I'm not sure I follow you on when the gospels were written. You say that many people incorrectly believe it was centuries later, and note some evidence that they were likely written in the first century A.D. Which I understand. But then you say " Jesus clearly prophecies the destruction of the Second Temple and the accompanying sack of Jerusalem, and those events happened in 70 A.D. In other words, if you start from the assumption that the Lord could not have known of future events then you are stuck with a timeline that strains credulity in every other way." Which implies that all the evidence not only suggests the first century, but specifically prior to 70 A.D. But I didn't see evidence in your article about that spoke to A.D. 30-70 vs. A.D. 70-100?
For avoidance of doubt, I have no axe to grind here. I was just going along thinking "yup, the general consensus that the Gospels were written in 65-100 A.D. seems consistent with what this book is arguing" and then got confused in the last paragraph.
This was my takeaway too. As an agnostic deeply interested in Christianity, my understanding was that these days, generally anyone who actually cares about the age of New Testament books (and is not a frothing-at-the-mouth "internet atheist") sets out dates between A.D. 55 and A.D. 150 depending on the book - often with theologically conservative Christian scholars arguing for dates a few decades earlier than more "secular" academics, and with general agreement that various written and oral versions of canonical and non-canonical texts were floating around at this time.
You might like the new book *Josephus and Jesus* by T. C. Schmidt. It is free online: https://josephusandjesus.com/purchase-page/. You may have heard that Josephus's history of the Jews--*Antiquities*--mentions Jesus, and you probably also have heard that the consensus of historians is that this was a later insertion into the text.
Schmidt argues very convincingly that no, in fact, *Antiquities* included this mention of Jesus in the original. His first move is to retranslate the Testimonium Flavianum (TF) and basically shows that it does not flatter Jesus whatsoever. In other words, modern translators/historians play up the mention of Jesus, so it appears that the TF reverentially refers to Jesus, which it does not. He also argues that stylistically the TF resembles Josephus's style and makes other arguments.
I was so pleasantly surprised to see McMahon topping this list. I remember digging into him after a podcast appearance and realizing he had worked for or managed 80+% of the people in the "startup community" that were actually worth a damn.
I'm not sure I follow you on when the gospels were written. You say that many people incorrectly believe it was centuries later, and note some evidence that they were likely written in the first century A.D. Which I understand. But then you say " Jesus clearly prophecies the destruction of the Second Temple and the accompanying sack of Jerusalem, and those events happened in 70 A.D. In other words, if you start from the assumption that the Lord could not have known of future events then you are stuck with a timeline that strains credulity in every other way." Which implies that all the evidence not only suggests the first century, but specifically prior to 70 A.D. But I didn't see evidence in your article about that spoke to A.D. 30-70 vs. A.D. 70-100?
For avoidance of doubt, I have no axe to grind here. I was just going along thinking "yup, the general consensus that the Gospels were written in 65-100 A.D. seems consistent with what this book is arguing" and then got confused in the last paragraph.
This was my takeaway too. As an agnostic deeply interested in Christianity, my understanding was that these days, generally anyone who actually cares about the age of New Testament books (and is not a frothing-at-the-mouth "internet atheist") sets out dates between A.D. 55 and A.D. 150 depending on the book - often with theologically conservative Christian scholars arguing for dates a few decades earlier than more "secular" academics, and with general agreement that various written and oral versions of canonical and non-canonical texts were floating around at this time.
You might like the new book *Josephus and Jesus* by T. C. Schmidt. It is free online: https://josephusandjesus.com/purchase-page/. You may have heard that Josephus's history of the Jews--*Antiquities*--mentions Jesus, and you probably also have heard that the consensus of historians is that this was a later insertion into the text.
Schmidt argues very convincingly that no, in fact, *Antiquities* included this mention of Jesus in the original. His first move is to retranslate the Testimonium Flavianum (TF) and basically shows that it does not flatter Jesus whatsoever. In other words, modern translators/historians play up the mention of Jesus, so it appears that the TF reverentially refers to Jesus, which it does not. He also argues that stylistically the TF resembles Josephus's style and makes other arguments.
I was so pleasantly surprised to see McMahon topping this list. I remember digging into him after a podcast appearance and realizing he had worked for or managed 80+% of the people in the "startup community" that were actually worth a damn.