DCHindley

Huon,

According to Loisy:

Written early 2nd century (100-125 CE?) with final form before 130-140 CE. Written for liturgical use within the Roman church.

Composed later than Mark & Luke, probably around 140 when it is mentioned by Papias.

Original correspondence between "Luke" and "Theophilus" around 110-120 CE, with the canonical edition around 130-140 CE.

1st draft around 135, final form (with a reworked death & resurrection sequence) around 140-150 CE. Author a Christian mystic.

Loisy comes across as a "too liberal" Catholic.

This appears to be the "standard view" common today.

In my view, the gospels were not written with liturgy in mind (this is wishful thinking based on how Christians later used them), but rather explanation to outsiders. What were they composed to explain? Why their founder (and by association, the authors' own crowd as well) should not be considered (a) dangerous rebel(s), but instead a harmless wisdom teacher or religious reformer framed by the jealous Judean ruling class as described by Josephus in his War and possibly also his Antiquities. I think the refashioning of Jesus into a divine redeemer had already ocurred, operating in the authors' own times as a harmless private association with its own "mystery."

DCH

sotto voce

Very true.

Very untrue. Liturgy was the invention of people who feared and detested Christians. As anyone who has read history is aware. Liturgy, a set form of pious words, has two purposes. One is to provide something for a non-believer to say that gives an impression, to the ignorant and the cowardly, that he or she has the Holy Spirit. The other is to ensure that nobody says anything that is genuinely of the Holy Spirit, that would show up the liturgists as the foul wretches they are!

The gospel writers had a thing called a gospel, strangely enough. Nothing to do with wisdom, or reform. The gospel, or good news, was that a person's conscience can be cleared, cleared by his or her own creator, to whom only is he or she answerable. The means by which conscience can be cleared cannot be by wisdom, or tinkering with Judaism, but by a saviour, or christ, who is saviour, therefore lord. All four gospels have revelation of this purpose very clearly in view, from the start of each, as culmination of a ministry that had christhood as its aim and its consummation as an actual, historic event.

The difficult word in all this is 'lord', because some people like to be criminal, or otherwise sociopathic, and don't like the idea of being told what to do, or of others accepting lordship and making them look criminal and sociopathic. That's why, when the gospel had spread, these interfering people invented ritual and forced it down everyone's throats on pain of death for a thousand years.

Duvduv

What happened to the subject of this thread too??

Toto

D - if you think that a thread has lost its topic, you can try to bring it back, or report it to ask for a split. These disembodied questions do not help.

Duvduv

I think I asked a question to Huon to which I didn't yet receive any replies (posting #99 in this thread). That was the last involvement I had in this thread.

Duvduv

So the unanswered question still remains - where did an alleged 2nd century writer derive an authoritative set of texts if there was no sanctioned or sponsored synods until the emergence of the Constantinian regime?
If none existed, then it is more than clear that a text attributed to a virtually unknown person named Irenaeus emerged in the 4th or 5th century.

Iskander

What does the “Constantinian regime” mean?

Duvduv

The Christian-friendly regime that started in the 4th century and became Christian as time went on.

Iskander

What does “regime” mean?-- as in "Constantinian regime"

sotto voce

The regime got up by Constantine to destroy Christianity. It was undoubtedly a regime, because it forced everyone under imperial control to accept the official religion. (This of course is fundamentally at odds with the nature of Christianity, that is inevitably both elective and a minority! 'Christian regime' is at least as much contradiction in terms as 'democratic fascism'.) Constantine tried to replace Christianity with a works salvation system similar to the works salvation belief of Jews who had not accepted Jesus as their Messiah. That itself was similar to the existing pagan beliefs of Rome, so Jews could quite easily describe themselves as Christians while retaining their non-acceptance of the real Jesus. This eventually met the wants of everyone, except Christians, of course, who either fled or were killed.

It was a regime based on ignorance, as well as coercion, so it did not withstand the light of the Renaissance; a light that Adolf Hitler would have extinguished, possibly for ever, had he succeeded. It was the regime that Hitler admired, upon which he said the hierarchic Third Reich was modelled— which does not come as a surprise. Today, those who fear Christianity, yet are unable to counter the claims of Christianity by means of fact and logic, are liable to assert the validity of Constantinianism, in either its Eastern or Western divisions; though the authoritarianism of the Vatican appeals more. If Christians could be forced under that authority they would lose all their dread for those who oppose their faith. Unquestioned assumption of the legitimacy of Catholicism/Orthodoxy, ignoring all scholarly requirements to demonstrate that legitimacy, is not only a sign of the illegitimate status of Constantinianism, it is sure evidence of belief in HJ. It is very common today.