Now I want to make clear - I am still the 'Agrippa guy.' I am not 'changing my mind' on anything. But the one thing that my recent run in with one unnamed dysangelic missionary taught me is that I can't allow myself to completely close my mind to anything - including the idea that Jesus really was the Christ as the Western tradition suggests.
No, I am not 'going soft.' It's just that I don't want to end up like this guy:
By this I mean I don't want the ugliness of dogma to color one of my most cherished attributes - i.e. my open mindedness. Indeed Nietzsche once warned against the dangers of becoming a monster in the process of fighting a monster. I can't imagine what it must be like to wake up in the morning and look at that puss staring back at you in the mirror ...
In any event, in order to demonstrate that I am not just another huckster out there (and whose name will forever go unmentioned) promoting only my version of the truth I started to consider - could an argument for the gospels being written by a prominent Roman official be made? Of course others before me have done so, but I guess the question came down to something like if I was going to promote such an idea what would be my take?
Well to begin with I would probably focus on the gospel of Luke because Luke is such an enigmatic figure. His gospel - as Al Jabbar notes - was obviously written after the others or at least 'others' were already established. This same figure was also responsible for writing Acts so right away one could argue that 'Luke' was involved in shaping not only the canon but very identity of the religion.
Of course I subscribe to the notion that Luke was established in the second century. However the author or editor clearly could not have claimed to his contemporaries that 'this gospel was written yesterday in my basement.' There had to be an argument for the gospel having been produced in the first century or by someone who was a witness to the original eyewitnesses of the events of the gospel.
As such I wasn’t thinking of the date of final editing of the canonical Luke, I was thinking of the date the reader is expected to calculate. Could it be assumed that the names of two suitable persons that would still have been round about twenty years after the death of Jesus, the date the reader of the canonical Luke is expected to guess at, were chosen some time after their death as a convenient literary device? The start of ch. III of the canonical Luke has been thought by some to show knowledge of Josephus. Wouldn’t an editor familiar with Josephus assume the same familiarity on the part of some readers?
Remember the content of Luke aside from the opening and aside from editorial additions here and there must be old, since Marcion’s text of the Gospel opened with the second pericope of ch. III, and what Marcion is said not to have is not much compared to the whole book. In the time of Irenaeus it must have been known that something with much of the content of the canonical Luke had been round for a very long while.
There is still the difficulty that the High Priest that tried Jesus was Caiaphas (Caiphas and Caipha in the Western Text), whereas the High Priests at the Passover of 37 A.D. were Jonathan and then Theophilus. Can Caiaphas plausibly be identified with Jonathan? Caiaphas was son-in-law of Annas according to John, and Josephus makes Jonathan the son of Annas/Ananus. Has Josephus deliberately duplicated the same person?
Another note on the plausibility of an editor hinting that the author of the Gospel is Vitellius, as a literary device. Vitellius had his headquarters in Antioch, and went to Jerusalem from time to time. Wouldn’t it seem reasonable to a reader later on for Vitellius to have known what to put in the book of Acts? Also, he had an unblemished record as Governor of Syria. Also, if the supposed author of Luke and Acts was meant to be a foreigner but devoted to the religion of Israel, Vitellius again had a perfect record. Also, he is on record in Josephus as having dismissed Caiaphas and as having sent Pilate back to Rome. Theophilus has nothing recorded in Josephus to his disadvantage.
Josephus does duplicate people when his reconstruction of events or chronology runs into difficulties, e.g. Simon the Just and Agrippa. The dismissal of Pilate by Vitellius was at the time of death of Tiberius, and the dismissal of Caiaphas and replacement by Jonathan must have been at the same time. But the dismissal of Jonathan and replacement by Theophilus was at the time of death of Tiberius. If Caiaphas in one passage is not the same as Jonathan in another passage, Jonathan must have been High Priest for one day, which is just silly. Also, there is no date and no context in Josephus for the execution of Jesus, except that it is at “about the same time”. The two events, the attack on the Samaritans and the execution of Jesus, must have been two simultaneous events, or the same event.
Anyway that's my take on that theory. Back to being 'the Agrippa guy' ...
