But this is not actually what we are talking about now let the leaders of Christian confessions be preoccupied by this. But rather about finally cleansing the Teaching of Jesus from the age-old deposits of Judaism and presenting it in the form in which it could be preached by Jesus to his disciples if possible. And I must say right away that this opportunity is very limited and small.
Sources
If we look the truth in the eye, there are practically no extra-biblical historical sources of information about Jesus, except for two quotations from the Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus, one of which is recognized as a later forgery. As for the conventionally biblical (that is, canonical and apocryphal) sources, I consider it proven in the revolutionary works of doctors Marcus Vincent, Mattius Klinkhardtand Dieter T. Roth, as well as their great predecessors, Garnak, Whayett, Nocks and Paul-Louis Couchoud, that all synoptic gospels are late (not earlier than 150 AD) compilations of the gospel of the Lord by Marcion, dating back to 140, ie, the sources are certainly secondary and deliberately distorted, and therefore do not have value as valid. The very gospel of the Lord (by Marcion), too, has the traces of the early Judaizing, its origin, apparently, being obliged to the early Christian messianic Judeo-Christianity, originally inclined to commitment to faith of our fathers in the Jewish tribal god Yahweh-Jehovah. The gospel of John is earlier (this assertion will be substantiated below) and therefore deserving more trust, however, there are easily distinguishable birthmarks of editorial Judaizing edits in it as well, which, as a rule, have the form of crude illogical inclusions of categorical imperatives of the truth of the Jewish faith we will mark in the process of text analysis. And finally, ev. Thomas, not included in the canon of the New Testament because of its clearly pronounced anti-Jewish orientation. Nevertheless, being the most ancient text of the records of Jesus, it appears more credible as the source of the greatest reliability and closeness to what Jesus really could teach than the other gospels. Thus, as our sources, we will most of all use Thomas, with reservations John, and finally, conditionally, the Marcion gospel of the Lord, trying to cleanse all this from Judaization and preserve everything that can be attributed by us to Jesus. It is also possible to consider individual sayings from the canonical synoptic gospels, which, although they are reliable sources of the second row, nevertheless, may contain some elements of sources that have not survived to this day, but existed during the second half of the second century. An example of such a lost source is the collection of the records of Jesus in five volumes of Papias of Hierapolis, mentioned by Eusebius of Caesarea in the History of the Church.
Dating sources
The classical dating of the canonical gospels, adopted in modern biblical studies, reads: The time of creation cannot be reliably established, but ", and this but is followed by the coined phrase most scientists are inclined to think which means more or less justified guesses. It is useless and senseless to cite literature here, it is so vast over the past approximately five centuries, starting from the 17th century almost from Spinoza it will be enough to refer to Metzgers cornerstone work The Canon of the New Testament. And what is this dating? Matthew as it is believed, the earliest is attributed to the 5060s, Mark to the 6070s, Luke, respectively, to the 7080s, and poor undignified John, considered unreliable [8] as much as 90100 AD.
However, the arguments in favor of these datings are very limited. In fact, upon closer inspection, there is alas! just one argument, considered indisputable, in favor of the early dating of the Gospels to the middle or end of the first century. This is two citations of [9]Papias of Hierapolis (70155), the author of lost Jesus records in five volumes, mentioned in Church History by Eusebius of Caesarea [10]. One claims that Papias wrote down the memories of Jesus from the oral tradition, not trusting the written evidence: I understood that books would not do me as much benefit as a living voice that remains in my soul. Another is about the sources of the records he collected (this is a quote from his quotes in the History of Eusebius): " In his book he also reports other words of the Lord in the transmission of the aforementioned Aristion, as well as the stories of Presbyter John. We refer inquisitive people to them, but we consider it necessary to immediately add to everything that has been said about the Evangelist Mark. Here is what the elder (John) said: Mark was Peters translator; he accurately wrote down everything that he remembered from what was said and done by the Lord, but not in order, for he himself did not hear the Lord and did not walk with Him. Later, he accompanied Peter, who taught as circumstances required, and did not intend to arrange the words of Christ in order. Mark was not at all wrong, writing everything down the way he remembered; he only cared not to miss anything and not convey anything incorrectly. This is what Papias says about Mark; about Matthew, he reports the following: Matthew wrote down Jesus conversations in Hebrew, and translated them as best he could. He also uses the First Epistle of John, as well as Peter, and tells about a woman who was accused before the Lord of many sins. This story is in the Gospel of the Jews. I considered it necessary to add all this to what has been said.
From these passages, which are, I remind you, the only indisputable argument in favor of early dating of the Synoptic Gospels, it becomes obvious and taken for granted that these Mark and Matthew could not be the author of the Gospel; one wrote down everything in a row, and certainly not in the form of an unfolding chronological story, but in the form of separate, unrelated memories, perhaps containing some eventful episodes, but not in the chronological order of a single history; about the other Eusebius can hardly be believed at all, since today it has already been established for sure that the Gospel of Matthew, written in Hebrew, is a reverse translation from Greek. And the conversations of Jesus, in the first place, are not a composite story of His life, which the canonical Gospel from Matthew is meant to be, and secondly, Jesus Himself preached in the Aramaic, and it is unlikely that Matthew (if this is the same Matthew, the tax collector) would have written them down in the sacred language of the Jews, being a traitor to his people and an outcast, if you believe that he was a publican One would rather believe that he wrote in Greek than in Hebrew. According to most scholars, the Gospel of Matthew was not written by eyewitnesses. And the authorship of Luke will be mentioned in detail later. As for the other, controversial arguments and second-tier evidence of early dating synoptics, they are considered in detail and convincingly refuted in the fundamental work of Dr. Marcus Vincent [11], and are summarized in the work already cited by us by Dr. Evlampiev[12]. No other direct documentary evidence of the existence of the synoptic gospels previously to 140 AD simply not exist in nature. It is necessary to understand. At the same time, we must pay tribute to the fact that modern researchers, analyzing the above testimonies of Papias of Hieropolis, come to the unequivocal conclusion that the records of the utterances of Jesus Christ made by Matthew and Mark, which are mentioned in quotations from his work, can not be the Gospels, that included into the New Testament.