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Before I had discussed the first three gospels of the Bible called the Synoptic Gospels. A few historians have tried to infer that Mark wrote these three gospels. But here are some things we know.
1) Mark was probably written first. It was the shortest of the Gospels and is unlikely that if someone else was using some of this history as a source would delete items as opposed to adding some from another source (possible Q Document) as well as eyewitness acounts.
2) There is a great variety not only in content, but in style and the focus of the book. As I said Matthew's focus is on Yeshua (Jesus) the Messiah, Mark in a very "legal" manner as he was a Roman and only a young child when he saw Jesus at the home of his parents where shared had the last passover before Jesus's arrest. Luke was a physican who for a time was with Paul. He is the only author of the gospels who could have never met Jesus. He saw Jesus in the veiwpoint of a Greek..."the perfect man".
3) Matthew was probably written originally in the Aramaic. (The common tongue of the period, spoken by most Jews) The greek gospel account of Matthew has numerous anomilies that are seen in translation from Aramaic which would be similar to those translated from the Hebrew.. Some of these same anomolies are seen in the greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint...3rd century BC). Many of the more famous pieces of greek literature, such as Plato and Aristole, have the oldest copies...not in the Greek but Latin. The oldest manuscript of Plato was acutally copied in the Latin in 895 at Constantinople. The Bodleian ( at Oxford)also has the oldest manuscript of the Discourses of Epictetus, written in the 12th centurt text. There are many Greek documents, but the oldest did not survive. When you translate many of the Greek texts from the Latin copies back to the original Greek, they do not match the Greek copies of later date. That is because of translation anomilies. Anytime you go from one language to another there is a loss. An Greek and Latin have many similarities. Hebrew and Aramaic, althought they are similar, are completely different from Latin or Greek. It would be like comparing English to Japaneese, so the difficulties in translation are magnified. Remember, sometimes you are not just trying to translate a word...but a cultural concept which may be completely foriegn in another language and culture.
4) This is taken from some very good scholars that make an excellent case for early writting of the synoptic gospels:
None of the gospels mention the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70 A.D. This is significant because Jesus had prophesied concerning the temple when He said "As for these things which you are looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down," (Luke 21:5, see also Matt. 24:1; Mark 13:1). This prophecy was fulfilled in 70 A.D. when the Romans sacked Jerusalem and burned the temple. The gold in the temple melted down between the stone walls and the Romans took the walls apart, stone by stone, to get the gold. Such an obvious fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy most likely would have been recorded as such by the gospel writers who were fond of mentioning fulfillment of prophecy if they had been written after 70 A.D. Also, if the gospels were fabrications of mythical events then anything to bolster the Messianic claims -- such as the destruction of the temple as Jesus said -- would surely have been included. But, it was not included suggesting that the gospels (at least Matthew, Mark, and Luke) were written before 70 A.D.
Similarly, this argument is important when we consider the dating of the book of Acts which was written after the gospel of Luke by Luke himself. Acts is a history of the Christian church right after Jesus' ascension. Acts also fails to mention the incredibly significant events of 70 A.D. which would have been extremely relevant and prophetically important and garnered inclusion into Acts had it occurred before Acts was written. Remember, Acts is a book of history concerning the Christians and the Jews. The fact that the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple is not recorded is very strong evidence that Acts was written before A.D. 70. If we add to this the fact that acts does not include the accounts of "Nero's persecution of the Christians in A.D. 64 or the deaths of James (A.D. 62), Paul (A.D. 64), and Peter (A.D. 65),"1 and we have further evidence that it was written early
If we look at Acts 1:1-2 it says, "The first account I composed, Theophilus, about all that Jesus began to do and teach, 2 until the day when He was taken up, after He had by the Holy Spirit given orders to the apostles whom He had chosen." Most scholars affirm that Acts was written by Luke and that Theophilus (Grk. "lover of God") "may have been Luke’s patron who financed the writing of Luke and Acts."2 This means that the gospel of Luke was written before Acts.
"At the earliest, Acts cannot have been written prior to the latest firm chronological marker recorded in the book—Festus’s appointment as procurator (24:27), which, on the basis of independent sources, appears to have occurred between A.D. 55 and 59."3
"It is increasingly admitted that the Logia [Q] was very early, before 50 A.D., and Mark likewise if Luke wrote the Acts while Paul was still alive. Luke's Gospel comes (Acts 1:1) before the Acts. The date of Acts is still in dispute, but the early date (about A.D. 63) is gaining support constantly."4
For clarity, Q is supposedly one of the source documents used by both Matthew and Luke in writing their gospels. If Q actually existed then that would push the first writings of Christ's words and deeds back even further lessening the available time for myth to creep in and adding to the validity and accuracy of the gospel accounts. If what is said of Acts is true, this would mean that Luke was written at least before A.D. 63 and possibly before 55 - 59 since Acts is the second in the series of writings by Luke. This means that the gospel of Luke was written within 30 years of Jesus' death.
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Posted by journeyman on 2008-06-06 00:44:23 | Rating: | Views: 66
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