THE SECOND CENTURY TESTAMENT

  

Chapters  

INTRODUCTION

DATING MARK

DATING MATTHEW

DATING LUKE AND ACTS

LUKE, ACTS AND JOSEPHUS

DATING JOHN

THE FIRST PROOF

CONCLUSION

 

INTRODUCTION

  

The New Testament’s four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the only real sources of information about the alleged life of the historical Jesus.  They are also the only accounts of this life that Christians consider divinely inspired.  The other gospels that were excluded from the New Testament were written too late to be of any value.  Considering the fanaticism that marks most forms of Christianity, it is remarkable that their precious gospels show no indication of having existed in their present form at least until more than a century after Jesus died.

     The gospels could have been written a year after Jesus died and Jesus might still not have existed.  Selective choice of the readership by the engineers of the Church could have ensured that Jesus would be believed in.  But the longer the gospels can be proved to have existed after Jesus died the more likely it is that Christianity is a fake.  Had the gospel writers not been ashamed of how late they wrote they would have given us dates for then as now people did not like late accounts or accounts that could be late.

  

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DATING MARK

  

 Christians like to give the gospels as early a date as possible because the closer they put them to Jesus the more likely they think they are to be true.  So the question of when the gospels were composed might be inseparable from the question as to whether or not Jesus existed.

      Paul was the first Christian writer.

     The gospels came later.  Mark is the oldest extant gospel though there might have been older ones.  The gospels of Luke and Matthew were heavily dependant on it.  Those who wonder about the dating, concentrate on the prophecies made by Jesus in the gospel.  They assume that the prophecies were written after the event.  But it was possible that they were guesses and good ones.  They were the kind of prophecies of events that had to happen.

     The tradition of Clement of Alexandria that Peter dictated the gospel to Mark is contradicted by Irenaeus who said that the Gospel was not written until after Peter and Paul had died (Jesus and the Four Gospels, page 151). 

       Mark tells so many lies that he must have been writing after 70 AD when he was confident that the Jews were too battered to find his work’s weak points and use them against him.  This was the case after 70 AD when a huge number of Jews emigrated from Palestine (page 343, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail) not to mention the number that died in the war.     

     Jesus' prophecy of destruction and the overthrow of worldly kingdoms proves that the gospel was written after 70 AD because if it had been written before that time, the Romans would have understood the prophecy of destruction as a threat to their power.  They knew there was a danger that some might try to arrange the fulfilment of the prophecy so zealots could be incited to rebel because of it.  The Romans did not like anybody predicting destruction and world war for that made citizens less keen on working to advance their power.  This tells us that the gospel was certainly written after 70 AD at a time when there was widespread war and dissension through the empire when it did no harm to make prophecies like that. 

    Since Mark was the first gospel this tells us that the other ones were much later.  The reason this tells us that the gospel was written late rather than written early and hidden is that leaks are always possible so it was safer to write it late.  Perhaps it is possible the author never let anybody see the manuscript.

  

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DATING MATTHEW

  

Matthew uses Mark so it is a later gospel.  Mark is more ordinary and shorter and less detailed so it is likely to be earlier.

     In the first chapters of Matthew, we read that the Magi or the magicians were led by a star to Jesus.  This is accepted to be a reference to astrology.  Matthew then makes a link between Jesus and the occult which supports the Jewish tradition that Jesus was an occultist though Jesus pretended to be anti-occult.  This proves that Matthew which was geared towards Jewish Christians was written when the Jews had lost their stability and influence after 70 AD and especially after the Bar Kochba revolution when they got the worst blow.  Matthew would not say such a thing about Jesus unless he thought the Jews were not a threat anymore. 

     Matthew 16:1-4 has the Jews asking Jesus for a sign.  He tells them about how they can tell what the next day will be like by observing the sky and that they cannot read the signs of the times.  Then he says they will get no sign but that of Jonah.  The signs of the times can only be the immorality in the world that will force God to judge the world and visit it with destruction.  The sign of Jonah implies the resurrection of Jesus which will call them to repentance for Jonah was resurrected or sort of for the purpose of calling the people of Nineveh to repentance.  Matthew would have looked on the destruction of Jerusalem as the part fulfilment of this prophecy.  He was looking back on it after 70AD.  He wouldn't write until he saw evidence in the times that Judaism was perhaps about to be destroyed which points to a second century date such as during the Bar Kochba rebellion.  He was wrong but he wouldn't have written down the prophecy unless he thought it was going to be shown to come true. 

     In Matthew 23, Jesus hysterically accused the Jews of killing all the innocents who had ever died on the earth from the blood of Abel to that of Zechariah, son of Barachiah.  The author of Matthew was likely to have known that there were no Jews when Abel son of Adam and Eve was murdered and that Abel was murdered by his jealous brother Cain.  This implies that Matthew was written in a time of dreadful persecution of the Jews and their scriptures, the Old Testament, which they pored over like there was no tomorrow.  This would explain his wilfully misinterpreted prophecies and his errors.  He was sure that few would see through him.

     Zechariah was not killed until the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus happened and that was in 70AD.  Josephus records that event but, predictably, conservative Christians choose to believe the Matthew gospel that it happened before Jesus’ time.  Small wonder, for it would mean that the gospel was written after 70 AD after Zechariah’s death and would imply that Matthew or the author was putting words in Jesus’ mouth.  Even 15 years is a long time in a traumatised country. Israel was tormented during and after the alleged time of Christ.  So why trust the gospels even if they were not composed after long after Christ?

  Christians then tell us we believe non-religious records written long after the times so we shouldn't approach the gospels with the attitude that they may be spurious if written long after Jesus.  But the non-religious records do not ask for the sacrifice of the intellect and happiness and life and deserve to be believed.  Religion has a bad record when it comes to truth for power is its priority.  It asks us to be biased and unreasonable.  We only believe the non-religious records because they could be right and because it is better to believe them than to be silent.  We are not believing in them despite them being so late after the event.  We are believing in them because we need them.  The Christians are just trying to manipulate us.  Supernatural claims written down long after the event shouldn't be taken seriously even if historical claims to which there is no objection written down long after the event are taken seriously. 

     Anyway, Matthew was written when it was safe to slander the Jews and blame them for the crucifixion of Jesus – another indication that it was written after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD which was a terrible blow to Judaism and had prospects of being lethal for it.  Matthew could only blacken the Sanhedrin after it disbanded at that time.  The gospels are all cagey about saying outright that the Romans took Jesus and crucified him.  They say it ambiguously though.  Luke 23:25 says that some “they” took Jesus and crucified him.  We have to go to the lines immediately preceding that to find out who “they” are.  Only the Jews baying for Jesus’ execution are mentioned so it is clear that Luke is squarely stating that the Jews nailed Jesus to the cross.  Embarrassed Christians say that he is ambiguous for they know that the Jews historically cannot be blamed.  He is not.  John did the same thing.  He blamed the Jews too as the notes to his chapter 19:16 in the NAB admit.  The NAB then lies saying that John admitted later that the Romans were the killers.  But when you check this out you find that soldiers are mentioned but we are not told if they are Roman or what they are.  They could be Temple Guards.  The Temple Guards were Jews.  The further a gospel goes in blaming the Jews the younger it is.  Luke and John knew they did not have to go as far as saying the Jews physically crucified Jesus but they did to suit the rabid anti-semitic climate of the early second century.  Otherwise they would not have stooped so low.  They did not care much for Jesus when they slandered his killers.

     Matthew concludes with Jesus telling the disciples meaning them and their successors to enter every nation to make converts.  The author was sure this could happen so it was not written during the times of savage and death-dealing persecution for Christianity nor written when it was small and threatened.  This points to a second century date.  It could have been written after 70 AD when the Jews stopped persecuting Christians and after the persecutions carried out under the auspices of the Romans.

    Matthew alleges that all of Syria knew about Jesus and he was famous there (Matthew 4:24).  But no there is absolutely no record of that at all.  Jesus was not mentioned in the writings that country has left us.  This suggests that Matthew knew very little about Palestine and Syria otherwise he would not have said such a thing.  This was suggest the gospel was written in the second century when it was harder for him to get information.

   Despite Jesus saying that the generation he lived in would see the signs in Heaven indicating that the Son of Man was coming back, Jesus said that the only sign for his generation would be his resurrection and not that glorious return (Matthew 12).  If Matthew was written before 70 AD he would say the return was the sign.  Thus Matthew is no older than 70 AD.

     It is thought that when Matthew said that Jesus made a prophecy that his apostles will not be finished preaching to all the towns of Israel before he comes back in the second coming (Matthew 10:23) that Matthew must have been written before they died because it would not have been put in after its failure was apparent.  But Jesus is just saying that they will never do it until he comes and gives no hint if this will be sooner or later.

     The zany book, The Jesus Papyrus, argues as follows that Matthew was written before 66 AD.  The verse says that Jesus said his followers must flee from one town to the next if they are persecuted and that they would not be in every Israelite town before he comes back.  The book says that he is saying they will never flee to non-Israelite towns (page 51).  This is a totally nonsensical deduction.  Christians went for refuge to the Gentile town of Pella in 66 AD.  Following its stupid deduction, the book says the verse indicates that Matthew was written before the flight to Pella for Matthew wouldn't put in a prediction from Jesus that nobody would go to Gentile towns for refuge unless it hadn't happened yet. 

    Jesus meant, “Flee to any SAFE town at all (be it Jewish or Gentile) and you will not hide in all the towns of Israel until I return”.  He would have meant that for it is hardly a good idea to run to another Jewish town if the Jews hold your faith against you and you aren’t going to hide your faith. 

   And how do you know that Matthew cared if Jesus knew the future or not?  Matthew was not a theologian.  He said Jesus saw something in a verse of Exodus that is obviously not there at all (12:18-27).  But if Matthew did care then he was written after 66 AD for he refers to the Christians having to hide in safe Gentile towns.

     Some say that Matthew must have been written late when it was known that Peter would be the rock the invincible Church was built on (16:18).  Others say that it could have been written in 30 AD as long as there was some kind of a Church.  Church may not mean people of God here but community of believers for the word for Church ecclesia just means called out.  You can be a believer without being reconciled with God or being one of his and still be called to spread the gospel and used for that purpose.  It probably doesn’t mean people of God when Matthew never calls the Church the people of God and he says Jesus called Peter Satan a few minutes later.  Peter might have been the rock the Church was built on meaning that he was the first believer.  The first member of your Drama Class could be called the foundation in the sense that he started it off for there is no class without members.  But the weight seems to be on the view that this was made up about Peter being rock and the Church being invincible at a time when it was thought no power now could get rid of the Church. 

     The Gospel says that the story that the disciples stole Jesus from the tomb was told among the Jews until the time he was wrote and was told to discredit the resurrection of Jesus.  This gives us a vital clue as to when Matthew was really written.  It was written after the Jewish and secular records, if any, were destroyed in 70 AD.  The soldiers could not accuse without evidence and so records would have had to be made of suspects and why the tomb must have been robbed by disciples.  But Matthew hints that there was no evidence which tells us that there was evidence that they were wrong.  This latter evidence must have been ruined enabling the Jews to tell that story.  If the Jews were saying that then why had the Sanhedrin nothing to say when the apostles spoke of the resurrection in Acts 4 and could not silence them?  Even Paul had no bother from the rumour (Acts 28) in the sixties of the first century.  The rumour was a late one.  The guards could not have started it for it was less than their lives were worth so somebody might have said they said it after their deaths which would have all transpired by 80 AD.

     Maybe Matthew could write what he liked when the gospel was to be secret for a while?  But the devotees of the gospel were waiting until the right time to inflict it on the world so the book had to be written as ready to go out when the people were ready.

  

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DATING LUKE AND ACTS

  

Authorship of the Gospel of Luke comes after the gospels of Matthew and Mark.  It has more detail and information than they have.  Matthew’s material was frequently rewritten for this gospel.  It follows Mark’s chronology and the Matthew material is used in such a way that Luke might have been using a book that Matthew was made out of rather than using Matthew.  See the entry for Luke in the Biblical Dictionary.  There is too much of Matthew and Mark in this gospel for it to have really been composed of what eye-witnesses said though it claims they were its source.  The Prologue to Luke says that the whole point of the exercise was to show Theophilus that what he had been told was true and you don’t do that by regurgitating what is old hat in all the main respects and which is little else than old hat.  When Luke could not be sure exactly what age Jesus was when he started his ministry (Luke 3:23) he had no eyewitnesses.

     Luke is supposed to have been the companion of Paul and a doctor.  The medical references in the writings of Luke are now admitted to have been capable of being put in by anybody so they are not an indication that Luke the doctor was the author for they were known to everybody (page 153, Jesus and the Four Gospels).  Obviously a book with two or three medical jargons need not have been written by a physician – but many Christians choose to forget this.  There are books written by people who were not physicians from that time that have more medical references (GA Wells Replies to Criticisms of His Books on Jesus).  The Christians prove that Luke wrote the gospel through appealing to the “we” passages of Luke’s book of Acts which indicates that the author claimed to be there.  But the author could have been using the diary of the person who was there and was not there himself at all.  And there is still no concrete statement that he claimed to be Luke.  He would not even sign the gospel or Acts with his own name which is impossible to explain if he really was with Paul for he would have been well-known and like Paul would have been able to sign documents.  Nor would anybody that had travelled with Paul be so ignorant of the Jewish Bible which Paul preached from all the time as to think that Jesus’ death and resurrection were predicted by Moses when they were not (Luke 24:27).    He was so desperate for evidence for the death and resurrection of Christ that his Jesus had to appear to the apostles to use the Bible prophecies to assure them this was a real resurrection (Luke 24:44).  So Jesus was proclaimed as raised not because he appeared but because the Bible was supposed to have predicted he would.  Luke’s Jesus once said that the law and the prophets are more important than seeing a man coming back from the dead.  The author would not have been that hard up had he really known Paul and had he really interviewed eyewitnesses like he claimed.

    The gospel monger used a silly argument to defend the authority of Jesus Christ.  He said that Jesus said that the student is not above his teacher and only gets on the teacher’s level when he has all his studies done (Luke 6:40).  This is nonsense for the teacher will necessarily know more than the students and will be able to teach more subjects than he teaches them.  The student could know more than the teacher but be only at school for the sake of accreditation.  But that is an exception to the general rule.  The same foolishness is to be found at Matthew 10:24.  This shows the author of the gospel was not Luke the physician for somebody who had been trained as a doctor would not have come out with such garbage. 

     The interest of the author of Acts in events in Paul’s life and his not mentioning many other important events of his life such as Paul’s war with Peter at Antioch and the war against the heretics who wanted circumcision stressed as necessary for salvation show that this man was not a companion of Paul’s for what he knew about him was too sparse.  The truth is nobody knows who wrote Luke or Acts.  What kind of man bombasts about getting eyewitnesses and then fails to provide witnesses that he was telling the truth?  What use are eyewitnesses then?  He was a phoney.

     The gospel was meant to be private for it was addressed to a most excellent, or His Excellency, Theophilus.  This man must have been very important if Luke went to so much trouble for him.  He must have been at least a prospective convert to Christianity and a powerful influence and maybe he was a Roman Governor for Luke makes his characters call them Most Excellent.  Luke would have chosen a very well known person.  But Theo seems to have been forgotten.  But how could he have been forgotten?  He was too important and Rome kept records of important people.  It is more likely that Luke made him up to give his book importance and to make it seem that people in the know took him seriously as a historian than that he was forgotten.  (I hate the suggestion that Theophilus stood for the Church and was not a person.  It is absurd for it is unlikely and Luke would not patronise the Church by telling it that he wanted it to know the instruction it got was accurate.  And it is unwarranted.)  Or was he forgotten?  The Catholic Encyclopaedia says that the gospel was written for Bishop Theophilus of Antioch who was made bishop in 169 AD.  How could the Church forget the man who received and gave them a precious gospel?  However, the fact that we don’t know the man’s name and he has not signed his books despite mailing them to a friend is a strong hint that the author was a deceptive person or that the people who first had the gospel were ashamed of who the author was and thought him shifty.

     We know that Luke was kept private for there is evidence that somebody was able to hack pieces off it.  For example, in Luke 4:21-30 we are told first that Jesus made a great impression in a synagogue where he was speaking.  Next we are told that they said, “This is surely Joseph’s son”, meaning that they supposed that he was good for nothing seeing as who his father was and meaning that Jesus’ life before that had been too normal.  Then Jesus tells them that the saying, “Physician heal yourself”, applies to him meaning that there was something the matter with him and he could not cure himself.  Then he tells them that they will not accept him and he deliberately provokes them showing that he was a troublemaker who encourages sin and ends up nearly being murdered by them by being fired over a cliff.  But there was nothing in what Jesus said that could have made them react so strongly so something was excised.  The reason why Jesus quoted the saying is also excised.

     Some say that since Paul mentioned something that was said in the gospel that he meant the Luke gospel.  They come to that conclusion that Luke was written by then for Luke was Paul's companion so Luke is the gospel he means (Eusebius, The History of the Church, 3:4).  But Paul said his epistles were his gospel book.  Luke was written a long time after Paul left the scene for it does not embody much of Paul’s spirit.  There is no stress on salvation by faith despite being an unrepentant sinner or on the death and resurrection to the exclusion of everything else.  It would have taken Luke a long time to change when he was such a trusted soul and friend.  He would have named himself as author in case people would think he did not seem to be the Luke who was by Paul’s side.

     The gospels were written in different places so Matthew and Luke would have been composed long after Mark was written for it would have taken a long time for the book to circulate so that they could steal its stories. 

     Luke says that Jesus was descended in a direct line from David (3).  This could only be written after the Temple was destroyed because the records in it say otherwise.  We know they did for Pilate and the people were sceptical about Jesus’ royal status as heir to the throne. 

     But the gospel says Pilate put up a  king of the Jews sign over Jesus' head on the cross.  The historical Pilate might have put it up for sarcasm.  Or perhaps some gospeller decided Pilate would have done something like that for sarcasm though it is very unlikely that he would have and that Pilate did not tell the Jews he was being sarcastic when they confronted him for putting that wording on the sign.  Had his sign not been sarcastic then he would have been slaughtered by the Romans.  It is obvious nobody would believe the sign was sarcasm if the gospel allegation that Israel regarded Jesus as king were a true story!

     Jesus tells his disciples, not necessarily just the twelve, that they will desire to see a day of the Son of Man and will not see it (Luke 17:22).  Luke was written after they were all dead which was how he knew they would see Jesus no more some day.

     Luke 22:36-38 has Jesus telling his men to buy swords.  The fact that the author made no effort to explain this episode away and keep presenting Jesus as a man of peace suggests that this was written at the time of the Bar Kochba revolt in the second century when it was thought that there would be nothing to fear from either the intolerant Jews or the equally intolerant Romans.  It also suggests that the gospel was written for people outside the Empire and away from the Jews.  It could be taken as a sign that the gospel was hidden but it is more an indication of publication for the gospeller would not have wanted anything controversial to leak out. 

     Luke finishes with the ascension and starts his sequel the Book of Acts with a new ascension story.  Did he forget he already wrote about it?  If he did then Acts was written a long time after Luke and that Luke was hidden when the author could not read it.  But Luke’s purpose is to add more detail to the story of the ascension.  Jesus tells the apostles in Acts that it is not for them to know when the kingdom will be delivered back to Israel from the Romans.  Jesus trusted them and would have told them but if they were never going to see it there would have been no point.  This suggests that the apostles were dead and John the last of them died in the nineties.  Luke would not have put in such an unedifying saying except to give a clue of the time of writing.  Acts was probably written soon after Luke.  Theophilus needed these books for he was a sceptic and needed to be sure.  When Luke went to such trouble as to give him a Gospel he was more than keen to convert him and fast.  But a second book was needed for the man was still dissatisfied.  So it would have been written soon after Luke.

     In an interesting Christian book, Answers to Tough Questions (page 18), it is argued that since the Book of Acts records the life of Paul and ends abruptly without describing his death which took place in 64 AD it must have been written when Paul was alive.  Acts was the sequel to the Lucan gospel which would imply that Luke was a little while older than it.  This is called “strong testimony” by the crafty writer to an early date but it is strongly weak.  The end of Acts could have been lost or perhaps Luke could not finish the book for some reason.  Luke wrote his gospel with a beginning and an end.  He wrote a beginning for Acts.  He wrote an introduction to Acts for his friend, Theophilus.  He was so professional with writing starts and finishes and he would not have sent his friend a book that just stops abruptly and does not end anyway.  The rest of Acts is missing.  Probability is against the notion that the abrupt end proves that the book was composed when Paul was alive.  What happened "Luke" that he could not write any more?

     Some say that the ending is not abrupt for it just ends by saying that Paul had two years of peace and welcomed all who wanted to listen to his preaching about Jesus.  But it is for it won’t go on to tell us what happened to Paul after the two years.  It says the two years are past so what happened to Paul after the two years of peace ended.  A man who wanted us to know about Paul and who went to the trouble of giving us a lot of surplus detail about him would not have finished like that.

     The abruptness suggests that there were so few copies of the book that when somebody lost the ending it was gone forever.

     Also, note that one of Pilate’s successors, Festus, said that Paul was mad for saying Jesus rose and appeared to him (Acts 26:24).  Festus wished Paul no harm and Paul never told him to check him and his Jesus tale out.  This shows that the author thought that Festus could not study the Roman records about Jesus and the happenings at the tomb.  The real Luke would have known about them if they existed. If Luke had been much of a Christian, he would have thought of saying there were records even if there were none so the author was not Luke.  Whoever wrote the Luke gospel, did so many years after many of the records were destroyed in the Bar Kochba revolt in the second century and misunderstood why he could not locate any.  Why were there none?  The real reason could have been that the stories about Jesus were lies. 

    Acts says that King Agrippa was scared of being turned Christian by Paul when he said that everything he preached about Jesus was in the Law and the Prophets.  That is a lie for it is appalling evidence and if there were historical affidavits Agrippa would have been more interested in them.  These lies are about events that allegedly took place in 60 AD.  So, Acts was written a long time after that to get away with the lies.  And Festus is portrayed as stupidly thinking that he couldn’t get Paul charged (Acts 25:27) though there was a way according to Acts 23:26-10.  After his years of experience!  Read the note on Acts 25:27 in the New American Bible.  A lie like that could only be told decades after the alleged event.

     The introduction to Luke in the NAB Catholic Bible says that the early traditions declare that Luke and Acts were written about 75 AD.  The books are hard to date (Biblical Dictionary, Luke, Gospel of) so tradition is the only real help in that it gives us a date that we can’t go any earlier from.  It is good for nothing else.  Tradition is simply saying it is not older than 75 AD but it could be a lot younger.  We have no reason to question that Luke is definitely not older than 75 AD.

     Marcion, who edited a gospel thought to be Luke's in the second century, is not relevant to the dating question concerning Luke.  There is no proof that Marcion rewrote or revised Luke near the middle of the second century for what he used was most probably the forerunner of Luke. 

  

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LUKE, ACTS AND JOSEPHUS

  

The Gospel of Luke and Acts contains stories extracted from Josephus (The Passover Plot, page 63, 288). 

     This is disputed and cannot be disproven so at least it makes it possible.  If so then it means we cannot be so sure that Luke was not written after the first century.  Luke as good as says he consulted history books so if Josephus’ writings were available he would have looked them up.   

     Luke knew Josephus’ works then he wrote after 96 AD (Controversy, page 182).

     Luke and Josephus both think that the census under Quirinius of Syria happened in 6 AD.  But alas for Christians, Josephus made a mistake and Luke made the same one showing that Luke stole his data from Josephus. 

     Josephus said the Jerusalem priests consulted him when he was a boy and Luke says the same thing of Jesus.  It is hard to believe that either were really that highly esteemed.  Josephus is boasting and Luke is trying to make Jesus better than him.  Luke said that Jesus grew in wisdom which makes it most likely that Luke was inspired by Josephus.  If Jesus was that theologically minded his mother and his father would not have needed to search three days for him for it would have been known that he would have had to have been in the Temple.  It is hard to believe Luke would make up that story about Jesus for nothing so it was to make Jesus score more points than Josephus and because Josephus was its inspiration.

     Mark and Matthew have the same story of John being beheaded.  They say why it happened which was to please Herodias Herod's lover.  It is too much of a coincidence that Luke drops it entirely and opts instead to briefly mention that John was jailed for criticising Herod’s sex-life with his brother’s wife, Herodias, and Herod’s other crimes (3:18-20).  It doesn’t say why John was beheaded (9:9).  We have seen that Mark and Matthew say it was because Herodias wanted it.  Matthew and Mark would have said, given their attitude to avoiding obvious slander, if there was more to it than that for a Herod who jails just for a woman is worse than one who jails for other reasons too.  Luke says there was more to it than Herodias.  Why does he say it?  The reason is that Josephus never said that Herodias had a part in it or that John died under the circumstances that Matthew and Mark say.  Luke omits their story and details to avoid seeming to be in conflict with Josephus.  The book was written after Josephus wrote in the late first century.  Luke implies that Matthew and Mark are unreliable as well or perhaps he didn’t know them very well.

     In Evidence That Demands a Verdict, Volume 1, page 64 it is argued that since the gospels that say that John preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins are more plausible than Josephus who denied that the baptism was for removing sins the gospels precede Josephus.  But you could deny that baptism has any power to forgive sins and still say that there is a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins meaning that the repentance that motivates the baptism removes the sin not the baptism.  The book says that John’s baptism forgiving fits the historical times best.  It does not for the Jews never believed that baptism or washing could remove sins but ritual uncleanness which Josephus says was the purpose of John’s baptism.  And what right has it to say that when all we know of John comes from the gospels and Josephus?  Even if many others had been attempting to wash away sins in baptism that does not mean that John was doing it.  The purpose of such weak arguments is to give the book a greater bulk so that it looks superficially more convincing as a whole for when people see a whole shipload of arguments they assume that many of them would be right without checking.  It is hoped the reader will forget to check out the claim that John tried to wash sins away and find that it is mere speculation.  The reason Josephus would have to be earlier than the gospels is that his version of John’s story is more detailed and plausible than the gospel account.  If Jesus did away with ritual uncleanness then how could John have been his precursor?  Josephus undermines the notion that there was an important link between John and Jesus.

     Hugh Schonfield said that the story of the two men meeting Jesus on the way to Emmaus was influenced by the first chapter of the Golden Ass.  But the Emmaus story contains nothing too unusual so it is probably a coincidence.  Plus, the influence would require that Luke was written after 150 AD which is far too late (page 266, Christianity for the Tough-Minded).

 

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DATING JOHN

  

The Gospel of John is probably the last gospel.  Cranks say that it could have been written anytime from soon after Jesus’ death and the non-cranks say it was nearly until the end of the first century.  The latest date is the safest bet as we shall soon see and that date takes us into the second century. 

     The way it is so different, in the sense of being mystical and magical, from the other gospels points to it being the last and so supersedes any evidence to the contrary.  It is more hostile to Judaism than the rest and shows the influence of Greek philosophy so it was written after the Church broke away from Judaism which happened in a big way in 70AD.  Irenaeus said that John wrote it in the nineties of the first century (Biblical Dictionary, John, Gospel of).  He might be wrong about the author but right about the date.  What the earliest person says comes first and he was the first to say it was a late gospel.  Papias indicated that there was a gospel of John a few decades later.

     The stress on God and the supernatural telling you that Jesus’ and his message are all for real in this gospel is an attempt to do away with historical evidence and forbids belief in the other gospels for they have a different attitude. 

     This gospeller did not have the other gospels before him at all.  There is no evidence that he consulted the synoptic gospels (page 403, William Neil’s One Volume Bible Commentary).  The similarities prove that he was not filling in where the others were silent.  John did not put in the stuff unique to his gospel for purely theological reasons.  Why would he say that the handkerchief over Jesus’ head was rolled up by itself in the tomb unless he was intending to be historical?  If John is the last gospel then it is proof that they were kept secret for it has no awareness of them.  John uses traditions that avoid any semblance to the traditions of Mark, Matthew and Luke.  He didn't avoid them deliberately.  What we see about John's stories and the stories of Mark, Matthew and Luke is that each side made up its own traditions.

     John must be the last gospel for Luke claimed to have written all about Jesus and that we need to know so John’s tales must have been invented afterwards.  Luke would not have neglected the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead that we have in John.  It is no answer to say that Luke thought the story of the resurrected son of the widow was enough for the Lazarus story is more astonishing for Lazarus was smelling in the tomb.  He declared that he wanted to tell Theo everything meaning everything essential or major (Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1).

     John’s Jesus tells the apostles that they are not slaves but friends (15:15).  The principle in the other gospels that we must love only for God’s sake implies that we are slaves for we are not working for a reward but for God’s benefit is denied.  We are certainly slaves if we love God this way on earth because we have no way of being sure that depression, grave sickness and death will not come and we only believe we will have blessings after death.  Thus, John is putting itself outside the Mark, Matthew and Luke traditions and even their very foundations.  This heretical gospel is implying that any other gospel is nonsense.

     Jesus tells the crowd that the light – Jesus for he calls himself the light of the world - is among them for only a little while and told them to walk in it while they still have it for it will be dark when it is gone (John 12:35).  But if the light speaks through a gospel this would not be unless that gospel will be written after they are all dead.  John 14 promises that the apostles will always have the revelations of the light.  So when they had light and didn’t leave any for the people  we have a clear hint that the gospeller knew there were no gospels written or authorised by the apostles during their lifetimes.  It also implies that John the apostle never wrote the gospel.  John might have died in 98 AD at the latest so the gospel could be later than that.  The gospel envisions itself as a restoration of the lost light.  Since the apostles claimed to be the foundation of the faith anybody claiming to restore is a heretic and so the John gospel is heretical and should not be in the Bible.

     Some say all this dualism in the John gospel between light and darkness comes from the Qumran writings of the early first century and not from Hellenistic philosophy at the end of the first century and on that basis date the gospel earlier than the nineties (page 70, Reasons for Hope).  But the writer could have used Qumran material any time after the material was known. 

     In John 9:4, Jesus tells his disciples when he wants to cure a blind man that he has to do miracles before night comes on.  Then he says that while he is in the world he is the light of the world.  Jesus is denying that there will be any miracles done when he physically leaves the world.  The Acts of the Apostles and the epistles which record miracles are being pronounced to be unreliable and fraudulent.  When the author thought of putting that in he must have intended to halt the claims of the apostles or their fans that they possessed miracle powers.  He may contradict himself elsewhere but what he means here is clear enough.  The night must stand for the absence of the physical presence of Jesus on earth for he said he was the light of the world as long as he was in the world.

     John must have been a secret gospel if it had a go at the apostles and then it would have been loudly and scathingly denounced in the New Testament and in early tradition.

     John says that the apostles reached an astonishing level of saintliness and belief (17:8, 10, 19).  Since one sin makes all you do hypocrisy and Jesus told the apostles that they did not belong to the world, a figure for sin and materialism, it means that they must have been perfectly holy.  Significantly, there are no tales in John about the apostles being weak cowards and all the rest.  Only Thomas was accused of a reluctance to believe that Jesus rose but it was not described as detracting from his character.  Peter and the beloved believed Jesus going missing from the tomb was the work of thieves or Jesus reviving because they did not understand or believe that scripture said he would rise from the dead (John 20:8,9).  They were brave and loyal enough to do that.  This implies that the story of cowardly and unreliable apostles was an invention.  The way this story is not attacked directly shows that it was not being said about them.

    John denies that Jesus predicted the crucifixion clearly before it happened for if he had we would be reading that they did not understand Jesus and not the scriptures for it sees Jesus as more important than the Old Testament.  He does say that Jesus predicted his death but only in vague terms.  He denies that Jesus ever spoke clearly about his crucifixion and death because the Old Testament scriptures are vague about it and they are.  So that is why he is able to say the apostles didn’t understand that Jesus rose or was meant to.  Matthew, Mark and Luke then lied when they said Jesus clearly predicted that he would die on the cross and rise again and the events surrounding these happenings.

     As Robin Lane Fox says, in John 14:31, Jesus says let us get up and go out and then he rambles on for a long time before he goes out indicating that the rambling was an insertion (page 142, The Unauthorized Version). 

     John 5 describes a pool in Jerusalem that allegedly had the power to heal the first person lucky enough to be dipped in after an angel stirred the waters.  This shows us that the people were gullible and superstitious including the gospeller who believed in this legend.  Also, Jesus cured this man which casts doubt on whether a cure happened at all for the man was gullible.  Jesus should have picked headstrong rational people if he wanted his miracles to be signs.  It is bad enough when the gospels give no evidence that anybody Jesus cured was like that but here it is admitted that a gullible man was chosen for the alleged miracle.  The main problem with this is that it is now known that this pool was sacred to the god of healing, Asclepius.  Jesus cured the man and ran off leaving the pagan god to get the credit even though he did tell the man later.  Perhaps the man was cured by somebody else and Jesus heard that some people thought it was him and he took the credit.  The gospeller’s gullibility is so great that he does not give any proof that this could not have happened.  John hides the fact that this was a pagan shrine and says an angel was doing the miracles which suggests a late date long after the destruction of Jerusalem.  Or maybe he was not John and did not know but still he had to have been writing after these things were relatively forgotten. 

     Jesus told the apostles that he gave them a new commandment to love one another as he loved them (John 13:34-36).  This is different then from the Old Testament commandment, “Love your neighbour as yourself” for it was an old commandment.  Jesus accepted the Old Testament command so it seems that he meant we have to love one another enough to die for one another like he died for others.  The preceding sentence has Jesus saying he will only be around a little while so that was probably what he had in mind.  The line after also says that Jesus will sacrifice himself to death and Peter says he will sacrifice himself too.  The Law of Moses commanded people to die for others say in war.  So why does Jesus say it’s a new commandment?  Could it be that the gospel is obliquely saying that Jesus wants people to die UNNECESSARILY for others?  That is the only explanation.  If the apostles committed suicide by getting themselves martyred then we cannot rely on them at all.  Jesus said that the whole world would know they are his disciples by their love and obedience to the new commandment.  But the apostles lived obscure lives and died deaths that are masked in legend.  This prophecy proved false.  It was only in the second century that stories of this remarkable suicidal fanatical love of the apostles appeared which tell us plenty about when this ludicrous gospel was written.

     The Book of Revelation which is attributed to John and which was entered into the canon of the Bible because it was thought to be genuinely from him is no help in working out how old John is or who wrote it for it is full of abrupt Greek and has copious grammatical errors (page 319, The Truth of Christianity) and so it is not John’s work.  The Revelation cannot be the word of God when it strictly forbids anybody making any changes in it when it needs changing.  Sometimes the book is in good grammar and other times it is appalling (page 319, ibid) which has led some to say that the bad grammar was just a put-on to imitate the hurried style of the Old Testament prophets.  So, no matter what anybody throws up against the Christian scriptures they have an answer.  The most plausible answer is that somebody rewrote a well-written book and made a hash of it.  It is more plausible than saying somebody would deliberately write in bad grammar to make a symbolical point that nobody cares about. 

     The Ryland’s Papyrus, the oldest fragment of the New Testament in the world, is a tiny piece of scroll with part of John 18:31-33, 37.  It is taken to date from 130 AD, at the oldest and could be from 160 AD (Challenging the Verdict, Earl Doherty), through the science of palaeography or the analysis of the writing.  It was found in Egypt which is far from Ephesus where the gospel was apparently written.  But tradition says that the author departed from Ephesus in 98 AD so he could have left it for Egypt.  There is no evidence for the view that the gospel was so well circulated that the fragment became available.  The gospeller would have sent his gospel to Egypt because it was receptive to new religious ideas.  The piece might have come from just the second copy or even a talisman.  Superstitious people carried portions of holy books with them.  And these tended to stick to the handwriting on the original for magic is based on the idea that like produces like.  Many people prefer to use old-fashioned styles so the writing is not conclusive proof about anything.  The fragment was alone when found suggesting that it was a talisman.  Thus it poses no threat to those who would date John to 142 AD.

     The fragment does not prove that John existed in its complete and present form between 130 and 150 AD.  Luke wrote that some of his gospel material came from the already existing books and undoubtedly some of it would have come from them word for word.  John could have been produced the same way.  This was about or over a hundred years after Jesus’ death so by that time it was possible to invent anything at all about him.  Judaism was in chaos and not a threat.

     The first quote from this gospel comes from the Gnostic heretic Basilides around 130 AD.  Basilides however must have been sure that the gospel was corrupted for he claimed that Simon of Cyrene was crucified instead of Jesus and repudiated John’s Jesus’ acceptance of the Jewish Law by implication when he accused the God of the Jews of being a mere angel.  But the original sources are merely fragments and the other sources disagree on what his doctrines were and tell lies about them (page 53, The Concise Dictionary of the Christian Church).  Thus we dare not be sure that Basilides did quote John when nearly all his teaching was reported by hostile Christians who were liberal with accuracy.  John never says that Jesus’ return from the dead was supernatural or inexplicable which shows the mark of the second century climate among Gnostics that said that it was a natural resurrection and not a real resurrection.

     But anyway, Basilides quoted John 1:9 which speaks of the true light coming into the world to enlighten every person and John 2:4 where Jesus says his hour has not come yet (page 126, The Canon of Scripture).  So Hippolytus says in his Refutation of All Heresies.  Now there is no problem with the quotation from John 1 because it was a hymn in common use that John put at the start of his gospel.  As for the other, it was only a saying and most of the sayings of Jesus were allowed to be distributed.  Basilides proves nothing about the existence of the John gospel.

     John was certainly written in the second century.  We don’t know how much rewriting it got after its composition.

      

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THE FIRST PROOF

  

When do we get the first indication of the existence of the Gospels and/or their emergence from the closet?

     Tatian, composed a harmony of the four gospels which was finished as late as 150 AD.  The gospels existed by then but were probably still private or fairly private.  His work is called the Diatessaron and was treated as sacred by the Churches that used Syriac.  By then the legends about Jesus would have been irrefutable. 

     The gospels were initially only released in pieces in certain regions.  Justin Martyr still did not have them except a few excerpts later on.  It would be some decades before they would be fully thrown open to the world yet.

   The gospels, the most important part of the New Testament, edited by the heretic Tatian and fused into one book!  That he got away with it shows that the Church knew fine well the gospels were not of divine or apostolic origin.  Not only did he get away with it but many of the Churches treated his gospel as scripture!  The first edition of the gospels that got canonical treatment by the “orthodox” Church was his heretical one! 

 

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CONCLUSION

  

There is no reason to believe that anybody who would have known the truth had any contact with the New Testament as we have it.

  

BOOKS CONSULTED

  

ANSWERS TO TOUGH QUESTIONS, Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Scripture Press, Bucks, 1988

CHRISTIANITY FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED, Editor John Warwick Montgomery, Bethany Fellowship Inc, Minneapolis, 1973

Conspiracies and the Cross, Timothy Paul Jones, Front Line, A Strang Company, Florida, 2008

CONTROVERSY, Hector Hawton, Pemberton Books, London, 1971

DICTIONARY OF SECTS, HERESIES, ECCLESIASTICAL PARTIES AND SCHOOLS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT, by Blunt, Gale Research Company, Book Tower, Detroit, undated

DEAD SEA SCROLLS, Kenneth Hanson, Ph.D, Council Oak Books, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1997  

EARLY CHRISTIAN WRITINGS, Editor Maxwell Staniforth, Penguin, London, 1988

EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT, VOLUME 1, Josh McDowell, Alpha, Scripture Press Foundation, Bucks, 1995

JESUS AND EARLY CHRISTIANITY IN THE GOSPELS, Daniel J Grolin, George Ronald, Oxford, 2002

JESUS AND THE FOUR GOSPELS, John Drane, Lion, Herts, 1984

JESUS HYPOTHESES, V Messori, St Paul Publications, Slough, 1977 

JESUS LIFE OR LEGEND Carsten Thiede, Lion, Oxford, 1990

JESUS ONE HUNDRED YEARS BEFORE CHRIST, Professor Alvar Ellegard, Century, London, 1999

JESUS THE EVIDENCE, Ian Wilson, Pan, London, 1985

JESUS, A N Wilson, Flamingo, London, 1993 

PUTTING AWAY CHILDISH THINGS, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1994 

REASONS FOR HOPE, Editor Jeffrey A Mirus, Christendom College Press, Virginia, 1982 

REKINDLING THE WORD: IN SEARCH OF THE GOSPEL, Carsten Peter Thied,e Valley Forge, Trinity Press, 1995 

THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE, FF Bruce, Chapter House, Glasgow, 1988 

THE CONCISE DICTIONARY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, Editor Elizabeth Livingstone, Omega Books, London, 1988 

THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH, Eusebius, Penguin, London, 1989

THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY GRAIL, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln, Corgi, London, 1982 

THE JESUS EVENT AND OUR RESPONSE, Martin R Tripole SJ, Alba House, New York 1980 

THE JESUS MYSTERIES, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, Thorsons, London, 1999

THE JESUS PAPYRUS, Carsten Peter Thiede and Matthew D’Ancona, Phoenix, London, 1997 

THE MESSIANIC LEGACY, Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh & Henry Lincoln, Corgi, London, 1987 

THE ORIGINAL JESUS, Tom Wright, Lion, Oxford, 1996

THE PASSOVER PLOT, Hugh Schonfield, Element Books, Dorset, 1996 

THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY, WH Turton, Wells Gardner, Darton & Co Ltd, London, 1905

THE UNAUTHORISED VERSION, Robin Lane Fox, Middlesex, 1992

WHY BELIEVE? A Rendle Short, The Intervarsity Fellowship, London, 1938 

WILLIAM NEIL’S ONE VOLUME BIBLE COMMENTARY, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1962 

 

THE WEB

 

THE JESUS PAPYRUS – FIVE YEARS ON Professor JK Elliott

www.bowness.demon.co.uk/thiede.htm 

This informs us that Thiede ignored the main objections Elliott made to his silly theories in a response added to The Jesus Papyrus.  Thiede uses the work of scholars that does not support his conclusions at all and twists them and misquotes them to make it look like it does. 

 

THE CASE FOR CHRISTIANITY EXAMINED (THE PROVENANCE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

 www.askwhy.co.uk/truth/040ChristianCase.html

 

MARK: FIRST GOSPEL OR PIOUS FORGERY? Dr M Magee

www.askwhy.co.uk/Christianity/080TheGospels4.html

 

SEVEN GREEK FRAGMENTS OF THE EPISTLE OF ENOCH FROM QUMRAN CAVE SEVEN

www.breadofangels.com/7quenoch/article2.html

 

HIGHER CRITICAL REVIEW, By Daryl D Schmidt

www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/thiede.html

 

THE JESUS PAPYRUS: EYEWITNESS TO JESUS? 

www.askwhy.co.uk/awstruth/Thiede.html#TheJesusPapyrus:EyewitnesstoJesus?

  

THE GOSPEL OF MARCION AND THE GOSPEL OF LUKE COMPARED, CHARLES B WAITE

 www.geocities.com/Athens/Ithaca/3827/wait2.htm

 

CHALLENGING THE VERDICT by Earl Doherty

A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ

 

http://humanists.net/jesuspuzzle/CTVExcerptsThree.htm

 

7Q5: THE EARLIEST NT PAPYRUS? Daniel Wallace Ph.D

www.bible.org/docs/soapbox/7q5.htm

 

 

 

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