Re: How late might the gospels be?
Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2018 1:32 am
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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.neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2018 1:32 amOf course everything depends on what is precisely meant by "it" -- not to mention the provenance of the Thessalonians epistle.
archibald wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2018 6:17 am 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.
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.
MrMacSon wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2018 1:51 amarchibald wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2018 6:17 am 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.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.
'moving events to the 2nd C' is not what I was suggesting.
It depends on what you mean by 'they'.
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.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.
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.But 'Some of you will see it happening before you die' is a testable forecast.
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 thatAnd some Thessalonians appeared to expect it, which is difficult, imo, to set aside, even if here we are not doing the epistles of Paul.
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.Paul the Uncertain wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2018 3:59 am archibald
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.But 'Some of you will see it happening before you die' is a testable forecast.
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.
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.Paul the Uncertain wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2018 3:59 amNobody 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.
I should have been clearer. I meant the writing of events. My bad.
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.MrMacSon wrote: ↑Tue Jan 16, 2018 3:49 amIt 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.
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).
- (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.
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' -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.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.