Posted on 02/29/2012 11:27:27 AM PST by SeekAndFind
About 40 years ago, a liberal Anglican bishop, John Robinson, decided to make an experiment. He decided to look at the available evidence with fresh eyes and see what conclusion he could come to with respect to the dating the New Testament. His conclusion: all late dating was speculative. Mischieviously he even speculated that John’s Gospel was the first. Not the form we we read now, but as it gave probably the best chronology, even if not strictly chronological. Pauline Fredericksen, the Jewish scholar also holds to the view that this most “theological” of the Gospels is also the most historical and shows how Jewish really was.
Given that the first Christians were Jews and gentiles strongly influenced by Jews, I doubt there would be as much messing with the text as there would be in later times. Given that the Dead Sea scrolls are virtually the same as the texts dating from about 1000, and given the authority attached to writing, the copiers were be very careful. mistakes would come from maybe including short commentaries on the page that were hard to distinguish from the original, or from the very speed with which these men worked.
I read the text critics at length and found that most of their output was rank speculation with ill intent, even to the extent of relying on known forgeries and inventing undiscovered proto-gospels (”Gospel Q”) out of whole cloth. They have all the credibility of the Jesus Seminar.
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