Between 150 and 250.

Now do literally any other work of antiquity.

fat girlfriend said:

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Heck, we've got a fragment of Mark dating to the 2nd century, maybe as early as 150!

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And we have early church fathers quoting extensively from the Gospels at approximately the same time.

Further, the fragments and whole copies that we have, and the letters of the Church fathers, use almost precisely the same language with no truly meaningful differences.

The evidence is overwhelming that our copies of the Gospels are accurate copies and that the originals dated to the 1st century. The arguments that they were written centuries later are rubbish with no meaningful evidence supporting them.

Wolfe,

You're only going to get either a roman record of who they punished or a jewish record of who was causing problems for them.

A modicum of research brings us this article that discusses extrabiblical evidence for Jesus. That jewish historians and leaders didn't deny Jesus existed but that he was misleading the people or a magician.

https://www.history.com/news/was-jesus-real-historical-evidence

Again, lets take a step back from the narrative the comedians and other cool kids of the media tell you about Jesus.

Jabin said:

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fat girlfriend said:

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Heck, we've got a fragment of Mark dating to the 2nd century, maybe as early as 150!

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And we have early church fathers quoting extensively from the Gospels at approximately the same time.

Further, the fragments and whole copies that we have, and the letters of the Church fathers, use almost precisely the same language with no truly meaningful differences.

The evidence is overwhelming that our copies of the Gospels are accurate copies and that the originals dated to the 1st century. The arguments that they were written centuries later are rubbish with no meaningful evidence supporting them.

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The first mention is around 150 and there are no names attached to them. The first mention with names comes around 180. It's also the case that Mark clearly came before the others just based on the amount of material found in the other texts and the minuscule amount unique to Mark compared to the other texts. They very well may have been written in the first century, but it seems likely that they were written late in the first century.

St Irenaeus writes that there are four and only four ever known as an obvious proof around 180 AD. We have a fragment of Against Heresies from around 200 AD which is remarkable.

We have no evidence of the gospels ever circulating under different names or anonymously. And the historical record is orders of magnitude better and more reliable and closer to the events than literally any writing of antiquity. These objections are silly.

Zobel said:

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Now do literally any other work of antiquity.

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Okay? We start to get quite a few closely contemporaneous records in the first century. Suetonius, Tacitus, and Josephus are just some of the more well known examples.

What's their manuscript record like?

Zobel said:

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St Irenaeus writes that there are four and only four ever known as an obvious proof around 180 AD. We have a fragment of Against Heresies from around 200 AD which is remarkable.

We have no evidence of the gospels ever circulating under different names or anonymously. And the historical record is orders of magnitude better and more reliable and closer to the events than literally any writing of antiquity. These objections are silly.

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We have no names for them until 180. Comparing it to other ancient texts is also silly. The texts hold up on their own or they don't. They aren't more historically reliable because of temporal proximity (which is still, as best we can tell, at least 2 generations removed from the events described).

Argument from silence, special pleading, and you're forgetting Papias.

If they're not under the four names what should we call them? If they're not written by the people we call them by who wrote them? If you say anything other than Matthew Mark Luke and John you're making it up from whole cloth.

They're at least as close to the events as Herodotus to Thermopylae. Why do you scrutinize them differently?

Zobel said:

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What's their manuscript record like?

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The first complete copies of the gospels are after 200. You're right that we don't have great original copies of many ancient texts. Christianity was lucky in that respect since they became the state church and survived the fall of the empire. Many of the post-gospel books of the New Testament don't show up in a complete copy until the 4th century, when the church had power in the empire.

Zobel said:

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Argument from silence, special pleading, and you're forgetting Papias.

If they're not under the four names what should we call them? If they're not written by the people we call them by who wrote them? If you say anything other than Matthew Mark Luke and John you're making it up from whole cloth.

They're at least as close to the events as Herodotus to Thermopylae. Why do you scrutinize them differently?

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I don't assume anything Herodotus says is accurate. He's not a reliable narrator. Anything he claims has to be cross-checked with other sources and archeological evidence.

I'm not making any special pleading. I'm pointing out the problems with your claims. You're imputing accuracy based solely off of recency (and it's not as recent as you might claim). You have to make claims based on speculation due to a lack of evidence. You can believe the claims are strong based on circumstance, but that's it's own form of special pleading.

Papias is not preserved in context. The first mention is in 180 and it's fragments. There are any number of questions or problems with claims he makes in surviving excerpts.

Zobel said:

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The first complete copies of the gospels are after 200. You're right that we don't have great original copies of many ancient texts. Christianity was lucky in that respect since they became the state church and survived the fall of the empire. Many of the post-gospel books of the New Testament don't show up in a complete copy until the 4th century, when the church had power in the empire.

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Here's some oft-read classical authors and their earliest manuscript dates

Herodotus - 10th century
Josephus - 10th century
Tacitus - 10th century
Julius Caesar - 9th century
Thucydides - 10th century
Cicero - 5th century
Sallust - 10th century
Plutarch's Lives - 10th century

We don't even have complete copies of many of the works of the people I wrote. Should we ditch the Gallic Wars because it contains multiple lacunae?

What about Thucydides? Eight manuscripts total written in 300 AD - 700 years after the events described. Maybe Lysander wasn't real? Maybe the battle of Aegospotami never happened?

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I'm not making any special pleading.

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You absolutely are engaging in special pleading. You're saying ignore the fact that the NT has thousands of manuscripts, and a manuscript tradition within decades of the events, when other reliable works of antiquity have manuscripts in single digits - sometimes one as Tacitus' Annals - separated by their events in authorship or surviving manuscript by multiple centuries. You hand wave this away - oh because state church blah blah like that matters. Were the documents preserved or not? (And who do you think preserved all those other manuscripts? Beowulf, Plato, Aristotle (try again), etc etc etc all preserved by those nasty Christians).

What is the justification for this scrutiny? If the NT doesn't hold up to this scrutiny, what does? Hint: literally nothing. Special pleading.

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I'm pointing out the problems with your claims. You're imputing accuracy based solely off of recency (and it's not as recent as you might claim). You have to make claims based on speculation due to a lack of evidence. You can believe the claims are strong based on circumstance, but that's it's own form of special pleading.

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I'm making one claim: in raw manuscript count, quality, proximity to the events the NT trumps all classical sources. If you doubt the authorship of the four Gospels, you should doubt the authorship of every single work of antiquity, because we don't have anything more reliable.

You ignored your argument from silence. I ask again. If they're not under the four names what should we call them? If they're not written by the people we call them by who wrote them? What evidence can you put forward for any other authorship? How do you know who wrote History of the Peloponnesian War????

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The existence of the classical works is attested by multiple independent sources. We're aware of some of the works that we've lost because of that. And no classicist is going to claim that the copies we have of these texts is absolutely accurate precisely because of what you mentioned.

How are YOU defining reliable in the context of ancient texts? Historians and classicists don't generally assume them to be truly accurate histories of the events. The way history was understood and written at that time precludes an assumption that a focus on the absolute facts of an event was the primary goal of a classical text. You're arguing against a straw man. I'm not claiming Tacitus or Josephus, etc, were more accurate than the Gospels or reliable while the Gospels weren't. I'm noting that they were written within years of the events they described happening. You can argue about the preservation of the texts, and if there is only one copy then it is certainly more problematic, but the idea that writing about events within living memory was something unique to Christianity is not the case. And even within the existence of documents written within living memory, making up events or people was not unusual. If we somehow had proof that Mark was written in 33AD, it still wouldn't do much for verifying the text of Mark. You'd just have to yet again make an assumption that he didn't lie.

You're still ignoring the gaps in the record of the Gospels. We don't have them until about a century after the events they describe and then it's in fragments. And the only sources for the names ascribed to them and the identity of those people is through Christian sources. This is where you can't compare the Gospels to other ancient authors. The authorship of major classical works is typically attested to by multiple independent sources across the Roman world. I'm sure an argument can be made about some of these sources, but that would be due to a lack of independent verification. We lack independent verification for the Gospels. Tradition is nice, but tradition is not verification, and there's a clear motive to identifying authorship with people as close to Jesus as possible.

In the end, your argument comes down to, "the NT is a bit better documented than your typical classical source." Cool. Neat. It doesn't actually help questions about the construction, authorship, and validity of the texts. These aren't traditional Roman or Greek manuscripts. These are religious texts written by a small cult in the late 1st to early 2nd century with nothing but tradition to ascribe name and location of their creation and authorship. If you believe the surviving material and the traditions lend weight to narrative in the texts, great. I'm not going to try to change your mind. I'm saying your claims are not particularly strong, and saying they are strong in comparison to an era where much of the written material was lost or had to be transcribed (as much of Christian material had to be transcribed as the originals were destroyed) doesn't particularly mean much. Ancient history is reliant on archeology for a very good reason: the documents aren't plentiful and they're not particularly honest in most cases.

As for what to call the Gospels, I don't care. Tradition has them as Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. So call them that. It doesn't particularly matter. The Torah is called the Books of Moses by tradition though it's patently obvious that Moses didn't write them.

one MEEN Ag said:

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Over and over again, I can't understand how Sapper got a phd in history and then gets smoked at discussing claims of history by a bunch of engineers and a dermatologist on this board.

Sapper, why do you have it out against Christian historicity? They got lucky? They had the power of the empire? You serious Clark? You give the heaviest slant against Christianity at any opportunity you get. Can't even say, 'good job Christians on preserving your documents at a rate far better than all your peers.'

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We're discussing Christianity more than other faiths because the vast majority of religious people on this board are Christians. Christianity has plenty of defenders. If you want a debate or discussion, it makes sense to tease out the problems with narratives being produced.

And yes, having the Roman Empire promote your faith does remarkable things for your ability to preserve liturgy, texts, and infrastructure. Given that religion impacts all levels of a society and is not dependent on an elite few to preserve documents, having millions of people in a multicultural empire join a faith means it will likely have more of its history survive.

I mean, good job Christians on preserving your documents better than your peers. However, having the power of an empire and leveraging that power to persecute the other religious peers does mean that their ability to preserve their texts and temples will be somewhat more limited.

So you believe the historical accuracy of the claim that a snake appeared to Eve and spoke to her? Or that Moses literally parted the red sea? Or that Jesus literally died and descended into hell before he came back to life?

There are a lot of stories in the Bible that no serious person could claim aren't myths or some great dramatization of actual events.

I only advised using sources other than the Bible itself to avoid circular logic. You can't tell me the Bible is 100% accurate and inspired by God then use that book as the sole and primary source. It's indisputable at that point.

If there are other historical sources that we can vet to gage the historical accuracy of the gospels then that would further strengthen the case for the historicity of the gospels.

I don't understand why that's hard to understand. It seems many in here get triggered immediately if I ask for an alternative source.

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The existence of the classical works is attested by multiple independent sources. We're aware of some of the works that we've lost because of that. And no classicist is going to claim that the copies we have of these texts is absolutely accurate precisely because of what you mentioned.

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So are the scriptures. You could recreate the entirety of the NT from patristic quotations alone. The last sentence here is irrelevant or some kind of new point. But even so, we have orders of magnitude more to work with in the NT than any classical document as far as determining accuracy and consistency of what we have vs what was written.

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How are YOU defining reliable in the context of ancient texts? Historians and classicists don't generally assume them to be truly accurate histories of the events. The way history was understood and written at that time precludes an assumption that a focus on the absolute facts of an event was the primary goal of a classical text. You're arguing against a straw man.

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There's some irony here. The guy asked for evidence about authorship. The evidence is better than any other historical author.

I agree with you about history being different than how modern historians treat it, which is why discussions like this are so stupid to begin with. For the audience, do you note the shift? When we engage with the 'scientist' of the history in the text they cast aspersions on the facts - the historical record - how many years, how many documents, generally quantifiable things. Now that it's beyond clear that this ground favors the reliability of the Christian texts - keep in mind the original question was about who wrote what when - there's a wild retreat to a nuanced point about "weeeeeellllll even if we have this or that document it doesn't mean they have absolute fact." OK? Whatever you're going to do with the documents, you've got a lot less to work with anything other than the NT.

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I'm not claiming Tacitus or Josephus, etc, were more accurate than the Gospels or reliable while the Gospels weren't. I'm noting that they were written within years of the events they described happening. You can argue about the preservation of the texts, and if there is only one copy then it is certainly more problematic, but the idea that writing about events within living memory was something unique to Christianity is not the case. And even within the existence of documents written within living memory, making up events or people was not unusual. If we somehow had proof that Mark was written in 33AD, it still wouldn't do much for verifying the text of Mark. You'd just have to yet again make an assumption that he didn't lie.

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I know you're not claiming that, because everyone would laugh in your face. I never claimed writing about events in living memory was unique to Christianity. I was responding to a poster that suggested Christianity was problematic because of a gap between the events described and their recording, and that we don't have good historical reliability of the texts. Both of these are nonsense.

But, let's talk about Tacitus. Annals was written in around 110 AD about events in the first half of the first century. It survives in no complete manuscript. We have one from around 1000 that has the first six books. The rest is found in a manuscript from around 1050. That's it. How bout Josephus? As I mentioned - earliest manuscripts are from 10th century, we have I believe nine. He was an eyewitness, also writing history in the style of narrative which includes himself and the story of his people and is decidedly biased. You say "ah hmm hmm mm yes this is ... problematic". If any book of the NT survived in this quality and was able to be parsed together from a handful of manuscripts centuries removed you would be howling. "Problematic".... hah.

Now again you're dancing away. Well we can't even know if what is in the text is true it could be full of lies. And? So could any document. At least a part of what we know about the Gallic Wars comes from the hand of Caesar and is almost certainly propaganda in part. Yet it is without a doubt the most important historical work on this campaign, even though much of the information it brings us as a primary source is unverifiable. And, for thoroughness, we have only ten or twelve primary manuscripts (depending on how you group them) of the Gallic Wars and the earliest are the 9th century.

But this was never the question, the question was how do you know who wrote the gospels, and the answer is because we have a massive amount of historical evidence better than any other work of antiquity. The end.

No one is triggered. People are explaining why handwaving away the best attested work of the ancient world bar none with nothing even remotely close to its equal is a bad approach.

As a way to test your approach, why don't you do the same exercise with any of the sources listed. Thucydides, Herodotus, Julius Caesar, Tacitus, etc.

But to answer your question - external sources that mention Christians or Christ or historical agreeance of events in the NT from the first and second century include - in historical order as far as I know -

Tacitus
Josephus
Thallus
Mara Bar-Serapion
Phlegon
Pliny the Younger
Lucian
Seutonius

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But this was never the question, the question was how do you know who wrote the gospels, and the answer is because we have a massive amount of historical evidence better than any other work of antiquity. The end.

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Except you don't. And you're still left comparing it to other ancient texts. "Well, we have these attestations about authorship only 100 years after we think they were written!" Great. 100 years is a hell of a long time, especially in a dispersed cult across multiple regions and cultures. The Gospels themselves make no claims about authorship or to being eyewitness accounts. The first solid claims about authorship come from 180. And the only sources regarding authorship are from senior Christian sources. Josephus, Tacitus, etc, make no claims about the veracity of the Gospels or their authorship. They only acknowledge the existence of Jesus and the claims of his followers. No one here is denying that Jesus existed and was crucified by the Roman state. The question is about the construction and veracity of the Gospels and the claims made about their authorship.

Zobel said:

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OK now do how we know the authorship of any other work of antiquity. You seem physically incapable of treating them the same.

The Gospel of John is an eyewitness account. "He who saw it has borne witness -- his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth -- that you also may believe." St Luke cribs Thucidydes or Livy and makes a direct claim to be a work of history. "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught."

Nobody said Josephus or Tacitus commented on the gospels. He said asked for other historical sources that we can vet to gage the historical accuracy of the gospels.

You're really having a hard time with this. It's pretty funny.

At this point since we've come back to "OK now do x" and you can't, I think my work here is done. Feel free to continue fuming at the futility of your position.

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I've already discussed this multiple times. You don't seem to be grasping what I've said. We have independent attestation about authorship of numerous ancient texts. We don't have independent attribution for the gospels. And history in the ancient context is not history in the modern context. Luke in particular. His account directly contradicts other accounts in several places.

Using Josephus and Tacitus to verify anything about the gospels would be pretty silly. They don't comment on the gospels. They don't comment on the validity of the claims of Christians. They just say Jesus existed, died, and his followers are around.

You can keep claiming that you've done x, y, and z. You haven't. You don't have the support you think you have. You have claims from over 100 years after the fact and you assume accuracy in that because it's closer to the events than copies of other ancient texts?

By the way, there is a really good book related to this topic called "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony" by Richard Baukham (here). It's a scholarly work so not like reading The da Vinci Code, but if you're interested in these kind of things I recommend it.

Zobel said:

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Find me a single historical source suggesting any other authorship for the four gospels.

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Huh? No one cared in the first century and early second century when they were written or who they were attested to. This would be like claiming the Torah must have been written by Moses since the Egyptians don't contest the claim of authorship. You're greatly overestimating the size and power of early Christianity.

There are plenty of reasons to doubt the attributed authorship. Again, we have no claims of authorship until the late 2nd century. And none of the gospels have a claim of authorship in them. John, for example, does not claim to have written the gospel, the gospel itself uses "we" and refers to John independently, and given that John was a dirt poor resident of Galilee, he couldn't have written the gospel.

Of the 4, Matthew and John are supposed eyewitnesses. And yet Matthew copies up to 80% of the narrative from Mark. Mark is never claimed to be an eyewitness. Mark is supposed to be an assistant to Peter, yet Mark makes mistakes regarding Jewish beliefs and practices that Matthew has to clean up. Additionally, Mark appears to rely on Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible and screws up Judean geography, which seems rather odd for someone close to Peter.

None of this is in any way new. Even many conservative New Testament scholars doubt the attestation of authorship. It doesn't add up.

So... you can't?

Live look at sapper:

Moving the goalposts?

I noted earlier that we can look to external validation for attributing works to people like Tacitus and Josephus. There's extensive commentary on their works from contemporaries and their authorship is never in doubt. We don't get that with the gospels. We get nothing until the late 2nd century. And now you're trying to claim that as a proof? That's just lazy.

And what are the church fathers? You act like 100 years is some unimaginable temporal void. Quick, who wrote Tom Sawyer? Never mind that was a hundred years ago, we'll probably never know.

But come on you can't give single idea? No suggestions who might have written them other than their eponymous attributions?

Welp. Guess we'll just have to go with the preponderance of all the evidence about their authorship.

Zobel said:

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And what are the church fathers? You act like 100 years is some unimaginable temporal void. Quick, who wrote Tom Sawyer? Never mind that was a hundred years ago, we'll probably never know.

But come on you can't give single idea? No suggestions who might have written them other than their eponymous attributions?

Welp. Guess we'll just have to go with the preponderance of all the evidence about their authorship.

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We have independent attestation about the authorship of Tom Sawyer. You can track it from conception to completion in the records of Samuel Clemons and his publisher to newspapers and magazines that reviewed and promoted the work. We don't have that for over 100 years with the gospels. There is no preponderance of evidence about authorship. There's nothing. I don't know who wrote them. But here's the thing: you don't, either.

Give it two thousand years. Other references will be lost. Someone will uncover this thread and say wow this is the first known reference to the authorship of Tom Sawyer, and a motivated fool will say bUt iT wAs OveR a HuNdReD yEaRs LaTeR.


I know who wrote them the same way I know Herodotus wrote Histories. Better in fact, because the manuscripts are centuries earlier and orders of magnitude greater in number and external references are sooner. Take the L man this is embarrassing.

You don't seem to get it.

1. You don't have attribution for over 100 years and the attributions made don't make any sense given the texts and who the authors are supposed to be.

2. We have independent attribution for a huge number of ancient texts, including those by Tacitus and Josephus and Herodotus. We don't have anything like that for any of the gospels.

What's the earliest independent attribution of Herodotus?

Anyway this is boring. Have fun.