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Proof of Jesus?

the correspendence between Seneca and Paul

Hi,

Tri Unity said:
How did Steven create a straw man? What he stated was mostly in agreement with the dates you have suggested... he said "before 70 AD", which is also what your dates are suggesting. What is the argument here? You seem to be agreeing with Steven yet you have called his argument straw man... Steven has denied the later dates (post 70 AD), which is also agreed in the dates you have shown. What is your point?
Right. The first link, leaderu, has generally reasonable dates, except two books are placed after 70 AD (John Arthur Thomas Robinson places John as the first Gospel, while I am not sure of that, I definitely would reject the post 70 AD dating.) There were some other concerns, but basically you are right .. they (leaderu, the one that is clear) are offering early dates that are far better than the current "scholarship consensus". And they attempt to be consistent with the New Testament text, which the standard scholarship rejects as including forgeries in some epistles and other unbelief approaches.

And I also have no idea what straw man is blowing in the wind.

=========================

Incidentally, on 1st century literature and evidences, I just did a little study on the purported correspondence between Seneca and Paul, where Ehrman has a few pages taking the forgery stance. I probably will put in a second post on the TC-Alternate forum, the first was on textualcriticism.

So far, I think the question actually hangs mostly on whether or not there are historical or chronological problems in the correspondence. If not, the level of detail virtually precludes the possibility of a 4th-century forgery. Stylistic claims have a tendency to be special pleading, the hard facts on the ground are often the real concern in authenticity questions. e.g. To be a little wild to give an example, if the book of Acts had a note about "tell Alexander the Great...." then you would know that the writer was writing later, and was all mixed up.

The study was actually an off-shoot of whether Mark's Gospel was originally written in Latin, or a Graeco-Latin dialect. The evidence for that is quite strong.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven
 
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Re: the correspendence between Seneca and Paul

And I also have no idea what straw man is blowing in the wind.

Free has a tendency to challenge people before he understands the subject. The straw man appears to be a spontaneous reflex.

Incidentally, on 1st century literature and evidences, I just did a little study on the purported correspondence between Seneca and Paul, where Ehrman has a few pages taking the forgery stance. I probably will put in a second post on the TC-Alternate forum, the first was on textualcriticism.

The Seneca-Paul letters are intriguing. They do not appear to be adding any new doctrine; which is what always occurs in a forgery. They do not appear to be stating anything unusual historically; which is also what you would expect from a forgery. What do you mean by the TC-Alternate forum?

God Bless
 
Re: the correspendence between Seneca and Paul

Hi,

Tri Unity said:
The Seneca-Paul letters are intriguing. They do not appear to be adding any new doctrine; which is what always occurs in a forgery. They do not appear to be stating anything unusual historically; which is also what you would expect from a forgery. What do you mean by the TC-Alternate forum?
textualcriticism and TC-Alternate are two forums dedicated to textual matters on yahoogroups. You can find them simply by googling the names. TC-Alternate is more open-ended, however on this topic I put one post in each forum. So far, I do not see any real hard errors in the correspondence. The lack of hard errors (chronology, names, titles, etc.) is actually a strong argument for authenticity, there are some previous writings on the topic that would need examination before I would come to any definitely conclusion.

Yours in Jesus,
Steven



 
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