Were St Paul's letters before the Gospels?

[annem]

Patrick457: I have yet to read any of Fr. Brown's works (I only know some of his stuff through osmosis) to form an actual opinion about his views; I'll let you know as soon as I get my hands on one.`

In the book on the community of John by Brown that I read, Brown kept talking about John's community as if it were a lonely outpost--like some castaway group on an island stranded in the Pacific somewhere--a group unaffected by other Christians living in other cities. Hostility from the Jews, and perhaps outright rejection from the synagogues after the temple's destruction, slanted the views of the Johannine community, etc., and therefore John, or the author, whoever he was, therefore portrayed the Jews in an unattractive light.

This is an argument I have heard many times from many different scholars, and I just don't believe it.

Surely if there is anything we can prove, it is that the early Christian groups were in constant contact with one another. Paul writing to his churches. Revelation sent out to seven different communities, Not to mention the fact that except for the gospels themselves all the books in the New Testament were letters. All those people always in contact with one another. Sending aid when needed. Not to mention 1 Clement and the letters of Ignatius. This is simply unique in ancient history. Meeting and holding councils to make sure they all agree.

Now, I find it very understandable when Protestants talk about lone communities. But I am baffled when Catholic scholars like Brown don't even seem to notice that the evidence screams church, church, church. Lone communities--bah, humbug. (It's always so difficult to hold a church council, I find, without a church.)

what do you think about Fr. John P. Meier?

I like him, don't you? I haven't read the third book in his trilogy, yet, however.

Oh, if it's of any interest: I've wrote a thread not too long ago about the problem with his idea of the Passion narratives being 'prophecy historicized'. (A view which he likes to contrast with his characterization of Fr. Brown's idea of them being 'history remembered'.)

Wow, I just loved it. Just loved it. And I am so impressed that you were able to sound so calm and pleasant as you discussed Crossan and the Gospel of Peter. Obviously, you are a much more saintly person than I am, because every time I think about his line of argument about it my composure utterly fails me. That was...desperate...that's the nicest word I can use to describe it.

Can you imagine what would happen if some Catholic scholar tried to argue that, say, the Protoevangelium had 'strands' from the earliest strata of Christianity--which it actually might, in direct comparison to the silly Gospel of Peter? Can you imagine the laughter? .

Every day I pray for more faithful Catholic biblical scholars. Why, why, aren't there more? There are thousands upon thousands of atheist scholar, doing their cheerless best to ruin the belief of millions. And thousands and thousands of Protestant scholars--wonderful, faithful people, but alas, without all the weapons that a Catholic would have. Catholic scholarship should simply decimate the arguments of the atheists. But where, where are Catholic scholars???

Sigh.


Thanks so much for writing back to me about biblical scholarship. I am so grateful, you have no idea. Nobody else seems interested!

God bless you, Annem

[po18guy]

Originally Posted by annem

Thanks so much for writing back to me about biblical scholarship. I am so grateful, you have no idea. Nobody else seems interested!

No one else is able, on such a level

[Abu]

annem
You might like to visit the Roman Theological Forum at:
http://www.rtforum.org/lt/index.html

[patrick457]

Originally Posted by annem

In the book on the community of John by Brown that I read, Brown kept talking about John's community as if it were a lonely outpost--like some castaway group on an island stranded in the Pacific somewhere--a group unaffected by other Christians living in other cities. Hostility from the Jews, and perhaps outright rejection from the synagogues after the temple's destruction, slanted the views of the Johannine community, etc., and therefore John, or the author, whoever he was, therefore portrayed the Jews in an unattractive light.

This is an argument I have heard many times from many different scholars, and I just don't believe it.

Surely if there is anything we can prove, it is that the early Christian groups were in constant contact with one another. Paul writing to his churches. Revelation sent out to seven different communities, Not to mention the fact that except for the gospels themselves all the books in the New Testament were letters. All those people always in contact with one another. Sending aid when needed. Not to mention 1 Clement and the letters of Ignatius. This is simply unique in ancient history. Meeting and holding councils to make sure they all agree.

Now, I find it very understandable when Protestants talk about lone communities. But I am baffled when Catholic scholars like Brown don't even seem to notice that the evidence screams church, church, church. Lone communities--bah, humbug. (It's always so difficult to hold a church council, I find, without a church.)

For the record, Richard Bauckham is an opponent of the 'Johannine community' theory. At least he argues against it in his The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences and The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple (preview). He is of the opinion that the prevalent idea that the gospels were written only with single, specific communities in mind - say, the Johannine community or the Markan community or whatever - should be taken with a grain of salt: he opines instead as you do, that since the early Christian movement was composed of a network of local communities who are connected with one another, we could not discount the possibility that all of the gospels could have been written with the intention that they circulate throughout all the churches. (You might also find Edward Klink's The Audience of the Gospels interesting here. Oh, and Bauckham also seem to have published a book called Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony.)

I like him, don't you? I haven't read the third book in his trilogy, yet, however.

Haven't read him, either. And now you know that I still have much to read.

Wow, I just loved it. Just loved it. And I am so impressed that you were able to sound so calm and pleasant as you discussed Crossan and the Gospel of Peter. Obviously, you are a much more saintly person than I am, because every time I think about his line of argument about it my composure utterly fails me. That was...desperate...that's the nicest word I can use to describe it.

You're welcome. No, I'm hardly a 'saintly' person; I'm probably really a worse person than you are IRL.

[patrick457]

Can you imagine what would happen if some Catholic scholar tried to argue that, say, the Protoevangelium had 'strands' from the earliest strata of Christianity--which it actually might, in direct comparison to the silly Gospel of Peter? Can you imagine the laughter? .

The main weakness in Crossan's theory is, as Dennis Ingolfsland and N.T. Wright point out, his penchant to create and propose hypothetical sources (in this case, the 'Cross Gospel') and a selective use of the text.

He claims that Jesus' male disciples couldn't have known what happened after He was arrested because they all ran away - they know that He was crucified rather than killed by some other method only because the women disciples saw Him from a distance. As Craig Evans explains in his critique of Crossan:

What makes Crossan's presentation of this otherwise unexceptional conclusion so distinctive is his reliance on the Gospel of Peter, a non-canonical Gospel that mainstream scholarship dates to the second century and regards as secondary to the canonical Gospels. Contrary to this widely-held opinion, Crossan argues that Peter is the earliest Gospel and the earliest known attempt to transform Old Testament messianic prophecies into history about Jesus. The passion story of the Gospels is not "history remembered," Crossan emphasizes, but "prophecy historicized." He further maintains that the four canonical Gospels are dependent on Peter. This is the part of Crossan's book that is the least persuasive, and unfortunately it makes up most of the book. The salutary value of the book (viz., the argument that the Jewish people did not kill Jesus) fades from view as the reader is taxed with a protracted defense of the antiquity and priority of an apocryphal Gospel pseudonymously attributed to Peter. Why does Crossan do this?

Crossan does it because he believes that much of the passion narrative in the Gospels was generated by what Christians found in the Old Testament, not by what they remembered to have actually happened. He reasons that because the disciples ran away following Jesus' arrest, they had no idea what took place. All they knew was that Jesus had been crucified. They had no idea if a trial of any sort had occurred, or where (or if) Jesus had been buried. (Crucifixion victims were often left on the cross to be devoured by birds and animals. Burial often did not occur.) What they did discover was that Jesus' kingdom message continued to work powerfully within the community that he had established. Convinced that he had been vindicated, Jesus' followers began to search the Scriptures to find out what it all meant and, in reference especially to the passion itself, to find out what had happened and how that fulfilled scriptural and jesuianic prophecies. Crossan believes that the Gospel of Peter is the earliest attempt at creating a historical narrative based on what was found in the Scriptures. But this invented passion story, which polemicizes against Jews (understandable in the first century, with Christianity the oppressed and beleaguered minority), is dangerous today and Christians need to know that it is mostly unhistorical.

Crossan explains it himself in The Birth of Christianity:

The individual units, general sequences, and overall frames of the passion-resurrection stories are so linked to prophetic fulfillment that the removal of such fulfillment leaves nothing but the barest facts, almost as in Josephus, Tacitus or the Apostles’ Creed. ... In other words, on all three narrative levels – surface, intermediate and deep – biblical models and scriptural precedents have controlled the story to the point that without them nothing is left but the brutal fact of crucifixion itself.

This is the flaw in Crossan's theory. If the Passion narrative was by its nature a mostly fictional account drawn from OT prophecies, how do we really know that the male disciples had run away and that the women disciples watched Jesus from afar? Crossan gets this idea from Mark 14:50 ("Everyone deserted Him and fled") and 15:40 ("Now there were also women from afar (ἀπὸ μακρόθεν) watching, among whom also was Mary the Magdalene, and Mary the mother of Jacob the Less and Joses, and Salome"); what he doesn't tell us is that these two narrative elements are themselves presented within the text as the fulfillment of a prophecy (Mark 14:27; cf. Zechariah 13:7) and an allusion (Psalm 38:11 LXX "My friends and companions stand aloof from my affliction, and my relatives stand from a distance (ἀπὸ μακρόθεν)"). As Mark Goodacre says:

But if this key foundational detail is itself so explicitly Scriptural, Crossan’s model demands that we see this too as “prophecy historicized”. And if this detail is prophecy historicized, how – to use Crossan’s logic – can we trust it as history? If we cannot trust the historicity of this element, there is no obligation to accept the absence of the disciples as a foundational premise for the whole. In other words, without the knowledge that there was no one present at the crucifixion, we do not require the thesis of the inevitability of the “prophecy historicized” model.

[patrick457]

Every day I pray for more faithful Catholic biblical scholars. Why, why, aren't there more? There are thousands upon thousands of atheist scholar, doing their cheerless best to ruin the belief of millions. And thousands and thousands of Protestant scholars--wonderful, faithful people, but alas, without all the weapons that a Catholic would have. Catholic scholarship should simply decimate the arguments of the atheists. But where, where are Catholic scholars???

Sigh.

I'm sure there are, only they don't get as much publicity. Another thing I would credit the likes of John Dominic Crossan and Bart Ehrman for is their skill as communicators: they are able to publicly express themselves in a concise way without it turning into the stereotypical boring lecture - in Crossan's case, he is able to craft a nifty and memorable phrase to encapsulate his thesis: "prophecy historicized." Scholars aren't exactly famous for being public figures, so those who are able to speak up in a convincing and easy-to-understand way, those who are able to write books geared to the general public has a chance of getting more attention than folks who author tomes which only other scholars and/or niche audiences are able to appreciate. Then there's also that penchant in the modern media for focusing on 'controversy' and 'conspiracy'. (Thank you, Dan Brown! ) A guy who claims to present a 'new', 'radical' image of figures such as Jesus (cue the taglines: "could shake the very foundations of Christianity," etc.) will be put in front of the camera faster than the guy who essentially reinforces, or at least does not attack, the traditional Christian picture.

Thanks so much for writing back to me about biblical scholarship. I am so grateful, you have no idea. Nobody else seems interested!

God bless you, Annem

You're welcome. I sure wish some other folks would chime in.

[patrick457]

For the record I've just been re-reading the N.T. Wright critique/parody of Crossan's ideas...utterly hilarious and accurate at the same time.

[PPC]

Originally Posted by Dave B_

Thanks for your repsonses.

I have also since found an interesting article on CA magazine which is helpful.

http://www.catholic.com/magazine/art...t-christianity

And I liked this bit in particular

"There actually are many allusions in Paul’s writings to specific, historical details from the life of Jesus, including:

* Jesus was "descended from David according to the flesh" (Rom 1:3; Gal 3:16).
* Jesus was born and raised as a Jew (Gal 4:4).
* The names of some of Jesus’ disciples, including Cephas (1 Cor 9:5)
* The words and actions of Jesus at the Last Supper (1 Cor 11:23-25)
* The betrayal of Jesus (1 Cor 11:23)
* Jesus was executed by being crucified (Phil 2:8; 3:18; 1 Cor 1:17-18; Gal 5:11; 6:12),
* Jesus rose from the dead (Rom 1:4; 4:24-25; 8:11;1 Cor 6:14; 15:4-8; 2 Cor 4:14; Gal 1:1* After the Resurrection, Jesus "appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve" (1 Cor 15:5).
* He also appeared, post-Resurrection, to "to more than five hundred brethren at one time, * Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles . . . " (1 Cor 15:6-7)"

Contrary to popular belief/opinion, it was Cephas, not Peter, whom Paul rebuked in his letter to the Galatians.

Galatians 2:11 RSV
[5] to them we did not yield submission even for a moment, that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.
[6] And from those who were reputed to be something (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality) -- those, I say, who were of repute added nothing to me;
[7] but on the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised
[8] (for he who worked through Peter for the mission to the circumcised worked through me also for the Gentiles),
[9] and when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised;
[10] only they would have us remember the poor, which very thing I was eager to do.
[11] But when Cephas came to Antioch I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.

Some Protestant translations and their commentaries list either Peter or Cephas in all four places in this passage and this is not true to the original Greek manuscripts. The KJV uses Peter in three places and Cephas in one place. Two different men are written about in this passage. This is confirmed by Eusebuis, the early Church's historian.

Interestingly, Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich also claimed that it was Cephas and not Peter who was rebuked by Paul. I doubt that she had the opportunity to read Eusebuis' early Church history before she had her vision about this event.

[patrick457]

Originally Posted by PPC

Contrary to popular belief/opinion, it was Cephas, not Peter, whom Paul rebuked in his letter to the Galatians.

Galatians 2:11 RSV
[5] to them we did not yield submission even for a moment, that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.
[6] And from those who were reputed to be something (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality) -- those, I say, who were of repute added nothing to me;
[7] but on the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised
[8] (for he who worked through Peter for the mission to the circumcised worked through me also for the Gentiles),
[9] and when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised;
[10] only they would have us remember the poor, which very thing I was eager to do.
[11] But when Cephas came to Antioch I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.

Some Protestant translations and their commentaries list either Peter or Cephas in all four places in this passage and this is not true to the original Greek manuscripts. The KJV uses Peter in three places and Cephas in one place. Two different men are written about in this passage. This is confirmed by Eusebuis, the early Church's historian.

Interestingly, Bl. Anne Catherine Emmerich also claimed that it was Cephas and not Peter who was rebuked by Paul. I doubt that she had the opportunity to read Eusebuis' early Church history before she had her vision about this event.

There is certainly that idea of distinguishing between 'Cephas' and 'Peter', however I don't think that the case for it is very strong: for one Kephas of course is simply the Hellenicized form of Aramaic kepha 'rock' (cf. John 1:42). The clincher is, Kephas (or Petros, for that matter) isn't a common name - in fact it isn't even a proper name at all, but a nickname. We have only one possible instance of someone in pre-Christian antiquity being named Kepha apart from Simon Peter and none at all of Petros. For the argument to work we'll have to assume that there were two individuals who happened to have the exact same (very rare) epithet who were both men of some status within the movement. Possible, but IMHO this raises more questions than answers.

Eusebius' identification of Cephas as a different person than Peter is under the authority of Clement of Alexandria's Hypotyposes (which survives only in quotation). There is some question though as to the extent in which Clement distinguished the two: in his Stromata he identifies the "Cephas" in 1 Corinthians 9:5 with Peter (3.52-3; 4.15). But even if we hold that Clement indeed took the Cephas of Galatians as a different person, the fact still stands that he is apparently in the minority. There are three late apocryphal literature (the Epistula Apostolorum, The Apostolic Church Order, and The Statutes of the Apostles) in which 'Cephas' and 'Peter' are treated as separate individuals: unlike Clement though the two are both presented as being apostles, i.e. two of the Twelve.

Oh, and as for Galatians 2:9 and 11, it is true that most manuscripts have "Cephas" at this point, but there are also manuscripts who attempt to harmonize the text here by naming "Peter." The fact that such variants exist is proof that at least some readers have understood this Cephas and Peter to denote the same individual.

I won't particularly encourage an uncritical use of private revelation at this situation: in Blessed Emmerich's case there is also the added suspicion as to just how faithful the poet Clemens Brentano (her secretary) was in 'transcribing' what he heard from her.

[patrick457]

I quote from Fr. Joseph A. Fitzmyer's To Advance the Gospel: New Testament Studies (references have not been included):

The name Kēphas is found only in the New Testament, outside of the Johannine passage (1:42), only in the Pauline writings (Gal 1:18; 2:9, 11, 14; 1 Cor 1:12; 3:22; 9:5; 15:5). Paul, however, never uses of him the name Simon/Symeon, and he uses Petros only in Gal 2:7-8, in a context in which Kēphas otherwise predominates.
Either on the basis of the early church's interpretation of Kēphas as Petros (John 1:42) or for other reasons, modern commentators usually identify the Cephas of Galatians with Peter. However, there has always been a small group of commentators who have sought to identify the Cephas of Galatians 1-2 with someone other than Simon Peter. Eusebius quotes the fifth book of the Hypotyposes of Clement of Alexandria to the effect that the “Cephas concerning whom Paul says ‘and when Cephas came to Antioch I withstood him to the face’ [Gal 2:11] was one of the seventy disciples, who had the same name as the apostle Peter.” More sophisticated reasons for hesitating about the identity of Cephas and Peter in Galatians have been found in modern times. In antiquity it was often a question of the supposed relative positions of Peter and Paul in the church; in recent times it is the peculiar shift from Cephas to Peter. Though the majority of modern commentators agree that Cephas and Peter are the same person in Galatians 1-2, the shift has been explained by postulating that Paul is “quoting an official document” in vv. 7-8, whereas he has elsewhere used the name Cephas which he otherwise preferred for him. Another aspect of the problem is that whereas the manuscript tradition is [p. 115] constant in 1 Corinthians in reading Kēphas, there is fluctuation between Kēphas and Petros in the manuscripts of Galatians. In any case, though we take note of this minority opinion about the identity of Cephas and Peter in Galatians 1-2, we cannot consider it seriously.

He then goes on about the use of the Aramaic word kephā’ in the Dead Sea Scrolls (where it means something like 'rock' or 'crag'), and the sole instance of kp’ being used as a Jewish proper name in pre-Christian antiquity from 5th century BC Elephantine in Egypt.

[patrick457]

Markus Bockmuehl builds upon Fr. Fitzmyer in The Remembered Peter: In Ancient Reception and Modern Debate (again, footnotes omitted):

Peter's Aramaic name Kēfa’ has been the subject of far more extensive discussion, partly because its ecclesiological significance was for a long time deeply contested between Catholic and Protestant interpreters. The blossoming of ecumenical dialogue and of Roman Catholic biblical studies since Vatican II has meant that the confessional wind has for some time been more conducive to genuine progress and consensus. The exegetical dividing lines no longer fall among predictably denominational lines. The meaning of the Aramaic term כיפא as “rock” or “crag” has been reasonably demonstrated in the Targums and Dead Sea Scrolls, although the implications are still ignored by some recent commentators who deny that kēfa’ could be something one builds upon. This is not of course to say that all the difficulties have been removed. One of the major disagreements concerns the authenticity of Jesus’ saying about Peter as the Rock in Matt 16.18; on this matter the major multi-volume commentaries of the last decade continued to reach opposing conclusions. Another abiding problem is the significance of the wordplay employed in that verse.
For present purposes, the answer to the problem of historicity is relatively unimportant. On the more focused question of what the name Cephas might mean to a Jewish audience of the early rabbinic period, answers are more readily to hand and probably on balance less controversial.
We may here discount the suggestion of Clement of Alexandria, occasionally revived on more critical grounds by a small number of scholars, [p. 149] that the Cephas of Gal 1-2 is not Simon Peter but someone else. Clement’s rationale, subsequently adopted by Jerome, seems quite patently an apologetic counsel of convenience with respect to an episode that other patristic writers like Jerome and Chrysostom found equally embarrassing. The primary critical argument derives from Gal 2.7-8, where Paul unexpectedly shifts from otherwise exclusive usage of “Cephas” in order to refer to “Peter”. But the Fourth Gospel is quite clear that Cephas is the same as Peter (John 1.42), and the surprising fluctuation of these two names in the manuscript tradition of Gal 1-2 also suggests that ancient writers on the whole assumed them to be identical. The immediate context of Gal 1-2 is equally unambiguous in affirming that Cephas is the most important apostle and pillar of the Judaean church, whose sole acquaintance Paul seeks out in Jerusalem (1.17-18) – in other words, the figure of whom it might most reasonably be said that he was the key “apostle” for “the gospel of the circumcised” (2.8-9).
Cephas, then, is Peter. What is more, the application of this name to Simon is now widely regarded as dating back perhaps to an early stage of his association with Jesus, some of whose other disciples bore comparable epithets. Interestingly, Jesus’ only reported use of either form of “Peter” as a proper name addressed to Simon occurs at Luke 22.34, where it is probably redactional. It seems likely, nevertheless, that both kēfa’ and its equivalent, Πέτρος, were in use in their respective linguistic settings from the very beginning of the Christian movement. Simon’s brother, by contrast, seems to bear only the Greek name Ἀνδρέας (like Φίλιππος, their friend and fellow Bethsaidan.)
But what resonance might these appellations have among a contemporary Jewish audience? Cephas is not attested as a non-Christian personal name in Hebrew or Aramaic sources from the Second Temple or rabbinic periods. True, Joseph Fitzmyer has rightly drawn attention to the existence [p. 150] of the name Kēfa’ in a fifth-century Jewish Aramaic papyrus from Elephantine in Upper Egypt, comparing it with the Hebrew name Ṣur (“rock”) which is repeatedly attested in the Old Testament. But it remains the case that nearly half a millennium of history and culture separates Elephantine from first-century Palestine, where the evidence suggests that Cephas was not current as a name.
The term Cephas would have remained perfectly intelligible in Jewish circles throughout the rabbinic period, so that the name Šim’ōn Kēfa’ could still be readily understood and interpreted in the later legends of the Toledot Yeshu. In the absence of evidence for Cephas as a Jewish name, however, this remains as Peter’s most distinctive epithet – his nickname rather than a proper name. Somewhat contrary to Fitzmyer’s inquiry, it seems likely to have been of interest precisely because it was not a familiar personal name. It is this that characterized him in the Aramaic-speaking churches of Judaea, and which ironically survived even Paul’s move into the Gentile world.

[patrick457]

For a small sample, my copy of the NA27 gives the following textual variant for Galatians 1:18:

Πετρον א2 D F G Ψ 0278. 1739mg 1881 latt syh �� ¦ txt P46.51 א* A B 33. 1241s. 1739* pc syhmg co

In other words, the Πέτρον "Peter" reading is found in Codex Sinaiticus (2nd corrector), Claromontanus, Augiensis, Boernerianus, Athous Lavrensis, and Uncial 0278, Minuscules 1739 (margin) and 1881, the entire Latin tradition, the Harclean Syrian version, and the Majority Text. The Κηφᾶς "Cephas" reading meanwhile is attested by Papyri 46 and 51, Codex Sinaiticus (* = original reading), Alexandrinus and Vaticanus, Minuscules 33, 1241 (s = later supplement) and 1739 (original reading), a few (pc = pauci) less important witnesses, the Coptic version, and the Harclean Syrian (marginal reading).

[Abu]

In The Hebrew Christ, Franciscan Herald Press, 1989, Claude Tresmontant makes a strong case for the writing of Mathew, John and Luke, before the first letters of Paul.

Real evidence continues to build to support much of the work of Fr Jean Carmignac and Claude Tresmontant, for in a New Book Claims Four Gospels Written Before Fall Of Jerusalem, (February 13, 1997, The Wanderer) Paul Likoudis refers to the substantial evidence revealed:

On Matthew writing first, a German scientist, Carsten Peter Thiede, director of the Institute for Basic Epistemological Research in Paderborn, with Matthew D'Ancona, is about to dash to pieces the Bultmann-built edifice of modernist exegesis.

Their book, Eyewitness To Jesus: Amazing New Manuscript Evidence About the Origin of the Gospel (Doubleday, 1996), is about a small piece of papyrus held at Magdalen College, Oxford, which is the oldest fragment of St. Matthew's Gospel in existence today.

[patrick457]

Originally Posted by Abu

On Matthew writing first, a German scientist, Carsten Peter Thiede, director of the Institute for Basic Epistemological Research in Paderborn, with Matthew D'Ancona, is about to dash to pieces the Bultmann-built edifice of modernist exegesis.

Their book, Eyewitness To Jesus: Amazing New Manuscript Evidence About the Origin of the Gospel (Doubleday, 1996), is about a small piece of papyrus held at Magdalen College, Oxford, which is the oldest fragment of St. Matthew's Gospel in existence today.

Ah, Carsten Peter Thiede. To be frank, his assertion that the Magdalen Papyrus, aka Papyrus 64 and 67 (conventionally dated from the period between the late 2nd century to the 3rd) dates from the 1st century and 7Q5 from Qumran is a fragment of Mark (he is reasserting an argument first brought forward by Spanish papyrologist Jose O´Callaghan here), while rather intriguing, are rather shaky. Peter M. Head wrote a rebuttal of Thiede's claims about the Magdalen Papyrus, citing that Thiede over-estimated the amount of stylistic similarity between the fragment and several Palestinian Greek manuscripts and under-estimated the strength of the scholarly consensus of a date around AD 200.

[Abu]

Even Adolf von Harnack, a rationalist historian of high repute among Rationalists and Protestants, wrote that the Synoptic Gospels were written before 70 A.D. – before the fall of Jerusalem, and accepted the tradition that St Luke derived his information on the infancy of Jesus from Mary His Mother. [Theologische Quartalsch, Tubingen 1929, IV, p 443-4].
[See Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine, Sheehan/Joseph, St Austin Press, 2001, p 89, 93]

There is no good reason to suppose that St Paul's letters were written before the Gospels.