Dating the disciples & the NT

[inkillerxyz]

I don't think it is that relevant if John wrote his Gospel down in A.D. 100 or A.D. 40, in terms of his OWN memory. One person here has already mentioned New Testament historian Richard Bauckman's book "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" which is a good scholarly book on this subject, since it pertains to oral traditions and memories of eyewitnesses.

I think you need to remember the apostles began preaching the Gospel of who Jesus is immediately after his resurrection and they kept it up throughout their whole life as their mission and purpose until they died. Obviously when you keep repeating the same story over and over again and make your living practically, the odds of you forgetting it after a while are very improbable. That is why New Testament scholars regularly trust sources of Jesus they believe to be based on eyewitness testimony albeit decades later, and that includes the skeptical scholars. Eyewitnesses testimony faithfully recording something that should be deemed as accurate as a contemporary report regardless if is not contemporary is not really in dispute among scholars today. Even Bart Ehrman, an agnostic atheist NT historian, stated he believed the Gospels to have eventually been based on eyewitness testimony and regularly used it as very reliable when he though this or that in the Gospels likely reached back to the original witnesses. The dispute is whether the early church was good at keeping their own traditions from the apostles reliable. Obviously, this does not matter if you already accept the Gospels were based on apostolic testimony anyway, not using and strand of traditions eventually reaching back to them but using the so called "living voices" themselves.

Furthermore, dating the Gospel accounts is a very subjective business and really no critical scholar has researched severly into it to come with a book on it. Honestly, the earliest one stating the late 1st century dates of the Gospels widely known is from Harnack literally a CENTURY ago. I would advise looking into John Wenheim's "Redating Matthew, Mark, and Luke" and John Robinson's "Redating the New Testament." Robinson was actually a liberal and skeptical scholar, which makes the book all the more interesting, as he dates the final Gospels to the A.D. 50s and early 60s, including John, but also dates what he deems former drafts of them as early as the A.D. 40s.

 

[Korah]

Furthermore, dating the Gospel accounts is a very subjective business and really no critical scholar has researched severly into it to come with a book on it. Honestly, the earliest one stating the late 1st century dates of the Gospels widely known is from Harnack literally a CENTURY ago. I would advise looking into John Wenheim's "Redating Matthew, Mark, and Luke" and John Robinson's "Redating the New Testament." Robinson was actually a liberal and skeptical scholar, which makes the book all the more interesting, as he dates the final Gospels to the A.D. 50s and early 60s, including John, but also dates what he deems former drafts of them as early as the A.D. 40s.

Yes. See my Post #3 in this thread.
Also see my three postings in my own thread here in the Historical Jesus:
http://www.christianforums.com/t7452292/

 

[Goinheix]

Hi there

I hope there are people out there who can help me with this.

To the best of my knowledge, Jesus lived from approximately 5BC to 29/30AD. The New Testament contains the earliest writings about His life in the form of the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The earliest disciple wrote from about the year 50AD as far as I can tell (I willingly stand to be corrected).

If this is true, why the two decade gap before anyone writes about Him? Why didn't anyone write about His life while He was alive? Even His disciple, John, wrote about 100AD or 30 years after the books of Mark, Luke, and Matthew were written, but that means he would have had to have been ridiculously old to have walked with Jesus and have written about it. Why did it take him so long to write about it? Did all four of these men walk with Him?

Sorry for the attack of questions. I've wanted to ask them for such a long time and no one at my Church has been able to give me a decent response yet. Any advice you guys can give me will be awesome. There's only so much that Google can tell me.

Jhon did write at the end of the I century, that is 60 plus years after Jesus minitery. John is a very good example to start with. There is a big discusion between experts refering who was the John who wrote Revelations. The big contriversy is because the author of revelations did not speak (wrote) good greek, and the writer of the Gospel did. One asnwer, the answer I think is the best is:

John wrote the Gospel in a early period of his life at a time when he has enough help to write in good greek. But when he was prisioner in Pathmos Island he didnt have any greek asistance, and his Revelations use a poor greek.

Now lets check his Gospel. Dont you wonder why it ends at least 2 times? First ends at 20:30-31; and ends again at 21:24-25. Going back to the beggining we found (it is not totally clear) 2 beginins. The First beginig was 1:6, and a posterior begining was added at 1:1.

The point is: John was writing "his" Gospel for years in Jerusalem. Please notice that all the contain of his book hapens in Jerusalem. Despite John was traveling with Jesus all around Galily; for "his" Gospel he only included incidents in Jersalem and near by. (with the only exception of the feeding of multitudes and Canaan wedding). That make us presume that he wrote "his" Gospel while at Jerusalem. We know that later he moved to Epheso; and we know that the Verb concept was a ephesian philosofy. We conclude that John did include a new begining of "his" Gospel in order to reach the efesians. Probably, just probably, his original manuscrip was corerrected into a better greek while at Epheso.

As we can see, it is most probable that despite the John Gospel was known and distributed in the 90´; John was writing it for decades already.

A similar sitation we have with Mattew. "His" Gospel also has 2 beginins. The first Gospel of Mattew we know for sure it was write in aramic. Eventally it was translated to greek. Probably with Matthew´s disciples participation. And also probably, the original Gospel did not contain the first 2 chapters. Since we date Matthew Gospel (the greek translation) in the 60´or the 70´; we have to understand that a previous version was already wrote before that time.

The most clear case is Luke. If we start Luke reading at 3:1 we will have not difficlties to take it as the begining of the book. It is quite possible that as in Matthew, the firsts chapters where not part of an original version. And again that push the first manuscripst date way before the date of the copies circulating in the I century church.

Have you ear of the Sinoptic Problem? For the experts it is clear that all 3 Gospels we know as sinoptics (Matt, Mark, Luke) did copy one the other. That is out of question. The problem is who copied from who. Naturaly we tend to believe that the second copied from the first, and the third copied from both previous. Otherwise; how could the first copy from some text that dont exist yet? Nevertheless, it is a great problem to figure it out. Because it is christal clear that Matthew copied from Mark; but also it is christal clear that Mark copied from Matthew. How can be? The answer is: becouse both. Mark and Matthew were preapering thiers gospels slowly along the years and they did have acces to the other manuscripst.

Not only that. In Acts we read that the christians where reading the "words of the Lord". The OT never was call "God´s Word" as we call the Bible today. The words of the lord where anotations of Jesus teaching. Probably those words of the Lord where material for Mark, Matthew, and Luke aswell. And if you want to have a peek to the same material, you can do it reading Paul. Paul says "is more blessing giving than recievins as the Lord teached". But nowhere in the Gospel we founf that teach. Paul did found that teach in the Worlds of the Lord.

 

[Pilgrimer]

Hi there

I hope there are people out there who can help me with this.

To the best of my knowledge, Jesus lived from approximately 5BC to 29/30AD. The New Testament contains the earliest writings about His life in the form of the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The earliest disciple wrote from about the year 50AD as far as I can tell (I willingly stand to be corrected).

If this is true, why the two decade gap before anyone writes about Him? Why didn't anyone write about His life while He was alive? Even His disciple, John, wrote about 100AD or 30 years after the books of Mark, Luke, and Matthew were written, but that means he would have had to have been ridiculously old to have walked with Jesus and have written about it. Why did it take him so long to write about it? Did all four of these men walk with Him?

Sorry for the attack of questions. I've wanted to ask them for such a long time and no one at my Church has been able to give me a decent response yet. Any advice you guys can give me will be awesome. There's only so much that Google can tell me.

I have not taken time to read all the responses to your questions so forgive me if I am repeating anything. But I believe the best authority on the dating of the Gospels places them before the Roman/Jewish war of 66 - 73 A.D. The reason is simple. During that 7-year war the entire nation of Israel was laid waste and the Jewish commonwealth with it's religious customs and practices ceased to exist. It is simply not possible that later writers could have had such intimate knowledge of a time and place and people and way of life that had been effectively wiped off the map by the Roman armies. The authors of the Gospels demonstrate what can only be firsthand knowledge of a world that after 73 A.D. had ceased to exist.

And further, we have the testimony of Saint Luke: "Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses ..."

Herein Luke declares that those who wrote the Gospels in order to set forth an orderly declaration of Christian beliefs were in fact eyewitnesses from the very beginning.

And even more definitive, the Apostle John, at the close of his Gospel, states that he, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," (John 21:20), was the disciple who testified and wrote down the things that are recorded in the Gospel that bears his name, and that his testimony is true.

With two of the four Gospels having this internal evidence of having been written by that first generation of eyewitnesses and apostles, coupled with such an intimate knowledge of the Jewish world which ceased to exist after 73 A.D., it rather strains credulity to suggest these documents were written by any other than those who lived during and were witnesses to the times and events of which they testify.

In Christ,
Pilgrimer

 

[Pilgrimer]

Why not. It is perfectly normally in that day and age for that to occur. If people are asking you this question, ask them back, why does that cast any doubt>


it really is only a modern phenomenon for famous people to have bibliographies written about them while they are alive- I see many write two or three!

There are 4 independent eyewitness accounts of Jesus life, written over a period of anywhere between 20 and 60 years depending on which end of the estimates you take. They are no contradictions that cannot be attributed to scribal errors. Paul's writings predate the gospels. The writings of the early christian fathers from 100ad quote the gospels extensively. The circulation of the gospels was widespread, and within the lifetime of people that existed during Jesus life, there are no documents attributed to people saying "hey, I saw him, and it didnt happen like that" - if it wasn't true, we would expect to find such documents proliferating.

There are many documents of antiquity that people generally accept as accurate yet none of these have as anywhere near as much reliable manuscript evidence as the gospels.

The difference is, that accepting the Gospels as truth ultimately means we have to answer to someone else, and some people cannot accept that, so conjure up all sorts of reasons to discredit it.

Valid points! And I would add that not one person in the world, either Jewish or Roman, not even among Jesus' own disciples, had even an inkling of an idea of the magnitude of the events they were witnessing, or the world-changing effects the life and ministry of Jesus would have upon the whole world for generations to come. It's easy now to look back and see and understand how momentous the life of Jesus was and how it would impact the whole world, but for those who lived in the beginning of the Gospel they were simply unaware of the universal import of what they were witnessing. Not until the Apostle Paul do we see glimmers of understanding of the magnitude of what Jesus' coming would mean, not just for one generation of Jewish people, but for all people of all time.

And as to Jesus' existence, while the Rabbinic Jews who were contemporaries of Jesus and the Apostles rigorously rejected the messianic claims of Jesus, they never refuted his existence even though they were in a unique position to have easily been able to do so if he was nothing more than a myth.

In Christ,
Pilgrimer

 

[OzSpen]

Pilgrimer,

I have not taken time to read all the responses to your questions so forgive me if I am repeating anything. But I believe the best authority on the dating of the Gospels places them before the Roman/Jewish war of 66 - 73 A.D. The reason is simple. During that 7-year war the entire nation of Israel was laid waste and the Jewish commonwealth with it's religious customs and practices ceased to exist. It is simply not possible that later writers could have had such intimate knowledge of a time and place and people and way of life that had been effectively wiped off the map by the Roman armies. The authors of the Gospels demonstrate what can only be firsthand knowledge of a world that after 73 A.D. had ceased to exist....

In Christ,
Pilgrimer

From my study of the Gospels, I have not found this to be the majority opinion among scholars. It is the minority view of a scholar such as J. A. T. Robinson in his, Redating the New Testament.

In the Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (J Green et al, 1992 IVP), the various scholars for each of the gospels provide these estimates for dating of the Gospels:

• Matthew:"If we grant that Mark could have been written as early as the mid-60s, we have the earliest possible date for Matthew between A.D. 75-80, with a date between A.D. 75-85 being widely held (the commentators Bonnard Grudmann, Davies and Allison) [author of article, S. McKnight, p. 528].

• Mark: "Mark wrote after Peter's death in Rome, assumed to be c. A.D. 64-65 during Nero's rule" (p. 514). He adds that "most scholars, however, follow this tradition and debate only whether he wrote before or after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70" (author of article, R. A. Guelich, p. 514).

• Luke: "The most popular view is a date after the fall of Jerusalem.... The most weighty argument is that Luke's eschatological discourses (Lk 19:41-44; 21:20-24) assume a post-70 date" (author of article, D. L. Bock, p. 499).

• John: "Earlier in the century it was fashionable to date the Fourth Gospel in the second century.... But the discovery of the Rylands Papyrus 457 p52 ... and dated by scholars to the early second century, suggests that John cannot have been published later than the end of the first century or very early part of the second... One date that has been widely accepted by scholars of all persuasions places the Gospel in the period A.D. 90-100. The earliest external witnesses date the Gospel in this period as well" (author of article, M. M. Thompson, p. 370).

In Christ, Oz

 

[steve53]

Just some observations here...

The Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple was such a cataclysmic and far-reaching event that you can make a case that all of the Gospels were written before it. Even John, that the church fathers place at around A.D. 85.

Specifically to Luke and Acts, written by the same man, these can be "macroscopically" dated to A.D. 63-64. The book of Luke ends in Rome with Paul contemplating going to Spain, in A.D. 63. The the author of Luke had lived through the persecutions of Nero in A.D. 64, where Paul and Peter were executed, he surely would have written about it. The author was probably killed as well- Luke of Macedon.

Hagan has a couple of interesting books on the subject- Roman Fires and Passover Year.