Which surviving Christian documents are oldest, according to those who date Paul's writings to the 2nd century CE?

[ABuddhist]

I ask because I am curious. I expect that I may receive many answers.

[mlinssen]

Everything is dated via palaeography and the very first verifiable document that had been dated are the Lindisfarne gospels

Everything else is up for debate and hasn't been dated scientifically - nothing of it

[andrewcriddle]

Everything is dated via palaeography and the very first verifiable document that had been dated are the Lindisfarne gospels

Everything else is up for debate and hasn't been dated scientifically - nothing of it

The Dura Europus Gospel Harmony pretty well must be dated before the siege of Dura Europus 256 CE.

Andrew Criddle

[Secret Alias]

Unless of course "orthodox scholars" went to the ruins dug up somewhere and "planted" the fragment to confound the power and authority of mountainman years in anticipation of his advent. You guys do it for Morton Smith ...

[Benway]

I'd say Revelation, as there's some evidence supporting a date around the Jewish/Roman war of the first century. I tend to think that the gospels and Pauline epistles are compiled and revised from earlier sources, making them hard to date, but later than that in my opinion. Didache could be early, but again, it's been revised at some point.

[neilgodfrey]

I ask because I am curious. I expect that I may receive many answers.

I don't "date Paul's writings to the 2nd century" but I am open to that date as a possibility in part (a significant part but still only a part) because that is when we find the first independent attestation of them.

If we look first for independent attestation of Christian writings we find few (none?) of them on that basis datable to the first century.

If our second checkbox for dating is some explicit datable reference to their composition in the texts themselves, we come to the time of emperor Hadrian for apologies of Aristides and Justin.

Aristides refers to "a gospel" (singular, from memory) and Justin equates "gospels" to the "memoirs of the apostles"(unless "which are called gospels" is a gloss). In Dialogue with Trypho Justin further references the Book of Revelation.

That's as far as I've got with my own latest thoughts on the same question you ask here -- and since I'm one who is thought to "date Paul's letters to the second century" that's my response so far.

[schillingklaus]

No, Revelation is nowhere near a work of the first century; therefore, already Gustaaf Adolf van den Bergh van Eysinga realized that its content is symbolic as opposed to historical.

[neilgodfrey]

Continuing....

Justin Martyr is often said to provide the evidence for our gospels being known to him, and perhaps even a harmony of the canonical gospels. My own reading of Justin, though, leaves me wondering if interpreting Justin's words that way is largely wishful thinking. I had long been wanting to write a detailed response to those claims but before I got the chance I came across Cassels' Supernatural Religion, an Inquiry into the Reality of Divine Revelation and found he had written it all before me.

The most that I believe we can conclude from Justin is that he was aware of a collection or collections of discrete claims about the promise of Jesus through OT passages. I find too many problems arising if we try to interpret his writings as derived from a knowledge of our canonical gospels or even from any of our noncanonical ones.

The only NT writing he explicitly mentions is the Revelation of John and I think Witulski has demonstrated the inadequacy of a Domitian era dating of that work and given good reasons for dating it to the time of Hadrian, likely during the Bar Kochba war.

I am sure I must be overlooking some texts and evidence supporting their earlier dates and no doubt someone here (Andrew?) will point that out to me if I have.

The gospel that Aristides speaks of does not look like anything we know although it outlines Christian ideas (and none of our gospels are called "the gospel" and none of them say that the twelve went out to evangelize the world or that "God came down from heaven"; and one might also question whether our gospels are "teaching" texts as distinct from "narrative biographies"):

And it is said that God came down from heaven, and from a Hebrew virgin assumed and clothed himself with flesh; and the Son of God lived in a daughter of man. This is taught in the gospel, as it is called, which a short time was preached among them; and you also if you will read therein, may perceive the power which belongs to it. This Jesus, then, was born of the race of the Hebrews; and he had twelve disciples in order that the purpose of his incarnation might in time be accomplished. But he himself was pierced by the Jews, and he died and was buried; and they say that after three days he rose and ascended to heaven. Thereupon these twelve disciples went forth throughout the known parts of the world, and kept showing his greatness

But then we come to the gospel of Mark and it is from an entirely different planet and is surely a Jewish work about a Jewish messiah who suffers the same fate that the Jewish people had suffered at the hands of the Romans. If this work had been produced shortly after the war of 66-70 ce then for whatever reason it was picked up by Matthew and Luke (and finally John) who rewrote it to be fit consumption for a wider audience -- and they did so without Justin knowing about it, so likely after Justin. (Or is it too crazy to wonder if even the Gospel of Mark was written in the wake of Bar Kochba? -- I know Detering places its 13th chapter to that time but I think that 13th chapter is tied in so seamlessly with many threads to the rest of the gospel.)

[mlinssen]

Everything is dated via palaeography and the very first verifiable document that had been dated are the Lindisfarne gospels

Everything else is up for debate and hasn't been dated scientifically - nothing of it

The Dura Europus Gospel Harmony pretty well must be dated before the siege of Dura Europus 256 CE.

Andrew Criddle

Thanks Andrew! I didn't know of that one. Essentially still palaeography but at least there's circumstantial evidence to date the paper - and if solid it would attest to the burial (and hence likely resurrection)

It is a very puzzling fragment really, full of differences yet also similarities

[Leucius Charinus]

Everything is dated via palaeography and the very first verifiable document that had been dated are the Lindisfarne gospels

Everything else is up for debate and hasn't been dated scientifically - nothing of it

The Dura Europus Gospel Harmony pretty well must be dated before the siege of Dura Europus 256 CE.

Andrew Criddle

Thanks Andrew! I didn't know of that one. Essentially still palaeography but at least there's circumstantial evidence to date the paper - and if solid it would attest to the burial (and hence likely resurrection)

It is a very puzzling fragment really, full of differences yet also similarities

DP24

Dura Parchment 24 is a critical manuscript because it is understood to be dated by
archaeological stratiographic dating prior to the fall of Dura Europos 256–57 CE. It's dating thus does not rely on paleography in isolation as do the rest of the "Early Christian papyri". It was discovered on March 5, 1933 by Clark Hopkins’ wife, Susan, in a workman’s bucket. [1] It was presumed that it came “from the embankment, behind (west of) Block L8 and not far from Tower 18.” [1]

Hopkins writes: “How it got into the debris at that point remains a mystery, and how it happened to be preserved and then discovered is another.” [1]

Could DP24 have been introduced to Dura between the 3rd and the 20th century? We don’t know for sure despite the consensus opinion to the contrary. In any event the text is a harmony gospel and not a canonical gospel. This opens up further questions. Perhaps the four canonical gospels are derived from a single harmony gospel, and not the other way around?

[1] The Discovery of Dura-Europos, Clark Hopkins,1979