(09-26-2022, 02:48 AM)jimhabegger Wrote: I'm not seeing any ground to stand on now for doubting the traditional stories about who wrote the original versions of Matthew, Mark and Luke. It looks to me now like the later dating is all based on nothing more than an unspoken and unquestioned assumption that before 60 CE, there couldn't have been any people who believed that the temple would be destroyed again some day. I'm really curious now to see if anyone can show me any better ground to stand on, for dating the original versions of the synoptics later than 60 CE.
(09-26-2022, 02:59 AM)epronovost Wrote: Do you want a really good one? Here's mine for a later date than 60 for all Gospel literature. We haven't found any fragment, let alone entire copies, of those texts prior to the mid 2nd centuries. These are the oldest records we have of the Gospels and the oldest ones is from John's Gospel. It's unlikely these very important religious texts, the sort of texts that are copied and preserved unlike sales or administrative records for examples, would be a century older than that. We would have found more copies than a handful of fragments all from a century later. We have a lot of fragments and even complete gospel manuscript from the 3rd and early 4th century, but not a single word prior to the mid 2nd century and almost nothing in the 2nd century at all. Archeology seems to point to a early 2nd century date for most of the Gospels at the earliest.
Thank you! Do you have any others?
