Philosophos, thank you for your patients, I appreciate you taking the time to start the topic. I haven't forgotten about you, merely been pre-occupied recently. But enough of that, let's get to the meat which I'm sure you want to do.

I can't tell what your argument is against my statement, Philosophos. There is a strong silence against the Bibles prior to the second century...you admit it by stating nobody wrote about them before the second century. Unless you are stating that not many people wrote...period...before the second century which would still make my case, although quite untrue as we have a number of writings from the first century mainly from Gnostics who refer to Christ as a spiritual revealer of the Gnosis...a second Adam. You recall some of our dialog with gdon on IG's board about this a year ago? I recall you arguing that very point with me.

The point is lack of evidence prior to the second century, mainly mid-second centur, is enough to vindicate any earlier date then the very hind end of the first century for the writing of the synoptic Gospels. Clement wasn't even written until the hind end...if not LATER then that. (Some place Clement as late as 120 CE) And not even Clement knows of any particular Gospels, save what he has heard from Oral Tradition, in fact it is written by many early second century Christians that their knowledge of Christ is through oral tradition and what they've heard from others.

Paul himself states that he did not recieve knowledge of Christ from any man or from any man, but through his vision. He speaks of this in Galations. And we both used to agree (I still feel this position is 99% true) that Paul was a Gnostic who did not even concieve the idea of a historical personality as a Jesus. In fact he seems oblivious to the idea of such a personality which was supposed to have lived merely 20-30 years prior.

He would not have met anybody who was yet alive during the supposed life of Christ, as in Rome the average life span of a person was not more then 20-30 years old. Only if they survived the rough and rugged life as a youth would they perhaps reach the age of 40. At thirty-two as it would be had he actually existed, Jesus would have been an old man.

You can also check out the statistics HERE from the University of Texas. There are some nice graphs here.

All of this goes against the idea that somebody wrote an account prior to Paul, and that Paul himself knew of nobody who was - or rather would have been - present at the time of Jesus' existence.

Without revealing any more about my dissertation (which deals some into this subject - and you can always wait until it is published or when part of my explanation airs on FTM - which you can subscribe to and get early on) there is no way a historical personality of Christ existed more then perhaps 3-5 years prior to the fall of the temple in 70 CE. I would argue that the idea of a historical personality wouldn't exist until the very turn of the century because even in Clement there are still many esoteric themes which preside over the writings. The Gnostics were still very engrained in society and popular up until the turn of the third century.

Anyway, hope that helps you understand my point about dating the Gospels. This doesn't even include the amount of internal evidence present within them to date them later then the fall of Jerusealm.