DramaQ

Sorry, Toto. I guess this is a bit of both...

It's not. It could have been an educated guess, a shot in the dark, a coincidence, etc etc etc.

But one of the (many) things I've learned in my year or so of trolling around this board is that its poor logic to argue from the standpoint of "it mighta been" or "it coulda been". Instead, stick to the explanation that is the most probable, simplest, or requires the least provisos to answer the question.

In this case, the simplest, most obvious answer is that the "prophesy" was accomplished by being written after the fact and put into the mouth of someone speaking in the past. i.e. "Luke" is post 70.

Cheers,
dq

Layman

The "simplest" answer is not always "they made it up."

Given the early Christian expectation of the arrival of the Kingdom of God, it is not at all unlikely that Jesus predicted doom and gloom for the religious status quo in Jerusalem. And, in any event, you are offering this as THE decisive point in dating. There are many factors to be considered when discussing the date of authorship of the gospels. The descriptions of the destruction of the Temple is one of those, but not the only or even necessarily the most decisive one. Moreover, many scholars think that Mark wrote before the destruction of the Temple but after the war with Rome started. Mark was warning about what most agree was the inevitable conclusion of such a war (especially from the perspective of a separatist Jewish sect that had distanced itself from the Temple). So even if you think the prediction/prophecy was made up, that does not preclude a dating prior to 70 AD.

You want to win the game with one swing, but you do not have enough people on base.

Amaleq13

Actually, I think we are discussing what it is these alleged witnesses are said to have witnessed. Are they eyewitnesses of the events described in the subsequent story or are they eyewitnesses (and officers) of the Word?

That's interesting but I don't understand how getting the name of the proconsul right can only be explained by an "eyewitness" source.

Where does the book make this claim? I'm pretty sure the name "Luke" doesn't occur anywhere in the texts nor does they identify when they were written.

I appreciate your attempt to shift the burden but my question is simply a request for you to support your assertion that the author claims to have been an eyewitness. Is it entirely based upon the "we" passages in Acts? He clearly fails to identify himself as an eyewitness in the introduction so I'm curious as to the basis for your assertion.

Diogenes the Cynic

It is when the alternative is magic.
Even if it was written during the war but before the destruction of the Temple, it still only fudges back the date by a year or two. ~68 CE is not significantly different from 70 CE in the context of this debate...and it still precludes any supernatural prophecy from Jesus.

DramaQ

I didn't say it "always" is. I said "in this case". And "they made it up" isn't quite acurate, either. How about they "retrofit" it.

Right here you have to quantify how "not at all unlikely" this is.

It's still a lot more easily explained by "It was written after the fact".

No. I'm saying that the simplest explanation for the character in the story being able to make an accurate prediction is that the story was written after 70.

True.

And many don't.

Well, of course it's the dating of LUKE we're discussing here, but I realize that he is based on Mark. In any case, I have to confess I don't have your clear understanding of what Mark was writing about.

Um... I'm a bit confused by this. I am saying that the author's ability to write about the destruction of the temple was because he KNEW about the destruction of the temple. That makes it post 70 C.E.

I wouldn't know about that. I don't follow hockey.

Cheers,
dq

S.C.Carlson

If you believe Josephus, there was one guy predicting bad things for Jerusalem and the Temple way back in 62 ( Quote snatched from http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/GMark/GMark15.html ):

Did this Jesus, son of Ananus, have a supernatural ability to predict the future? The answer does not really matter, because we know Josephus wrote after the disaster and was subject to the usual, heavy recollection and recordation bias in favor of fulfilled predictions. False predictions, though much more frequently made, are remembered and recorded much less often.

Stephen

Layman

That's about as circular as it gets. We must assume that there was no such thing as prophecy. Thus, we must date the gospels close to or after the fall of the Temple. And dating the gospels close to or after the fall of Jerusalem means Jesus could not have prophecied.

Congratulations.

Diogenes the Cynic

That should be, "Even as they, who from the beginning (were/became) eywitnesses and servants of the word, handed them over to us."

(From the Greek: Kathos paradosan hemin hoi ap arches autoptai kai huperetai genomenoi tou logou)

The "who" (actually just a hoi) is in the nominative and goes with those who did the transmitting, not the receiving. Don't let the syntax confuse you. A literal tranlastion of the word order is misleading because you don't have the case forms as a guideline.

Verse one says, Epeideper polloi epecheiresan anataxasthai dingnesin peri ton peple rophoremenon en hemin pragmaton.

"Since many have taken it in hand to compose an orderly narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us."

Verses three and four translate as follows:

"It seemed good to me also, having thoroughly investigated everything from the beginning, to set them in order for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you might know the certainty of those things in hich you have been instructed."


Im going to put all four veses together now, but I'm going to move the portion contained in verse two because the word order is less confusing in English and better conveys the Greek:

"Since many have taken it in hand to compose an orderly narrative of those things which have been fulfilled among us, It seemed good to me also, having thoroughly investigated everything from the beginning, to set them in order for you, most excellent Theophilus, just as they, who from the beginning (were/became) eywitnesses and servants of the word, handed them over to us, so that you might know the certainty of those things in which you have been instructed."

(Lest you think I'm playing tricks here, please understand that all of Luke 1:1-4 is really just one long sentence, that Greek word order can be quite strung out and that the verse divisions are not original to the text but an artifice imposed much later. I'm not cheating anything but just breaking the constrictions of the verse divisons to make it more coherent in English. When the word order of the above is untangled and translated more sensibly, it doesn't fit the verse structure, but that verse structure is not something that strictly needs to be maintained in order to render an accurate translation. Sometimes it just gets in the way)



To simplify - Since many others have written about Jesus, I thought it would be a good idea to investigate everything and give you a definitive account of how the first witnesses transmitted them to us.

Luke is quite definitely NOT claiming to be a witness of anything, he is claiming - at most to have received his info second hand and is also clearly implying that his sources are written.
I haven't researched it either but it's meaningless. A completely trivial detail about a title? Give me a break. Would you like a list of the historical details (including personal titles) that Luke got wrong? There are some real people and places in Luke-Acts, no one denies that. Lots of fiction has real people and places. It proves nothing. Your assertion that Luke was "extremely accurate" is demonstrably untrue.
The author makes no such claim as to dating or as to any acquaitance with Paul.
I don't know what you mean by the "integrity of the text." but if you are siggesting that the proven late dating for Luke-Acts somehow contradicts an internal claim by the author, then a.) you're wrong, it doesn't and b.) it would be of no concern to the dating if it did. If the dating contradicts a claim by the author, then the author was lying. So what? Why can't the author be a liar?

Diogenes the Cynic

Thanks for that story. It's very striking in some of it's similarities to some details in the synoptics (including the name, Jesus).

I would only point out (as you did) that this passage was written after the fact, that it was alleged to have occurred at a time much closer to when the war started (when tensions were higher and when such an expectation was not particularly prescient and that the details of the "prophecy" are quite vague and and general.

I understand what you're saying about predictions sometimes coming true just by chance, and predicting gloom and doom for Jerusalem was often SOP for ancient Jewish prophets (as well as just for crazy people), but the predictions in Mark show enough detailed knowledge that chance is not very plausible.

Diogenes the Cynic

I think you misunderstood me. I was just saying that dating of Mark to after the war but before the destruction of the Temple (as you suggested) would still not indicate a predictive prophecy by JESUS, it would only indicate that Mark read the writing on the wall during the war.

Having said that, predictive prophecy, llike any other supernatural assertion, cannot be rationally considered as a historical possibilities UNLESS there is proof or unless all natural possibilities can be ruled out. You actually have to show a REASON why a magical explanation should be preferred to a natural one. It is not unfair or irrational to assume that the laws of physics were not violated until proven otherwise.