medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The obiter dictum about the unlikelihood of Matthew writing the gospel
bearing his name reflects conventional but often unexamined assumptions
about the dates of the writing of the gospels. Those who enjoy thinking
outside the box might look at
John A. T. Robinson, _Redating the New Testament_,
Jean Carmignac, _The Birth of the Synoptics_
and
Claude Tresmontant's commentary/translation of Matthew (exact title not
at hand) in English
The last two works and other titles by Carmignac and Tresmontant are, of
course, also available in French. All three authors employ a
combination of internal evidence of Semitisms and the absence of
references to the destruction of Jerusalem to argue for dates between
the late '30s and A.D. 70.
Matthew D'Ancona and Gerd Theissen also did a popular-level book
summarizing similar claims (based, however, on paprylogical evidence)
for early datings, in the '40s and '50s. I do not have the title at
hand.
Specific refutations of these authors have, for the most part not been
forthcoming from those who maintain the conventional explanatory models.
They iconoclasts have been attacked in general terms for having
rejected _in toto_ modern historical critical scholarship (which seems
hardly the case) but for the most part they have been more ignored than
countered. Their theories may, of course, be incorrect, but they do the
valuable service of at least pointing up the tenuousness (thus possible
incorrectness) of the conventional theories which date writing of the
gospels to the '60s-80s, if I am not mistaken. The conventional
theories rest almost entirely on internal evidence, interpreted in a
complex tissue of interlocking assumptions.
This should serve to remind scholars that all historical reconstructions
(doctoral dissertations, learned articles in scholarly journals, books
published by profesional historians) are just that, historical
reconstructions, explanatory models, each of which claims to explain the
data more fully than all rival explanatory models. While we are
trained, with regard to specific micro-topics, not to take as settled
fact what another historian publishes but to challenge and critique it
and hence establsh our own legitimacy as scholars, still, over time some
paradigmatic explanatory models rise to the level of "conventional
wisdom" and "scholarly consensus." With these models the risk of
forgetting that they too eventually will be ripe for "paradigm shift"
looms large. Conventional wisdom on the dating of the four gospels is,
I think, one of these high-risk paradigms.
The explanatory models of the "hard sciences" have the same limitations,
except that the latter can be tested against ongoing data observations,
whereas historical models by definition involve fragmentary data that
cannot be tested and retested in the laboratory and also, perhaps more
unsettlingly, are always contaminated by the reconstructor's
philosophical and religious presuppositions, especially insidiously by
the unacknowledged philosophical and cutlural presuppositions.
Dennis Martin
>>> [log in to unmask] 09/21/04 12:35 AM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
culture
Today (21. September) is the feast day of:
Matthew (1st cent.) Matthew---or Levi---or Matthew the Levite---was
a tax collector at Caphernaum when Jesus collected him. He has
traditionally been credited as author of the first gospel (which
seems unlikely, unless he lived a *very* long time). Legend says
that Matt preached in Judea and then further east, eventually being
martyred in either Persia or Ethiopia.
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