MortalWombat

So this means that you believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all wrote the original gospels corresponding to their names?

Roger Pearse

That's what all the ancient evidence says. Indeed it is a little hard for me to see why anyone supposes otherwise. As a rule those who do deny this seem to use speculation as their reason to ignore this data, which doesn't work for me.

As they say, "Every great man has his disciples; although admittedly it is usually Judas who publishes the biography."

All the best,

Roger Pearse

avi

So, I acknowledge that I was in error for thinking that the date for these documents confirmed authorship prior to Nicea. I do believe, however, (based upon prejudice) that Constantine played a much more important role in establishing the Church, (including destruction of, or modification of any documents with which he disagreed,) than he is generally credited with. I believe we greatly underestimate both the harshness of his authoritarian rule, and the breadth of his (and his mother's) influence, regarding all matters of religious doctrine. It would not surprise me to learn that he instructed scribes to modify gMathew, gMark, gLuke, gJohn and all of Paul's writings, in accordance with his opinions, and to destroy everything else.

Roger Pearse

Not sure whether you are clear that the carbon date is for the physical copy in Coptic of the ps.Gospel of Judas? The original must have been composed much earlier, of course. You might find these notes on the discovery interesting.

Constantine was undoubtedly a tough and ruthless man, as all the late emperors were. Becoming and remaining emperor in the seething mess that late Roman society had become required that kind of personality, panegyric notwithstanding.

I am told that the idea that he was insincere in his beliefs was fabricated in the 1850's as part of a political effort to undermine the ideological basis for the Hapsburg empire (so Cameron and Hall, Eusebius: Life of Constantine (or via: amazon.co.uk)). I think he was perfectly sincere, just as Heliogabalus was towards El-Gabal. It is recorded somewhere that Constantine used to preach sermons to his court on Sundays; and that the courtiers used to try to find excuses to get out of them! Somehow that sounds sincere to me. In tedium there is sincerity.

By contrast I recall reading the diary of John Burchard, who was master of ceremonies to the Borgia pope. I was looking for a quotation including the word 'Christ' (which I did not find). I was amused, tho, to find that Alexander VI only invoked the name of Christ for official purposes, and when threatened, and otherwise it played no part in his life.

Leaving aside the lack of actual evidence, and the rather extensive evidence of non-tampering from quotations and mss prior to Constantine; is there any pressing reason to suppose Constantine to wish to do so?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

aa5874

So what language was the original? And when was your speculated original written?

You have no idea. You are just speculating.

Flaming Moe

Wow, I thought that it was taken as a fact that the 4 Gospels were NOT written by the people they were named after. So, really then we should accept that they are actual eye witness accounts, I mean evidence-based eye-witness accounts of the actual apostles?

Roger Pearse

Many people seem to think so, which is really rather curious. It might be a standard belief of secular NT studies, for all I know -- but if so, such certainty in the absence of actual evidence would not be very creditable to that discipline.

This is really a different issue, you know? I'll offer you my thoughts.

I note that you say eye-witnesses of the apostles and their actions? Yes, I think so, within their limits. (Luke indicates plainly that he is collecting the accounts of others, after all. Mark is doing the same, although he does not say so).

But... this is not to brush aside a whole bunch of data which suggests that the process of composition of the four texts is not nearly as simple as we might think. The texts of Matthew and Luke contain passages verbally identical with passages of Mark; the endings of Mark clearly have a different transmission to the main body of the text; and the passage in John on the woman taken in adultery likewise. There is evidence that Matthew was originally composed in Aramaic, for instance.

Most of the inferences that get made from these pieces of data seem to me a little careless, tho. We really have no information as to how these things come about. For all we know Matthew, Mark, Luke and John got together every morning for breakfast, a game of whatever the equivalent of poker was in Rome in 61 AD, and swapped mss (NB: I invented that!).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

bacht

Roger, how do you feel about the authorship of books in the Jewish Bible? For example, is Daniel a product of the 2nd C BC or the 6th?

Do you acknowledge the practice of pseudepigraphy before the Christian era? Is the book of Proverbs really from Solomon's hand, or the Psalms from David?

spamandham

The only conclusion to properly draw from what little c14 testing we do have, is ...for those texts which have been c14 tested, they test to the late 3rd/early 4th century.

This does not imply that the content of the texts dates from that period, but merely that those particular copies date to that period. Since we know these texts were widely distributed after 325, we should not expect to find texts dating earlier than that period.

So, I think you're making too much of the c14. No-one disputes that Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome. The c14 testing done to date is consitent with that idea.

Any theory of Christian origins must explain all the evidence, not just some.

Having read "Against the Galileaens" a couple of times now, I do not get from it what you suggest. Julian takes the existence of Jesus and Paul as a given, and readily accepts that Jesus performed a couple of miracles. His dispute is that Jesus and Paul were unimportant nobodies in their own day converting only other unimportant nobodies and that they were only puffed up into immortal status later on. Julian accepts the existence of 1st century Christianity as a given.

Amaleq13

Yes, you can find the conclusion repeated in "secular" references like the Catholic Study Bible.

Specifically, the notion that Matthew was written by an eyewitness/disciple is rejected due to the clear reliance upon Mark.