Dean Anderson

It seems that way.

The laws - particularly those in Deuteronomy - although they are put into the mouth of Moses by Deuteronomy's author - were new laws that were introduced during Josiah's reign (late 7th century).

The works were a tool of propaganda and of proseletysing.

Don't forget, soon after this (at the start of the 6th century) the Hebrews were taken captive by Babylon, and it was this experience that led to the works of the various Prophets (Isiah, Ezekiel, etc.) being written and to the updating of the theology in the Torah to make the unconditional-promise propaganda (which was still somewhat polytheistic) into a conditional-promise religious hope (which was more monotheistic).

It was also the political and social climate post-exile that made this religious hope appealing. It was in this post-exile period that the people seem to have stopped being Yahweh worshipping Hebrews and become what we would recognise as monotheistic Jews.

Codec

A rather nice summary of how, when and where the Torah was written, in diagramatic form is here.
I have to say, I brought this diagram to Richard Freidman's attention, and he said it had a number of innaccuracies (Chronicles 1&2 seem to be missing for instance). Still despite that, I still think its a reasonable summary, and helps those of us who prefer pictures over words.

Some other nice diagrams on the rest of the site.

robto

Another argument is that Matthew reproduces about 90% of Mark, so you might expect he copies a similar % of Q. Since there's little narrative in the bits of Q we know about, we expect any missing bits were similarly thin on narrative.

Doug Shaver

Apparently not.

I have not seen specific arguments against biographical data in Q, but I infer that they would have something to do with the lack of any correlation, in comparing Luke with Matthew, between the sayings and the biography. This would suggest that both writers had to invent the settings in which the speeches were given.

robto

Right, for instance: Mt and Lk both add nativity stories. But in these stories we find none of the kind of verbal parallelism that is in the Q sayings. So the stories cannot be drawn from the same written document. They could come from oral tradition or the writers invention, but not from something written down.

triffidfood

Another question please..

I've read in various places that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew (or Aramaic?) - apparently, several early Church figures refer to this. If thats the case, does this mean that somebody went to the trouble of translating Mark from Greek into Hebrew (presuming that Mark was written first and used as a source by the writer of Matthew), and then later that the Hebrew Matthew was translated (back) into Greek again?

[I found a quote for this, from 'Epiphanius' who, writing some time in the 4th century, apparently wrote:

Quote:

"And they themselves [the Ebionites] also accept the gospel according to Matthew. For this they use alone, as also those from Cerinthus and Merinthus. But they call it according to the Hebrews, since it is true to say that Matthew alone in the New Testament made the layout and preaching of the gospel in Hebrew, and in Hebraic letters."

~ from http://www.textexcavation.com/ebionitegospel.html ]

Just sounds slightly strange (not to mention improbable?) to me..

Julian

The gospel we know as the Gospel of Matthew was written in Greek, almost certainly. There is a very small minority of people who claim that it was written in aramaic, but the bulk of scholars accept that it was written in Greek. One statement we have from the early part of the 2nd. century (although no copy exists) is
This, however, does almost certainly not refer to what we call the Gospel of Matthew. All the writings of the NT was originally done in Greek, in particular the dialect of Greek called koine or common Greek. There are many others gospels, some of those might have been written in aramaic.

Julian

Doug Shaver

It's probably not true. It apparently was just a tradition that Matthew wrote his book first in Hebrew.

The tradition seems to have been based on a remark attributed to Papias, whose own work does not survive. He was quoted briefly by Irenaeus and at somewhat greater length by Eusebius. According to those quotations, Papias claimed that he had been told of documents, one written by Matthew and another by a companion of Peter named Mark, recording certain sayings and doings of Jesus, and that Matthew had written his document in Hebrew. Papias does not claim to have seen the documents himself, and he does not identify the people who told him about them except to say that they had been acquainted with at least some of Jesus' disciples. Papias does not claim to have met any disciples himself.

Papias, who seems to have written whatever he wrote during the early second century, seems to be the only source for the tradition about a Hebrew version of Matthew's gospel. So far as I have been able to find out, no remnant of any document, written in Hebrew, containing sayings of Jesus has ever been found, and no early Christian writer that I know of claimed to have actually seen such a document.

triffidfood

Uhuh, okay thanks guys. Seems like you just can't trust those early Church 'fathers' can you?

Entirely coincidentally, I was reading something on another IIDB topic about 5 minutes ago (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=139183&page=2) about the "Peshitta", an Aramaic version of the NT which some people apparently consider came first (or at least, they apparently consider that an Aramaic version of the NT came first).

Wikpedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_primacy] says concerning the Aramaic versus Greek NT origins debate:

Could someone expand a little on this please?

Is the sentence above saying that the NT (or at least GoMark) Jesus essentially 'speaks' in Greek ~ or rather, in an identifiably Greek style, with occasional translated/ transliterated Aramaic expressions thrown in? (Or am I just reading that into the above?)

If so, this seems like a pretty interesting argument against the Gospel/ NT Jesus being historic (or atleast, the sayings attributed to him being historic), given that he oriignally would actually have spoken Aramaic?

Or am I missing something, or simply reading too much into things there?

Julian

The Gospel of Mark was originally written in Greek. Some people suspect that it was written in Rome because of certain elements which seem to betray that the writer might have been a Latin speaker. The issue is unresolved. What the quote above is talking about is that Mark occasionally uses aramaic expressions, such as

5:41 And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.

where Talitha cumi would be aramiac. Another example is

15:34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

This doesn't do much for the case of aramaic primacy. It would be assumed that Jesus spoke aramaic so adding some phrases in that language seems natural enough. However, it is highly probable that Jesus would have been able to speak Greek as it was the lingua franca of the day and he would have been unable to speak with a lot of people if he didn't know it. This all goes back to the issue of determining which sayings of Jesus were originally by him. No one seems to be able to decisively determine which ones can be so classified.

Julian