How late might the gospels be?

[neilgodfrey]

...

[archibald]

But 'Some of you will see it happening before you die' is a testable forecast.

And some Thessalonians appeared to expect it, which is difficult, imo, to set aside, even if here we are not doing the epistles of Paul.

Of course everything depends on what is precisely meant by "it" -- not to mention the provenance of the Thessalonians epistle.

How much does it depend on the 'it', really, in the final analysis? Are we not likely to be talking, at best, about versions of the same core expectations? I mean, it's unlikely the faithful were expecting egg and onion sandwiches.

As to questioning Thessalonians, yes, you can question absolutely everything. You can deconstruct, reconstruct and/or reinterpret the entire written evidence and suggest missing bits to suit any alternative. But for certain alternatives you will have to be pedalling your speculation bicycle very hard indeed. And although it annoys me to admit it, I think we are all going to have to concede that at best, we are stuck with coherence, parsimony and explanatory power.

Well, we are not stuck if we are just enjoying the fun of speculation, to while away the hours we spend on the mortal coil engaging in our shared fetish, but we are stuck if we are hoping for conclusive answers.

The general idea that at some point there were expectations about something imminent and that later these were postponed, seems pretty much the best narrative. I think it would take quite a bit of overturning, and moving individual bits of the jigsaw around in a speculative way might not manage it convincingly, imo.

[MrMacSon]

I might say one general thing though. Imho, it might be easier, I'm thinking, to tie the NT to the 1st Jewish War than to the Bar Kokhba Revolt. But I haven't looked into the latter before now. I think it was Jax who recommended to me a book doing the former, and I haven't followed that up yet either. So many theories, so little time.

... the book.. which I have ordered, 'A Shift in Time' by Lena Einhorn, doesn't involve a shift in time forward to events closer to the 1st Jewish War.

It's not clear why you say what you do in that second post. 'A Shift in Time' by Lena Einhorn proposes events and people in the period before and around the 1st Jewish War, in texts like Josephus's, have been re-packaged in the NT and shifted back to be in the late 20s and early 30s AD.

Frans Vermeiren has proposed something similar from a slightly different time in his 2015 book A Chronological Revision of the Origins of Christianity.

It would be easy for the narratives for the events and people portrayed in the NT to have been written in the second century. In fact, if aspects of the NT narratives are indeed based on the texts of Josephus (and others), those NT narratives would have to have been written after Josephus's texts/books were circulated ie. after 80-95 AD.

[archibald]

I might say one general thing though. Imho, it might be easier, I'm thinking, to tie the NT to the 1st Jewish War than to the Bar Kokhba Revolt. But I haven't looked into the latter before now. I think it was Jax who recommended to me a book doing the former, and I haven't followed that up yet either. So many theories, so little time.

... the book.. which I have ordered, 'A Shift in Time' by Lena Einhorn, doesn't involve a shift in time forward to events closer to the 1st Jewish War.

It's not clear why you say what you do in that second post. 'A Shift in Time' by Lena Einhorn proposes events and people in the period before and around the 1st Jewish War are shifted back to the late 20s and early 30s AD.

Frans Vermeiren has proposed something similar from a slightly different time in his 2015 book A Chronological Revision of the Origins of Christianity.

It would just as easy for the narratives for the events and people portrayed in the NT to have been written in the second century. In fact, if aspects of the NT narratives are based on the texts of Josephus (and others), those NT narratives would have to have been written after Josephus's texts/books were circulated ie. after 80-95 AD.

Well, I haven't read the book yet, so maybe I picked something up wrong from what Jax said or what a google skim of the book led me to mistakenly think.

As to whether it is 'just as easy' to move events to the 2nd C, I don't know, I would have to study a detailed case and compare it to another one (assuming I had the time). Perhaps in principle some readjustments (whether they be to do with time and setting generally, or who the characters really are, or to do with rearranging the order of certain events or whatever) are warranted, and perhaps in principle almost any case can be made (I think this is true), but some will involve more juggling and pedalling and speculation than others.

Quick question. If they were all 2nd C, why are the events apparently backdated? Not a clincher, you understand. Just a question.

[archibald]

To add...

If there isn't a book out there which proposes that the relevant events were more closely associated with the 60's CE...there arguably could or should be, imo. It seems at least as plausible as several others, at first glance. Is there a lucrative gap in the market, I wonder?

And how about James was the real 'Jesus'. Eisenman might be missing a trick.

[MrMacSon]

As to whether it is 'just as easy' to move events to the 2nd C ...

'moving events to the 2nd C' is not what I was suggesting.

... If they were all 2nd C, why are the events apparently backdated? Not a clincher, you understand. Just a question.

It depends on what you mean by 'they'.

If the events and people described in the NT narratives and texts are based partially or fully on people or events from times other than the late 20s to 30s AD/CE, they could (1) be direct accounts written in (or shortly after) those other times; or (2) be based partially or fully on accounts of people or events from other sources; or (3) the NT narratives could be a combination of (1) and (2).

I think (1) would be fairly straight-forward, other than the questions of why would the authors (1.a) shift those accounts to the late 20s to 30s AD/CE, (1.b) rename the characters, and (1.c) not include references to or accounts of the time they originated from.

(You might find 'A Shift in Time' addresses some of those points, and points mentioned below. Frans V's book might too.)

If the events and people described in the NT narratives and texts are (2) based partially or fully on accounts of people or events from other sources, the question arises as to what other sources might they be. Perhaps they would have been from a mixture of sources ie. -

• (2.a) texts eg. Jewish texts, Josephus, Homer, Plato, Philo, Plutarch, etc. They could be from other religions eg. from texts or traditions now unknown; perhaps from the Hermetics / the Corpus Hermeticum. which has been preserved; etc.

• (2.b) oral contributions eg. (2.b.i) accounts of the Oral Torah, as they are being recounted as part of the discussions about writing them down; or (2.b.ii) oral accounts from other religions or philosophies; or (2.b.iii) a combination.

Also, it is is not widely acknowledged that the period from about 2-300 BCE to the late 2nd C. AD/CE was a period of a dreamworld, where people's dreams informed various narratives eg. Aelius Aristides, in the 2nd century, was one of the better recorders of these 'dreamers'. He interpreted and obeyed the dreams about the god Asclepius that came to him while "sleeping in the god’s sacred precinct". He wrote about these 'experiences' in a series of discourses titled Sacred Tales (Hieroi Logoi).

In another of his works, "To Plato: In Defense of the Four,", Aristides derides a group of people by comparing them to 'impious men of Palestine' that 'do not believe in the higher powers' -

These men alone should be classed neither among flatterers nor free men. For they deceive like flatterers, but they are insolent as if they were of higher rank, since they are involved in the two most extreme and opposite evils, baseness and willfulness, behaving like those impious men of Palestine. For the proof of the impiety of those people is that they do not believe in the higher powers. And these men in a certain fashion have defected from the Greek race, or rather from all that is higher.

Aelius Aristides delivered a famous oration, “Regarding Rome,” before the imperial household in Rome in which he glorified "the Empire and the theory behind it, particularly the Pax Romana,” and painted an impressive picture of Roman achievement. The culminating passage compared the creation of the Roman World with the creation of an orderly universe and represents the Roman World as the perfect state in which the gods can take delight, because it is dedicated to them. This oration would become the main basis for history's favorable verdict on the Antonines, inspiring Gibbon's famous pronouncement that the period between Domitian and Commodus was the happiest era of human history.

[Paul the Uncertain]

archibald

But 'Some of you will see it happening before you die' is a testable forecast.

Not if there are two kinds of death, as Jesus has just said, at some length and with considerable insistence. Neither Jesus nor Mark put a chapter boundary there - it's all one speech.

Similarly, Jesus will later say to Caiphas that he will see much the same thing - and who is ever going to be able say that Caiphas won't see it someday, in a general resurrection? No Nicene Christian, surely.

And some Thessalonians appeared to expect it, which is difficult, imo, to set aside, even if here we are not doing the epistles of Paul.

Nobody is setting that aside. You and I agree about the literalness of Paul's audiences' expectations. The current issue, however, is whether the composition date of an apparently later work than Paul's letters "must have" come within a certain time frame, because the work quotes Jesus in a way that

- some people interpret as a forecast, and
- so interpreted, the forecast would have failed

on the further assumption that

- that failure would have embarrassed Mark

unless he was writing within the lifetime of Jesus' longer-lived contemporaries.

There is no forecast, except that interpretation might make it so. As to its failure, that experiment has been done. Believers in both Jesus and the forecast will be happy to explain to you why the jury is still out, or perhaps how it came true already. Mark's embarrassment? What do we know about Mark that would justify such a speculation about his interior mental states? Not so much, else we wouldn't be uncertain about when he wrote.

As to the expectations about which you and I agree, Paul's first audiences could easily have gotten their expectations from Paul, and Paul could have gotten them from a post-mortem conference with Jesus, or a distinctive analysis of Jewish scripture, seasoned with a Pharisaic outlook. Paul could grok two kinds of death.

[lsayre]

When do we begin to witness the first definitive quotes and/or (more importantly) commentaries of Canonical texts which we can pin down to real people who lived within verifiable time-frames, and what are the earliest of those time-frames?

BTW, I'm in the Stuart Waugh camp with regard to my belief that these texts are post Bar Kochba, and I thank him for responding to my request that he jump in and provide comment.

[archibald]

archibald

But 'Some of you will see it happening before you die' is a testable forecast.

Not if there are two kinds of death, as Jesus has just said, at some length and with considerable insistence. Neither Jesus nor Mark put a chapter boundary there - it's all one speech.

Similarly, Jesus will later say to Caiphas that he will see much the same thing - and who is ever going to be able say that Caiphas won't see it someday, in a general resurrection? No Nicene Christian, surely.

I have read the passage again and I see it as a forecast, for what will happen soon (within the lifetimes of the listeners) not least because the prophecy narrative includes the temple being demolished.

If Jesus later says Caiphus will see it too, then that's consistent.

Nobody is setting that aside. You and I agree about the literalness of Paul's audiences' expectations. The current issue, however, is whether the composition date of an apparently later work than Paul's letters "must have" come within a certain time frame, because the work quotes Jesus in a way that

- some people interpret as a forecast, and
- so interpreted, the forecast would have failed

on the further assumption that

- that failure would have embarrassed Mark

unless he was writing within the lifetime of Jesus' longer-lived contemporaries.

There is no forecast, except that interpretation might make it so. As to its failure, that experiment has been done. Believers in both Jesus and the forecast will be happy to explain to you why the jury is still out, or perhaps how it came true already. Mark's embarrassment? What do we know about Mark that would justify such a speculation about his interior mental states? Not so much, else we wouldn't be uncertain about when he wrote.

As to the expectations about which you and I agree, Paul's first audiences could easily have gotten their expectations from Paul, and Paul could have gotten them from a post-mortem conference with Jesus, or a distinctive analysis of Jewish scripture, seasoned with a Pharisaic outlook. Paul could grok two kinds of death.

Imo, there is a clear forecast throughout regarding what the listeners will see in their lifetimes (or some of them at least). As to whether this failed prophecy would be embarrassing or not, I agree that it might not necessarily have been. As such, I personally would not rely on it (possible embarrassment) to date the gospel.

It does beg the question about why someone writing in the future would include a backwritten failed prophecy, but as we can see from Thessalonians alone, the failure of expectations still exists in the texts. So it would appear that failed expectations (presumably arising from prophecies) are not so embarrassing as to require them being taken out (or not put in, as some might have it).

If I were to try to guess an answer to the apparent non-embarrassment (including to Nicene Christian readers) and the existence/retention of the failed prophecies in the extant texts, I might offer that (a) it wasn't necessarily always easy to airbrush stuff out that was either widely accepted or in numerous copies (something which I think is often overlooked when people cite interpolations/excisions) and (b) the postponement excuses were seen as valid corrections, and that people came to believe and accept them.

I don't have a handy offering for why they would have been backwritten, but I'm guessing someone else will.

[archibald]

As to whether it is 'just as easy' to move events to the 2nd C ...

'moving events to the 2nd C' is not what I was suggesting.

I should have been clearer. I meant the writing of events. My bad.

... If they were all 2nd C, why are the events apparently backdated? Not a clincher, you understand. Just a question.

It depends on what you mean by 'they'.

If the events and people described in the NT narratives and texts are based partially or fully on people or events from times other than the late 20s to 30s AD/CE, they could (1) be direct accounts written in (or shortly after) those other times; or (2) be based partially or fully on accounts of people or events from other sources; or (3) the NT narratives could be a combination of (1) and (2).

I think (1) would be fairly straight-forward, other than the questions of why would the authors (1.a) shift those accounts to the late 20s to 30s AD/CE, (1.b) rename the characters, and (1.c) not include references to or accounts of the time they originated from.

(You might find 'A Shift in Time' addresses some of those points, and points mentioned below. Frans V's book might too.)

If the events and people described in the NT narratives and texts are (2) based partially or fully on accounts of people or events from other sources, the question arises as to what other sources might they be. Perhaps they would have been from a mixture of sources ie. -

• (2.a) texts eg. Jewish texts, Josephus, Homer, Plato, Philo, Plutarch, etc. They could be from other religions eg. from texts or traditions now unknown; perhaps from the Hermetics / the Corpus Hermeticum. which has been preserved; etc.

• (2.b) oral contributions eg. (2.b.i) accounts of the Oral Torah, as they are being recounted as part of the discussions about writing them down; or (2.b.ii) oral accounts from other religions or philosophies; or (2.b.iii) a combination.

Also, it is is not widely acknowledged that the period from about 2-300 BCE to the late 2nd C. AD/CE was a period of a dreamworld, where people's dreams informed various narratives eg. Aelius Aristides, in the 2nd century, was one of the better recorders of these 'dreamers'. He interpreted and obeyed the dreams about the god Asclepius that came to him while "sleeping in the god’s sacred precinct". He wrote about these 'experiences' in a series of discourses titled Sacred Tales (Hieroi Logoi).

In another of his works, "To Plato: In Defense of the Four,", Aristides derides a group of people by comparing them to 'impious men of Palestine' that 'do not believe in the higher powers' -

These men alone should be classed neither among flatterers nor free men. For they deceive like flatterers, but they are insolent as if they were of higher rank, since they are involved in the two most extreme and opposite evils, baseness and willfulness, behaving like those impious men of Palestine. For the proof of the impiety of those people is that they do not believe in the higher powers. And these men in a certain fashion have defected from the Greek race, or rather from all that is higher.

Aelius Aristides delivered a famous oration, “Regarding Rome,” before the imperial household in Rome in which he glorified "the Empire and the theory behind it, particularly the Pax Romana,” and painted an impressive picture of Roman achievement. The culminating passage compared the creation of the Roman World with the creation of an orderly universe and represents the Roman World as the perfect state in which the gods can take delight, because it is dedicated to them. This oration would become the main basis for history's favorable verdict on the Antonines, inspiring Gibbon's famous pronouncement that the period between Domitian and Commodus was the happiest era of human history.

Thanks. If I knew what your general thesis was, I might be clearer about what you are getting at. For example, in this particular set of mini-exchanges in the thread, I don't know if you are or aren't on the side of thinking (as stuart and isayre seem to) that the epistles and the gospels were written after Bar Kokhba.

Or maybe you are just exploring without having a set thesis in mind. But I do wonder what possibilities you are exploring. If it is just that orthodoxy came later than appears and that between 1st C Judaic origins and the 4th C there were other things going on, I don't have a problem with that.