(September 4, 2012 at 10:28 am)Ziploc Surprise Wrote: Get a different perspective of Christianity, read the New Testament in chronological order (order in which it was actually written).These aren't "date written," they are "date of the earliest copy." Christian scholars have reasons to believe Mark, or source Q, came first. Read a chronology New Testament based on what they ascertain to be history--that Jesus died and ascended, the beginning of Acts follows, Paul's conversion, Paul's letters written at different legs of his missionary journeys, John's rebuttal of the gnostics. As to the Gospel of Luke, Luke says in Acts 1, "In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen" suggesting he wrote it first, prior to 70AD and the destruction of the temple.
The idea of the Gospels being written after the Epistles also neglects to address the why and how. Would you start going to a church based on one man's letters? Paul referred often to Christ's resurrection and once to his lineage: "Regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David" (Romans 1:3)--what could he have been talking about? Paul copies early creeds, including Philippians 2:6–11, Colossians 1:15–20 and 1 Corinthians 15:3–7. Is that not akin to writing a commentary before a novel? Across history, human psychology does not change. People need motivations and they need evidence. Paul's audience was less than thirty years removed from Jesus. With no story and no eyewitnesses, how would you respond? If Paul writes his letters to churches, why did the people have a church to begin with? Paul didn't build each church on his own, the people did. And they are no different from you and I--they require proof.
