> ...as such, when written, it is meaningless and superfluous. In modern usage, however, it may most often be correctly replaced with the phrase, "as a Millennial, I informally
The distinction between spoken and written seems a) arbitrary and b) entirely irrelevant to a comment section on a website. I'm writing conversationally, comments aren't technical documentation or tenders, they're comments. Observations in passing.
Being honest, when you opened with... ...whatever your thinking there was, I immediately shut down on engagement.
Genuine feedback - you know your shit, so just lead with that, not the part where you decide to lead with "You started a sentence with 'yeah', and that's wrong". It helps establish a rapport.
Anyway, you got your chronology slightly wrong but only slightly, so very much well done, and I mean that genuinely, and it only erred in where you placed Acts, which contains the earliest Christian writings. (That we know of (so far))
> Being honest, when you opened with... ...whatever your thinking there was, I immediately shut down on engagement.
My thinking was the tenor of your comment was overly informal and self-gratifying considering the subject, a major theme of whose teachings was humility. It doesn't quite follow that being antagonistic is not engagement.
> Anyway, you got your chronology slightly wrong but only slightly, so very much well done, and I mean that genuinely, and it only erred in where you placed Acts, which contains the earliest Christian writings. (That we know of (so far))
"The earliest possible date for Luke-Acts is around 62 AD,[citation needed] the time of Paul's imprisonment in Rome, but most scholars date the work to 80–90 AD on the grounds that it uses Mark as a source, looks back on the destruction of Jerusalem, and does not show any awareness of the letters of Paul (which began circulating late in the first century); if it does show awareness of the Pauline epistles, and also of the work of the Jewish historian Josephus, as some believe, then a date in the early 2nd century is possible."[1]
"The Gospel of Mark... is usually dated through the eschatological discourse in Mark 13: most scholars interpret this as pointing to the First Jewish–Roman War (66–74 AD) that would lead to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, with the composition of Mark taking place either immediately after the destruction (the majority position) or during the years immediately prior."[2]
"A majority of scholars agree that Galatians was written between the late 40s and early 50s, although some date the original composition to c. 50–60."[3]
"The Epistle to Philemon was composed around AD 57-62 by Paul while in prison at Caesarea Maritima (early date) or more likely from Rome (later date) in conjunction with the composition of Colossians."[4]
"Regardless of the literary unity of the letter, scholars agree that the material that was compiled into the Epistle to the Philippians was originally composed in Greek, sometime during the 50s or early 60s AD."[5]
The earliest surviving subject materials are the authentic Pauline Epistles, and the oldest surviving Gospel is the one attributed to John Mark. It has been theorized and argued that a lost Gospel, a gospel of sayings, known as the Q source,[6] was composed earlier or around the same time as Mark, with the Gospel of Thomas a candidate for the Q source, but most place the date of Thomas' composition after the 2nd Century, and there is no consensus on whether the Q source existed. The earliest recorded words attributed to Jesus are found in Matthew 5-7, portions of the Sermon on the Mount[7] ("Blessed are the cheesemakers...")[8]
I reiterate my recommendation of that book by Pheme Perkins. Acts contains the oldest Christian traditions. Oral traditions, natch.
Your comments on my tone are bewildering in their absolute irrelevance - discussing the historical Jesus doesn't require reverence or adherence to the themes of Christianity, like how
discussing the historical Muhammad doesn't require me to adhere to the shahada, nor consider dogs unclean.
But hey, maybe you're neurodiverse, or maybe you're just an asshole, but you do you.
If your objection to my tone was because of closely held personal beliefs, then I'm afraid you'll just have to build a bridge and get over it.
> Acts contains the oldest Christian traditions. Oral traditions, natch.
The Oral Tradition hypothesis holds that where Matthew and Luke agree against Mark, rather than using a Q Source, the source is oral traditions. Prior to Mark and the letters of Paul, surely there had to be oral traditions passed on for decades. Luke may refer to these in the first two verses of his gospel.
But since the synoptic gospels all attest together to a number of events, known as the Triple Tradition, including Jesus' baptism and crucifixion, and many details in between, and Acts begins with the replacement of Judas with Matthias, detailing further events only after this event, I don't see how the earliest oral traditions could be found in Acts.
Clearly the baptism, temptation, gathering of disciples, etc., all occurred prior to Mathias elected to replace Judas, and if drawn at least partially from oral tradition, how could the later traditions predate the earlier? Without earlier oral traditions including key elements from Jesus' life, how could oral traditions concerning much later events in Acts begin to develop?
Oral traditions detailing the spread of the gospel predating the oral traditions of the gospels themselves is difficult to imagine and implies early Christians developed what necessarily then becomes a backstory, or prequel, namely Jesus' ministry, only after developing the oral traditions concerning the oral transfer of those earlier events. That would be a neat trick, as the narratives about the oral transfer of those chronologically earlier narratives somehow would predate the content of the oral transfer detailed in Acts.
The distinction between spoken and written seems a) arbitrary and b) entirely irrelevant to a comment section on a website. I'm writing conversationally, comments aren't technical documentation or tenders, they're comments. Observations in passing.
Being honest, when you opened with... ...whatever your thinking there was, I immediately shut down on engagement.
Genuine feedback - you know your shit, so just lead with that, not the part where you decide to lead with "You started a sentence with 'yeah', and that's wrong". It helps establish a rapport.
Anyway, you got your chronology slightly wrong but only slightly, so very much well done, and I mean that genuinely, and it only erred in where you placed Acts, which contains the earliest Christian writings. (That we know of (so far))
Anyhoo, I'm a big fan of this book if you've not read it yet: https://www.amazon.com/Reading-New-Testament-Pheme-Perkins/d...
But I suspect you may have.