In another thread, a tangent developed concerning the dating of Luke and Acts as 1st century works. Ignatius was cited as a source, and is said to quote from these works in some of his epistles. Now, there is a difference in the way "New Testament Scholars" go about "confirming such things that differs in the way historians go about it in other areas. First and foremost, all evidence is internal. What this means is that the evidence is considered "authentic" if they can find slight references to other works within the same structure (i.e. early Christian writings). It has no external evidence, sources outside said structure, which is usually an ingredient most historians consider necessary in order to claim whatever historical event that is being studied "highly probable".


Now, it should be important to note the use of such words as "quotes". In neither of the two above passage does Ignatius "quote" the book of Luke or Acts. What is believed is that Ignatius gives an allusion to these books, but nothing about them suggests a definitive link. At most, all that can be said is that some of the stories about the young religion were in verbal circulation that were later added into Luke and Acts. This in no manner dates either of these books.

Normally, historians would stop there. But, New Testament Scholarship is willing to accept this specious tie as evidence, so we'll play along. Let's say, for argument's sake, Ignatius is quoting Luke and Acts. How do we verify the authenticity of the Ignatius Epistles themselves? I'm going to quotw from Casselss examination, Supernatural Religion:


As we can see, all internal verification, and actually very few direct references within that. Wait, it gets even sketchier:


So how do we choose which are the seven "authentic" one described by Eusebius since he doesn't name any of them?


For those unfamiliar, the general rule in determining "authenticity" is that the shorter version is usually the more authentic.


So, the shortest version of the epistles attributed to Ignatius are the Syriac version, which do not include the letters referenced above which are supposed to date Luke and Acts by way of allusion to the first century. As noted, all of the early Church Fathers only quote these Epistles using the three found in the Syriac version.

This is why I consider the Epistles to be spurrious and the so called "quotations" not to be evidence of an early dating of Luke or Acts. This would seem to be enough, but we could continue. We could cast light as to whether the Syriac three are even authentic. We could do this by examining the official Church version in how Eusebius comes to write these epistles:


Incredible indeed! These are the circumstances that New Testament Scholars either have to overlook or attempt to explain in declaring these works "authentic". If someone was trying to sell you on this, would you buy in?

For those interested, here is Cassels' book online:

Supernatural religion [by W.R. Cassels]. - Google Book Search

Here also is another more modern examination:

The epistles of Ignatius: are they all forgeries?

I'm not a professional scholar by any means but i've read some on the subject lately.. and dating a Gospel like Luke is always a variable.. from say 80 to 120 years CE ...so in other words from the late to the early second century.

It also I believe the Gospel of Luke was not always in one form but probably interpolated for various reasons. This is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on the subject and you'll note that Bart Ehrman is cited:

Textual critics have found variations among early manuscripts and have used principles of textual criticism to tentatively identify which versions are original. Bart D. Ehrman cites two cases where proto-orthodox Christians most likely altered the text in order to prevent its being used to support heretical beliefs.[52]

When Jesus is baptized, many early witnesses attest that Luke's gospel had the Father say to Jesus, "This day I have begotten you." In orthodox texts (and thus in most modern Bibles), this text is replaced by the text from Mark. Ehrman concludes that the original text was changed because it had adoptionist overtones.

When Jesus prays in the garden of Gethsemane, the text refers to him being comforted by an angel and sweating drops like blood (verses 43-44 in Luke 22:40-46). These two verses disrupt the literary structure of the scene (the chiasmus), they are not found in all the early manuscripts, and they are the only place in Luke where Jesus is seen to be in agony. Ehrman concludes that they were inserted in order to counter doceticism, the belief that Jesus, as divine, only seemed to suffer.

Read more at

Gospel of Luke - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From what I've read according to most scholars Luke is writing for a Hellenized audience. We say "Luke" and we should probably mean not just one entity either..

- Art

__________________
"it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God."
- Johannes Kepler

You guys are so educated and l am just a simple no good peasant ignorant innocent stupid dumb and so much more kind of guy but enough about me lol .

With that in mind l want to say that only about 70 years ago was the invasion of Pearl Harbour and about 70 years before that was " Custer's Last Stand" and bout 400 years before that was "Christopher Columbus" .

Only 500 years before that was , was , was well was whatever lol , but only 500 years before that was "Jesus Christ" .

Pearl Harbour , Little Big Horn , Columbus , the "one' before that , were all documented and we all know them as fact so of course Jesus Christ is going to be fact also as is almost all the stuff written then and till now be it by Chief Crazy Horse , Columbus , Captain America or Mathew Mark Luke or John ,,, just as we believe that Columbus landed in 1492 we can believe the written words of the rest all the way back and including Jesus .


Just wanted to say that as l read your stuff on what was said by who and when and do l believe it was really said by someone .

But, we have to always ask, why? Its not referenced directly until the last half of the second century. So is the need to find such an early date really based on "evidence" or is it based on the need to get the Gospel as close to the alleged events it is supposed to describe, and possibly more importantly, to maintain the appearance it comes before the "Gnostic Gospels" so they can claim those are a corruption of the canonical other than something done concurrently or after the Gnostics?

-TC

Hey TC,


I reject this dichotomy. Firstly, it sounds like you're saying those ***grapes*** were sour anyway as you walk away in frustration after being exposed to unison scholarship.

Secondly, you seem to be alluding to the criterion of multiple attestation as being more credible if the attenstation comes from opponents of Christianity. However, in your last reply in the direct one-on-one debate forum you reject what opponent's thought of Jesus as being interpolated by Christians even before Christianity became a state religion.

Thirdly, multiple attestation for a historical source outside the ideology is of course desirable, but is only a contributing factor to deciding historical authenticity. If you reject multiple authenticity that is not within the society in which that source emerged, then history as an enterprise would collapse (e.g., European medieval history).

Besides, I already mentioned that Lucian of Samosata (a pagan) in De Morta Peregrini (167 CE) shows familiarity with the same Greek phrase used in Ignatius's letter to the Smyrnaeans and also to Polycarp (the phrase is "couriers of God"). If Ignatius's letters were unknown in 167 CE, then why is this Greek phrase used in a manner similar to how Ignatius used the phrase?


Please provide a scholarly citation for this claim.


Please give me a citation from a recognized scholarly source that says historians "stop there." I get the strong impression that you are making this stuff up as you go along.


We have references in history from Ireneaus who quotes from the Ignatius's letter to the Romans, Origen who quotes from Ignatius's letter to the Romans and to the Ephesians, Polycarp who mentions the letter from Ignatius letter to him, and Eusebius says the following:


So, we have references to each of the major Ignatius letters from antiquity.

* Note: Edited from apples to grapes to use the correct expression.

I never cease to be amazed at the arguments over the scholarship of who wrote what, and when. No doubt these are interesting historical questions, but they most often crop up (outside of scholarly circles) in arguments aobut religion, not history. In my own view, such arguments answer little or nothing about the religious questions that usually generate the heat.

For example, let's bring up a slightly more recent example. Much has been written about Joseph Smith, his life, his works, where he went, who he knew, what he did and said. But all of that work doesn't answer one fundamental question for me:
We can argue forever and a day about what was written and when, but what we cannot resolve is the truth of what was written. Someone may be able to prove that I wrote the statement "no elephant known weighs more than 11 pounds," but the proof that I wrote it does not constitute proof of the statement itself.

Thus, the literal truth of statements about the rent veil in the temple, corpses rising from their open tombs, the sun standing still for any period of time, etc. must all remain, at the very best, unanswered. And this must also be the case for the religious "truth" about the existence of God or the spiritual resurrection of Christ.

I guess, if somebody invents something out of whole cloth, or even if they recast some other religious ideas into a more acceptable framework for a different culture, what difference does it make who copies it down, and when, and how accurately? Or even if there was interpolation or forgery? None of it answers the underlying question which is at the heart of most such discussions outside of the rarified atmosphere of historical scholarship.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

I'm taking it the the "quote" text is the fundamental question you want answered... but it appears to me that that question is rather different from the question of the truth (or should one say Truth) of Joseph Smith's revelation. It is possible that one make up something that is True, after all... or is it your contention that, because the story about how it was found is untrue, then the contents must, necessarily, be untrue?

And isn't that a bit like shooting the messegner, and then ignoring the message because the messenger got shot?

Of course, if we say that all "fiction" is necessarily false, then one has to explain why so much fiction rings True.

But perhaps I simply misunderstand you.

__________________
Grassaf, Eolas

"We have to accept somewhat looser standards. In the legal profession, to convict the defendant of a crime, you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil cases, a preponderance of the evidence is sufficient.
When dealing with the Bible or any ancient source, we have to loosen up a little; otherwise, we can't really say anything."

-David Noel Freedman (in Bible Review magazine, Dec.
1993, p.34)

So, TC, does this mean that you are willing to dismantle the study of ancient history? As Professor Freedman alludes to, and what I've been saying for some time, ancient history is a study of what probably happened based on the current evidence that we have. Actually, all of science is based on the same assumption, but in the case of ancient history we might be lucky in having a source or artifact, but there are no video and audio recordings, no DNA to analyze, no spectrometer readings, no data from Spitzer or Hubble space telescopes, or anything of this sort.

If you are content with not analyzing history based on these limitations, then why are you providing so many radical hypotheses (and what almost all scholars would label "very improbable" hypotheses) to the questions that ancient history raises?

EH, I would separate historical notions of fact and philosophical notions of fact. In the case of history, especially ancient history, I don't think we can fully verify miracles. We can state that certain testimony appears in all probability to be reliable (e.g., Paul's communication about the resurrection of Jesus, direct transporting to heaven before God's throne, healings, prophesying, etc.), but we cannot verify that these events require miraculous interpretations (i.e., an intervention in physics) to properly classify. All we can say is that these things are, historically speaking, unexplained without more data.

In the case of metaphysics, you've entered the realm of philosophy, and herein we can say more about whether it makes philosophical sense to say if scientific laws are laws of nature or human inventions, or whether God is likely to exist, etc.

However, in both cases we can still make faith based statements with good reason. For example, after reading and studying Paul, I think he would not have likely converted to Christianity and suffered so great in his life had he not seen Jesus in some kind of resurrected form. You, on the other hand, may not come to that conviction by reading Paul. You might consider him to have some kind of psychological disorder, and wouldn't consider it further. We both have our reasons for our distinct beliefs. Similarly, I look at the philosophical arguments for God, and I shake my head wondering how anyone could deny a personal God exists, but again, we each have our reasons.

I think my reasons are pretty good, and so I feel pretty comfortable in believing and being a Christian.