jakejonesiv

I would recommend the possibility that Mark 13, the Little Apocalypse, is derived from the Bar Kotchba rebellion, about 135 CE.

Malachi151

That's a very hard sell, especially when people had already cited this gospel prior to that date, and it seems very likely that Matthew and Luke were already written by this time.

yalla

Well I would be reluctant to put "Mark" as post 135ce but I'm not totally rejecting the idea.
The problem is that the people who are supposed to have cited the gospels prior to that date are rather hard to definitively date.
With almost any of the alleged chronology of early Christian writings there is a lot of margins for debate and the traditional patristic sources are not as solid as they appear to be at first glance.
More than once I have tried to pin down a date [via the internet and books]for someone eg Papias, Ignatius, Valentinus and have found the following:
1. A lot of sources just repeat other sources sometimes near verbatim.
2.On further investigation I found a variety of dates for a particular person.
Irenaeus' date can vary by decades and he is fairly late and fairly well
documented.
3.Most early writers are nebulous, very little is known about them at all.
Sometimes all that is supposed to be known can be traced to a single source which is itself doubtful.
The whole biography of Marcion [from Sinope, had lots of money etc] can apparently be traced to a single later hostile source but is endlessly cited as if solid fact.
4. One nebulous date is related to another nebulous date to date either of the persons involved or a third.
spin dates Ignatius to c160, he is not alone in that.
Some date him "never" as in he is a forgery.

There is no certainty. Although there may be the appearance of such.
So a healthy scepticism seems to be required.
cheers
yalla

Malachi151

Yes, this is true. I wonder about this. Why are they so damned hard to date, I mean, I know why they are, but standard Greek and Roman and Egyptian works from this period are not so hard to date, they give information that makes them dateable, but these Christian works are so vague....

My other problem with these late dates, however, has to do with the fact that Pilate and JtB are even used. Why pick these people for the story if you are trying to write a relevant story in 135-150? These people would have been meaningless to people of that time, yet still meaningful to people in 70.

yalla

Well 71ce would seem to me to be the earliest possible date for the first of the gospels. [Probably after. Maybe well after. I favour c100plus for g''Mark".]
So after that would be even less meaningful to people.
And maybe that is the attraction.
If you are writing creatively shall we say in the late 1c or even later having no contemporaries around to question your facts [particularly if there have been one or two wars intervening] might be a considerable advantage might it not?

MadPhatCat

Heard it was good for the core muscles.

Doug Shaver

Not necessarily, I think. If you're writing fiction, you're not trying to deceive anyone, but you do still want to help your readers suspend their disbelief. To that end, Mark would have wanted to minimize conflicts between what he said happened and what his readers knew happened.

yalla

I just had a thought.
I don't have many and haven't worked through it carefully so be nice please.

We know that Josephus was in 2 critical places for the saga we are considering, Jerusalem/Judea and then Rome, from 70 to about 100ce.
And that he was very interested in the events of Judea, hence "War" and "Antiquities".
And that he had pretty good literary and political contacts.
So if a literary work was published that directly pertains to his field of interest such as the preliminaries to the Roman Judean War, the decades immediately preceding, which includes accounts of events and characters [Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas, the Pharisees, perhaps J the Baptist etc] involved in his own history then he would have sat up and taken some notice of it. Used it as a source maybe.
Presuming he was aware of it, presuming it was circulated in such a manner that he was likely to hear of it etc..
And its' ["Mark's"] latinisms etc seem to suggest to many that it was circulating in the Roman sphere for a gentile/Roman audience at least in part.

But he does'nt refer to it at all [TF obviously excluded].
[OK argument from silence I know but I reckon he could be expected to have known these works ...maybe..?]

Does anyone believe Josephus knew g"Mark", or its later editions such as g"Matthew", conventionally placed in the lifetime of Josephus?

Why not?

OK "Mark" is said to have been a low profile work, but not so "Matthew".
And even "Luke", according to those who like to claim companion of Paul etc.

I'm suggesting that there is a certain degree of posssibility that Josephus could have been expected to be familiar with the early gospels, not necessarily JC, but at least have been aware that in certain circles 1 or 2 or 3 accounts of a fair length and alleged impact were making the rounds in the same literary circles more or less in which he was moving.
After all there has been stated that there is a fair degree of crossover between the Jewish and Christian groups at this time.
Its not like its a closed shop or a sphere that is foreign to him.

What do you think?
Does this, if it carries any weight, suggest a late date for the gospels, ie a date after the death of Josephus, late 1c wasn't it?
"Mark" post dating the death of Josephus roughly? Circa 100ce?

Be gentle.
cheers
yalla

Malachi151

Good points yalla, something to consider.

Toto

yalla - Harold Leidner in The Fabrication of the Christ Myth (or via: amazon.co.uk) argues that Josephus did not know any of the gospels. In his Contra Apion, Josephus lists and rebuts all of the anti-Jewish propaganda of his day, and he does not show any knowledge of the gospels, which all contain slurs agains "the Jews."