Steve Weiss

That tells it like it is. The same applies to all of ancient history. Was there a King David, for example? There is virually no evidence outside the bible to support his existence, although Christianity rests upon his having been a real person.

Rich Oliver

Well it was precisely this over use of the Dead Sea Scrolls that put me off. But his later work seems at admittedly first brush to have a lot more credibility to it. What I liked about Wells and parts of Doherty's work was that you could see the power of the case that they were making and you could easily check out their theories with out some huge scholarly back ground. There seems to be some suppression going on around Jesus's family even what they are expressing was itself an earlier myth.

Doug Shaver

Oh, I think a few facts of ancient history are somewhat better documented than the fate of the library of Alexandria. Like for instance, what the guy whom the city was named after did on a few occasions.

There is the Tel Dan stele. Even if there weren't, if the Bible were the sole evidence for his existence, I would not regard that as prima facie evidence of his nonexistence. There was a kingdom of Judah. Somebody had to be the first king and somebody had to be his successor. According to the Bible, their names were Saul and David. Exactly what makes it improbable that Judah's second king actually was named David? We can believe that without also believing that he did anything the Bible says he did, other than being Judah's second king.

Juststeve

Steven Weiss:

I’ve claimed no expertise for myself. Show me where I have and I will retract the claim immediately. I’m no expert.

I have advocated according substantial weight to the opinions of people who are experts on matters such as the dating of the Gospels. It seems to me that academics who have spent careers on such matters, and published their findings submitting them to peer review are more likely to be correct than amateurs on the internet. That idea seems to be heresy here on the free thought forum.

In any event some of the experts I would recommend are: John Meier, Paula Fredriksen, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Robert Fund or Bart Ehrman. I consider any or all of them better qualified to make the sort of judgments we have been talking about than others of less erudition myself included.

Steve

jgoodguy

One of us is guilty of the crime of tangent mode and the other is an accessory. I plead nolo contendere.:wave:

Toto

Which of these experts discusses dating the Gospel of Mark to 70 CE? Please cite the source and the reasons.

Juststeve

Toto:

I'm not really inclined to abstract the work of six recognized scholars and explain it to you. If you are interested in what they have to say, go to the library.

Steve

Toto

This is a test to see if you actually have read these scholars and know what their arguments are. In other words, I'm calling your bluff.

spamandham

The purpose of this subforum is to discuss the evidence and the arguments, not merely to declare your perception of consensus and then send everyone off to the library if they challenge it. I don't think the author's you vaguely cited actually say what you think they say.

Look at Crossan's argument. He argues that Mark is writing sometime in the generation that followed the fall of the temple. That's a far cry from dating Mark to 60-70.

Meier states that Mark appears to be dependent on divergent oral traditions, and so a long enough time period must have passed to allow for this. Is 30 years really long enough to account for the rise of Christianity, divergent oral tradition, and the beginning of a catholicizing phase to bring it back together?

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/mark.html

spin

That's usually a sign of a plea bargain attempt.


spin