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To: ksen
I am sorry that the testimony of John's contemporaries that he was around after 70AD is not good enough.

In other places Eusebius disputes the opinion that Revelation was written by the Apostle John. And this despite the fact Irenaeus (who claims to have known Polycarp, who knew John) was certain that the Apostle wrote It. For some reason, obviously compelling to Eusebius, he felt justified in contradicting Irenaeus’s emphatic statements regarding the Johannine authorship of Revelation. Eusebius’s countering of Irenaeus’s witness in this area surely indicates that this great chronicler of the Church did not conceive of Irenaeus as above reproach on historical matters.

In Against Heresies we read a very unusual historical statement: For how had He disciples, if He did not teach? And how did He teach, if He had not a Master’s age? For He came to Baptism as one Who had not yet fulfilled thirty years, but was beginning to be about thirty years old; (for so Luke, who bath signified His years, bath set it down; Now Jesus, when He came to Baptism, began to be about thirty years old:) and He preached for one year only after His Baptism: complet- ing His thirtieth year He suffered, while He was still young, and not yet come to riper age. But the age of 30 years is the first of a young man’s mind, and that it reaches even to the fortieth year, everyone will allow: but after the fortieth and fiftieth year, it begins to verge towards elder age: which our Lord was of when He taught, as the Gospel and all the Elders witness, who in Asia conferred with John the Lord’s disciple, to the effect that John had delivered these thingsunto them: for he abode with them until the times of Trajan. And some of them saw not only John, but others also of the Apostles, and had this same account from them, and witness to the aforesaid rela- tion. Whom ought we rather to believe? These, being such as they are, or Ptolemy, who never beheld the Apostles, nor ever in his dreams attained to any vestige of an Apostle?

The careful detail he meticulously recounts in his argument, and the reference to the eyewitness accounts, should be noted. Yet, no respected New Testament scholar asserts that the biblical record allows for a fifteen year or more ministry for Christ, or of His having attained an age in excess of forty. We must vigorously assert that Irenaeus was “strangely mistaken about the age of Jesus.”

31,634 posted on 03/04/2002 10:46:08 AM PST by vmatt
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To: vmatt
In other places Eusebius disputes the opinion that Revelation was written by the Apostle John. And this despite the fact Irenaeus (who claims to have known Polycarp, who knew John) was certain that the Apostle wrote It. For some reason, obviously compelling to Eusebius, he felt justified in contradicting Irenaeus’s emphatic statements regarding the Johannine authorship of Revelation. Eusebius’s countering of Irenaeus’s witness in this area surely indicates that this great chronicler of the Church did not conceive of Irenaeus as above reproach on historical matters.

Might be a good idea to let everyone know from where this cut and paste comes from.

31,653 posted on 03/04/2002 11:18:29 AM PST by Invincibly Ignorant
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To: vmatt
In Against Heresies we read a very unusual historical statement: For how had He disciples, if He did not teach? And how did He teach, if He had not a Master’s age? For He came to Baptism as one Who had not yet fulfilled thirty years, but was beginning to be about thirty years old; (for so Luke, who bath signified His years, bath set it down; Now Jesus, when He came to Baptism, began to be about thirty years old:) and He preached for one year only after His Baptism: complet- ing His thirtieth year He suffered, while He was still young, and not yet come to riper age. But the age of 30 years is the first of a young man’s mind, and that it reaches even to the fortieth year, everyone will allow: but after the fortieth and fiftieth year, it begins to verge towards elder age: which our Lord was of when He taught, as the Gospel and all the Elders witness, who in Asia conferred with John the Lord’s disciple, to the effect that John had delivered these thingsunto them: for he abode with them until the times of Trajan. And some of them saw not only John, but others also of the Apostles, and had this same account from them, and witness to the aforesaid rela- tion. Whom ought we rather to believe? These, being such as they are, or Ptolemy, who never beheld the Apostles, nor ever in his dreams attained to any vestige of an Apostle?

All I can say is "wow".

31,655 posted on 03/04/2002 11:20:54 AM PST by Invincibly Ignorant
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