Johann_Kaspar

If you want to try to understand the time and frame of the period you are studying you need to use yourself the calendars used at the time. Otherwise you are committing an anachronism. It is not a serious way to work. It means that not many "scholars" are serious. Of course it is also necessary to use the Hebraic calendar. Do you know why the 25th of December? No xian so called "scholar" will give you the answer...

Johann_Kaspar

Nonsense.

hatsoff

Ignatius quotes from them in c. 110 CE. Papias references them again in c.130 CE and Justin Martyr in c.150 CE. Luke tells of many Gospels. What more do you want?

Ben C Smith

I think Justin knew the gospel of John. Compare Apology 1.61.4-5...:

Και γαÏ? ο ΧÏ?ιστος ειπεν· Αν μη αναγεννηθητε, ου μη εισελθητε εις την βασιλειαν των ουÏ?ανων. οτι δε και αδυνατον εις τας μητÏ?ας των τεκουσων τους απαξ γεννωμενους εμβηναι φανεÏ?ον πασιν εστι.

For Christ also said: Unless you are born again, you shall not go into the kingdom of the heavens. But that those who have once been born are unable to enter into the maternal womb is apparent to all.

...with John 3.3-4:

Jesus answered and said to him: Amen, amen, I say to you, unless one is born again one cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him: How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into the womb of his mother, can he?

Also refer to Apology 2.6.3:

Ο δε υιος εκεινου, ο μονος λεγομενος κυÏ?ιως υιος, ο λογος Ï€Ï?ο των ποιηματων και συνων και γεννωμενος....

And his son, who alone is authoritatively called son, the word who also was with him and was begotten before the deeds....

Sounds a lot like the Johannine prologue, does it not?

Martin Hengel discusses at least the first passage above in The Johannine Question, pages 12-14.

Ben.

Chris Weimer

I'm not assuming it is. I use to doubt him outright, but lately I've been very unsure. I need to hurry to finish an early project of mine (re: get the freaking paper written already!) before I embark on this time-consuming quest. The answer, I think, lies with Luke/Josephus/Tacitus and the mini-synoptic problem. And there's a woe of trouble there. But now is neither the time nor the place to discuss it.

I think we can reasonably know a close approximation to the original canonical manuscripts (I'd say no later than 1000 auc).

OK, I see. I was thinking of visible layers of different hands overworking the documents, and not independent authors forging their text out of earlier materials. Perhaps this was the confusion a while back, if you remember.

I was finding a death between 650 and 770 plausible, but lately I've been following the more orthodox view. Again, this is all due to the mini-synoptic problem, which I avow to solve.

I'm not so sure. I'll write off most of it as fiction, especially the storyline from Acts as pure fiction, wholly invented, but I'm still bemused by the possibility that Roman-Galatian + 1 Thesslonians and parts of Philippians as maybe containing core material written by one man. There is so much in this, I've barely begun to know!

Yes, many have identified the layers of Thomas. The great thing about sayings is that a little change here or there, opposed to the narrative, is that it can make a huge difference. At core I'd place 1st layer of Thomas in the first century well before Mark. 1st redaction post canonical gospels (dialogue with Matthew comes to mind). 2nd redaction after the advent of formal gnosticism. Those are the visible layers.

When I think of layers, I think of layers like that - discernable hands. Matthew I find one (perhaps two) layers, but many sources antedating it. I guess this is merely a preference of word-use and not any distinguishable difference.

Toto

Where does Ignatius quote from a gospel, explicitly? Papias is rumored to have referred to gospels that bear little or no relationship to the canonical gospels. Justin Martyr quotes some text that matches the gospels, but does not identify them. Luke's prologue where he speaks of many sources cannot be dated with any precision.

None of this identifies a church tradition that the gospels were written in the first century.

What I would want is some reference in a verifianble first century document to the gospels - at least some description or reference.

mikem

Sounds reasonable to me, and so I must revise my earlier statement. Old Testament prophets also predicted the downfall of Jerusalem as a punishment for social injustice - (eg Micah 3:12). It seems not unlikely that a HJ might have done the same thing, which would tie in with the charges brought against him at his "trial" by the High Priest.

Jesus predicted "not one stone being left upon another". However Josephus in the "Wars" VI, iv 5ff says that the temple was destroyed by fire. So if this is a genuine prediction by Jesus, it looks like the gospel writer has not tampered with it. Had it been written after the event, then I think that it might have been more specific, but that's just my opinion.

As for the rest of the "Little Apocalypse" - this is not Jesus style in the rest of the synoptics at all, and belongs to the "apocalyptic" genre. Scholars differ as to what comes from where, and how much of it can be attributed directly to Jesus, and I don't want to get bogged down with that if I can help it. Much of it does seem to reflect later Xtian concerns though - the divisive nature of Xtianity, persecution etc. My own view is that much of originated as individual sayings of Jesus, on the coming of the kingdom, and the end of the temple era, which have been gathered together to form a "discourse" - very much the same sort of process that resulted in the "Sermon on the Mount".

I think there is another thread on the "this generation" saying, and I remain undecided about that. I think that Xtians get needlessly worked up about paassages like this that indicate Jesus human fallibility. I would have though that a consistent theory of incarnation would expect that hsi knowledge too was subject to the usual epistemic limitations, but that's not really germane here.

Johann_Kaspar

Doubt is wise. I don't think the answer will come by classical means. A revolution of thought is necessary and the corrupted xian influence on the interpretation of the texts to be overthrown. But how to accomplish this?
I do not know what is an "original canonical manuscript". And I do not care. The apocalypse is very interesting and can be quite old (that is: the first layer...). One has to understand who were/are the Jews.
In the first gospel, the layers are more visible than in the others. That was the most important text, so it was edited a lot more than the others. The most important part is the teaching. It has several layers by different authors (style, ideology, etc.). For instance the didache. See also below.
Good luck!
Tell us when it will out!
Could have been written by one person, maybe maybe, but not the Paulus depicted in the Acts which is a fictitious character "Paulus", lol.
Yep.
Many more. Little apocalypse, didache, parables, "miracles", edited to make one "story", updates after 823, etc. (this only for the "teachings" section).

Julian

Seeing how the wording is different, is it possible that both Justin and John are relying on oral tradition? Or maybe some documented saying or anecdote? You would think that if he was quoting he wouldn't paraphrase to the extent that he is.

Has there been any analysis done of Justin's correlation to the gospels? Sanders and Davies talks about it but it is quite limited and far from satisfying.

Julian

hatsoff

Ignatius' epistles to the church in Ephesus (14:2), to Symrna (6:1) & to Polycarp (2:2) quote Matthew 12:33, 19:12 & 10:16, respectively. In his epistle to the church in Symrna (3:1) quotes Luke 24:39. These quotations are not credited, and they do leave some doubt as to whether or not Ignatius was actually quoting the canonical Gospels, some other Gospel(s), or simply relying on oral tradition. However, taken with the rest of the evidence, it seems likely to me that he was simply quoting from the Synoptics.

He was quoted directly by Eusebius. It was no rumor. Moreover, your contension that his description bore little resemblance to Mark's Gospel is just silly.

Since Luke is quoted in c. 110 CE, his Gospel could hardly have been completed much later than 100 CE. Again, by itself, this is not strong evidence. Taken with the rest of the whole, though, it speaks volumes.

Yes, it does. Maybe I'm missing a few pieces of evidence, but I really don't think I'm wrong about this.

I remember watching a video of some guy (he was a Jew, which made it all the more bizarre), trying to debunk the holocaust through a visit to Auschwitz. He kept pointing to conflicting claims, unreliable witness testimony, reconstructed gas chambers and a host of other suspicious happenings. He made about as good a case as I suppose can be made for such a falsehood, but in the end his little video couldn't even scratch the surface of the legacy left behind by Nazi Germany.

The situation is similar, here. Sure, maybe Papias was referring to something other than Mark. Maybe Ignatius was just drawing on oral tradition. Maybe Justin, too. Maybe Irenaeus was just repeating what Papias had written when he talked about Peter and Mark. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But this house of cards comes tumbling down if even one of these maybes is not so.

Obviously, there was a lot of myth and rumor behind the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. Eye-witnesses lied, or in other cases were mistaken. The evidence is decaying, reconstructed. The paperwork is minimal, inconclusive. So what? Does that mean the Holocaust didn't happen?

Was Jesus real? Were the Gospels written in the first century? Maybe no. But almost definitely yes.