The Anonymous Gospel Manuscripts

[robvalue]

I don't taks these seriously as "historical", when they contains nonsense bullshit. This means the authors were either delusional, or in the business of making shit up. Or, in this case, believing stories which were obviously made up. Either way, none of these give me any confidence that the authors were interested in portraying truth.

If I had to guess, I'd actually come down on the side of the authors intending them to be non-literal stories, or fictional propaganda. Even if they didn't, integrity and accuracy were clearly of no concern to them as the gospels tell an increasingly ridiculous tale when viewed chronologically. Especially with Matthew going off at the deep end and adding a bunch of nonsense of his own.

You might be able to try and establish the existence of characters within the fictional story, but to just believe anything happened as written without verification is not something I'd ever do.

Also, the resurrection is supposed to be absolutely central to Christianity. Yet it's a forgery. It is quite incredible this doesn't cause Christians concern.

[downbeatplumb]

"It is a fact that anything you read about me on the internet is true"-Abraham Lincoln.
The truth is people attribute their writings to "famous" people all the time, how many times have I seen "quotes" by Einstein or some other renowned scientist that purports to show they believed in god.
This appropriation of other peoples names to support whatever claim they are making is rife now and there is no reason to believe that it wasn't rife in the past.

[Aractus]

If I had to guess, I'd actually come down on the side of the authors intending them to be non-literal stories, or fictional propaganda. Even if they didn't, integrity and accuracy were clearly of no concern to them as the gospels tell an increasingly ridiculous tale when viewed chronologically. Especially with Matthew going off at the deep end and adding a bunch of nonsense of his own.

Well it's a good thing we don't listen to unqualified hacks like yourself then. How do you know the author of Matthew "added" anything he didn't find in pre-written material?

How did they "invent" the sermon on the mount when James had already made about 20 direct references to it in an epistle of his?

[robvalue]

Still getting worked up over Jesus, I see. Let it go man. I'm only giving my opinion. I'd love to not have to skip past all your posts like I do with so many other people.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well it's a good thing we don't listen to unqualified hacks like yourself then. How do you know the author of Matthew "added" anything he didn't find in pre-written material?

It would be further demonstration of the situation rob -just- described if he did crib pre-written material.......the NT is a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.  From third person omniscient narration, to the conversations of which there -could be- no witnesses.  It's clearly a story meant to spread a message, not distribute history or facts.

[drfuzzy]

I wish that we still had the non-traditional, removed books available.  They would make for interesting reading.

If you're talking about the "gnostic" texts, they are all available to read. All the ones that have survived anyway, here knock yourself out: .

Thank you Aractus!  I appreciate it!

[Mudhammam]

So you're wrong, the earliest literary evidence is from the early second century, where there are not just references but direct quotes from many (but not all) of the NT books.

Okay... I'm wrong yet you repeat exactly what I claimed from the start? I said that none of the Gospels, insofar as we might be able to evaluate authorship, appear prior to the second century. Twice you've attempted to correct me... To then go on and say just that (with the possible exception of Clement).

[Minimalist]

So you have appropriated for yourself the ability to determine who is and who isn't a "serious scholar," Danny.  How very presumptuous of you!

...

The theologians have a vested interest in trying to push this shit back as early in time as they possibly can.  Are they serious "scholars" or serious "believers?"

Yeah straw man. I never said that scholars don't debate the dating of manuscripts. I never said there was a consensus on that. And what does P52 have to do with what I was saying? Nothing, that's what. It could be dated to the fifth century and it wouldn't change P66 and P75's significance and dates. All available information on these two particular manuscripts dates them to around 200AD. With an upper limit of perhaps 225AD. Even if we take the upper limit they still had to have diverged at least 30 years in the past; and prior to that they were copied and circulated as well.

The scholars you just quoted aren't arguing that the synoptic gospels were written later than 90AD are they? No, and in fact the link you just gave me, if you'd bothered to read it, concludes that P66 was likely written within the late-second/early-third century.

I guess it is time to remind you what you did say.  That seems to happen a lot with you.

There are no serious scholars who date the Synoptics any later than 90AD. P66 & P75 were both written around 200AD, both clearly contain the "gospel according to John" titles like this:

First off, I'm used to this bullshit about anyone who disagrees with you being a "non-serious" scholar.  That bullshit is trotted out all the time and I will call you on it EVERY  TIME.  Because you don't get to say who is a TRUE SCHOLAR any more than our resident theistic nutjobs get to say who is TRUE XTIAN or TRUE MUSLIM.

Second, why do you assume this line:

There are no first-century New Testament papyri and only very few papyri can be attributed to the (second half of the) second century. It is only in the third and fourth centuries that New Testament manuscripts become more common, but here too the dates proposed by COMFORT–BARRETT, 1999, 2001, and JAROŠ, 2006 are often too early.

does not apply to the documents you so love?    There's a big difference between 200 AD and 399 AD.  You should study history more than religious bullshit.

[Cecelia]

I've done little study on the authorship of the Gospels, so I'm unable to say much on the subject.  But I did find this:

Recommended Reading: https://adversusapologetica.wordpress.co...e-gospels/

I think this answers very well the question "Where are the unattributed manuscripts?" 

Furthermore, it is not even clear that the Gospels’ abnormal titles were originally placed in the first manuscript copies. We do not have the autograph original text for any literary work from antiquity, but for the Gospels many of the earliest manuscripts that we possess have grammatical variations in their title conventions. This divergence in form among the earliest manuscripts suggests that there was no original manuscript or title upon which the later titles were based. As textual criticism expert Bart Ehrman points out in [/i] (pp. 249-250):

[i]“Because our surviving Greek manuscripts provide such a wide variety of (different) titles for the Gospels, textual scholars have long realized that their familiar names do not go back to a single ‘original’ title, but were added by later scribes.”[/i]

So, no.  We don't have the original manuscripts.  That doesn't mean that there weren't original manuscripts without the title or names attached.  There's a lot of written work that we don't have.  Movable type wasn't around for another nearly thousand years, and the printing press wasn't around until around 1440.

[Aractus]

So you're wrong, the earliest literary evidence is from the early second century, where there are not just references but direct quotes from many (but not all) of the NT books.

Okay... I'm wrong yet you repeat exactly what I claimed from the start? I said that none of the Gospels, insofar as we might be able to evaluate authorship, appear prior to the second century. Twice you've attempted to correct me... To then go on and say just that (with the possible exception of Clement).

You said "at least the second century" we have direct quotes from them at the very start of the second century. They therefore show up then at the latest.

I submit these men have better credentials than you.

http://vridar.org/2013/03/08/new-date-fo...pyrus-p52/

ABSTRACT. — The date of the earliest New Testament papyri is nearly always based on palaeographical criteria. A consensus among papyrologists, palaeographers and New Testament scholars is presented in the edition of NESTLE–ALAND, 1994. In the last twenty years several New Testament scholars (THIEDE, COMFORT–BARRETT, 1999, 2001 and JAROŠ, 2006) have argued for an earlier date of most of these texts. The present article analyzes the date of the earliest New Testament papyri on the basis of comparative palaeography and a clear distinction between different types of literary scripts. There are no first-century New Testament papyri and only very few papyri can be attributed to the (second half of the) second century. It is only in the third and fourth centuries that New Testament manuscripts become more common, but here too the dates proposed by COMFORT–BARRETT, 1999, 2001, and JAROŠ, 2006 are often too early.

The theologians have a vested interest in trying to push this shit back as early in time as they possibly can.  Are they serious "scholars" or serious "believers?"

The issue Min is that you're selectively misquoting what the scholars have to say. They are arguing in their article against the revision of dating towards earlier dates for some NT mss. They don't appear to dispute the dating of P66 and P75 in the main, and in their appendix they list all dates published for these works by the various groups involved in paleographic dating. Furthermore they don't argue against the use of paleographic dating, but rather note how difficult and imprecise a science it is. All the major bodies date P66 and P75 to within 50 years of 200AD - except Jaros for P66 which dated it to c. 100AD. You'll note though I didn't cite the outlier. There are only a couple of scholars who think that either P66 should be dated to the early-mid fourth century (yes early-mid, not 399AD), but they too are outliers at this time.

They don't talk about theologians in their article - obviously a theologian would be less than neutral in their assessment.

There are other reasons, besides paleography itself, to think these two particular texts are earlier than fourth century. As I mentioned earlier in fact, and that is the fact they represent an earlier text-type than other texts found in the fourth and fifth centuries. It doesn't make a fourth century date impossible, but it does make it less likely.