Richard Carrier went into a long blog post where he discusses the latest publications of David Trobisch and myself - and we both have to thank him for the time he spent on our works.
Was the Entire New Testament Forged in the Second Century? • Richard Carrier Blogs
This is not the place to react to this post, but when time allows, I will write an answer to it to engage with criticism and to learn from it.
Dating and authentication in biblical studies is the weakest element of the process. Here we have Paul's letters, dated by content to 40-63CE. The problem is that the lists are known only from the Corpus Pauline which, according to consensus, was created around 100 CE (G. Zuntz's famous hand-drawn diagram). It contains 10 letters written by 2-3 ghostwriters and subjected to intensive editing. Is Paul as an author a historical or invented figure? No biblical scholar can answer this. This alternative has no solution. The text itself makes it impossible to distinguish historical tradition from invented tradition. No way out.
ReplyDeleteGospels. Klinghardt and Vinzent tried to prioritize *Ev by introducing another ghostwriter as author. This was not convincing due to the problematic linguistic solutions required. Gramaglia claims that the author of *Ev is ghostwriter Luke. Gramaglia claims that *Ev itself is already a compilation of texts. Klinghardt dates *Ev to 90 CE, Vinzent dates it to 140 CE based on Tertullian.
Klinghardt abandoned Marek's priority in favor of *Ev after several years of research. Mark's precedence leads to the theory of many of Burkett's or Boismard's hypothetical sources. Theoretically they are right, but there is no evidence to prove it. They are practically drawing the wrong conclusion. The Gospels were created in parallel by a group of writers and editors working together in one scriptorium. Their first product commercially used on a large scale was *Ev. There was no theological conflict in the church. Marcion's problem is a classic corporate power struggle. Historical Jesus is the product of a group of writers from one scriptorium. End of story