rakovsky wrote: ↑Mon Dec 24, 2018 11:09 am
Shouldn't Papias' writings be dated to 95-140 AD, rather than 110-140 AD?
The Early Writings webpage says:
Schoedel writes about Papias (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 5, p. 140):
It is notable that Eusebius, in spite of his desire to discredit Papias,
still places him as early as the reign of Trajan (A.D. 98-117); and although later dates (e.g., A.D. 130-140) have often been suggested by modern scholars, Bartlet's date for Papias' literary activity of about A.D. 100 has recently gained support (Schoedel 1967: 91-92; Kortner 1983: 89-94, 167-72, 225-26).
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/papias.html
Wikipedia says:
The work of Papias is dated by most modern scholars to about
95–120.[7][8] Later dates were once argued from two references that now appear to be mistaken..... Eusebius refers to Papias only in his third book, and thus seems to date him
before the opening of his fourth book in 109. Papias himself knows several New Testament books, whose dates are themselves controversial, and was informed by John the Evangelist, the daughters of Philip and many "elders" who had themselves heard the Twelve Apostles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papias_of_Hierapolis#Date
I think we all have come to agree that Papias did not actually hear any apostles or disciples of Jesus directly, but heard stories that the second generation had relayed to him about them.
According to the common date for Jesus' period of activity, then, ca. 30 CE to 70 CE is 40 years, which is about one generation, then 70-110 is the second "generation." Of course, Christians liked to believe that their key figures lived to extreme ages, kind of throwing a wrench into any attempt to figure out where the "original" generation ends and the next one begins, but most folks in those days lived about 40-60 years.
Let's assume that Jesus' disciples/apostles were about the same age as he was, say 30 years old. This means that most if not all of them should be dead by 60 CE.
Those who carried on the torch after them would, again, have been at least in their 20s, maybe 30s, when they entered into their duties as elders and "evangelists." So they would be dying out by about 90 CE.
So, yes, Papias could have originally published his Notebooks in the 90s, but it could just as well be the 100s or 110s (I speak of decades). The later writer Hegesippus, for his part, did not write his notes for publication until he was an older man, IIRC.
In my opinion, Christianity as we know it from the NT had to have developed in reaction to the social conditions that prevailed in Judean dominated territory up to southern Syria, in consequence of the Judean rebellion. Give the Phoenix of the church 10 years to grow from the ashes, or 80 CE, as a start of developed Christian tradition (where Jesus is a divine redeemer, no longer an anointed Judean royal claimant).
Irenaeus was right, though, that the traditions Papias passed on of Jesus' teachings about a future kingdom of God on earth do resonate with Paul's preoccupation with the faithful (Judean and gentile) one day inheriting a bountiful promised land, although I am skeptical that Paul was a Christian himself.
The earliest Christians' desire to see a fruitful kingdom overseen by Jesus the anointed ruler, had over time experienced the crucible of the Judean war, morphing into a mystery cult.
The remnants of Paul's movement had also been decimated and beat up by the aftermath of that rebellion, even though they resided outside of southern Syria/Palestine.
The morphed Christian cult later interacted with, and absorbed into itself, Paul's orphaned movement of faithful gentiles longing to inherit the blessed age promised by God to Abraham's seed. So, and like a couple old widow/widowers, the two movements "married" out of convenience.
But I do not think that the idea of a fruitful messianic kingdom was quick to die out, even in the mystery cult of Jesus Christ, even though they seems to deny it to Judeans who would not renounce the law as they themselves had done.
A lot of what has been written by scholars are based on incredibly romantic (hence not realistic) notions about the earliest "christians." Even the traditions about the Judean wing of the Jesus movement, where Jesus was likely the anointed king of a still to come kingdom of God, was equally hokey and romantic, with the same incredibly long lives and halos around their heads as they incredulously believed was the case with their own gentile wing figures. It is almost as though that by the time the mystery-cult Christians realized that they were irrevocably divorced from Judaism, they had little memory of their founders and early leaders, and had to fabricate a back-history to 'explain" it away, and put distance between them and Judeans.
Yet scholars accept these traditions lock stock & barrel as if sacred in themselves, because it make them feel good and doesn't upset the faithful.
Amen!
DCH