I'm curious at which date these gospels actually emerged - as far as I was aware sure dates have not yet been established.
A related question: what dates do you think Doherty or Carrier suggest for these texts?
Let’s get John the Baptist out of the way first, proudfootz.
As far as I know, and I gladly stand corrected, Justin Martyr is the first to mention John. Marcion knows nothing of John, suggesting that the latter went directly from Josephus (assuming this particular passage is authentic) to Justin, and thence to Luke. Marcion published his work a few years after arriving in Rome, or around 145. Justin, discrediting him, knows Marcion, and probably wrote around the middle of the second century.
In that John the Baptist plays a key role in the canonical gospels and the Jesus saga, this little snippet alone would seem to indicate that the Gospels were composed at least no earlier than say 150, as solidly affirmed by the fact that Justin not only fails to mention the Gospels by name, but appears to have simply no knowledge of them.
As well, in all the Christian writings up to 180, there doesn’t exist a single authentic mention of any of the canonical gospels, except for one by Theophilus in the early 170’s in respect of the Gospel of John. Neither is there any reliance whatsoever prior to that date on the contents found in the Gospels, over and above what already existed in preceding manuscripts. I think the first mention of Acts of the Apostles is by Irenaeus about 180.
I’m not going to present the relevant details here, but the writings of Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria, in the latter part of the second century, further clearly demonstrate that there existed a mutual accord between these three fathers, one aimed at the introduction and promotion of the canonical gospels as the final inspired word, and which happened to coincide with extending the authority of the Church of Rome beyond the borders of Italy itself.
Finally, Jerome in his Commentary on Matthew states:
“The Evangelist Luke declares that there were many who wrote gospels, which being published by various authors, gave birth to several heresies; such as that according to the Egyptians, and Thomas, and Matthias, and Bartholomew, that of the Twelve Apostles, and Basilides, and Apelles, and others, which it would be tedious to enumerate; in relation to these it will be enough at present to say, that there have been certain men, who endeavored, without the spirit and grace of God, rather to set forth some sort of account, than to publish a true history.”
As far as I’m aware, no scholar claims that Luke referred to any of the canonical gospels, which furthermore discredits the notion of Mark’s gospel being the first.
Origen, as well as others, add additional writings to those above, but suffice to say that the Gospel of Apelles was definitely written no later than the year 170.
(By the way, some scholar have observed that part of Apelles work focussed on the epistles of Paul, ‘which thereafter the whole church had to take more seriously, as the anti-Marcionite prologues to the canonical gospels make clear’, especially with reference to Luke whose prologue survives in both Greek and Latin.)
For sake of completeness, I’d also once more note that Hegesippus knew nothing of the canonical gospels, even though he’s said to have written five books on church history a few years after 180, traveling extensively to that end.
Given all of the foregoing, it is beyond me how any scholar can possibly maintain that the Gospels were in fact first-century productions!
You’d also like to know the dates applied by Doherty and Carrier.
Let’s first return, in part only, to Godfrey entry on Ehrman’s conclusions: -
“From Bart Ehrman’s Jesus, Interrupted, pp. 144-145:
It also appears that the Gospel writers know about certain later historical events, such as the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 ce . . . That implies that these Gospels were probably written after 70.
There are reasons for thinking Mark was written first, so maybe he wrote around the time of the war with Rome, 70 ce.
If Matthew and Luke both used Mark as a source, they must have been composed after Mark’s Gospel circulated for a time outside its own originating community — say, ten or fifteen years later, in 80 to 85 ce.
These are rough guesses, but most scholars agree on them.”
The dating of Mark stems largely from Jesus prophesying the 70 AD destruction of the Temple, with some Christian writers, and most scholars, latching on to this as evidence of its approximate date - with the other three gospels in turn dated respective to Mark. The problem here being, that this renowned event could have been inserted into the tale at any subsequent time whatsoever, even right up to 170 or 180 AD!
As Godfrey notes, we’re told that most scholars agree on a range of dates, ‘for a variety of reasons’, yet these seems to be more motivated by ideology than facts.
The following is mostly taken from Carrier’s review of Doherty’s Jesus Puzzle.
Carrier: “For example, there is no need at all for him to argue that Acts was written decades after Luke (a very disputable claim), since this has nothing to do with his thesis. He can work just as comfortably with Luke-Acts being a single unit composed at the end of the 1st or beginning of the 2nd century.”
Acts seems only to have been concocted a decade or so after Luke, and I doubt that Luke and Acts were composed by the same author, but the notion that they were composed ‘at the end of the 1st or beginning of the 2nd century’, for the reasons given earlier, strikes me as plain fanciful!
Carrier: “A special remark is needed for the most unfortunate example of hyperbole: Doherty's ad hominem, ‘no serious scholar dates either [Matthew or Luke] before the year 80’ (p. 194). Such a sentence has no business in anything a serious scholar writes. Several scholars whom I would indeed regard as serious, and competent, do in fact date these texts earlier (even if not greatly so), and Doherty seems to be maligning them here without the dignity of a trial. The fact is, there is no evidence these texts weren't written earlier, by at least a decade, maybe two--yes, it is unlikely, but not impossible, and arguing this certainly does not deprive me of the right to be called a serious scholar.”
Modern scholarship on full display!
Doherty (in his reply): “Rather, I would regard Mark (dating it perhaps a little earlier than the end of the first century) chiefly as an allegorical and ‘lesson’-oriented piece of writing, heavily employing midrash on scripture, to embody certain outlooks and practices within a sect centered somewhere in the Galilean/Syrian region. To what extent the later evangelists building on Mark (up to around 130?) also intended their Gospels as allegory, or may have accepted elements of Mark’s fictional creation as historical, is difficult to say.”
Why not simply suck our thumb!
Carrier: “For example, he argues that ‘if none of the sayings and deeds of Jesus found in the Gospels are attributed to him in the epistles,’ etc., then ‘the Gospels cannot be accepted as providing any historical data...’ (p. 26). Different interests, different styles, and different sources dictate the content of both.
Doherty: “My argument was a common sense one. If a story claims to present historical data, and yet a plethora of other documents from the same period and on the same subject fails to provide us with any of the detail of that story, big and small, we are justified in regarding the data of that story as ‘unreliable’.”
It’s hardly a question of which of the two sets of writings are acceptable as providing any historical data, seeing that, by their very nature, as well as intention, the one is as unreliable as the other.
The only way one could speak of Paul’s writings and the Gospels comprising a ‘plethora of other documents from the same period’ is if they both hailed from the first century … Our first witness to Paul’s writings is Marcion near the middle of the second century, rendering all that came before in this respect speculation. They simply represent different and non-interacting streams, unrecognized by the orthodoxy till the latter part of the second century by way of Acts of the Apostles.
Ask a simple question, and what do you get …
