Solitary Man

Why faith in this and not faith in God? To me, they're both the same. Both lack evidence.

Fortunately, we also have numerous heretical works documented, and nothing similar exists in those either.

We already know about the competing beliefs. You cannot, however, claim something without any evidence. Pony up or shut up, essentially.

Possibly half a century or more later? 30 years is the upper limit.

Let me guess, because we "disagree" on the dating of Luke, I must be the one assuming.

This is merely ad hom. I've assumed no such thing. I work from the evidence.

So all historians when they use older sources are merely motivated by inserting their own revisionist spin? What a cynical outlook on historians you have.

Possible != Probable.

If you want to make an attempt at dating Luke, feel free.

aa5874

Solitary Man, you are technically a flip-flopper. You contradict yourself. It is a fallacy to try to maintain two complete opposite positions.

schilling.klaus

the non-dfantastic parts are as fictive as the fantastic parts

If Ebionites did that, they would be deceivers like Euhemeros.
Only naive scholars like Crossan could trust them.
But they possibly depicted Jesus as an angel.
They rejected the God Jesus due to their monotheist bias.

Anyways the Markan authors did not write history, but a community catechism
for the Roman Catholic church, and so did the authors of Matthew and Luke before him, possibly even the same authors, anyways powermongers like Irenaeus, Justin M, Polykarp, Theophilos, and similar sinistrous figures. They used previous mythical material like the Memorabilia Apostolorum or the Logia of the Lord in Five Books, and the gospels of the pre-Catholic heresies that they refuted, like Marcion, Valentinus, Kerythos, Satornil, the Barbeloites, the Sethians, the Cainites, Basilides, ...

Klaus Schilling

angelo

What evidence is there that Mark was not the first gospel to be written? The author was trying to understand the legend of this Jesus by referring to the various passages in the O/T. Time after time he writes ''this was done in accordance with the scriptures''. Or ''to fulfil the scriptures''. Not that is evidence of Mark being first, but shows the primitive nature of it. What was being written was what was floating about by word of mouth by various people who heard it from a friend of a friend of a witness. Such tales would be fortunate to contain 5-10% of fact.

Malachi151

#1) The pattern of copying between Mark, Matthew, and Luke is best explained as Matthew and Luke having been copied from Mark.

#2) (More importantly IMO) The structure of the narrative in Mark is mutilated by Matthew and Luke. Things are clearly in order, flow, and have cohesive literary allusions in Mark, then they are trashed in Matthew and Luke. This is highly indicative that the writers of Matthew and Luke copied from Mark and altered it. To go from Matthew or Luke to Mark would be basically impossible.

#3) The absence of particular narrative elements in Mark that are in Luke indicates its earlier status, such as the lack of birth narrative, etc.

I think the case for Mark being first is as water tight as any case can be. I'd give it 99.9% certainty.

aa5874

But couldn't the absence of the birth narrative in gJohn be used to indicate an early writing of this gospel?

GMark being the first is a reasonable hypothesis, but sometimes I get the impression that it may have been written after gMatthew. This theory is based on the dating of gJohn. If gJohn was written last and still does not contain the story of the birth of Jesus, then gMark also could have been written later than gMatthew, since the story is also missing.

Perhaps the author of gJohn was not comfortable with or thought the birth stories of Jesus, as depicted by gMatthew and gLuke, were not believable, and maybe the author of gMark editted gMatthew to fabricate a more "believable" gospel by removing the parts that appeared incredible.

Toto

Hi patcleaver: you will get further if you do not generalize about all Christians. They do not all engage in forgery, and some of them even put some effort into exposing other Christians' fraud, using Christian values.

When you scatter charges with such a broad brush, you reduce your own credibility. Yes, David Barton has been peddling falsehoods about American history. But he is not typical of American Christians, and I know of no reason for any later Christian to falsify Eusebius.

spamandham

I have no idea what faith has to do with this discussion.

aa5874 already ponied up http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthr...47#post5106247. Now I suppose it's your turn to "pony up or shut up" regarding your claim that "Luke is writing very closely to Mark".

schilling.klaus

no, it's a hallucination by naive (mainline) scholars

Klaus Schilling

spin

Something with a little reasoning would be useful. Your correspondent thought he provided some. Surely you should as well, rather than giving an unsupported opinion whose validity is certainly not clear.


spin