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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27106 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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This opens another debate of when the gospels were written. I don't think Mark was written earlier than the 60s, and the rest of the gospels between then and the first decades of the 2nd century. The primarily Jewish era of the church does not seem to have lasted very long, as it did not make much headway among the Jews. It was certainly over by AD 70 and the destruction of Jerusalem.

Right, the consensus is that Mark was written around 60-70 AD, which is consistent with my point. Q, the theorized other source of Luke and Matthew, would probably have been written around or before the same time.

The primarily Jewish era of the church does not seem to have lasted very long, as it did not make much headway among the Jews

I disagree with this--contextual evidence, especially how we both seem to agree that before 70 AD Christianity was essentially seen as a branch of Judaism, suggests that it did make plenty of headway among the Jews. This is a good place to mention my problems with researching these things. The first source found points to this paper which says:

Just how small was the Christian movement in the first century is clear from the calculations of the sociologist R Stark (1996:5-7; so too Hopkins 1998:192-193). Stark begins his analysis with a rough estimation of six million Christians in the Roman Empire (or about ten percent of the total population) at the start of the fourth century. He then argues, on the assumption of 1 000 Christians in the year 40 that this figure could have been reached through a natural and consistent growth of 40 per cent per decade. What makes this a feasible rate of growth is that it compares very favourably with the expansion of the Mormon Church in more recent times, which has grown at a rate of 43 per cent per decade.

This is an utterly absurd analysis, basically pulled out of a hat. Acts mentions in the first few chapters nearly ten thousand people in Jerusalem (we can assume Jews) who converted; the rest of the analysis is devoted to casting doubt on those numbers because it would be a sizeable proportion of Jerusalem. The numbers mentioned specifically refer to pilgrims, though, not to the normal Jewish population. It's very clear about this:

And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.

...

Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judæa, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia,

Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes,

Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.

...

Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.

The whole field is just a cesspool of speculation. There are many arguments for/against how many Jewish converts there were in the early Christian church but I find the arguments for large numbers more convincing. I find it more likely that Jewish converts married into the Gentile church and thus mostly disappeared, ethnically and culturally, within a few generations. The book of Matthew wasn't directed towards the Jews on a whim--they were the foundation of early Christianity.

If the gospel authors are trying to redirect blame from the Romans to the Jews, why would they remove details of Herod's reign?

Because he was appointed by the Romans. Anyone who would fabricate events wholesale just to blame Jews would also obviously treat Herod and the Roman occupation more positively. You'd probably have all sorts of examples of Romans miraculously being converted because there faith was so much greater than that of the Jews, or of Romans protecting Jesus from the wicked Jewish leaders.

I can't imagine anyone would fabricate such events just to blame the Jews without going further anywhere else. Why not say the Sanhedrin stoned Jesus? Why not allow Jesus to say something about how great the Romans are and we should all be like them? Why not write in a single Roman convert or apostle?

Generally the idea that these things were inserted just to make the Gospel more palatable to the Romans seems really far-fetched.

I'm pretty sure Theudas is only mentioned in Josephus and Acts, and neither refers to him leading an armed revolt.

My bad, I thought I read that somewhere but now I can't find it. Still--the popular conception of the Messiah as one who leads a revolt against Rome, combined with the wording that he had a group of about four hundred men, to me strongly implies he was an anti-Roman rebel, not just a prophet.

Also, I believe those are different Theudas's, or one of the mentions is incorrect.

Pliny was a regional governor, and the Emperor even advises him in the answer to his letter to try any Christians who are brought before him, but not to expend any energy actually hunting them down. I say it doesn't seem like Pliny knows much about them because he describes their rituals/customs as if he's unfamiliar, and says he actually tortured two deaconesses to find out more, but only discovered "depraved superstition." What I meant was that Diocletian's edict was the only time in Roman history where the Emperor apparently said "we're getting rid of all the Christians in the empire," and empire-wide steps were taken to enforce this. Even the Neronian persecution appears to have been an attempt by Nero to take the heat off of himself rather than a principled attempt to uproot the whole faith. Before this, persecution was mostly sporadic and on the initiative of local mobs and magistrates. While most of the Church fathers were (if you take traditions at face value) eventually martyred, most of them apparently lived and preached openly as Christians for many years before they crossed the wrong governor or priest. There wasn't a "shoot on sight" order.

There may not have been a shoot on sight order, but Christians were executed just for being Christians. My original point was that mentioning eyewitnesses by name might be dangerous for them; the fact that a tipoff (even an anonymous one, as of the letter) that you were Christian could get you executed more than qualifies as dangerous.

Pliny's letter was written nearly fifty years after the Neronian persecutions so it's fairly weak evidence for the state of Christian persecution at the time the Gospels were written.

What I mean is nowhere except in the gospels, except at the end of John, is there anything like "I was told this by X son of Y," or even (with no specific names attached) "I know this because I saw myself" or "I know this because I spoke to those who were there" which was extremely common in ancient biographies, whenever the author actually had access to eyewitness sources.

This assumes the gospels were not actually written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which is highly debatable. There's little need to explicitly say "I know this because I saw myself" if it's clear from the format that you're speaking from firsthand experience.

Matthew has the first post-resurrection appearance to the disciples take place on a mountain in Galilee, while Luke tells us that the first appearances were in Jerusalem, and what's more leaves little room for Galilean appearances by having Jesus explicitly tell the disciples (in the first chapter of Acts) that they are not to leave Jerusalem until Pentecost, to name one of the biggest differences. The differences can be reconciled with some work, like all differences, but I don't find the harmonizations compelling.

No, they don't. Matthew describes a post-resurrection appearance, as does Luke. Neither asserts that these appearances are his first. Acts mentions that Jesus visits the apostles many times over a 40 day period.

Sure, all differences can be reconciled with some work, but the amount of work necessary is crucial. I think the account of Judas' death is contradictory and probably indicates missing/altered text, while the Resurrection accounts are decently compatible with each other.

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