Paul belongs in the 2nd century also, all post Bar Kokhba. One must separate the legend of Paul from the writings in his name. The so-called letters are in fact a diverse set of tracts cobbled together, often by similar topic (same is true of the Catholic Hebrews) and them put in the form of letters with formula greetings and closings. Material within them snowballed.archibald wrote: ↑Sun Jan 14, 2018 4:54 amIt arguably originates in something that is at the heart of the disagreement between 'Paul' and the Jewish 'christians' he references.Stuart wrote: ↑Sat Jan 13, 2018 7:52 pm
What I am saying here is the Jews in John's Gospel are in fact stand-ins for Jewish Christians, that is those who accept the OT and the Davidic Jesus, who oppose John's own "Gentile" Christian sects version of Jesus, who rejects the Jewish God. This is a mid to late 2nd century debate, not a 1st century debate.
Or do you also place 'Paul' in the 2nd C? If so, still before the gospels? Or what? I'm guessing yes, to both? I'm not asking for a long answer.
Galatians especially belongs in the era well after the Marcionite Gospel, and after the first edition of Matthew were published, in the later half of Antoninus. The debate about circumcision and Law (of Moses' code vs Roman code "of the peoples") fit the era after Judea is dissolved, and in the aftermath of Antoninus making a provision allowing Jews to circumcise. Further the perverted Gospel is Matthew. When the Pauline letters say Gospel, I have concluded they mean written Gospel, not oral. The letters are parallel to the development of the Gospel, not prior. Again the autobiographical elements, are drawn from apocryphal acts or invented by the writers to fit the established period piece genre of the Gospels. It was a convention, much like the famous heroes and villains of the post civil-War American West, must make an appearance or be mentioned to give placement for a Western novel or movie. But the debate discussed, or the moral being told, is contemporary.
A note on the Pauline collection in Marcionite form. Most probably it did not come together all at once, but accumulated over a couple decades. Unlike the Gospel which appeared in the first decade of the reign of Antoninus, the collection may have not come together in ten letter form until as late as 160 AD. It was not strictly Marcionite, but contained tracts and elements from a variety of what we'd call heretical and Gnostic sources, even with some proto-orthodox elements within.
The story I present is a New Testament that came about from competition between various sects, which can broadly be divided into to two camps, where the nature of the High God and father of Jesus -that is whether he was also the Jewish law giver and the creator or not- was the dividing line. The success of the Marcionite using a Gospel to spread their message forced reactions, first in the form of Matthew, which itself forced a reaction in John, and ultimately in Luke. The letters of Paul derived similarly and were revised like the Gospels. Celsus was quite correct in his claim that Christians came pen in hand, rewriting and adjusting their Scripture to counter whatever arguments of the day.
My model says some of the New Testament books are from the first half of the 3rd century, such as 2 Peter, Jude, 2 & 3 John, possibly James and Hebrews. The only document I believe may have started life in the 1st century was Revelation, but only part of it and as a Jewish document that became Christianized. It was a snowball that in the form we have is probably from very late in the 2nd or the start of the 3rd century. The theology is very different from any of the Gospels or letters. Amazing the diversity of Christianity. But that diversity is what drove competition, and why the NT was put together the way it was. Were there no competition between sects, otherwise the NT might look more like the Koran, a haphazard collection of sayings and legends, and would have been formed over hundreds of years.
