I mean considering the extreme amount of creative liberties in the source material which started as an example of the genre of bios which is both biography and propaganda written decades if not centuries after the death of their subject, was then heavily edited (Origen already complained about that in the third century), before being carefully handpicked and arranged by the Roman church as a political tool, a bit more creative liberties would not change much things.
Most critical scholars dont really think the gospels are centuries after the fact anymore, that's a 20th century position that's largely lost support. Atheists love it tho!
The general consensus is that Mark was written fifty years after the fact, Matthew and Luke à century after mostly based on Mark and John at least a century after with some thinking even later from who knows what source but with a clear political goal. We are clearly in the decades if not centuries range.
Most scholars date Mark to c. 66–74 AD, either shortly before or after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD
This is essentially a few decades after the fact.
It's very challenging to really try to push Mathews gospel much further than 80s AD - and even that date has some serious problems.
You seem to have cherry picked certain (older) views... it was certainly popular in the last century to try try push the dates well into the second century but this approach is very fraught and can't be well supported at present.
> This is essentially a few decades after the fact.
That’s literally 75 years after the fact. Scholar put Mathew between 80 and 110 years after the fact so a century as I correctly pointed.
I understand you don’t like being faced with the fact that the gospels were written with a clear political agenda long after what they depict and that the canon is mostly an exercise in late Roman politics. The fact remains.
One of us must be using a different form of math - I take 66 AD, subtract 33 AD and get a mere 33 years
You can try to push out mathew to 110 but it gets kinda tough....if there is that much of a gap between mark and mathew why do we have lots of mathean quotes in the early church and virtually none from mark? Kinda stretches credulity, for me at least.
I feel that if Mark really did enjoy a lengthy period as the of extant gospel it should have acquired a sort of prominence.
33AD?! You can substract zero. No one believes that the event of the gospel happens in 33AD apart from Colin Humphreys and his arguments are completely bogus.
Can you elaborate on this? I had no idea that a date of roughly 33AD was controversial, and Wikipedia seems to say that the consensus is that 30AD or 33AD are when the later events of the gospels occurred.
When I google Colin Humphreys, he seems to be a physicist who dabbles in bible studies. According to Wikipedia, his argument was that the Last Supper occurred on a Wednesday instead of a Thursday, not that he disagreed with anyone about the year.
