Читать книгу Jesus’ Teachings about the Father. Reconstruction of early Christian teaching based on a comparative analysis of the oldest gospels - - Страница 4

The classical dating of the canonical gospels, adopted in modern biblical studies, reads: “The time of creation cannot be reliably established, but …", and this “but” is followed by the coined phrase “most scientists are inclined to think” which means – more or less justified guesses. It is useless and senseless to cite literature here, it is so vast over the past approximately five centuries, starting from the 17th century almost from Spinoza – it will be enough to refer to Metzger’s cornerstone work The Canon of the New Testament. And what is this dating? Matthew – as it is believed, the earliest – is attributed to the 50—60s, Mark – to the 60—70s, Luke, respectively, to the 70—80s, and poor undignified John, considered unreliable [8]– as much as 90—100 AD.

However, the arguments in favor of these datings are very limited. In fact, upon closer inspection, there is – alas! – just one argument, considered indisputable, in favor of the early dating of the Gospels to the middle or end of the first century. This is – two citations of [9]Papias of Hierapolis (70—155), the author of lost Jesus records in five volumes, mentioned in “Church History” by Eusebius of Caesarea [10]. One claims that Papias wrote down the memories of Jesus from the oral tradition, not trusting the written evidence: “… I understood that books would not do me as much benefit as a living voice that remains in my soul.” Another is about the sources of the records he collected (this is a quote from his quotes in the “History…” of Eusebius): " In his book he also reports other words of the Lord in the transmission of the aforementioned Aristion, as well as the stories of Presbyter John. We refer inquisitive people to them, but we consider it necessary to immediately add to everything that has been said about the Evangelist Mark. Here is what the elder (John) said: “Mark was Peter’s translator; he accurately wrote down everything that he remembered from what was said and done by the Lord, but not in order, for he himself did not hear the Lord and did not walk with Him. Later, he accompanied Peter, who taught as circumstances required, and did not intend to arrange the words of Christ in order. Mark was not at all wrong, writing everything down the way he remembered; he only cared not to miss anything and not convey anything incorrectly. This is what Papias says about Mark; about Matthew, he reports the following: ‘Matthew wrote down Jesus’ conversations in Hebrew, and translated them as best he could. He also uses the First Epistle of John, as well as Peter, and tells about a woman who was accused before the Lord of many sins. This story is in the ‘Gospel of the Jews’. I considered it necessary to add all this to what has been said.”

From these passages, which are, I remind you, the only “indisputable” argument in favor of early dating of the Synoptic Gospels, it becomes obvious and taken for granted that these Mark and Matthew could not be the author of the Gospel; one wrote down everything in a row, and certainly not in the form of an unfolding chronological story, but in the form of separate, unrelated memories, perhaps containing some eventful episodes, but not in the chronological order of a single history; about the other Eusebius can hardly be believed at all, since today it has already been established for sure that the Gospel of Matthew, written in Hebrew, is a reverse translation from Greek. And the conversations of Jesus, in the first place, are not a composite story of His life, which the canonical Gospel from Matthew is meant to be, and secondly, Jesus Himself preached in the Aramaic, and it is unlikely that Matthew (if this is the same Matthew, the tax collector) would have written them down in the sacred language of the Jews, being a traitor to his people and an outcast, if you believe that he was a publican… One would rather believe that he wrote in Greek than in Hebrew. According to most scholars, the Gospel of Matthew was not written by eyewitnesses. And the authorship of “Luke” will be mentioned in detail later. As for the other, “controversial” arguments and second-tier evidence of early dating synoptics, they are considered in detail and convincingly refuted in the fundamental work of Dr. Marcus Vincent [11], and are summarized in the work already cited by us by Dr. Evlampiev[12]. No other direct documentary evidence of the existence of the synoptic gospels previously to 140 AD simply not exist in nature. It is necessary to understand. At the same time, we must pay tribute to the fact that modern researchers, analyzing the above testimonies of Papias of Hieropolis, come to the unequivocal conclusion that the “records” of the utterances of Jesus Christ made by Matthew and Mark, which are mentioned in quotations from his work, can not be the Gospels, that included into the New Testament.

As for the Gospel of John, let’s agree to accept the dating proposed by “the majority of scientists” and see what follows from this for us. Remember this fact: John is the end of the first – the very beginning of the second century.

Separately, I would like to note once again that according to the traditionally accepted dating of the Gospel texts, Mark is attributed to the 60s, Matthew – to the 70s, Luke – to the 80s, and John – to the end of the first century. Thus, in the tradition of religious studies, the opinion was fixed that John is the latest, and therefore the least reliable source, and even partially compiled by the synoptics, and constructed by a certain Gnostic community, possibly from the circle of the disciples of John the Theologian. However, as I pointed out above, the Gospel of Marcion is now considered a presynoptic text used by synoptics to create their gospels. At the same time, Dr. Marcus Vincent in his monograph “Marcion and the Dating of the Synoptic Gospels” quite reasonably proves that the author of the Gospel of the Lord Marcion was Marcion of Sinope himself, and, according to our assumption below, it was written in Rome between 140 and 144 years. At the same time, the first mention of all four canonical gospels together by Irenaeus of Lyons [13]refers to the 180th year. Thus, the dating of the synoptics is shifted to the second half of the second century, although this does not apply to the original dating of the s. John 90—100 years, which presumably remains in its place. And here the most interesting thing begins: shifting the dating of the synoptic gospels to the second half of the second century, as secondary sources in relation to the Gospel of Marcion with a dating of about 140 and leaving the dating of John fixed at the turn of the 1—2 centuries., we get that John is not secondary in relation to the “sinoptics”, but, on the contrary, it was written off by the synoptics (including Marcion) from John.

Therefore, the gospel of John is brought to the forefront, as the most ancient of the canonical sources, its reliability is strengthened, and those borrowings that are attributed to it are overturned: now it is precisely these borrowings that should be attributed not to John from the synoptics, as before, but to the synoptics from John.

However, this is not all. As I indicated above, the proven[14]primacy of Ev. Marcion, in relation to the synoptics, shifts them to the third place: first John, then borrowing from John is ev. Marcion, and then from Marcion to synoptics. And we undertake to prove this statement in our book.

As for the gospel of Thomas, which “most scholars” attributed to the 60—140 years[15] (which is doubtful, I did not find any arguments, and I personally believe that the end of dating should be shifted at least to the end of the 1st century), then it is the form of this gospel in the form of a record of scattered and not connected by a single meaning records first of all testifies to the greatest antiquity of this document: it looks like a sequential record on a single carrier (a sheet of parchment or a papyrus scroll) of recordsrecords in the order of sequence in which they were collected by the author from the oral retellings of many of those interviewed by him. Apparently, this very form of recording was also used by other collectorsrecords, which were subsequently lost.

As for the indications of a 50% similarity between Thomas and the records that Marcion and the synoptics have, then after the shift of all synoptics to the middle of the second century, these coincidences unambiguously indicate the opposite: that the Gospel of Thomas is an early monument, which It was used in the preparation of the later texts Marcion and – further – the synoptic gospels, and may well claim a place of mysterious Q source, the existence of which is pointed out by historians and text analytics that study synoptic gospels. As for the gospel of John, its textual connection with ev. Marcion, as we will see later, is hardly visible, despite the ideological similarity, and this suggests that here we are dealing with two ancient sources independent of each other, which are, perhaps, the product of two different schools of apostolic Christianity.