There are 33 comments.

1. Member
   Stina

   @CM

   1:45 PM EDT ⋅ May 1, 2017

   David Limbaugh (View Comment):
   I should add — Jesus died in his early thirties. If the Gospels were written 20 to 30 to 40 or even 60 years later in the case of John, the writers would have been in their 50s but not much older than 90 (John).

   Also, Judaic tradition dictated that rabbies start their ministry at the age of 30 (Jeremiah, Ezekiel) who would gather younger disciples to teach before sending them on their own ministry.

   So its possible some of the contemporaries of Christ were even younger than he was.

2. Member
   Saint Augustine

   @SaintAugustine

   8:03 PM EDT ⋅ May 1, 2017

   A-Squared (View Comment):

   Saint Augustine (View Comment):

   A-Squared (View Comment):
   Did I hear David Limbaugh say that the Gospels were written by contemporaries of Jesus?

   I thought that the conventional wisdom was that the earliest Gospel was written some 30 to 70 years after Jesus died.

   The conventional wisdom may well be wrong–or no longer conventional. But even 30-70 years before committing to hard copy is possible for contemporaries. (Naturally, if any of them wait a full 70 years they’ll have to be young starting out and old finishing off.)

   I understand. My question was poorly stated, but there are at least two underlying questions. 1) Do people of faith accept that conventional wisdom as the correct timeline for the writing of the Gospels? . . .

   We have to make a distinction between people of faith who don’t take the authority of Scripture very seriously and those who do.  Those who don’t, as a general rule, accept all conventional scholarly wisdom.

   Those who do take the authority of Scripture, not so much.  Count me among this group of believers!

   Now I do take scholarship seriously.  But from what little I know of the scholarship in the area its findings are fully compatible with early dates for the four Gospels–such as could easily have been written by contemporaries.

   The major exceptions to this among scholars are generally not coming from an objective assessment of the evidence, but from a perspective ruling out the possibility of miracles or of prophecy.

   It just so happens, sadly, that sometimes, when enough scholars rule out miraculous works of G-d prior to their assessment of the empirical evidence, the conventional scholarly wisdom can be wrong.

   In @mjbubba‘s thread “Introduction to Christian Prayer” we talked about this.  Comment # 190 and environs give more of my views on the subject.

3. Inactive
   Keith SF

   @KeithSF

   2:44 PM EDT ⋅ May 3, 2017

   Reno!? @jameslileks I’m so disappointed! You know there are several of us Ricochetti in the Reno-Tahoe area; we might have arranged some small meet-up. Maybe next time:-)