That dating is wrong as well, and again not even supported by the Wikipedia page. Many of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas were copied word-for-word from a work called the Diatessaron, which is essentially a condensed version of the four real gospels translated into Syriac. The Diatessaron was written by Tatian in 175 AD, which gives us a lower limit for the date that the Gospel of Thomas was written in. Nicholas Perrin proved the dependence of the Gospel of Thomas on the Diatessaron in his book Thomas and Tatian; see the chapter titled “Thomas and his Sources”.
Besides which, the evidence for early dating of the Gospel of Thomas is laughable. See, for instance, the claim that because Thomas is merely a collection of sayings, it must have been written at same time as ‘Q’, the hypothetical collection of sayings of Jesus from the 1st century. One might as well say that Don Quixote and The DaVinci Code were written at the same time because they’re both novels.
I think you don’t understand what a terminus ad quem is. The late dates are not probable suggestions for when it was written, but merely the latest possible dates they COULD have been written.
Off the top of my head:
Paul Meir
JD Crossan
Robert Funk
Robert Eisenman
PJ Achtemeir
Randel Helms
Richard Carrier
Even the earlier dates are late 60’s. Mark knows about the 1st Jewish-Roman War, so that put him pretty squarely after 65. He also seems to know about the destruction of the Temple (or at least knows it’s imminent) which puts him probably right around 70.
No there aren’t. There are arguments, but not substantial ones.
Wrong.
If you want a very at-length discussion, go here:
Your Bible College cite is a traditionalist (and not particularly well informed) apologia, not a scholarly piece. Even the portion you quoted presumes, with no justification at all, that the traditional association of the author with Peter has any basis in fact. It also assumes the legend of Peter going to Rome as fact, when, in fact, this tradition cannot be established as historical at all. You really do great injury to your own credibility when you try to harrangue people about “serious scholarship” (of which I am convinced you know nothing), when you cite bilge like this.
Bruce Metzger, Bart Ehrman, JD Crossan, Howard Kee, Werner Georg Kummel, Edward Tinsley, Joseph Tyson, Franklin W. Young, Stevan Davies. Luke seems to know of Josephus’ Antiquities, so that puts it in the mid-90’s.
No there aren’t.
Wrong.
The author shows awareness of both events,actually, the destruction of the Temple in Luke 21:5-30, and the death of Paul (more obliquely) in Acts 20. The author also uses Mark as a primary source, which puts it into the 80’s at the earliest. The reason Luke is scircumspect about Paul’s death probably has to do with the fact that he was writing to Romans and didn’t want to piss them off. In any case, there’s no question he was writing well after 70, most probably after 85 and possibly as late as the turn of the century.
Again, you don’t understand the purpose of a terminus range.
Wrong again. The Wikipedia page even says that the consensus among scholars puts it in the second century. As for Crossan’s attempt to extract the “Cross Gospel” and date in to the middle of the first century, here’s the response from Gary Evans in The Case for the Real Jesus
But honestly, are you just linking to Wikipedia pages and hoping that I won’t bother to read them?
Ehrman makes this point himself. It’s really not salient, though. The fact that there are thousands of even minor (and they’re not ALL minor) discrepencies shows that we can’t ever know exactly what the originals said. This is important if you think these books are literally the word of God.
Johannine comma.
Funny how you say that like you think it’s significant. Metzger was Ehrman’s mentor. That is well known. You seem to have the impression that Ehrman’s writings are in some kind of significant contradiction to Metzger. They are not. Ehrman’s popular books are expositions of pretty straight down the middle of the road NT scholarship. Ehrman is not espousing radical, personal opinions. He’s jus presenting mainstream scholarship to a lay audience.
ITR, do you ever get tired of having Diogenes prove you wrong?
Seriously, these threads of yours merely convince everyone that you’re completely wrong about everything. So why do you keep starting them? You’re not a fundamentalist so why the need to propagate this nonsense?
Richard Dawkins confused the Sayings Gospel of Thomas with the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, therefore Christ is Lord.
Is that about right?
All this quibbling over the dating of the Apocryphals is ultimately beside the point. Dawkins was essentially correct that the Canonicals wre chosen from a multiplicity of Gospels, none of which were authored by eyewitnesses of Jesus, none of which agree very well and none of which are historically reliable.
I find it educational to read DtC’s posts on biblical scholarship and following his and others links, so it’s an interesting read in anycase. Not sure that’s ITR’s motivation for starting the thread though.
Yes, that’s what I mean. There is no hard evidence for the non-canonical gospels being in existence prior to about 170-180 AD. There are irresponsible speculations like the kind I mentioned in my response to Sage Rat about the Gospel of Peter, but that’s it.
Well here’s the thing. Whenever we have a thread like this, we see phrases like “scholarly consensus” and “mainline scholarship” tossed around. Now I’m all in favor of generally respecting a consensus where it actually exists. I just don’t like seeing one pulled from a hat like this.
Where is the evidence that “consensus scholarship” puts any non-canonical gospel “around the same time period as the canonical gospels”. What sources better than Wikipedia report this? The authors I’ve linked to already are all mainstream scholars in the New Testament, quoted often by both Christian and secular sources. I could add to that list Craig Blomberg, N. T. Wright, and numerous others. They recognize the wide gap between the canonical and non-canonical gospels. How do they fit into this supposed consensus?
I do as well. ITR seems to represent what I consider the angry fringe fundamentalists (although I don’t think he’s a fundie, IIRC), a la JP Holding and Frank Walton type.
It’s very interesting to read DtC’s blasting away of ITR’s arguments.
I, too, would be quite interested in hearing of any mainstream church teaching that what Dawkins says is true or close to true. Dawkins says that the choice of the four canonical gospels was “arbitrary”. But it was not arbitrary. They were chosen as canonical because they had been written long before any others, because the church had used them continuously since the start, and because church doctrine was based on them. There was nothing arbitrary about them. If we are to accept Dawkins’ statement, then modern day historians are making “arbitrary” distinctions every day.
As for Dawkins hinting that certain gospels were not included because they contained “embarrassing” stories, he has a grand total of zero facts to back that up with. He’s just making it up, much as he makes up most of what’s in the book.
This is not true. To give one example, the Gospel of the Hebrews is mentioned by Hegesippus around 165.
It’s also pretty well accepted that the Gospel of Peter (embedded Cross Gospel or no embedded Cross Gospel), the Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of the Ebionites and others all date from the mid 2nd Century or earlier – possibly MUCH earlier. And that’s just the works that are labeled as Gospels. There are are also apocryphal works of other genres – the Apocalypse of Peter, for instance, and the Didache which is dated between 50-120 CE.
Even if you were right, it wouldn’t matter. A lot f these things are hard to date and there’s no hard evidence to date then AFTER 180 either. Even the datings of the Canonical Gospels could be slid to the 2nd Century. They all have a range. None of them can really be nailed down hard.
At the end of the day, though, the point still stands that the NT Canon was selected from dozens of other extant works, none of them with any clear provenence, and while the Canonical Gospels are not exactly AP reports, they were chosen largely because they were the best of a bad lot.
You need to distinguish between what is taught as Church doctrine and what is taught in Church seminaries and colleges. You want a mainstream seminary that backs up Dawkins? How about the Princeton Theological Seminary, home of the late Bruce Metzger, who was regarded as the foremost expert on Biblical manuscripts, and who was also an ordained presbyterian minister.
Did you perhaps miss Diogenes’ post where he mentioned
Paul Meir
JD Crossan
Robert Funk
Robert Eisenman
PJ Achtemeir
Randel Helms
Richard Carrier
Bruce Metzger
Bart Ehrman
Howard Kee
Werner Georg Kummel
Edward Tinsley
Joseph Tyson
Franklin W. Young
Stevan Davies
eta: Diogenes has already pointed out many, many, many specific facts that you have yet to rebut. Your argument basically consists of saying “no it didn’t”.
Should I instead follow your lead and provide no cites at all?
The fact that Peter was in Rome is testified to by Clement of Rome. Papias and Clement of Alexandria both testify conerning not only Peter, but also his relationsihp with Mark and the authorship of Mark’s gospel. Bishop Dionysius of Corinth testifies that Peter was at Rome. One letter of Ignatius of Antioch strongly suggests that Peter was in Rome with Paul. Irenaeus says that the Church in Rome was founded by Peter and Paul. So does Tertullian. etc… One could, I suppose, complain that Peter failed to post vidoes of himself in Rome on YouTube, but by the standards of the ancient history the case for Peter being in Rome is firm. We accept a lot of facts about figures from ancient history on less evidence than that.
It’s in their books, for instance Bruce Metzger’s The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origins, Development, and Significance, Ehrman in any number of books, ditto for Crossan, Kummel’s Introduction to the New Testament.
These are actual books, not web articles, and I don’t have the page numbers at my fingertips. If I give a list of each and every book with page numbers, are you going to seek them out? would it make any difference to you. You asked for one, I gave you several. Take them or leave them.
Not so. this letter is the only known writing Clement I. Show me where he says Peter went to Rome.
Now you’re citing 2nd Century folklore. There is no hard, historical evidence that Peter went to Rome. None of these writers (with the possible exception of Clement I, who does not claim Peter went to Rome) are contemporary sources or witnesses to anything. It’s not impossible that Peter went to Rome, founded the Church there, and was executed by Nero, but that’s all 2nd Century tradition. None of it is historically verifiable.
Incidentally, you’re also mistaken that Papias (who Eusebius called “a man of small intellect”) said anything about the Canonical Gospel of Mark. He says that Peter had a secretary named Mark who wrote down Peter’s recollections of Jesus, and this forms the basis for the traditional ascription of authorship to Canonical Mark, but the reality is that Papias’ description doesn’t match the Canonical Gospel, and whatever Petrine memoir he was talking about (if it existed at all) was not Canonical Mark.