Ben C Smith

Nor is there any reason it should remain the same. This is not plant growth.

Transmission is less about technology than about human interest and caprice.

I do not think anybody thinks the gospels were languishing for decades on end. They were used; they were just used anonymously for a while (for the most part). Consider a typical spectrum:

69-80: Mark written.
81-90: Matthew and Luke use Mark.
91-100: John uses Mark and Luke (and possibly Matthew).
101-110: Barnabas uses Matthew (see 4.14, for example).
111-120: Papias refers to Mark and Matthew and uses John (see Hengel and Bauckham for the latter). Ignatius uses Matthew and possibly Luke.
121-150: Marcion uses Luke; Basilides uses Matthew and Luke; Justin Martyr uses all 4 gospels (but to varying degrees). Egerton and the gospel of Peter use the synoptics and possibly John. Somewhere in here or possibly even earlier we also have the Didache (do as you find in the gospel) and the gospel of Thomas.

I know that the estimated dates and strengths of allusion vary, and I do not even agree with all of the above. But there seems to be something for just about every decade from 70 on in a fairly steady stream.

This is on a fairly mainstream, standard view, which means that the gospels languishing cannot be used against such a view (even if it may be wrong on other counts).

It is all this copying that means the gospels were not languishing.

Ben.

God Fearing Atheist

Speaking of which...

Does anyone have a PDF of this paper that they'd email me? I'd love you forever.

Julian

There is all kinds of reasons why it would remain the same. You are still dealing with the same culture and technology. Continued...
...so there would have to be a tremendous shift in the interest of Christians sometime in the early 2nd century that would suddenly make the gospels of great interest. But then why were they written if there was no interest before that?
But that is exactly what we are talking about. According to the mainstream view you cite above (and I agree that it is roughly a mainstream view) the gospels do indeed languish. First of all, all that copying and writing of gospels has no basis in any kind of fact other than the usual "they could have been written that early." In other words you have nothing in that list until the second century so therefore no evidence that puts them solidly into the first century. I don't think that Papias are talking about the gospels that we have in the NT, but that doesn't really matter for this purpose since I am willing to accept any gospel as a terminus post quem.
All that copying, none of which can be shown to have happened, at all. That is the bias I was talking about earlier, moving the writings to the earliest possible time despite there being no good reason to do so. Terminus ante quem is just as valid and if one is picked over the other then good cause must be shown or the range will have to stand as is.

Don't get me wrong, I don't care emotionally one way or another. They could be written in the first century, or maybe in the second century. My complaint here (which is emotional) is with the unscientific regard of the evidence, a typical transgression in this field where scientific methodology is never taught and hardly ever understood. Always my pet peeve in biblical studies.

Julian

Ben C Smith

Then you have shifted the subject from the gospels languishing to the gospels having no firmly dated anchor points. Those are two different things.

In fact, it has even been suggested that some of those mainstream dates are set up precisely in order to spread out the evidence, so to speak, keeping something in every decade, as it were. In that case, what you are really talking about (lack of firm dating indicators) is being exploited in order to answer your purported question (why did the gospels languish?).

(Mind you, I do not think every single item on that list was placed there by mainstream scholars just for that effect, though that may have influenced one or two placements.)

Try this experiment, though. Take all those items on that list and squeeze them between, say, 110 and 150. That is a lot of gospel stuff. Does the Christian record after 50 match that output?

But such reasons are not hard to come by. Papias knows written gospels but prefers his own inquiries. So why did the gospels suddenly become popular shortly after Papias? Because inquiries such as the ones Papias was making were becoming very difficult with the deaths of the first two generations; it was now necessary for the first time to rely on written records. (I am not saying this is the correct answer; I am showing how easy it is to answer such fluid questions.)

Ben.

Toto

I am stunned at this misinterpretation. Kloner states that there were only 4 round blocking stones, and they were all connect to mausoleums or tombs of important officials. There were no ordinary round blocking stones. Carrier reports this. I do not understand the source of your confusion.

Geetarmoore

Thanks for all the great replies, guys. I've actually understood most of the arguments and 'evidence' brought forward in this thread for a few years, and was just looking for anything new that might have been discovered or thought of to prop the conservative early dating.

In my mind, the 1 c. dates seem predicated on a strong desire to have gospels that date within the 1st century, rather than on good evidence that positions them there. I'll continue to think on this, however.

Roger Pearse

I'd hate to try this argument from lack of citation or lack of evidence on any classical text. Most of them would end up dated to the renaissance!

Geetarmoore

I think we're only talking about a discrepancy of 60-90 years in dating. It just happens to make a really huge difference.

Gracchvs

Well, the earlierst text that we have internal evidence for is Rev.
I recomend:
The Book of Revelation

Quote:

Quote: “The beast that thou sawest was, and is not.... The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth; and there are seven kings; five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not get come, and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven.... And the woman which thou sawest is the great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” Here, then, we have two clear statements: (1) The scarlet lady is Rome, the great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth; (2) at the time the book is written the sixth Roman emperor reigns; after him another will come to reign for a short time; and then comes the return of one who :"is of the seven,” who was wounded but healed, and whose name is contained in that mysterious number, and whom Irenaeus still knew to be Nero. Counting from Augustus, we have Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero the fifth. The sixth, who is, is Galba, whose ascension to the throne was the signal for an insurrection of the legions, especially in Gaul, led by Otho, Galba’s successor. Thus our book must have been written under Galba, who reigned from June 9th, 68, to January 15th, 69. And it predicts the return of Nero as imminent. But now for the final proof — the number. This also has been discovered by Ferdinand Benary, and since then it has never been disputed in the scientific world. About 300 years before our era the Jews began to use their letters as symbols for numbers. The speculative Rabbis saw in this a new method for mystic interpretation or cabbala. Secret words were expressed by the figure produced by the addition of the numerical values of the letters contained in them. This new science they called gematriah, geometry. Now this science is applied here by our “John.” We have to prove (1) that the number contains the name of a man, and that man is Nero; and (2) that the solution given holds good for the reading 666 as well as for the equally old reading 616. We take Hebrew letters and their values — ב (nun) n= 50 ק (keph) k = 100 ר (resh) r = 200 פ (samech) s= 60 ן (van) for o = 6 ר (resh) r = 200 ת (nun) n= 50 Neron Kesar, the Emperor Neron, Greek Nêron Kaisar. Now, if instead of the Greek spelling, we transfer the Latin Nero Caesar into Hebrew characters, the nun at the end of Neron disappears, and with it the value of fifty. That brings us to the other old reading of 616, and thus the proof is as perfect as can be desired. [The above spelling of the name, both with and without the second nun, is the one which occurs in the Talmud, and is therefore authentic.] The mysterious book, then, is now perfectly clear. “John” predicts the return of Nero for about the year 70, and a reign of terror under him which is to last forty-two months, or 1,260 days. After that term God arises, vanquishes Nero, the antichrist, destroys the great city by fire, and binds the devil for a thousand years. The millennium begins, and so forth. All this now has lost all interest, except for ignorant persons who may still try to calculate the day of the last judgment. But as an authentic picture of almost primitive Christianity, drawn by one of themselves, the book is worth more than all the rest of the New Testament put together.

And Kautsky's Foundations Of Christainity, in particular,

Quote:

The first thing we encounter is a fierce class hatred against the rich. It appears clearly in the Gospel according to St. Luke, a composition of the beginning of the second century, especially in the story of Lazarus, which is found only in this gospel (16, verses 19f.). The rich man goes to hell and the poor man to Abraham’s bosom, and not because the rich man was a sinner and the poor man just: nothing is said about that. The rich man is damned just because he was rich. Abraham says to him: “Remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.” The thirst of the oppressed for vengeance is gloating here. The same gospel has Jesus say: “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (18, verses 24f.). Here too the rich man is damned for his wealth, not for his sinfulness. Likewise in the Sermon on the Mount (6, verses 20f.): Quote: “Blessed be ye poor: for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh ... But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation. Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.” The Gospel according to St. Matthew is some decades later than that of Luke. In the interval prosperous and educated people had begun to come close to Christianity. Many Christian propagandists felt the need of giving the Christian doctrine a form which would be more attractive to these people. The uncompromising tradition of primitive Christianity became inconvenient. Since however it had struck too deep roots to be simply put aside, an effort was made at least to revise the original composition in an opportunistic way. By virtue of this revisionism the Gospel according to St. Matthew has become the “Gospel of Contradictions” [2], and the “favorite gospel of the church.” Here the church found “the unruly and revolutionary elements of enthusiasm and socialism in primitive Christianity so moderated to the golden mean of a clerical opportunism that it no longer seemed to endanger the existence of an organized church making its peace with human society.” Naturally, the various authors who successively worked on the gospel according to St. Matthew left out all the inconvenient things they could, such as the story of Lazarus and the rejection of the inheritance dispute, which too gives rise to an attack on the rich (Luke 12, verse 13f.). But the Sermon on the Mount was already too popular and well-known to be treated in the same way. It was patched up: in Matthew, Jesus is made to say: Quote: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven ... Blessed are they, which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled” (chap. 5). Of course all the traces of class hatred have been washed away in this adroit revisionism. Now it is the poor in spirit that are blessed. It is not certain what sort of folk these are, whether idiots or people who were paupers only in an imaginary sense; who continued to have possessions, but assert their heart is not in them. Apparently the latter are meant; but in any case the condemnation of wealth which was contained in the blessing of the poor is gone. It is really amusing to find the hungry transformed into those that hunger after righteousness, who are assured that they shall be filled; the Greek word used here (chorazein – have their fill) is used of beasts for the most part, and applied to men humorously or in contempt. Having the word used in the Sermon on the Mount is another indication of the proletarian origin of Christianity. The expression was current in the circles from which it sprang, to indicate the complete quenching of their bodily hunger. It is ludicrous to apply it to quenching the hunger for righteousness. The counterpart to these blessings, the cursing of the rich, has disappeared in Matthew. Here even the shrewdest manipulation could not find a formulation acceptable to the prosperous groups whose conversion was being aimed at. The curses had to go.

We see that revelation is the first book of christianity, with the others written later, not only are thy being written later, but they are constantly being revised and updated... Apart from Rev. everything seems to fall between 130-270 ad.

Roger Pearse

I think that it would anyway. But there seems no convincing reason to late date the NT.

All the best,

Roger Pearse