JAT Robinson wrote a book titled
Redating the New Testament. As conceived, it is a first rate piece of liberal biblical scholarship, pushing the envelope and trying to tease the subject out to new heights of sophistication. Its method is simple:
assume that everything in the New Testament derives from before AD 70, and then go bonking on the head all the arguments to the contrary. (Someone has, legally or not, placed the
entire book online so that you can verify this description.)
There is no problem with Robinson
qua Robinson. The problem comes when these hidebound conservatives footnote Robinson. They have understood neither where Robinson starts, how he operates, nor really where he ended up. They cite Robinson as, "scholar proves all of the NT dates before the destruction of Jerusalem!" Funny that, what began as an essay in creative thought, has ended up a footnote to decorate the dot at the end of a thousand ignorant apologetic arguments.
You see, Robinson published for the sake of stoking the fire and starting a conversation, and that he did successfully. Other scholars have posted their reviews, mentioned their own work, and continued on with the business of biblical scholarship. One scholar (whose name I am searching for now) was in the business of producing a manuscript on the dating of the New Testament, when he fell over dead. Others such as Raymond Brown are familiar with JAT Robinson's arguments, but are not persuaded.
I think we will never hear the end of JAT Robinson's supposed proof, but one could just as easily have expected JAT Robinson to have performed the reverse trick, and "proven" that all the New Testament dates after AD 70. I'm sure, if his patience were long enough, and if he knew how his work would be abused, Robinson would have enjoyed publishing that addendum to the original work.
3 Comments:
Perhaps I am a hideliberated apologist, but when I approach dates, I tend to have a bigger range than most. In my Acts, piece, for example, I conclude that Acts was written "somewhere between 62 and 90 A.D." I find the "deal breakers" on either end unpersuasive, such as the silence about Paul's fate or the supposed Marcion-response theory of Knox. Sometimes we should be satisfied with a 30 year range and hope for further illumination.
As for Robinson, it sounds like you are saying that he engaged in sort of thought experiment and produced arguments accordingly. Even if true, why is it so unreasonable that some find the arguments produced by the thought experiment persuasive? Most people who find Robinson persuasive refer to the lack of references to the fall of Jerusalem. While this did not convince me that the New Testament books must have been written earlier than 70 AD, it did factor into my decision that the Gospels and Acts might have been written before the event.
Perhaps you could explain why you find the arguments produced by Robinson so unpersuasive. I remember you responding to some of his points at Infidels on one occasion. I thought you made some good ones, but would like to see them again.
Layman
I found the name of the individual who died while producing a text on dating the NT. It is J. V. M. Sturdy. He is the one whose review of Robinson I posted to IIDB.
Actually, the most useful service Robinson performed was to reveal how very shaky most dating schemes are. They typically rest on the very assumptions that the dating of the materials is supposed to get around (e.g. there could be no prophecy vis-a-vis destruction of the temple, there could be no "institutional" church or theology of such until later). Robinson, though, has a good point in revealing how little of the NT really requires the destruction of the temple for it to remain logical. Only Hebrews argues from the "what if" of the temple's destruction. It is really a long apology for Christ as replacement of temple, but it certainly wouldn't have taken a bright Jew living in Roman Palestine after about 64 AD to guess that the Romans might invade and sack the temple. Arguing that Matthew is later base on Chapter 24 and the use of the word church, a LXX term, is thin evidence of any date.
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