Besides the destruction of the temple in 70AD why are the Gospels considered to be written after 70AD? Jesus predicted his death, why could Jesus not predict the destruction of the temple. The temple was burned and the stones removed to gather the melted gold.

Is there a particular bible verse that stands out- that makes the Gospels have to be written after 70AD.

General Comments:
1) We know the synoptic gospels- Matt, Mark, Luke have large sections that are copied off one another. Speculation it was from unknown Q source. It appears Luke is written last? Luke and Acts are tied together, written by the same author. Luke was written and then Acts.

2) Time marker- We know St. Paul and Peter died roughly mid 60s during Nero. We know Paul was in rome around 63AD. We know St. Paul wrote epistles in the 50s.

3) Acts of the apostles which is about the apostles/ church with Peter and paul. Abruptly ends with no mention of their death in Rome which was huge. Many scholars believe Gospels written much earlier in 60s.

Some of it seems that the dates are dependent upon other books that the evidence for the date isn't clear to me. Granted I'm not a ancient Bible scholar, but it seems odd that Acts ends as it does if it is written after ~65AD when Paul dies. But, since the argument is Luke used Mark as a source document, and Mark is dated to 70 AD (because...) that Luke is after 70 AD and since Acts was written with Luke, so is Acts. But we come back to the problem of why Luke doesn't write about Paul dying.

The date doesn't concern me much. Immediately, 10 years, 25 years, 50 years, after Jesus, that doesn't concern me. The story of who Jesus is and why he came remains constant.

Maybe 70 AD because those in Jerusalem felt the pressure of Rome when the temple was destroyed as the persecution against the Christians had been growing throughout the empire over the previous decade. Maybe they felt they had to write then because they would soon be martyred.

Though it seems waiting so long would have negatively affected the book advance money they would have gotten.

Pro Sandy said:

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Though it seems waiting so long would have negatively affected the book advance money they would have gotten.

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That is a very Good reason on timing. The Apostles/Disciples could cash in! All the bling, money and power they had!

Been reading bart ehrman's new testament textbook. It has alot of these same good details and arguments. Dont really have much to add, just thought it was interesting timing!

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The destruction of the temple is one reason, but it's actually a multitude of tools scholars look at when trying to date these.

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The accounts of the destruction of the temple in the Gospels are NOT written in past tense and They do not say, it was fulfilled as Jesus had predicted. This is what we would expectt. We see it in Acts of Apostles by Luke Acts 11:27-28 At that time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch, and one of them named Agabus stood up and predicted by the Spirit that there would be a severe famine all over the world, and it happened under Claudius. (Note: this happened 40s AD)

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We can establish an upper bound based on the first time a person with a known lifespan quotes the book. For the gospels the upper limit is based on the writings of Irenaeus and Justin martyr. That would put a hard upper date of 150-180CE

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Do somewhat agree, we have significant writings from Justin Martyr (140-165AD) and Ireaneus (180AD). So we have lots evidence. We also have earlier comments from Papias roughly 130AD commenting on Mark & Matthew. Not a direct bible quote, but key piece on Gospel of Mark. The Elder (John) also said this, "Mark, being the interpreter of Peter, whatsoever he remembered he wrote accurately, but not however in the order that these things were spoken or done by our Lord. For he neither heard the Lord, nor followed him, but afterwards, as I said, he was with Peter, who did not make a complete [or ordered] account of the Lord's logia, but constructed his teachings according to chreiai [concise self-contained teachings]. So Mark did nothing wrong in writing down single matters as he remembered them, for he gave special attention to one thing, of not passing by anything he heard, and not falsifying anything in these matter.

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There are a number of church fathers between paul and this date who reference the Pauline epistles, but for whatever reason make no mention of the gospels.

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Context is important, would want to know intended audience and subject. If these were churches of founded by Paul then it makes lots of sense to quote from what Paul wrote to them.

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He uses the title rabbi which didn't exist until 70AD. He also refers to synagogues in Galilee, which archeology tells us weren't around until after 70 AD. The word "sanhedrin" as referring to the Jewish court; and "mammon" as meaning money aren't used until after the destruction of the temple. So we got a few points pushing the date beyond that.

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Interesting will have to look into some of these comments. Also difficult to say that these words were Never used, we have a very small sample size of documentation from 2000 years ago.
Use of Rabbi after destruction of temple could make logical sense- No more temple, priest and sacrifice thus new title and organization.
Sanhedrin does Not passing the smell test the Sanhedrin council goes way back to the OT on historical basis, Josephus mentions it in history (50BC). Note: I don't have access to the exact original text

Madaman said:

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Been reading bart ehrman's new testament textbook. It has alot of these same good details and arguments. Dont really have much to add, just thought it was interesting timing!

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Not a Ehrman fan, he is a smart liar, a snake in my opinion. He tells the truth and then leaves out key pieces of evidence that he knows will hurt his argument. He knowingly withholds evidence.

He is like watching half of those Dateline TV shows. The first part of the show they only give you half of the story (and you are convinced the person is guilty) and then the 2nd half of the show they give you the other side of the argument (and you are left with is the person innocent or guilty?).

Try Scott Hahn- Ignatius Bible or Understanding the Scriptures: Scott Hahn- Understanding the Scriptures

booboo91 said:

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The accounts of the destruction of the temple in the Gospels are NOT written in past tense and They do not say, it was fulfilled as Jesus had predicted. This is what we would expectt. We see it in Acts of Apostles by Luke Acts 11:27-28 At that time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch, and one of them named Agabus stood up and predicted by the Spirit that there would be a severe famine all over the world, and it happened under Claudius. (Note: this happened 40s AD)

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This is addressed in the link I sent. It makes more sense in context for his reader's if it's after, but again it's only one of very many points in favor of a later date with extremely little pointing to an early one.

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Do somewhat agree, we have significant writings from Justin Martyr (140-165AD) and Ireaneus (180AD). So we have lots evidence.

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It's actually remarkably thin. For the first 150 years you get less than a paragraphs worth. Comparing it to the Pauline epistles shows the dramatic difference. Those have lot's of evidence, these far less so, which is peculiar.

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Context is important, would want to know intended audience and subject. If these were churches of founded by Paul then it makes lots of sense to quote from what Paul wrote to them.

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It also makes a lot of sense to quote the gospels. Same thing with paul's own silence. paul didn't shy away from quoting scripture and would have been well served in countless instances by quoting the gospels.

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Interesting will have to look into some of these comments. Also difficult to say that these words were Never used, we have a very small sample size of documentation from 2000 years ago.
Use of Rabbi after destruction of temple could make logical sense- No more temple, priest and sacrifice thus new title and organization.
Sanhedrin does Not passing the smell test the Sanhedrin council goes way back to the OT on historical basis, Josephus mentions it in history (50BC). Note: I don't have access to the exact original text

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Much of these were changes relating directly to the destruction, synogogues in an area previously served by the temple, the title rabbi. I think I remember reading the sanhedrin being called by a different word. And there are many more instances like this. All three synoptics reference Roman denarius to paid to Caesar. Prior to the reign of Vespasian, Roman taxation was not collected in Judea (Julius Caesar banned the use of Roman publicans in 47 BCE, and instead the Jewish government paid Roman tribute after collecting taxes through a native system), nor was the use of the denarius widespread.

The reason the consensus of scholars date them late and only a few date them early is due to the weight of the evidence and the number of different things acting in conjunction. There just isn't much reason to think them older unless you are simply trying to minimize the time of oral transmission (this is most common among conservative protestants).

Aggrad08 said:

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Much of these were changes relating directly to the destruction, synogogues in an area previously served by the temple, the title rabbi. I think I remember reading the sanhedrin being called by a different word. And there are many more instances like this. All three synoptics reference Roman denarius to paid to Caesar. Prior to the reign of Vespasian, Roman taxation was not collected in Judea (Julius Caesar banned the use of Roman publicans in 47 BCE, and instead the Jewish government paid Roman tribute after collecting taxes through a native system), nor was the use of the denarius widespread.

The reason the consensus of scholars date them late and only a few date them early is due to the weight of the evidence and the number of different things acting in conjunction. There just isn't much reason to think them older unless you are simply trying to minimize the time of oral transmission (this is most common among conservative protestants).

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Sounds good, do you have any good books you can recommend on this subject on dating of Gospels from scholars? Especially on the historical side?

This topic is truely very slippery.

One thing that I think it interesting, is that the consensus is that there is a common source for the synoptics that we do not have anymore, "Q". It is pretty well accepted that it existed, even though we have not seen it, and it has not been directly quoted, except for the synoptics.

However, we use a much more stringent test for trying to date the Gospels. Since we don't have a historical mention of them until 130 or so, may scholars say that is the earliest we can date them.

To me, the standards above are not consistent.

I think that the right answer is sometime between 50 and 130. I'm not sure that you can get much narrower with any degree of confidence.

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I think that the right answer is sometime between 50 and 130. I'm not sure that you can get much narrower with any degree of confidence.

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I think the upper end is higher than that with the same degree of confidence as the lower. But the general point is valid. The scholarly consensus is based on the preponderance of the evidence available, not some hard proof.

JJMt said:

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Buster, I'd also add that the argument that the earliest Church fathers do not quote the Gospels is not evidence that the Gospels did not exist by the date of those writings. That argument falls into the logical fallacy of "the absence of evidence is evidence of absence."

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Nope. People don't understand this fallacy and misuse it all the time. The absence of evidence is evidence of absence if evidence should be expected and has been looked for and not found. We use this standard all the time, in daily life, criminal investigation, historical analysis and science.

This is not proof of absence, but it absolutely is evidence of absence, and it's simply unreasonable to argue otherwise.

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Talking about the absence of evidence from 2,000 years ago is not a situation where evidence would necessarily be expected. It's not like science in a lab where one can produce and should be able to reproduce evidence on demand.

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No, but this is a situation where it is expected because the evidence HAS been found in large quantities. See if we didn't hardly have any writings from paul you would have a valid point. But we have tons of pauline writings that all would be well served by quoting a gospel.

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There are lots and lots of examples from archaeology where the lack of evidence was used for years to prove that something didn't exist (e.g., an actual historical King David) and then, lo and behold, evidence was found, immediately disproving decades of argument. We are, after all, essentially relying on what remains in garbage dumps for much of archaeology.

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Well no, it was never used to prove anything. That was a piece of evidence against it, yes, but not proof. Absence of evidence can be proof, we use it as proof everyday, but where such little evidence is found, like a tiny ancient kingdom, no, not proof.

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Your point, if valid, is at most that if it is evidence, it is really, really weak evidence, at least in terms of ancient archaeology.

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No, it's actually pretty strong. You simply don't seem to understand the nature of this kind of inquiry and how wrong your original statement is under the conditions I laid forth. Let's look at a simple example. If I claim that there is a mustang in my garage and you look through it and find only and F-150 and a bunch of tools and junk, that absence of evidence is most certainly evidence of absence. In fact, we would call that proof of absence.

Let's look at a situation, where it's merely evidence not proof. Let's say someone claims that Thomas Jefferson was a Buddhist. We have a bunch of writings from jefferson, a bunch of writings about jefferson, and many of those speak directly to his religious view. Since we have so much writing and he never once mentioned being a buddhist, we could say that the absence of evidence is very much evidence that he was not a buddist. Not proof in this case, but pretty damn strong evidence. Is it common to have a bunch of personal writings for any given individual from the 18th century, no, but we do have them all the same.

So when we look at prolifically writing paul, and to a lesser extent, writing from other early leaders, and all of them mention pauline epistles, all of them quote other OT scripture, all talk about jesus and none quote a gospel. It's absolutely good evidence against. Not proof, but good evidence.

This is how intellectually honest inquiry is done. Without presuppositional apologetics, toward the conclusion best fit by the evidence. Remember the scholars who put forth these arguments over the last 200 years or so have been largely christian. Just as most mormon scholars are mormon, and most muslim scholars are muslim. If you don't make up your mind before hand, there is good reason to believe their arguments.

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You do know that most scholars believe that the Pauline epistles were written before the Gospels, don't you? If that's correct, then it would be somewhat difficult for Paul to have quoted or even referred to writings that didn't even exist yet.

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Well I do know that that's how they are dated. And part of the reason for that dating is because of paul's lack of referring to them. Paul died in the mid 60s, which puts the gospels after that. Some try to argue they are younger than that.

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Any your analogy of the truck in the garage is obviously not "intellectually honest", as you so condescendingly put it. Perhaps a better analogy would be the proverbial needle in the haystack. Failure to find the needle is not meaningful evidence that it does not exist.

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No this is what's intellectually dishonest. We have his writings. That's why this analogy is bunk. We aren't missing the "needle" altogether, we've found it and it looks different than what we'd expect if what you claim is true. To claim it's a needle in a haystack is to claim that finding it is terribly unlikely. That's already not true.

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And people did argue for decades that the kingdom of David was simply a myth. In fact, that was the prevailing "scholarly" view up until a reference was found in the ruins of Ebla. You are perhaps too young to remember those decades of "scholarly" criticism of the Bible's veracity.

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I never said they didn't argue it was a myth. I rejected your false claim that they had claimed to have proved it. Again, this is a dissimilar situation. This really is a needle in a haystack comparison. A tiny davidic kingdom wouldn't leave much. That's not what we have with the gospels where we have a wealth of recorded information from early leaders.

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Another example is the Hittites. For decades supposedly "intellectually honest" scholars denied their existence because of the lack of archaeological evidence for that empire and peoples. All it took was one artifact to be found and, poof, those denials disappeared.

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Again, there is nothing intellectually dishonest about saying there is no evidence for hittites in a time where there was no evidence for hittites. Again, this is an actual needle in the haystack scenario. Firm proof is unavailable, the evidence is scarce and most historians are quite frank about what they know firmly and what they are only guessing at. You are trying to put all these things under one bubble. Tiny ancient kingdoms vs the pauline writings is flat out different. There is a wide array of "abscence of evidence". Some trivial, some hard proof.

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All what scholars are Christian? And you don't think that you approach this issue with presuppositional biases? Everyone approaches every issue in life with presuppositional biases. Your assertion that I am blinded is essentially an ad hominem attack, which usually means that you either don't have evidence to support your position.

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I'm saying that Biblical critical scholars are largely christian. That's the origin of these arguments. And in fact, when I first approached this subject I came at it with the biases of a christian. I'm not claiming not to have biases, only that I'm not committed to them beyond the preponderance of evidence. To say I don't have evidence is pretty vapid as I'm basically the only person in this thread who's mentioned evidence in any specific way. And it's hardly a stretch with you as more than once you've been shown to have bought into clearly false ideas and arguments that fit your fundamentalist worldview. Be it on threads regarding history, evolution, or age of the earth, you don't seem to fact check your own arguments. This is simply another situation like that as far as I can tell.

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And I've provided a plausible alternative to why the earliest church fathers didn't reference the Gospels. You didn't reply to that at all, other than by bringing Paul into the discussion. You do know that Paul is not typically included with the term "church fathers", don't you?

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They weren't very good so I didn't bother with them. But sure. If the gospels were either not around by the time of pauls letters or less spread out because they were written later that is in fact an argument that they were written later, and hence is incompatible with the arguments that they were early documents extant around or before the time of paul. So I'm not particularly sure why you find that an important point. Since the common scholarship puts them starting in the 70s with mark, your argument doesn't in fact run contrary to this. And yes I used the terms paul and church fathers separately for that reason.

Just a few thoughts. If St Luke was St Paul's scribe, there would be little reason for St Paul to "quote Luke" in his letters. Likewise for St Mark and St Peter. Seeing as all of them ended up in Rome, other early fathers not having their works seems reasonable.

St Matthew is usually held to be a gospel for the Hebrews, though that referenced Hebrew one may be a different one than we have now. But it's local intent and possibly distribution may explain a lack of proliferation especially considering the events of AD 70.

And St John and we traditionally hold to be written by him late in life.

In that regard, early mentions in the first few years of production wouldn't be expected, would they?

BusterAg said:

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This topic is truely very slippery.

One thing that I think it interesting, is that the consensus is that there is a common source for the synoptics that we do not have anymore, "Q". It is pretty well accepted that it existed, even though we have not seen it, and it has not been directly quoted, except for the synoptics.

However, we use a much more stringent test for trying to date the Gospels. Since we don't have a historical mention of them until 130 or so, may scholars say that is the earliest we can date them.

To me, the standards above are not consistent.

I think that the right answer is sometime between 50 and 130. I'm not sure that you can get much narrower with any degree of confidence.

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Q is the common source for Matthew and Luke stories that are NOT in Mark. They each have their own seperate source also, M and L, respectively. Q, M, and L may be written or oral sources. We probably will never know for sure.

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You are being disingenuous or you are simply unfamiliar with the history of biblical scholasticism.

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I'm quite familiar. In fact far more familiar than you by the looks of it. I mean seriously, it looks like you've never read a book or article that put forth the consensus view. Above you asked why mark isn't the Q source which shows a complete unfamiliarity with the fundamentals of the synoptic problem and how the two source solution gained favor. There was nothing dishonest in what I said. In fact only one of us is putting forth the primary view of Christian scholarship.

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Scholars didn't simply acknowledge the lack of evidence of a Davidic kingdom. They went way beyond that, denying it ever existed and that it was a later fabrication. Skeptical cholars are quick to dismiss the Bible as an authentic historical document in its own right, most likely because of the religious claims made in it. If the Bible did not contain any religious claims, however, it would be considered a priceless and incredibly unique historical document. My point is that the biases of skeptical scholars blind them to the historicity of the Bible.

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The bible isn't dismissed as a historical document for it's religious claims alone anymore than Herodotus. It plays a role. But the biases and flat inaccuracies and simple lack of modern methods in ancient works is where the skepticism comes from.

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And skeptical scholars are frequently not intellectually honest. After all, they are men like each of us and allow their biases and prejudices to color their conclusions and work. You seem to believe that it's only Christians that are afflicted with that malady, whereas it's a universal human condition.

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Sure. But this is also precisely why I pointed out that most scholars espousing the consensus view are in fact Christians. So even with both sets of biases the consensus view is well, a consensus view.

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Finally, I can't tell what you are arguing. You seem to be all over the map.

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I'm arguing the simple fact that the claim that the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is very frequently untrue as demonstrated rationally in a myriad of contexts from everyday life, criminal investigation, history, science, and yes biblical scholarship. And that the notion that Pauline silence, anachronisms or any other evidence I described above is inaccurate is simply false.

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Just a few thoughts. If St Luke was St Paul's scribe, there would be little reason for St Paul to "quote Luke" in his letters. Likewise for St Mark and St Peter. Seeing as all of them ended up in Rome, other early fathers not having their works seems reasonable.

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The idea that any of the gospels were written by their namesakes is largely abandoned in scholarship. However, even if we were to grant that the namesakes learned to be highly proficient in a new language and forgot local geography and wrote the gospels that wouldn't make them any less valuable to paul. The value in the gospels to Christians is not that they are the musings of peter or luke or john. But rather that they are professed as an accurate retelling of the story of Christ and often contain within them the exact words, speeches, teachings and parables of Christ retold with fidelity verbatim. So what you are really saying is there would be little reason for St. Paul to quote jesus. To which I highly disagree. And when I say early fathers we are going back past the turn of the century with silence and varied location. So pauls works were more than disseminated, why wouldn't an early work attributable to peter be disseminated?

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St Matthew is usually held to be a gospel for the Hebrews, though that referenced Hebrew one may be a different one than we have now. But it's local intent and possibly distribution may explain a lack of proliferation especially considering the events of AD 70.

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Mark is amore a gentile work and Matthew a decidedly Hebrew one. But more or less the whole of mark is contained within matthew. So if anything it should have a wider appeal.

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And St John and we traditionally hold to be written by him late in life.

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Again, its not generally believed to be written by john, and in fact for that gospel may not even have a single author as it appears heavily redacted. Even still if John actually wrote it as a 90+ year old, this is actually in line with the general thinking that this work was composed long after the death of paul.

The Q is nothing more than a wishful fabrication.

Aggrad08 said:

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The idea that any of the gospels were written by their namesakes is largely abandoned in scholarship. However, even if we were to grant that the namesakes learned to be highly proficient in a new language and forgot local geography and wrote the gospels that wouldn't make them any less valuable to paul. The value in the gospels to Christians is not that they are the musings of peter or luke or john. But rather that they are professed as an accurate retelling of the story of Christ and often contain within them the exact words, speeches, teachings and parables of Christ retold with fidelity verbatim.

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This is where I would greatly disagree with you. A Point made by Brant Pitre (Professor at Notre Dame) in his book of Case for Jesus.

The case that is being made by scholars scheptics is not practical or reasonable. They believe that these Gospels went out across the region anyonmous- no names associated with it and then centuries later and across thousands of miles, everyone agrees who wrote them. This is before huge libraries, cellphones, and the internet (email and texting). The truth is - when they received the document they already knew who wrote it: Matt,Mark, Luke, John (or supposedly wrote it)

1) Hard factual evidence, this is not speculation. ALL manuscript gospel evidence that we have are correctly labeled "Gospel according to" No Anonymous Copies Exist. None of them are labeled as something other. These Manuscripts go back to 2nd century.

2)Hard factual evidence- ALL the early church fathers agree on who wrote the Gospels,- we see concensus. starting around 130AD. Matt, Mark, Luke and John. In comparison we see disagreement on who other books of the NT.

3) Gospels were titled- according to- this means they had influence, they were involved in creating these book of bible, multiple scribes could be used.

4) Question- Why would anyone use Luke or Mark in title who are known to be 2nd generation Christians ? Why not go big- Peter, James and John, Andrew and stick with just Apostles?

DryFly said:

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The Q is nothing more than a wishful fabrication.

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That is somewhat true. Q is a lot of speculation, little hard evidence. No references or comments from Early church fathers.

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However, even if we were to grant that the namesakes learned to be highly proficient in a new language and forgot local geography and wrote the gospels that wouldn't make them any less valuable to paul. The value in the gospels to Christians is not that they are the musings of peter or luke or john. But rather that they are professed as an accurate retelling of the story of Christ and often contain within them the exact words, speeches, teachings and parables of Christ retold with fidelity verbatim. So what you are really saying is there would be little reason for St. Paul to quote jesus. To which I highly disagree. And when I say early fathers we are going back past the turn of the century with silence and varied location. So pauls works were more than disseminated, why wouldn't an early work attributable to peter be disseminated?

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Aggrad, I assume you know this but will say it anyway. So you can understand Paul

1) Who was St. Paul- he was a zealous Jewish bible scholar (he knew the OT). He was bi-lingual he was both Jewish and Roman. He was single- no wife and kids. When he met Jesus he transformed from biggest enemy of church to biggest evangelist of church. Another clue to power of Jesus.

2) Paul Traveled the most of any of the apostles (no wife and kids). He lived with and taught (oral) the churches he founded (part of the reason he was so successful- he lived and was their example) and then wrote letters when he could not be there. Note: Romans is exception- he wrote before he arrived.

3) Paul's writings are about what he knows, which is the OT and how Jesus fullfills the OT, it is about his encounter with the Risen Jesus. Thus he does not quote Jesus (from Gospel) but speaks of his encounter (where he quotes Jesus) and of the Resurrection of Jesus.

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So what you are really saying is there would be little reason for St. Paul to quote jesus. To which I highly disagree.

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True St. Paul does not direct quote from Gospel because St. Paul lived it. St. Paul talks about what he knows, he repeats the same message in the Gospel. Paul talks about the Risen Christ over and over because that is what Paul saw and experienced.

1st Cor. 15 3-15 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared to Kephas, then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. After that he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one born abnormally, he appeared to me. For I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective. Indeed, I have toiled harder than all of them; not I, however, but the grace of God (that is) with me. Therefore, whether it be I or they, so we preach and so you believed. But if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then neither has Christ been raised.

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So pauls works were more than disseminated, why wouldn't an early work attributable to peter be disseminated?

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Can you provide some background to the claim. Try and follow K2 style (providing some quotes and background) so we can research.

booboo91 said:

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DryFly said:

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The Q is nothing more than a wishful fabrication.

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That is somewhat true. Q is a lot of speculation, little hard evidence. No references or comments from Early church fathers.

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Very well may be true, but in light of any hard evidence, the extent to which it has been accepted as gospel (pardon the pun) is kind of crazy.

DryFly said:

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booboo91 said:

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DryFly said:

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The Q is nothing more than a wishful fabrication.

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That is somewhat true. Q is a lot of speculation, little hard evidence. No references or comments from Early church fathers.

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Very well may be true, but in light of any hard evidence, the extent to which it has been accepted as gospel (pardon the pun) is kind of crazy.

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1) I think it is so widely accepted because the existance of the Q document is somewhat logical. Jesus rises from the Dead and followers would want to know everything about Jesus. Oral Tradition would be the primary way initially (go see people face to face and speak) and then eventually it would be written down. Basic sayings and details of Jesus.

2) Writing letters and especially long documents was expensive, took time, and had to be of a limited length (Scroll).

3) Then later well written account would be written. My favorite Gospel is Luke- well written. We see a glympse of Mary telling the apostles and disciples about her son early years. (2) instances in Luke, Luke 2:19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart

4) We also have hard fact that the Synoptic Gospels are identical in text in many areas. So did they copy off one Gospel or an unknown source "Q".

You're missing my point. I was saying, even if we are wholly ignorant of all scholarship, Christian tradition wouldn't expect a wide proliferation of quotes in early 2nd century materials or quotes in the Pauline epistles...because Tradition tells us they weren't written that early.

For example, St Irenaeus writes:

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Matthew also issued among the Hebrews a written Gospel in their own language, while Peter and Paul were evangelizing in Rome and laying the foundation of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia.
(Against Heresies III.1.1)

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Tradition tells us they weren't written that early.

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Some are trying to argue otherwise. I agree, if you say tradition shows late writing and scholarship shows later writing there is no conflict.

booboo91 said:

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True St. Paul does not direct quote from Gospel because St. Paul lived it. St. Paul talks about what he knows, he repeats the same message in the Gospel. Paul talks about the Risen Christ over and over because that is what Paul saw and experienced.

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Yea, that's no reason not to quote it. Anymore than it's reason not to quote the OT, which paul does extensively.

Quote:

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3) Paul's writings are about what he knows, which is the OT and how Jesus fullfills the OT, it is about his encounter with the Risen Jesus. Thus he does not quote Jesus (from Gospel) but speaks of his encounter (where he quotes Jesus) and of the Resurrection of Jesus.

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Which is precisely my point. It doesn't appear paul knows of the gospels. If he did, I think it highly likely he would have included them.