Dating the Gospels

It is fashionable among New Testament scholars to date the composition of the Gospels in this way: Mark circa 70 AD, Matthew sometime later in the 70s, Luke in the 80s, and John approx. 90 AD (with Jesus’ Resurrection circa 33 AD). Even if they were written this late, they are still the equivalent of CNN news flashes in the ancient world. And, of course, a later date of composition does not necessarily equate to a historically inaccurate account. Even at these later dates, eyewitnesses of the life of Christ would still be alive and available to correct erroneous accounts. Having said this, the earlier the Gospels were written, the better the argument for their historicity in the eyes of many. And there is a very good argument that the Gospels were actually written much earlier.

A key to the dating of the Gospels is actually the date of composition of the Acts of the Apostles, because Acts is the second of a two-part work by Luke the evangelist. The Evangelical scholar J.P. Moreland, in his classic apologetic work, Scaling the Secular City, enumerates many arguments for dating Acts between AD 62 and 64, only two of which I’ll mention here. Acts, like every other New Testament book, does not mention the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 70 AD (This is, of course, good evidence that all the NT books were completed by this date). It’s hard to believe that Luke’s works in particular, whose Gospel and Acts is so heavily focused on the Holy City, would fail to mention this fact. Second, no mention is made of the fierce persecution of the Church under the crazed emperor Nero, and the resulting martyrdoms of the two central figures in Acts, Peter and Paul, circa AD 64. The martyrdom of James, bishop of Jerusalem in 61 is also omitted. All of this is strange, considering the detail given by Luke to the account of the martyrdom of Stephen the deacon, and that of James, brother of John, another prominent figure in the early Church. Strange, that is, unless Luke wrote Acts prior to 64.

Back to the Gospels: If Luke wrote Acts before 64, that means Luke’s Gospel was written before that. And, since Luke used Matthew and Mark (the first Gospel to be written) as sources, they must be dated even earlier, perhaps as early as the mid-40s to the mid-50s, according to Moreland. Thus, we have biographies of Jesus that are perhaps 12 to 29 years removed from the events of his life – and they are based on sources (e.g. eyewitness accounts and early creeds) even earlier than that.