Merged Topic - Historical Reliability of the Gospels

[Randy Carson]

And what we have above is a perfect example of why I don't consider the criterion of embarrassment to be be even a weak argument: people say stupid shit all the time. They don't think what they're saying is stupid shit, but it's still stupid shit. This is stupid shit.

I have noticed this to be especially true in this forum. Kinda disappointing as I had hoped to see better responses from the long-time members.

Have you ever heard of the Q source hypothesis? It describes how Matthew and Luke may have drawn from not only Mark for Jesus's sayings, but also from a hypothetical source, Q, in addition to adding their own material.

I've been doing apologetics for a long time. Yes, I have heard of Q. And M and L.

However, as you must know since you are familiar with these things, Luke quotes nearly 250 passages verbatim from Mark. So, Mark had to have been written before gLuke and gLuke had to have been written before Acts and Acts had to have been written before the deaths of Peter and Paul in AD 64-65.

Your above question is loaded. It assumes dogmatically that the gospels were written at about the same time. There is nothing that shows this to be true, and textual criticism shows the opposite. Mark was clearly written first, and the two Matthew and James borrowed heavily from Mark, as well as including a new source (Q) and their own material. There is no collusion necessary, but they are also not multiple attestations. They are not independent accounts.

Of course they are. Four men working indenpendently wrote accounts that met the needs of the audiences to who their works were addressed. Luke and Matthew borrowed from Mark and (possibly) Q, but so what? They still had to decide what they would and would not include in their accounts. They weren't all sitting in the same classroom copying off one another's test papers.

This is also why your analysis of textual changes are bogus (as featured elsewhere on this forum), because it assumes that your pattern of descent is a tree â€"that authors draw from only a single, previous source and no otherâ€" when any schoolchild knows that you can use multiple sources for your work.

And it is stupid for you to assume that this is my position since I have repeatedly quoted Luke who is very clear in his prologue that "MANY" had written accounts prior to his efforts. Sheesh.

Cute. You try to bludgeon a complex and nuanced situation into this black-and-white, either/or situation. These kinds of arguments only work when the two choices are genuinely exclusive and exhaustive. In this case, they are not. It is both the case that it is just one story told multiple times, and those retellings are different in ways that cannot possibly all be true if they depicted a real event or scenario (the contradictions). That story retold multiple times is just that: A STORY. It doesn't refer to a real event at all.

What evidence can you present to prove your positive statement that the gospels do not refer to a real event at all?

Nonsense. I've already explained why your temple dating doesn't hold water. Even if I were to believe the majority opinion of biblical schollars, they put the writing of Mark (the earliest) at AD 70. Not "prior to" AD 70 â€" AT AD 70. That would put the most recent events of the gospels 40 years before that or more. That gives you a big problem for your eyewitness claim â€" it would make Mark a really old fucker by any definition at the time, writing about events at least 40 years in his past... assuming he wrote them at all.

Mark was the "hearer" of Peter. He recorded Peter's eyewitness account. See Papias for details.

And you know, I DID cover all this in another thread.

John could have been written as late as 110 AD. Also, isn't AD 95 getting a little late to be eyewitness testimony? That's about sixty years after the fact when the life expectancy of your average person was less than fifty. Add to that that John would need to be of age and pretty well established himself (~20 yo), it would put him well into his eighties. We also know the flakiness of episodic memory.

Apart from the fact that this was an account that John would have told repeatedly during the course of his lifetime (thereby reinforcing his memory), it is also true that John is VERY different from the others gospels. He was familiar with them, and so, he stressed some different things that resulted from his long years of reflection.

We don't really know when Paul was alive, let alone when he wrote any of his epistles, or indeed if any of his epistles are unadulterated by later redactors.

Have you ever read a book on this? How many Pauline epistles are UNCONTESTED by modern scholars?

This is another problem you have. Why do you assume that the Lukian passages in our modern manuscripts of Paul's epistles were part of his original? If the majority dating of the bible and Paul himself is to be believed, then the inclusion of Luke's passages in Paul is certainly a redaction, because Paul would have died (AD 67) before the first gospel (Mark) was even written (AD 70).

Um...that's kinda the point, isn't it? Scholars have dated Paul's letters based upon the dates of his missionary journeys. Consequently, if Paul is quoting gLuke in a letter that is definitively dated, then we can date gLuke, also.

And I have shown elsewhere why Mark was written prior to AD 70.

[Randy Carson]

I don't care how much you are whelmed.  You are still a prevaricator of half truths, willful ignorance, cherry picking, bullying and blindness.  Your 'research' comes to naught when you research only one side of a question or issue.

And I keep burying you with quotes BY the "other side" (ie, atheists) who have the stones to concede what any fool ought to know.

Except in Internet forums, apparently.

[Randy Carson]

Reading, I see that it never even occured to the Jews to look after these reports, on the remote possiblity that maybe the women who originally reported this missing body were (forgive me) hysterical. Would it not occur to them that the women simply gotten the wrong tomb, or they were frightened away by something and made something up? Wouldn't this be worth a look to confirm that the tomb was really empty? No, the only people to claim to have seen this empty tomb were Jesus's diciples.

If you ever bother to read the Book of Acts (and I doubt you have thus far), you would know that the Jews were actively trying to crush the Early Church. Peter, James and John were arrested, beaten, etc. James was eventually martyred. Stephen was stoned to death. A great persecution broke out against the early believers.

Now, if the Jews were eager to snuff out Christianity, all they had to do was to open the tomb and parade Jesus' body through the streets. But they didn't because they couldn't.

Consequently, they claimed that the disciples had stolen the body inadvertently giving enemy attestation to the fact that the tomb was empty.

[Randy Carson]

Again, you are assuming that any of the above were actual accounts, rather than repetitions of received stories. Nobody saw Jesus eat a fish or even claim to. They simply heard from a friend of a friend that Paul, or Luke, or Mark saw such an event. Even Paul may come to genuinely believe the event himself after constant repetition by fellow believers (but not witnesses) as a false memory even though it didn't happen to him. Such things occur in our world, even in a civilization that can read and write and launch space shuttles and go to the moon; is it really a stretch that the same may happen in a more primitive culture?

Luke recorded it after interviewing the eyewitnesses:

40 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. 41 And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate it in their presence.

Are you not familiar with what the scriptures actually say in this matter? Here is a brief passage from gJohn in which the author reveals his identity:

John 21:20-24
20 Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) 21 When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?”

22 Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” 23 Because of this, the rumor spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?”

24 This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.

So, John the apostle, an eyewitness, says that he is the author of the gospel bearing his name. He also recorded that Jesus cooked breakfast for the apostles on the shore of the lake. He also recorded:

26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”

28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Jesus rose from the dead physically.

Correction. They thought they knew. Even if it never happened to them, they can still come to believe the event as if it actually happened to them through the wonder of false memories. I have an aunt that for many years seriously believed that my grandparents were regularly giving birth to and ritually sacrificing their own babies, and asserted the same with the same fervor as the diciples proclaimed their convictions. She has since only recently come out of it, a period lasting many decades. This alone cuts your argument off at the knees.

Did any other family members believe those things?

Your aunt suffered, but she did so alone. The apostles did not share a hallucination or a delusion because the tricks of the mind do not affect others around us.

And thus, YOUR silly argument is dismissed.

[Gerard]

Yes and no.

First, there is every reason to consider the possibility that Jesus chose Matthew precisely because of his ability to read and write. It was not uncommon for teachers of antiquity to have disciples who recorded their teachings. The Q document, which contained sayings of Jesus, predated the gospels and was obviously compiled by someone.

Second, Jesus' teachings and sermons appear to be formed in the short, parable style that was commonly used by orators of antiquity because it facilitated recall.

Third, the disciples followed Jesus around for three years, so it's reasonable to think that they might have heard him preach the same message more than once in different towns and villages. Repetition is good for memorization. Repetition is good for memorization. Say it with me: Repetition is good for memorization.

Fourth, Jesus sent out the disciples on their own to preach in the towns around Galilee. So...what did they preach if not the same things that they had heard Jesus say? Did they do this entirely from memory? Or did they have a few outlines or notes from sermons they had heard him preach first?

Fifth, the era in question was an oral culture meaning that their memories were MUCH better than ours because they had to be. I barely know the phone numbers and a few birthdays of my family members because I don't have to store that with precise retrieval in my brain. I have an iPhone. In those days, people listened and remembered because they had to. There were no record, re-wind or pause buttons in their world.

FWIW, even today, people who practice can memorize the entire Qu'ran or massive portions of the OT. It's just not a skill that many of us have reason to develop.

Jesus and the writer of Matthew never met. Matthew would have said so if they did.

Gerard

[LostLocke]

Because we are not Jews, and the New Covenant abrogated the old.

Why, when I was Catholic, were the Ten Commandments hammered into us then? If we're not under the commandments, we're not under them.

[widdershins]

This is my first thread covering WHO wrote the gospels, and I have presented more information on this topic here than I have posted elsewhere.

Enjoy!

As I keep telling you, history is not a court.  They don't follow the same rules.

And the term "eyewitness account" applies ONLY to an event which "happened".  You can have an eyewitness account of an accident, for instance, but without the account you STILL KNOW than an accident happened.  What you are doing here is asserting that the incidents happened, now we must determine whether the people writing about it personally witnessed it.  We dispute that the incident ever happened.  You are starting this argument with the premise that the events in the Bible CANNOT BE pure fiction.  You have to back up a step.  FIRST you have to establish that an event ACTUALLY HAPPENED.  Only THEN can you move on to "Was the account of what happened the whole truth?  Are these eyewitnesses to these events?"

Essentially the argument you are making is like me asking if J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books were "eyewitness accounts" of the things that happened at Hogwarts.  The term "eyewitness account" does not apply to fiction, so you must FIRST lay out your argument that the events are not purely, 100% fiction; that there may be at least some truth to the stories.  It is only AFTER we have determined that "something" actually happened which inspired these stories that we can move on to determining whether or not the accounts are "accurate".  Are J.K. Rowling's accounts of Hogwarts "accurate" accounts of what happened?  Was she, herself an eyewitness or did she at least have access to eyewitnesses?  How the hell do you answer that?

You are a bit like an impetuous child.  You have all the patience in the world to stay here week after week and argue your case, but when it comes to giving an argument you have no patience at all.  You want to skip right to the end without doing any groundwork to actually build an argument.  Your every argument starts in the middle, at best.  Some of them start at the end.  I have yet to see you give a SINGLE argument which starts anywhere near the beginning.

[Gerard]

Because we are not Jews, and the New Covenant abrogated the old.

Which at least one uneducated Jew does not understand, apparently.

Tsss..... Randy, pleas don't go about calling people that....

Your point however is right.....

Gerard

[Gerard]

Why, when I was Catholic, were the Ten Commandments hammered into us then? If we're not under the commandments, we're not under them.

I think that this is about the Jewish Law (dietary and otherwise) that Paul told Christians not to bother with. Not so much about the 10 C's.

Gerard

[Mike Cl]

I think that this is about the Jewish Law (dietary and otherwise) that Paul told Christians not to bother with. Not so much about the 10 C's.

Gerard

And don't you find that odd?  Here I was under the impression Paul was the follower of Jesus, not the other way around.  Jesus did not say the OT was null and void. 

[Hakurei Reimu]

1 Corinthians is dated around AD 50-55. Since Jesus was crucified in AD 30, the letter was written 20-25 years after the death of Jesus.

Wait, what? First you said 1 Cor was dated 3-5 years after the crucifixion/resurrection, now it's 20-25 years? So you have no proof that 1 Cor was actually written 3-5 years after the resurrection.

Note that Paul reminds the Corinthians that he has given this basic message to them orally in the past and that he explicitly stated that what he is about to repeat in writing was received by him previously from others (presumably during one or both of his two trips to Jerusalem).

So he's been repeating this same story for years, huh? Interesting, because that's one of the conditions it takes for a story to change drastically through embellishments, according to the latest in psychology. For all we know, Paul's "eyewitness testimony" started out as secondhand accounts that grew more intimate in the retellings until it became his own eyewitness testimony.

And before you say, "This can't happen," we've seen this happen. Ancient peoples were as prone to this phenomenon as modern ones.

1. I can't believe you wasted your time typing that out.
2. We're not talking about the gospels, we're talking about the Book of Acts. Acts ends suddenly without recording the destruction of the Temple.

There's no reason to believe that the books of the bible were written in the order they appear in. Furthermore, since the book of acts is just that, a book of acts, it could be seen at the initial fleshings out of the Jesus myth.

A comprehenivie history of the region. The NT is nothing of the sort. See Josephus for that.

So you admit you can't use the lack of mention for the destruction of the temple as a way to date the gospels. Concession accepted.

Acts mentions the deaths of Stephen and James. Stephen would be unknown if not for this account. So, why did Luke record these two deaths, but not the deaths of the two most important figures in the early church?

Because they hadn't happened at the time the book was completed.

Not mentioning an event does not prove that the event did not happen at the time of the writing of a manuscript. Drop this line of argument. It will you avail you nothing.

Do some homework. You are ignorant.

I read the part you bolded. It does show something that looks like part of the traditional bible story, but in the bible, that same judgement ended up in Jesus getting nailed to the cross. Jesephus's account ends up with Jesus being made high priest. So either Josephus is not the credible source he claims to be, or the tale of Jesus has undergone some evolution (or even had multiple, divergent versions) since Josephus' time before it ended up where it is now. Choose your poison.

Oh, and Bart Ehrman, while he makes some interesting obersvations, consistently fails to weigh them against the fact that all of the bible manuscripts have been copied through the ages, where any two-bit monk with a holy agenda can do some creative correction.

Aristarchus and Demas were students of Paul. You know, like Timothy, Titus and Jude? Like Clement, Linus and Ignatius? And Papias and Polycarp?

They weren't Jesus' disciples and not part of the Twelve Apostles.

I know that, you ninny. I was wondering why they were being mentioned in the same breath as Luke and Mark, as if they were of the same station as Luke and Mark. That is, as if they were Jesus's diciples.

What do atheist scholars like Bart Ehrman and John Dominic Crossan say about the historical value of Josephus and Tacitus?

Here's Crossan:

"Jesus’ death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be. For if no follower of Jesus had written anything for one hundred years after his crucifixion we would still know about him from two authors not among his supporters. Their names are Flavius Josephus and Cornelius Tacitus.” (John Dominic Crossan, Co-founder of The Jesus Seminar, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography,145.)

Would we really? Even in the best of times, alternate history is more like alchemy than actual scholarship, and that's when we have plenty of documentation on the state of affairs at the time. In the distant past, where documentation is harder to come by, it's even more dubious. The above is speculation at best, and not very convincing speculation.

I have noticed this to be especially true in this forum. Kinda disappointing as I had hoped to see better responses from the long-time members.

Do you admit then that the afforementioned census would not and could never be conducted as described, and as such any such account must be a fabrication by someone who is ignorant of the logistics of running a kingdom or empire, or what the purpose of a census is?

I've been doing apologetics for a long time. Yes, I have heard of Q. And M and L.

However, as you must know since you are familiar with these things, Luke quotes nearly 250 passages verbatim from Mark. So, Mark had to have been written before gLuke and gLuke had to have been written before Acts and Acts had to have been written before the deaths of Peter and Paul in AD 64-65.

You had me right up until "gLuke had to have been written before Acts." No. You don't know that. You don't know what order these books were written in. That's what fucks up your timeline. Because right now you are at odds with the consensus of biblical schollars who date Mark no earlier than 70 AD. If Acts was written after Luke which was written after Mark which was written no earlier than 70 AD, then that places Acts well after the deaths of Peter and Paul in AD 64-65. It also demonstrates that your dating is bogus, which is what I've been saying all along.

Of course they are. Four men working indenpendently wrote accounts that met the needs of the audiences to who their works were addressed. Luke and Matthew borrowed from Mark and (possibly) Q, but so what? They still had to decide what they would and would not include in their accounts. They weren't all sitting in the same classroom copying off one another's test papers.

It means that Matthew and Luke had to have written their stuff after Mark had already scribed the words Matt and Luke lifted. Lifting passages verbatum is one of the prima facie evidence of plagerism. It means that Matt and Luke need not have had any independant experience of Jesus apart from Mark to write about Jesus. They can simply crib off of Mark and Q for much of it, and then add and change what they needed to.

And it is stupid for you to assume that this is my position since I have repeatedly quoted Luke who is very clear in his prologue that "MANY" had written accounts prior to his efforts. Sheesh.

Which basically destroys any claim of Luke's independence or proximity to the Jesus story. It also means that Luke's account is hearsay.

What evidence can you present to prove your positive statement that the gospels do not refer to a real event at all?

Jesus being of a town that did not exist in the first century, accounts of a census that could not possibly have happened in the way it was recounted, any miracle at all in the gospel, and... *ahem* ...Jesus rising from the dead!

If this were Pacos Bill and not Jesus, it would rightly be called a tall tale.

Mark was the "hearer" of Peter. He recorded Peter's eyewitness account. See Papias for details.

So Mark is relaying second-hand information. Hearsay. There's a reason why we don't allow hearsay in a court of law. At best, Mark and Luke and all the other accounts are second-hand. Even Josephus heard about Jesus and James second-hand. There are no primary accounts of this Jesus character. Nothing in his own hand. Nothing in the hand of the people to actually witness the events in question, your assertions to the contrary notwithstanding.

In such environs, urban legends are born and grown.

And you know, I DID cover all this in another thread.

Tough titty for you because I'm not reading your other threads.

Apart from the fact that this was an account that John would have told repeatedly during the course of his lifetime (thereby reinforcing his memory),

Modern psychology tells us that this "reinforcing of memory" does not work for episodic memories. Reinforcement only works as advertised when you have a reference to compare to, like a script in a play, or a textbook for a class.

We have shown that recalling memory reconstructs it, and in that reconstruction, that memory is altered. We have tested this, and it is strange but true. That John had told his account repeatedly through the course of his life is no guarantee of accuracy. In fact, the more often it is recalled, the more likely it is to be adulterated. It may even come to the point through repeated recall where a false personal memory is indistinguishable from your own true memories, as in the case of Oliver Sacks's 'memory' of an up-close encounter with an incendiary bomb that never happened.

it is also true that John is VERY different from the others gospels. He was familiar with them, and so, he stressed some different things that resulted from his long years of reflection.

In short, John's account comes long after the fact, an account degraded through repetition, and after exposure to other works. And you laughably call it an "independent account?"

Have you ever read a book on this? How many Pauline epistles are UNCONTESTED by modern scholars?

Again, if those same schollars are to be believed in their dating, then we know that some of the Pauline epistles are, in fact, redacted. The fact that some of Paul's works are "UNCONTESTED" does not mean that any particular work can be trusted to be unadulterated and entire.

Um...that's kinda the point, isn't it? Scholars have dated Paul's letters based upon the dates of his missionary journeys. Consequently, if Paul is quoting gLuke in a letter that is definitively dated, then we can date gLuke, also.

And I have shown elsewhere why Mark was written prior to AD 70.

Then, again, you are at odds with exactly the same modern schollars that have some Pauline epistles to be "UNCONTESTED!!!!11!!1" Why should I believe you over them?

[widdershins]

I know you want to believe that.

It's important for you to deny that Christians have evidence for the resurrection which is, in turn, evidence for the existence of God.

So, this is VITAL to you.

However, I have provided a significant amount of indirect evidence in the OP's of my posts, and you have impeached none of it.

Consequently, you have a certain amount of dissonance resulting from: 1) the gospels are historically reliable but 2) they claim that Jesus performed miracles.

How will you reconcile those two things?

No, it is not vital to me.  Very little would change in my life if I realized today that God was real.  The MAJOR change in my life would be a realization that I did not have to poof out of existence when I died.  What the hell would make you think I would be desperate for that NOT to be true?

You have a lot of misconceptions about atheists and how we think, a product of decades of misinformation from other people who know nothing about atheists and fear us because we challenge their beliefs, beliefs which are already fragile in a modern world which is quickly dismissing the idea of magic as a reality.  The supernatural is dying, and that is very, very scary for someone who depends on a belief in it so fully.

If you had any "evidence" that your magical beliefs are based in reality then you wouldn't need faith.  Faith wouldn't be this big virtue that you can't be saved without.

As for your "indirect evidence", I used to hang out on a lot of supernatural and UFO forums.  I know the language.  "Indirect evidence" is known by other names.  Soft evidence is the big one which comes to mind.  They are also big on "eyewitness accounts" AND the "court of law" analogy.  Why?  Because if you lower the standards it makes your argument better.  You use THE EXACT SAME argument styles and concepts I have seen used to "prove" alien visitation, psychic powers, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster and all sorts of other nuttery.  You use the term "indirect evidence" because you don't have "evidence", but you really, REALLY want to use the word "evidence" in your arguments.  You "think" that we have not been able to dismiss "any" of your "evidence", but that's just not true.  We have shot down your every shady argument, and they ARE ALL shady.  You have yet to deliver an actual honest argument where you haven't stacked the deck heavily in your favor to begin with.  We aren't convinced by your "evidence", not because we're desperate for it to be wrong.  I know you would REALLY like to believe that, but it's just not true.  If I'm wrong, I most certainly want to know it.  Do you REALLY think that I want to find out that I'm wrong on judgement day?  Do you REALLY think that I am so fucking stupid that I would trade an eternity in paradise for a blip in history on Earth if I thought for ONE MOMENT that an eternity in paradise was a real thing?  That seems to be what you believe and, frankly, that makes you a fucking MORON!  Who the fuck would make that choice?  Who the fuck would say, "Wow.  There sure is a LOT of evidence that God is real, but I REALLY don't want to believe it, so I'm going to trade FUCKING ETERNITY in the life to come for 80 or so years here, EVEN THOUGH my life would not change IN ANY SIGNIFICANT WAY by accepting this obvious reality."?  NOBODY would do that and you're FUCKING RETARDED if you think we would!

I don't dismiss your nonsense because I REALLY want to keep going every day from work to home to work to home to work to home instead of going from work to home to church to work to home.  You simply refuse to see that the problem isn't that every atheist everywhere just doesn't WANT to believe, the problem is that your arguments are poorly formed, deceptive and, frankly, crap.

[Gerard]

And don't you find that odd?  Here I was under the impression Paul was the follower of Jesus, not the other way around.  Jesus did not say the OT was null and void. 

Well, remember that Paul probably never got around to reading the gospels as we know them now. And he never met Jesus, although he apparently did meet some of his followers at the time. Also Paul, who was a Jew, argued that laws that were particularly meant for the Jewish people didn't apply to Gentiles who became followers of Jesus and he got in somewhat of a fix about that with Peter and James. But his reading became the Christian orthodoxy.

Gerard

[Mike Cl]

Well, remember that Paul probably never got around to reading the gospels as we know them now. And he never met Jesus, although he apparently did meet some of his followers at the time. Also Paul, who was a Jew, argued that laws that were particularly meant for the Jewish people didn't apply to Gentiles who became followers of Jesus and he got in somewhat of a fix about that with Peter and James. But his reading became the Christian orthodoxy.

Gerard

I do agree with you!  But is that not odd in that Paul taught about Christ, but not what Christ taught????  And Jesus said that the OT was not changed--not one dot for the 'i' or cross for the 't'.  You are right, the only scripture he knew was the Septuagint; he could not have read any of the NT, except that which he wrote.

[Randy Carson]

Interesting in that Paul wrote that prior to the rest of the NY authors (whoever they were) and so his 'scripture' was the Septuagint.  We know this because when he quotes his scripture he repeats the errors that are inherent to that work.  This is why Paul's works are placed after the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  That way, the reader is led to think Paul was referring to the NT and not the OT.

Oh, so that's the reason the NT is ordered as it is?

Yet, take a look at what Peter wrote of Paul's letters:

2 Peter 3:16
He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

IOW, Peter is speaking of Paul's letters and comparing them to the "other scriptures" thereby recognizing Pauline epistles as scripture.

And Paul quoted passages from Luke's gospel including the words of Jesus at the Last Supper. So, Luke had to have been written prior to 2 Corinthians, otherwise, Paul would not have been able to quote it verbatim.

Paul wrote:

1 Corinthians 11:23-25
23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

Luke wrote:

Luke 22
19 And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you."

Luke is the only gospel which contains the phrase, "do this in remembrance of me", and Paul quotes it verbatim. The other gospels do not contain this phrase.

How would that happen if Paul were not familiar with an already existing gospel when he wrote his letter around AD 53?

And notice, too, that Paul writes, "For what I received...". When did Paul receive this teaching about what happened at the Last Supper? How early did he pass it on in person previously? And who taught him these words?

Paul is recounting very old information that he got directly from the apostles in Jerusalem during one of his two visits there.

The gospels were written very, very early.