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Some do, based on Christian arguments. Others place it early second century AD. Most scholars also point out it was written by several people.
It's put at 90 AD by church tradition ONLY because that's the very longest a man born in 0 could survive to in those days. But the sad fact is that nobody before 200 CE even mentions John's Gospel. And the very earliest extant fragment that could possibly be attributed to it is about the size of a credit card and doesn't even have a complete sentence, just a few random words around which a passage could be constructed. This fragment P52 has been dated to about 150 CE. Pretty flimsy evidence, in fact NO evidence for 90 CE.
Some people have asked how I, formerly a dye-in-the-wool fundamentalist, could drop Christianity. I'll tell you:
The reason I dropped Christianity like a hot potato was because of a single sentence in the Bible--John 8:24
As I thought about this I began to reason, "Does the God who created billions of galaxies really give two bits about whether or not I believe some obscure character named Yeshua who claimed to be God's son really died for my sins when we can't even prove by archaeological or historical evidence he even existed"?
As I studied this matter I learned the gospel of John wasn't even written by John. Apologists will insist it was but no Biblical scholar worth his salt supports this outlandish claim. We can't even place this verse any earlier than the 4th century. It was written by some anonymous hack, probably a church lackey to scare people into converting to Christianity.
So let me get this straight: some anonymous hack writes 300 years after Jesus' purported crucifixion that I will die in my sin if I don't believe in Jesus. I asked myself: who stands to benefit from believing in Jesus, God or the church. The answer was obvious: the Catholic church has always taught that they are God's emissaries on earth. If you want to get to God you don't go through Jesus--you go through your priests and bishops; they are the ones who tell you what you believe and what not to believe--and how much to give them to live a lavish lifestyle.
It was the ol' classic carrot and stick approach to getting me to believe something they wanted me to believe: accept Jesus, and by extension us as God's representatives on earth OR burn in hell for all eternity if you don't.
Nobody benefits by me accepting Jesus except church ministers who live in $10,000,000 mansions and fly $60,000,000 private jets and rely on putting a guilt trip on me if I don't support their lifestyle. Gradually I began to understand the whole Christianity enterprise is composed of a motley cast of shady characters with a corrupt history of shenanigans, dirty-dealings, lies, obfuscations, and underhanded practices throughout its entire existence.
So I dropped Christianity like a hot potato and never looked back.
Well, good for you, I guess, but you are woefully uninformed about the Gospel of John. There are numerous papyri containing portions of the Gospel of John that are reliably dated to the mid second century, and no mainstream scholar places the date of authorship later than 95-120 AD. Early Church fathers quote from and refer extensively to the Gospel of John. Origen, for example, does so - and he died in 253. Irenaeus, Tatian and others did so in circa 170. To suggest that this sublime theological work was written by an anonymous hack 300 years after the death of Jesus is demonstrably wrong.
What I find more odd, however, is that anyone would lose his faith on the basis on which you claim to have lost yours. The Gospel of John is a comparatively late NT document, has a clear theological agenda, varies from the Synoptic Gospels to the tune of 80% or more, and is regarded as historically suspect by many. OK, so let's say for the sake of argument that we completely reject John. Logically, wouldn't this then cut in precisely the opposite direction from what you are suggesting? My conclusion in this circumstance would be simply, "Jesus probably never said precisely what was attributed to him in John 8:24." Would this cause my Christian faith to collapse like a house of cards? Hardly.
Christianity is a multi-faceted system of belief. It hinges to some extent, of course, on the Bible, but not on the Bible being the 100% inerrant, woodenly literal word of God. It hinges on the person of Jesus - who he was in history and who he is today. It hinges on one's personal experience of the Holy Spirit in one's life. If belief collapses like a house of cards, it was never really there in the first place.
Foaming-at-the-mouth fundamentalists are well-known for being atheists waiting to happen. This is precisely what happened with the atheists' favorite Bible scholar, Bart Ehrman. When he realized the Bible was not the 100% inerrant, woodenly literal word of God he had always assumed it was, his faith completely collapsed - collapsed in circumstances that a mature Christian would have shrugged off. (FYI, Ehrman has written a well-respected book addressing the lunatic fringe claim that Jesus never existed. There is no reputable scholar, including Ehrman, who believes this.)
What you see as the sordid history of Christianity, or perhaps pretend Christianity, is likewise irrelevant to the truth of the Gospel. The only relevant question is, "Who do you say Jesus was, and what are you going to do with him?" If I ever lose my faith, which I don't see as likely, it will be for better reasons than that a particular verse in the Gospel of John offended me, I conclude in the face of massive scholarship that Jesus never existed, or I am dismayed by the state of the religion calling itself Christianity. I must say, for someone who has concluded that this is all silliness, you seem to have an intense emotional involvement with it. But good luck to you.
It's put at 90 AD by church tradition ONLY because that's the very longest a man born in 0 could survive to in those days. But the sad fact is that nobody before 200 CE even mentions John's Gospel. And the very earliest extant fragment that could possibly be attributed to it is about the size of a credit card and doesn't even have a complete sentence, just a few random words around which a passage could be constructed. This fragment P52 has been dated to about 150 CE. Pretty flimsy evidence, in fact NO evidence for 90 CE.
The Gnostics used John, and the refutation of the Gnostics by early Christians would put it's existence in the mid second century AD. Justin Martyr also used a version of it, which would put it 150 AD or earlier.
Tertullian around 200 AD says it ended at chapter 20, so it was still being added to at that time.
P52 has now been redated to around 175 AD or later.
I found all this out after I left Christianity. Knowing what I know now, I could never return.
Well, good for you, I guess, but you are woefully uninformed about the Gospel of John. There are numerous papyri containing portions of the Gospel of John that are reliably dated to the mid second century, and no mainstream scholar places the date of authorship later than 95-120 AD. Early Church fathers quote from and refer extensively to the Gospel of John. Origen, for example, does so - and he died in 253. Irenaeus, Tatian and others did so in circa 170. To suggest that this sublime theological work was written by an anonymous hack 300 years after the death of Jesus is demonstrably wrong.
Some good points, some very bad. Several mainstream scholar date John up to 140 AD. Tertullian said John ended at chapter 20, so it was still being added to around 200 AD.
The few tiny fragments of John are NOT reliably dated to the mid second century, the earliest dates are often done by Christians wanting an early date. A revision of the dates now puts P52 to around 175 AD, possibly later, for example.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nerfball
What you see as the sordid history of Christianity, or perhaps pretend Christianity, is likewise irrelevant to the truth of the Gospel. The only relevant question is, "Who do you say Jesus was, and what are you going to do with him?"
No, the relevant question is what did the earliest Christians say about Jesus. Paul said he was an angel who revealed things in visions; Revelations says Jesus was an angel who was born of a celestial mother; Hebrews says he was a cosmic being who was sacrificed once and once only, in heaven, and that if he did walk the earth, he would not be a priest. Hebrews therefore contradicts ALL the gospels.
Which brings me onto your next section.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nerfball
If I ever lose my faith, which I don't see as likely, it will be for better reasons than that a particular verse in the Gospel of John offended me, I conclude in the face of massive scholarship that Jesus never existed, or I am dismayed by the state of the religion calling itself Christianity. I must say, for someone who has concluded that this is all silliness, you seem to have an intense emotional involvement with it. But good luck to you.
Your massive scholarship is either Christians, historians such as Ehrman using Christian methods only used in Jesus studies, and many historians not trained in the this area who accept the consensus. But they do seem ignorant of the source material I mentioned above. They also seem ignorant of other Christian writings that date the life of Jesus 100 years before the gospels. For someone so famous, it is amazing no one agreed on who Jesus was until the second century AD.
Well, good for you, I guess, but you are woefully uninformed about the Gospel of John. There are numerous papyri containing portions of the Gospel of John that are reliably dated to the mid second century, and no mainstream scholar places the date of authorship later than 95-120 AD. Early Church fathers quote from and refer extensively to the Gospel of John. Origen, for example, does so - and he died in 253. Irenaeus, Tatian and others did so in circa 170. To suggest that this sublime theological work was written by an anonymous hack 300 years after the death of Jesus is demonstrably wrong.
What I find more odd, however, is that anyone would lose his faith on the basis on which you claim to have lost yours. The Gospel of John is a comparatively late NT document, has a clear theological agenda, varies from the Synoptic Gospels to the tune of 80% or more, and is regarded as historically suspect by many. OK, so let's say for the sake of argument that we completely reject John. Logically, wouldn't this then cut in precisely the opposite direction from what you are suggesting? My conclusion in this circumstance would be simply, "Jesus probably never said precisely what was attributed to him in John 8:24." Would this cause my Christian faith to collapse like a house of cards? Hardly.
Christianity is a multi-faceted system of belief. It hinges to some extent, of course, on the Bible, but not on the Bible being the 100% inerrant, woodenly literal word of God. It hinges on the person of Jesus - who he was in history and who he is today. It hinges on one's personal experience of the Holy Spirit in one's life. If belief collapses like a house of cards, it was never really there in the first place.
Foaming-at-the-mouth fundamentalists are well-known for being atheists waiting to happen. This is precisely what happened with the atheists' favorite Bible scholar, Bart Ehrman. When he realized the Bible was not the 100% inerrant, woodenly literal word of God he had always assumed it was, his faith completely collapsed - collapsed in circumstances that a mature Christian would have shrugged off. (FYI, Ehrman has written a well-respected book addressing the lunatic fringe claim that Jesus never existed. There is no reputable scholar, including Ehrman, who believes this.)
What you see as the sordid history of Christianity, or perhaps pretend Christianity, is likewise irrelevant to the truth of the Gospel. The only relevant question is, "Who do you say Jesus was, and what are you going to do with him?" If I ever lose my faith, which I don't see as likely, it will be for better reasons than that a particular verse in the Gospel of John offended me, I conclude in the face of massive scholarship that Jesus never existed, or I am dismayed by the state of the religion calling itself Christianity. I must say, for someone who has concluded that this is all silliness, you seem to have an intense emotional involvement with it. But good luck to you.
nerfball, this is a good post. You raise a LOT of good questions but you're new. Are you here for a while so we can discuss?
Some do, based on Christian arguments. Others place it early second century AD. Most scholars also point out it was written by several people.
Even if it was datable to AD 90, that's still about 2.3 generations after the alleged events (90-33 = roughly 57 years, a generation being about 25 years = 57/25 = 2.3). While a few people did survive infections and accidents and disease to live to a ripe old age, there would, after 57 years, be precious few now-75 year old plus adults who were even marginally adult eyewitnesses at the time of the alleged events, and not now senile, to serve as direct sources for the events described. Even fewer whose assertions could be skeptically authenticated.
Not that the gospels were attempts at anything like 21st century standards of journalistic integrity, of course. There wasn't even a concept of such back then. Nor do the gospels lay claim to any such methodological regime; if I recall correctly, only Luke even tries to. They are most likely written down from oral tradition and/or "collections of sayings" manuscripts, even assuming for the sake of argument that they aren't coming from an already nascent church tradition that may or may not have been rooted in actual persons or events.
I have come to suspect that the gospels actually represent an attempt to promote a consensus orthodoxy that eventually won out over things like what's now termed "the gnostic heresy" (give that the victors get to write history). I suspect that Paul is the source of that "heresy" and that he was brilliantly subsumed into the competing orthodoxy by the simple device of putting his writings AFTER the much later gospel accounts in the scriptural canon, so Paul's corpus would be reinterpreted within the framing and assumptions of those accounts.
So Paul by himself mostly describes a "celestial" Jesus "seated in the heavenlies" but if you already, courtesy of the gospels, assume a flesh and blood, miracle-working god-man, then rather than a statement that Jesus is non-corporeal, mystical, and ethereal, it just becomes a theological musing about what Jesus is, now that he has been caught up into heaven after his earthly ministry. Whether this alchemy was deliberate or just a happy accident (probably a little of both), it results in what is considered Christian orthodoxy today.
Even if it was datable to AD 90, that's still about 2.3 generations after the alleged events (90-33 = roughly 57 years, a generation being about 25 years = 57/25 = 2.3). While a few people did survive infections and accidents and disease to live to a ripe old age, there would, after 57 years, be precious few now-75 year old plus adults who were even marginally adult eyewitnesses at the time of the alleged events, and not now senile, to serve as direct sources for the events described. Even fewer whose assertions could be skeptically authenticated.
Just to point out I date John early to mid 2nd century AD, depending on the various order the different gospels could have been written in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
Not that the gospels were attempts at anything like 21st century standards of journalistic integrity, of course. There wasn't even a concept of such back then. Nor do the gospels lay claim to any such methodological regime; if I recall correctly, only Luke even tries to. They are most likely written down from oral tradition and/or "collections of sayings" manuscripts, even assuming for the sake of argument that they aren't coming from an already nascent church tradition that may or may not have been rooted in actual persons or events.
Yes, Luke is playing at doing history. There were basic standards of how to write histories, the gospels fail on each one.
My view is Mark invented his gospel completely as an allegory about being a Christian. The other gospels then came after.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
I have come to suspect that the gospels actually represent an attempt to promote a consensus orthodoxy that eventually won out over things like what's now termed "the gnostic heresy" (give that the victors get to write history). I suspect that Paul is the source of that "heresy" and that he was brilliantly subsumed into the competing orthodoxy by the simple device of putting his writings AFTER the much later gospel accounts in the scriptural canon, so Paul's corpus would be reinterpreted within the framing and assumptions of those accounts.
Except Matthew is rewriting Mark to refute Marks gentile loving Jesus. Mark appears to use some of Paul's letters. Luke is trying to iron out the problems.
They were probably thrown together as a canon around 150 - 170 AD to promote a consensus orthodoxy, probably in an attempt to refute Marcion's first canon. And yes, Paul was subsumed (new word for me ) brilliantly by being placed after Acts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mordant
So Paul by himself mostly describes a "celestial" Jesus "seated in the heavenlies" but if you already, courtesy of the gospels, assume a flesh and blood, miracle-working god-man, then rather than a statement that Jesus is non-corporeal, mystical, and ethereal, it just becomes a theological musing about what Jesus is, now that he has been caught up into heaven after his earthly ministry. Whether this alchemy was deliberate or just a happy accident (probably a little of both), it results in what is considered Christian orthodoxy today.
I would say the idea of a 'historical' Jesus was a better selling point, so it would have been deliberate. But even Origen said the gospels were allegories for the wise sold as history so the not so wise could also be saved.
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