Peter Kirby

What questions do you have about the New Testament? Don't be shy...and, indeed, let your imagination run wild for questions! :grin:

Riverwind

Even though the canonical gospels mention the fulfillment of Jesus' prophecies, they fail to mention that his prophecy of the fall of the temple actually came true. In fact, they make no mention of the traumatic event that likely disrupted Christianity significantly.

Why?

Could it be possible that the gospels were written before the fall of Jerusalem? Is it possible that they were written before Paul? Are all of our assumptions about the dating based purely on secular assumptions and biases?

Peter Kirby

Shades of Redating the New Testament...

The answer, of course, is that mere "possibility" does not concern us. It's possible that Jesus wrote all four Gospels in their entirety on the night before he was arrested to be crucified, in a flurry of divine concentration.

Let's try for some more genuine, non-rhetorical questions about our subject.

(Hint: A genuine question is, "Hmm, when were the Gospels composed? Do we know?" A rhetorical and insincere question starts, "Are all of our assumptions about the dating based...")

Riverwind

No. I'm serious about the question. It is something that baffles me and I do not understand why it is not taken more seriously among scholars. My perception is that it is not taken seriously due to secular scholarly biases. There is a "prediction". "Predictions" cannot come true. So, the gospels must have been written after the "prediction".

Honestly, why is this theory so often dismissed with a wave of the hand? Can secular scholarship address this possibility (probability?) issue, or must they dismiss it? It may be a sort of argument from silence, but it seems like a very strong one to me, and arguments from silence are not necessarily fallacious or weak.

I really am sincere. It is a major problem that I have with the dating of the NT books. I suppose I expect the topic to be handwaved away as unorthodox, but until I see it satisfactorily addressed by someone (perhaps it has been addressed sufficiently somewhere, in the opinion of some?), then I can't help but be disturbed by the deafening silence of the NT with respect to the major event of the capture of Jerusalem. I won't belabor the point if no one wants to talk about it, but I would find it interesting to know why it couldn't be even a probability that the gospels were written before the war.

Toto

It is not even more likely that the gospels were written after the Bar Kockba revolt? That they make no reference to the fall of Jerusalem because it was too far in the past and too geographically distant?

Surely pushing the dating of the gospels to as early as 70 CE is because of the Christian bias in NT studies.

And I think that the NT is not so deafeningly silent on the fall of Jerusalem. What do you make of 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16?

Amaleq13

Then why do so many Christian scholars accept the most commonly suggested dates?

What does Paul's silence on this prediction suggest to you?

Riverwind

Considering we have a NT fragment that predates the Bar Kokhba revolt, I doubt it. However, even if one doesn't accept that, then I would just as soon ask why there is no reference to any details of the Bar Kokhba revolt as it, too, would have had a significant effect on any Christian community in Israel. I can't imagine that such a significant event would be too far in the past to be remembered in the NT.

Surely? Why surely?

I can admit the possibility of a late date. Most Christians simply accept the post 70 A.D. datings for the gospels because they are told that anything earlier is absurd. Why?

Why can't scholarship take a disinterested look at the possibility (or even probability) that the gospels (or some of them, or even one of them) might have been written pre-70 A.D.? Instead of taking a disinterested look, it seems like a hand immediately flies up and someone simply says, "You're just trying to push the dates earlier to benefit Christianity." But I'm not. I'm honestly inquiring whether the gospels might likely date pre-70 A.D. due to the obvious silence with respect to the destruction of the temple. Having read how impressed the ancient Christians were with Jesus' fulfillment of prophecies, the lack of mention of such a significant event in the life of the Jerusalem church just doesn't make sense to me.

You have to admit that there is nothing to say that this verse necessarily refers to the events of 70 A.D., right? Where are the specific references that say, "Jesus predicted the fall of the temple in Jerusalem and, lo, it fell to the Romans just like he said! He cried for Jerusalem and, lo, he must have had a foreknowledge of what was to happen to it!"

I am honestly baffled by this. Where are the direct, obvious, and explicit references to such a major event? Is it really ahistorical, such that many want to simply dismiss it as a Christian ploy to push the dates of the gospels back, to ponder the lack of such references?

I don't recall from my reading of the early church fathers, but perhaps for some analysis it would be interesting to note when they first begin to mention the fall of the temple and whether they mention the Bar Kokhba revolt or the results of it (ie. the Jews being expelled).

Riverwind

I think I address this in my previous post, so I'll just refer you there.

That he wrote before the fall of the temple when Jesus' prediction had not yet come true?

Peter Kirby

Eh...people. I wanted questions, not your perception, let alone your perception framed as a surety.

Asking "why" scholars say something is not only difficult to answer, but irrelevant to our actual subject, which is what scholars are saying something about.

The question of the "dating of the Gospels" is noted. Can we generate any other, or is this the end of our inquiry?

Solo

Even though the reference ("drove us out") here is probably to the mistreatment of the Nazarenes through the curse of birkhat haMinim, cca 85-90, it is a hilarious interpolation all the same. It pretends to be from the hand of Paul, who by his own admission was a Jew much involved in the "driving us out" in his own time. (Acts 8 says this was specifically in Jerusalem, ....but realistically his persecution of the church of God (Phl 3:6, Gal 1:13) likely involving synagogue purges happened elsewhere) .

Jiri