RE: Dating Paul's Writings
July 26, 2018 at 8:47 pm
(This post was last modified: July 26, 2018 at 8:54 pm by Minimalist.)
I'll find you something later in one of Ehrman's books. It's dinner time out here now and my wife is busting my balls.
That took no time at all. From Ehrman's Lost Christianities Pages 2-3
Chew on this for a while. I'll be back.
That took no time at all. From Ehrman's Lost Christianities Pages 2-3
Quote:In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that
the Jewish Scripture (the Christian “Old Testament”) was inspired by the one
true God. Others believed it was inspired by the God of the Jews, who was not
the one true God. Others believed it was inspired by an evil deity. Others believed
it was not inspired.
In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that
Jesus was both divine and human, God and man. There were other Christians
who argued that he was completely divine and not human at all. (For them,
divinity and humanity were incommensurate entities: God can no more be a
man than a man can be a rock.) There were others who insisted that Jesus was
a full flesh-and-blood human, adopted by God to be his son but not himself
divine. There were yet other Christians who claimed that Jesus Christ was two
things: a full flesh-and-blood human, Jesus, and a fully divine being, Christ,
who had temporarily inhabited Jesus’ body during his ministry and left him
prior to his death, inspiring his teachings and miracles but avoiding the suffering
in its aftermath.
In the second and third centuries there were Christians who believed that
Jesus’ death brought about the salvation of the world. There were other Christians
who thought that Jesus’ death had nothing to do with the salvation of the
world. There were yet other Christians who said that Jesus never died.
How could some of these views even be considered Christian? Or to put the
question differently, how could people who considered themselves Christian
hold such views? Why did they not consult their Scriptures to see that there
were not 365 gods, or that the true God had created the world, or that Jesus had
died? Why didn’t they just read the New Testament?
It is because there was no New Testament. To be sure, the books that were
eventually collected into the New Testament had been written by the second
century. But they had not yet been gathered into a widely recognized and authoritative
canon of Scripture.1 And there were other books written as well, with
equally impressive pedigrees—other Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses
claiming to be written by the earthly apostles of Jesus.
Chew on this for a while. I'll be back.