You said pretty much exacty everything I would have said and more.
One question—I only read the first third of so and skimmed the rest. The bits I read seemed to give a false dichotomy for dates of the composition of the gospels. The authors discussed atheistic schools that believed the gospels were all composed post 100 and contrasted these with the pre70 dates of Christian belief. Do they ever discuss the modern scholarly mostly-consensus of 70-90?
Relatedly, do you know of any good arguments for post 70 composition dates, especially for Matthew and Luke, other than fulfilled prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem? I’ve always found the arguments that these books were written before 70 because they could not have predicted the destruction of Jerusalem suspiciously question-begging about the possibility of miracles.
You said pretty much exacty everything I would have said and more.
One question—I only read the first third of so and skimmed the rest. The bits I read seemed to give a false dichotomy for dates of the composition of the gospels. The authors discussed atheistic schools that believed the gospels were all composed post 100 and contrasted these with the pre70 dates of Christian belief. Do they ever discuss the modern scholarly mostly-consensus of 70-90?
Relatedly, do you know of any good arguments for post 70 composition dates, especially for Matthew and Luke, other than fulfilled prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem? I’ve always found the arguments that these books were written before 70 because they could not have predicted the destruction of Jerusalem suspiciously question-begging about the possibility of miracles.
I’m afraid I really know very little about dating the Gospels; I just trusted what I saw on Wikipedia.
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