Historicity of Jesus. Now serving Atwil.

Sarky wrote: »

Why do random posters always think they can out-history Bannasidhe? It's like they never read any of the threads where she's shredded such folks before...

Sandals and Shorts wrote: »

No, just sincerity

georgieporgy wrote: »

Everything is mentioned in wiki these days and it's the first source coughed up by google when you search online.
You sound like a serious history scholar though. Have you decided not to accept Tacitus' reference to Christ, or is he not contemporary enough for you?

georgieporgy wrote: »

It would seem professional historians can have different opinions on history. Some actually claim that the bible is not a historical document (loaded with contemporary references to Christ), others , both believers and non believers, say it is.

In addition to this most accurate ancient historical narrative, we have archeological evidence to verify biblical stories. Not to mention the phisical evidence of Jesus' body.

georgieporgy wrote: »

And I thought you were a professional historian.... Matthew and John gospels are first hand accounts.

Estimates for the dates when the canonical gospel accounts were written vary significantly; and the evidence for any of the dates is scanty. Because the earliest surviving complete copies of the gospels date to the 4th century and because only fragments and quotations exist before that, scholars use higher criticism to propose likely ranges of dates for the original gospel autographs.

Scholars variously assess the majority (though not the consensus view as follows:
Mark: c. 68–73, c. 65–70.
Matthew: c. 70–100, c. 80–85.
Luke: c. 80–100, with most arguing for somewhere around 85, c. 80–85.
John: c. 90–100, c. 90–110,The majority view is that it was written in stages, so there was no one date of composition.

Traditional Christian scholarship has generally preferred to assign earlier dates. Some historians interpret the end of the book of Acts as indicative, or at least suggestive, of its date; as Acts mentions neither the death of Paul, generally accepted as the author of many of the Epistles, who was put to death by the Romans c. 65[citation needed], nor any other event post AD 62, notably the Neronian persecution of AD 64–65 that had such impact on the early church. Acts is attributed to the author of the Gospel of Luke, which is believed to have been written before Acts, and therefore would shift the chronology of authorship back, putting Mark as early as the mid 50s.

Here are the dates given in the modern NIV Study Bible:
Matthew: c. 50 to 70s
Mark: c. 50s to early 60s, or late 60s
Luke: c. 59 to 63, or 70s to 80s
John: c. 85 to near 100, or 50s to 70

Such early dates are not limited to conservative scholars. In Redating the New Testament John A. T. Robinson, a prominent liberal theologian and bishop, makes a case for composition dates before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Few academic scholars, however, take Robinson's work seriously. For example, Raymond Brown of the Union Theological Seminary specifically rejects "Bishop John A.T. Robinson's maverick attempt." J.V.M. Sturdy said regarding Robinson's work that he "one sidedly ignores difficulties for his views, steamrollers the evidence, again and again advances from an improbable possibility to a certainty.