When were the Gospels written?

S

snow

Registered Senior Member
Ive seen several people here claim the gospels were written long after most people think they were,Just to clarify this I ask,when do you think the Gospels were written?
 
IIRC, the prevailing belief among historians was that Mark was written c. 80-100 AD, and the others were written in the order they appear between 200-400 AD. Matthew was placed first when the Bible was assembled because it spoke to the Hebrew audience (as opposed to the Greek audience) and made a better transition from the Old Testament.
 
Originally posted by snow
Ive seen several people here claim the gospels were written long after most people think they were,Just to clarify this I ask,when do you think the Gospels were written?
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Saw a documentary recently which dated the Jesus Papyrus to well within the living-memory of the author. They used styles of writing and grammar to discern this date. Just how precise this is, is anybodies guess. But these guys were top-notch researchers.
 
Originally posted by snow
Ive seen several people here claim the gospels were written long after most people think they were,Just to clarify this I ask,when do you think the Gospels were written?
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Records show that Mark was the first Gospel written around 70 AD. The others followed. Saul/Paul who wrote most of the NT wasn't born when Jesus was alive. His epistles were written after the Gospels. I have read that he also wrote under the pseudonym "Josephus."
 
Re: Re: When were the Gospels written?

Originally posted by Medicine*Woman
Records show that Mark was the first Gospel written around 70 AD.
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What "records"?

Originally posted by Medicine*Woman
I have read that he also wrote under the pseudonym "Josephus."
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I'm sure you have. So, tell us. What is your position on the claim and are you willing to substantiate and defend it?
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: When were the Gospels written?

Originally posted by lifegazer
That's from a quick search. Looks informative enough.
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You have a notably low threshhold. :D

Experts in Greek paleography (ancient handwriting), however, rejected Theide's conclusions on 3 grounds:
  • His comparisons were not thorough; he stressed the similarity of the Matthew fragments to the 1st c. mss. but ignored their differences.
  • He failed to demonstrate that Roberts was wrong. He did not compare these fragments to 2nd & 3rd c. mss. & simply ignored the bulk of paleographical evidence used to date the emergence of uncial script.
  • Other research shows that these Matthew fragments came from the same codex as P4 (now at Paris), which contains a portion of Luke. This makes Thiede's 1st c. dating practically impossible, since the multi-text codex was not developed much before 200 CE.
P64/67 does not help date the composition of the gospel of Matthew. But its importance remains as the earliest copy of a synoptic gospel & (perhaps) as an example of the practice of publishing different gospels in the same book.

- see Rutgers Synoptic Gospels Primer: P64 & P67
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Thiede and Ancona’s new volume is an extraordinary production, padded with whole chapters of irrelevant material, yet curiously reticent—not to say deficient—when it comes to crucial questions about dating of manuscripts. As with many newspaper accounts, one finds in this book occasional errors, such as “Heraclion” (pp. 19 and 195) instead of “Heracleon,” and a reference to “the late C. F. D. Moule of Cambridge University” (p. 17), who happily is still in the land of the living (I received a letter from him last week). More serious, however, is the slack scholarship of the authors as reflected in their paleographical comments concerning the dating of the Magdalen fragments of Matthew.

- see Review by Bruce M. Metzger

Bruce M. Metzger is professor of New Testament, emeritus, at Princeton Theological Seminary, and author of Manuscripts of the Greek Bible (Oxford Univ. Press, 1981).
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I confess that I didn't read it. Was just trying to show you what it was. On the documentary I watched recently - on one of the discovery channels, I think - they did not mention anything you point-out here. I guess that there's a difference of opinion. No surprises there then.
 
Originally posted by ConsequentAtheist
Yes, somewhat like the difference of opinion between the scientific community and UFOlogists. :rolleyes:
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Not at all. These guys knew what they were talking about.
So let's take a closer look at this counter you presented:
Experts in Greek paleography (ancient handwriting), however, rejected Theide's conclusions on 3 grounds:
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What makes these "experts" any more-expert than the experts that did the initial work?
His comparisons were not thorough; he stressed the similarity of the Matthew fragments to the 1st c. mss. but ignored their differences.
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Differences?
Do you realise that these posts of ours could be dated just by the style of grammar and the language we are using? There are specific words we are using - and specific styles of grammar/punctuation (and even the way we would write this stuff - our handwriting style) - which would enable experts of the future to date these posts to a very precise date.
That's what those guys did with this papyrus. Yet it's obvious that our styles/grammar/handwriting will not have completely changed from that of say, 200 years ago. And nor shall they completely be transformed 200 years from now. These are the "differences" to which you attest. But the point is that, say for example, we would only do or say specific things within a very-short period.
The Oxford dictionary, for example, introduces new words every year... mirroring the current slang. But many of those words become unfashionable in a short time-span. They fall out of use. Thus their actual usage in correspondence can unveil the time such correspondence was had.
The point is that certain styles last a long time. Whilst others are short-lived and only happen within a certain era.
This is how these guys did their work. Only it was much cleverer and detailed than I have done it justice here. Don't just discount it on the back of some skeptical retort that does not actually disprove the initial hypothesis.

I'm not fully informed to counter everything you have said. But there is reasonable-doubt in my mind not to simply accept this retort as an invalidation of everything the other guys have said.
Like I said: differences of opinion.
I'm quite open-minded to this. The dating of the gospels can only be done in respect to educated guess of the available written evidence. For all we know, the first gospel(s) could have been written within months of Jesus' death. I like to think that they probably were. But I wont pretend to say that I can know, either way.
 
Is there a 1st century papyrus of the gospel text?

The Jesus Papyrus - Five Years On - A book review of The Jesus Papyrus by Carsten Thiede and Matthew d'Ancona addresses this claim in detail, finding that it is groundless. The papyri in question all date from around 200 C.E. The U.S. edition of this book is called Eyewitness to Jesus. The review is by Dr. J.K. Elliott , Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism at the University of Leeds, England. Source: Secular Web Library See also: Histrocity of Jesus
 
Originally posted by lifegazer
I'm not fully informed to counter everything you have said. But there is reasonable-doubt in my mind ...
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Best I can tell, when it comes to such things as paleography and textual criticism, you are not informed at all. Your doubt is based on ignorance and bias. You might wish to start here and then, if you're still interested, actually read a book. Metzger would be a good start.
 
Originally posted by ConsequentAtheist
Best I can tell, when it comes to such things as paleography and textual criticism, you are not informed at all. Your doubt is based on ignorance and bias. You might wish to start here and then, if you're still interested, actually read a book. Metzger would be a good start.
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That's true. I don't know alot about it. And like I said, I hadn't made my mind up one way or the other.
 
The Rutgers Synoptic Gospels Primer, though not dealing with paleography, has much to commend it, not the least of which is the following statement found beneath the index:
  • "Faith is no excuse for ignorance! Adherence to any tradition in disregard for textual evidence is sheer superstition."
 
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