Or, to produce unmistakable written evidence from the early church fathers or their contemporaries, listing, or citing a book under the title of "The Memoirs of The Apostles", as being canonical, as being considered for inclusion within the Christian canon, or even existing.
This is the minimum that you will need to produce to validate the otherwise unsubstantiated claim that you are making.

Again, for what its worth, I hope that you can produce such evidence, as I myself would find it to be quite useful.