Lost Latin commentary on the Gospels rediscovered after 1,500 years

[guillaumeb]

From the article:

The earliest Latin commentary on the Gospels, lost for more than 1,500 years, has been rediscovered and made available in English for the first time. The extraordinary find, a work written by a bishop in northern Italy, Fortunatianus of Aquileia, dates back to the middle of the fourth century................

This sheds new light on the way the Gospels were read and understood in the early Church, in particular the reading of the text known as “allegorical exegesis” in which elements in the stories are interpreted as symbols.

To read more of this fascinating story:

http://religionnews.com/2017/08/28/lost-latin-commentary-on-the-gospels-rediscovered-after-1500-years-thanks-to-digital-technology/

[Voltaire2]

1. It is actually a full copy from around 800.

But it appears to be complete (based on other references to the original text) and is an interesting discovery.

[Bradshaw3]

2. Wow so it's 800 years after the supposed fact

But that's still not as extraordinary or credible as just a few centuries after the supposed fact, right?

[guillaumeb]

3. There are Gospels dating to shortly after the time of Jesus. eom

[MineralMan]

4. The very earliest I know of is from the 2nd Century.

There are zero contemporaneous gospel manuscripts. That means that there are no written records of anything regarding that entire business that were created by anyone who lived during the time being discussed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_manuscript

The Second Century is NOT shortly after the time of Jesus. Not by any definition.

[Act_of_Reparation]

5. You're confusing authorship dates with surviving manuscripts.

Our oldest copies of biblical texts date to centuries after the supposed fact. Scholars studying the language, however, have placed authorship of Mark somewhere in the late 1st century.

That doesn't dramatically alter your point, however. With life expectancies being what they were, 30-40 years after the fact was a veritable lifetime for the people of Judea. It is not likely many people who were adults at the time of Jesus' crucifixion would have survived until 70 CE. There are zero contemporaneous accounts of Jesus' ministry. Everything we have was written well after the supposed events.

[MineralMan]

6. I'm not, really. I understand the issue pretty well.

In many ways, it would be like today's newspapers covering WWII as news today, except that we do have a wealth of contemporaneous accounts of that war. The fact that the Gospels weren't actually written for at least two generations after the events they describe is pretty remarkable. We don't know who the authors of the Gospels were, but we do understand that none of them witnessed what they are writing about. It's a massive game of Telephone, with the errors that are always introduced in second, third and later hand accounts.

All of the earliest New Testament scriptures are copies of copies of copies, with the degradation and inaccuracies that go along with people copying documents. Somewhere in a lockbox in my house is my original DD 214 form, yellowed and torn from folding 50 years ago when I got it. I had occasion to need a copy of that form to save $5 on a Minnesota State Fair ticket yesterday, which was Military Appreciation Day. So, I copied a copy of a copy. It's still readable, but not easily. It did its job, but if I ever need a fair copy of the form, I'll have to dig out that old original and make a fresh copy of it on a very good copier that can filter out the yellowing and make the typewritten text more legible. Either that or send off for a new copy from the archives.

And that's with modern copying equipment and nice, dry storage for the original documents. None of that was available, even 70 years after the actual events, when the first author of Mark wrote it that Gospel, based on fragments, second hand accounts, etc.

[guillaumeb]

7. Another source:

Because of the lack of original texts, it has been very difficult to date the canonical gospels as to when they were written or even when they first emerge in the historical record, as these two dates may differ. The gospels have been dated variously from shortly after the crucifixion, traditionally placed around 30 ad/ce, to as late as a century and a half afterwards.[1] The currently accepted dates are as follows, from the earliest by conservative, believing scholars to the latest by liberal and sometimes secular scholars:
Matthew: 37 to 100 ad/ce
Mark: 40 to 73 ad/ce
Luke: 50 to 100 ad/ce
John: 65 to 100 ad/ce

http://www.stellarhousepublishing.com/gospel-dates.html

I could list a few more with roughly similar conclusions. Mathew would therefor have written approximately 4-7 years after the Crucifixion, the latest, that of John, 32-35 years later.

[Bradshaw3]

8. That's your source? Really?

I clicked on the link. That's a reliable source? And there are a few others with similar conclusions? Please list them because the one you did is a joke. Your conclusions as to the dates when they were written are at odds with everything I've ever seen. We get it. You're a believer and are trying to prove this supposed fact but you can't do it by misrepresenting. Fact is there are no accounts from the time of these "miraculous" events taking place even though it was a very literate society.

[guillaumeb]

9. One person cited Wikipedia.

I cited another source. Google "how old are the Gospels" and you can read multiple sources that you are, of course, free to ignore.

You speak also of a, so-far, unnamed "everything that I have ever seen" as being more reliable. Feel free to provide links to these numerous other sources that you claim to have seen and read.

[Bradshaw3]

10. You are the one who made these claims

So it is up to you to back them up. I questioned the one source you cited and your response was to say "one person cited Wikipedia" (which I would take over your source) as if that validated your source and to ask me to name my sources - without of course posting anything that supports your claim that multiple gospels were written mere decades after the supposed events. Googling and finding more dubious sources doesn't prove your claims.

Here's a summary of the debunking with source material listed at the bottom if it helps:
https://ffrf.org/faq/feeds/item/18412-debunking-the-historical-jesus

What I have read, even from defenders, usually relies on Flavius Josephus for a more somewhat contemporaneous account, even though he of course wrote about 80 to 90 years later and whose texts were translated years later by Christian monks. There are many other holes in this source.

I say that there are NO contemporaneous written accounts of Jesus or his supposed deeds, that the gospel of Mark was written by who we don't know at least 70 to 100 years later based on what we don't know and that those that followed are based on it. If there is peer-reviewed scholarly work proving any of that wrong I would be happy to read it.

[guillaumeb]

11. I have read this "explanation" before this.

And if you reject any source that I cite as dubious we will obviously not agree on this.

[Bradshaw3]

12. I cite them as dubious because they are for a simple reason

They are trying to prove something as a historical fact based not on legitimate historical research but rather on trying to find anything that can bolster their beliefs regardless of whether it is factual or logical. That's not scholarly research. That's belief masquerading as historical facts.