Poor Dripshit. Facts are not his friends.
Quote:Only in Justin Martyr, writing in the 150s, do we find the first identifiable quotations from some
of the Gospels, though he calls them simply "memoirs of the Apostles," with no names. And
those quotations usually do not agree with the texts of the canonical versions we now have,
showing that such documents were still undergoing evolution and revision. Scholars such as
Helmut Koester have concluded that earlier "allusions" to Gospel-like material are likely floating
traditions which themselves found their way into the written Gospels. (See Koester's Ancient
Christian Gospels and his earlier Synoptische Uberlieferung bei den apostolischen Vatern.) Is it
conceivable that the earliest account of Jesus' life and death could have been committed to
writing as early as 70 (or even earlier, as some would like to have it), and yet the broader
Christian world took almost a century to receive copies of it?
Earl Doherty - The Jesus Puzzle 52
