> so we we are looking at 40 to 60 years after that then it would be within living memory Again that is the conservative perspective. One that I don't actually

> so we we are looking at 40 to 60 years after that then it would be within living memory Again that is the conservative perspective. One that I don't actually think looks likely. We also no that you can have cults develop a whole host of false believes in far less time. And just because it is in theoretical living history, doesn't mean that itself proves that the documents themselves are actually deeply informed by that history. Also, for most historical documents, where we hear about a guy going around doing magic, we don't tend to think 'ah this must be detailed oral history'. And the documents themselves show a huge amount of mystification. Also, conservatives have to defend these dates, because if they don't, all the huge amount of church history built on top of those assumption collapses like a house of cards. There is so much mythology built on these foundations. > Presumably source material would be even earlier. Nobody question if 'source material' existed. But you can't just assume it existed and then assume what's in it. That's not how history works. Yes it would be awesome to have documents from that time period, from within the movement itself, but we don't. The fact is we have virtually no confirmed evidence from the first century. And you can't just take 'Church tradition' as a substitute. Because that is a mythological history built by the church built over generations. We have a lot more in the second century and the waste majority of that, isn't interested in the gospels or even the Pauline epistles. That is troubling for the assumption that by 70AD there was a document that everybody considered the most important document very close from the source. You would think if we had such good evidence of Jesus own direct words, people would talk about that much more. But they don't. > Agreed, and there is good reason to think that, but some are generally accepted as written by Paul, right? The point of studying it is to try and work out which are which. Yes. But just because we have some writing with some original content from Paul, doesn't mean the other names attached to other documents are also correct.