On Sun, 18 Apr 2004, Michael Torrie wrote: > On Sun, 2004-04-18 at 01:18, Scott K wrote: > > Scholars date most new testament works after 70 CE* [snip] > > They don't date them c. 70 CE because they have > > evidence that puts authorship there, but because they cannot appear to > > accept any of the spiritual evidence provided by the text.
This sort of one-sided thinking goes both ways, in my opinion. Some scientists might date the gospels after 70 CE because of the internal references to events that happened in 70 CE (although personally I think there's enough other evidence to date them post-70 CE), but Mormon scholars do the same in reverse sometimes. Regarding this issue, for example: > I don't much care if it's AD or CE, because the calendar is not accurate > anyway. The birth of Christ is anywhere from 6 BCE to 2 BCE depending > on who you talk to. In the interest of fostering good will amongst my > many non-Christian friends, I generally use BCE and CE in anything other > than a Church context. it's been pretty much well-established that the birth of Christ was before 2 or so BCE, but James E. Talmage believed that he was born exactly April 6, 1 BCE, based on the date given in D&C 20:1 (I think he talks about it in "Jesus the Christ" IIRC). I think that's pretty common in the Church--to completely ignore scientific evidence in favor of "chapter and verse". To me, that's at least as harmful, if not more, as refusing to "accept any spiritual evidence" in such matters. ~ ross ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
