Peter Kirby

I'm glad you find it amusing, Vorkosigan, but I have always said that my web site often presents scholarly opinion, not necessarily with either my own agreement or the proof of reason.

Edited to add... of course, I don't really know what the joke is.

best,
Peter Kirby

Spenser

That's just it. The Jesus story would have a lot more credibility if the earliest of Xian writers included the likes of Pilate and Herod (real historical figures), instead they are mentioned by later Xian writers in what I believe was an attempt to 1984 the story, if you know what I mean...

Ted Hoffman

* Ellegard (Jesus - 100 years before Christ) uses the use of the word "synagogues" in the documents. Other words also come to mind.
* There is the mention/lack of mention of the Jewish war.
* The manner in which "leaders" (Roman leaders like Herod, Pilate etc) are mentioned and their roles.
* I also think many use Josephus writings, the dates he gave and the descriptions of communities and socio-political environments can be used as a guide.

As far as the Egerton Gospel being written in spring 63CE, since you are making the positive assertion, the burden of proof rests firmly at your feet. So support your assertions and then we can see how good your reasons for dating it as such are.

Peter Kirby

I await Iasion's response.

best,
Peter Kirby

Iasion

Greetings Peter,

Thanks for your response Peter, you strike to the heart of the matter - I have thought for some time about the issues.

Firstly,
I readily agree that a great deal of argument for dating these documents lies on relative or internal evidence and not any any HARD evidence.

Many keys documents could conceivably be dated very wrongly for all we really know. I note that Yuri argues strongly that many mainstream datings are incorrect by a large margin. I also note theories such as Michael Connelly's which posits large scale coherent forgery at a later date.

I would be happy to support a total revamp of our datings, based on a maximum of modern scholarship, and a minimum of tradition.

(Also, I can see now that my tendency to give what I consider is the best specific estimate of a document's date, without giving the range of dates full credence, is a poor way to treat the data.)


Now,
as to the specific issue of how the dates affect my argument :

It is true that many documents are variously dated by decades, e.g. Ellegård's recent, and quite credible, argument.

But the essence of my argument is really that they fall into two categories:

Early -
no details about the Life of Jesus or the Gospel events or actors

Late -
clear knowledge of same.

(with a grey area in between such as Barnabas, Ignatius, Polycarp)


I think it is fairly clear that this pattern is generally true for the documents we have, even allowing for varied datings generally accepted as credible.

However, I will certainly agree the evidence is not certain, and some documents do not follow this rule.

But, this pattern is generally seen as the typical behaviour in Christian writings - the longer generally developing out of the shorter, e.g. Ignatius.

This rule of thumb supports the argument that the details in the Gospels were added to Christian beliefs later.


The P. Egerton2 is indeed an illustrative document - I know you don't really argue it was written in sping of 63, but your point IS well taken :

Discussion about dating this odd document goes mainly to issues pertaining to Christology, NS usage, and relationships with other Gospels.

All of this is essentially relative, and based on very few hard facts, and does show that a great proportion of argument about datings in this field is speculation, and could in fact be quite wrong.

My unsurprising opinion would be that P.Eg2 was probably written in late 1st or early 2nd C., with a small chance of being as early as 63CE. A probabily curve seems to be the best way to express datings, much like a Carbon-dating result.


However,
I don't think a credible case could be made for the documents being actually dated in the reverse order (even broadly) -
i.e. I cannot see a realistic case which has the early documents being the ones that show most knowledge about Jesus' Gospel stories, and the later ones showing no mention of these details.
Nor am I aware of any such theory or argument.

So,
many serious doubts about dates notwithstanding, I think the pattern still supports the Doherty thesis - knowledge of the Gospel stories of Jesus was unknown until early 2nd century, when it rapidy became widespread.

Iasion

Vorkosigan

I also note theories such as Michael Connelly's which posits large scale coherent forgery at a later date.

Cite!?

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

There is an argument that Egerton must be late. It's a narrative gospel, not a sayings collection, as far as I can see. The appearance of the lawyers makes it look like part of a longer story.

If you want to argue that Egerton predates Mark, it seems you have to argue that Mark is dependent on Egerton, or else lots of people in Christianity independently hit on the idea of inventing narrative gospels. My view is the narrative gospel was invented only once, by "Mark" and everything in that gospel genre follows him. That would rule out a date of 63.

Vorkosigan

Iasion

Greetings Vork,

Dr Michael Conley sorry, his page is here:

http://www.thecosmiccontext.de/christianity.html

Interesting theseis.

Iasion

Peter Kirby

This assumes (a) that the idea of writing narrative about Jesus could only have occured once and (b) that the inventor of the narrative gospel was the author of Mark. Both assumptions are highly questionable. No argument is offered for (a), and against it is the obviousness of the idea of writing stories about what Jesus said and did. It's not like they independently invented something difficult and complicated like the atomic bomb. Besides, important ideas such as calculus and evolution by natural selection were discovered independently. No argument is offered for (b) either. What is there to suggest that Mark was inventing a narrative gospel genre without any earlier narratives about Jesus to draw upon?

best,
Peter Kirby

Vorkosigan

This assumes (a) that the idea of writing narrative about Jesus could only have occured once

yes, that is my assumption. Otherwise, we have to assume it occured several times, depending on how much independence you desire among the various texts.

and (b) that the inventor of the narrative gospel was the author of Mark.

Quite true.

Both assumptions are highly questionable. No argument is offered for (a), and against it is the obviousness of the idea of writing stories about what Jesus said and did. It's not like they independently invented something difficult and complicated like the atomic bomb. Besides, important ideas such as calculus and evolution by natural selection were discovered independently.

Good points. But the latter two were discoveries and inferred from the world. A narrative gospel cannot be inferred from the world; it has to be invented out of whole cloth. That's why it is more likely that it had a singular origin.

No argument is offered for (b) either. What is there to suggest that Mark was inventing a narrative gospel genre without any earlier narratives about Jesus to draw upon?

Can you identify anything in Mark that looks like it came from a written source, that Mark has apparently reworked? Or identify a source?

The fragments of Egerton look like a narrative gospel of the kind we have. If you want to claim that it has an independent origin, then you have to argue that not only did the writers indepedently invent the narrative gospel, but they did so in the same way, by stringing together sayings to form pericopes and apparently, a Passion Narrative (I infer this from the verse in Egerton about Jesus' time not yet come). Why is there no variety in the format of the narrative story, if they have independent origins?

Vorkosigan