Redating the Gospels.Oxford -- Writing in the US Catholic weekly The Wanderer for February 13, Paul Likoudis points out that the hundred years' war Hundred Years' War (1337–1453) Intermittent armed conflict between England and France over territorial rights and the issue of succession to the French throne. It began when Edward III invaded Flanders in 1337 in order to assert his claim to the French crown. on the Gospels, led by Rudolf Bultmann Noun 1. Rudolf Bultmann - a Lutheran theologian in Germany (1884-1976) Bultmann, Rudolf Karl Bultmann who said that "we can know practically nothing about Jesus' life and personality," has produced predictable results: religious indifference, agnosticism agnosticism (ăgnŏs`tĭsĭzəm), form of skepticism that holds that the existence of God cannot be logically proved or disproved. Among prominent agnostics have been Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, and T. H. and atheism atheism (ā`thē-ĭz'əm), denial of the existence of God or gods and of any supernatural existence, to be distinguished from agnosticism, which holds that the existence cannot be proved. . Typical of the Bultmann-inspired Catholic exegetes, he says, is Fr. Jerome Murphy O'Connor, who declared in the U. S. Catholic for December 1996 that the Gospels are "mythical embellishments," that Jesus did not know He was God or where His power came from, that Mary considered Him an embarrassment to the family, and much more. At the core of the dissident biblical exegesis exegesis Scholarly interpretation of religious texts, using linguistic, historical, and other methods. In Judaism and Christianity, it has been used extensively in the study of the Bible. Textual criticism tries to establish the accuracy of biblical texts. which has produced such disastrous results is a refusal to believe that the Gospels are eyewitness accounts. This refusal is challenged by a new book, Eyewitness of Jesus: Amazing New Manuscript Evidence About the Origin of the Gospel, published by Doubleday in 1996. It deals with a small piece of papyrus at Magdalen College, Oxford, the oldest fragment of St. Matthew's Gospel in existence. The book was written by Carsten Peter Thiede The Revd. Prof. Carsten Peter Thiede MA OCF KStJ (8 August 1952 West Berlin - 14 December 2004 Paderborn) was a foremost New Testament scholar, widely recognized as a pioneer in his field. Also a member of PEN and a Knight of Justice in the Order of St. and Matthew D'Ancona. Thiede pinpointed the writing style to the time of Jesus' life; moreover, the author used KS, an abbreviated form of Kyrios, to refer to Jesus as Lord God, meaning that he believed Jesus is divine. Thiede and D'Ancona write, "Bultmann was wrong: the authors of the Gospel could hear far more than only `the faintest whisper of Jesus' voice'. Indeed, the first readers of St. Matthew may have heard the very words which the Nazarene preacher spoke during his ministry. . ." They conclude that there is good reason to suppose that St. Matthew's Gospel was written not long after the crucifixion and certainly before the destruction of the temple in A. D. 70; that St. Mark's was distributed early enough to reach Qumran; and that the Gospel according to St. Luke belonged to the first generation of Christian codices co·di·ces n. Plural of codex. . That restores the old order and challenges the new. Briefly, they say that these are the first stirrings of a major scholarly reappraisal. |
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