Establishing dates for the New Testament

 What clues tell us when the books of the New Testament were written?

Major Points

1.  Nothing in the NT mentions the completed fact of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.  Several of Jesus' prophecies mentions the coming destruction of Jerusalem, but none of the books list it as something that has already happened.  

Several specific instructions are included that talk about what to do when the destruction is near:  flee to the mountains,  pray that it doesn't happen in winter, if you are in the city when you see the armies approaching you must flee and those who are outside should not re-enter it.  Why would the authors add these directions if the city was already ruined?  Why pray to avoid winter or the Sabbath if we already know that the sack of Jerusalem took place in late summer?  

Unless we are willing to accept that much of this prophetic writing was a deliberate and widespread fabrication (a conspiracy theory among thousands of Christians) then we are required to take the narrative at face value that the books were written before the destruction of the Temple.  If the attempt at deception was for the purpose of making Jesus look prophetic, why did none of the NT writers capitalize on that fact later?  Why did none of them point out that Jesus' prophecies were fulfilled in AD 70 when Titus was emperor?

2.  Luke wrote both his Gospel and the book of Acts.  At the end of Acts, Luke writes the narrative of Paul awaiting the conclusion of his trial.  From history, we know the conclusion of that trial happened around 64 AD when Paul fell victim to the mad emperor Nero.   And yet in the book of Acts, Luke never wrote of that end result; it trails off with Paul awaiting trial. (64 AD was also when much of Rome was destroyed in a great fire and Nero blamed the Christians and persecuted them, executed his wife Octavia, and largely began to plunge the empire into chaos.  None of this was mentioned by Luke.) The direct implication is that Acts was written before that happened and therefore before 62 AD.  We know that the Gospel of Luke was written before Acts.  Therefore, it was also written before 62 AD, and likely quite a few years before. 

Luke wrote of the famine in Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews under Claudius, but has nothing to say about the Jewish Rebellion, the Temple's destruction, or Nero's persecution of the Christians in Rome.  James (Jesus' brother) is listed by Luke as a prominent member of the church in Jerusalem and at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15.  However, his martyrdom, recorded by Josephus as having happened in 62 AD, is not mentioned by Luke.  Luke doesn't talk about Peter's execution, even though John's gospel mentions it.  Again, the implication is that when Luke's works were published, these events hadn't happened yet.

3. Luke, in writing his Gospel, is likely to have used Mark and Matthew as source material.  The understanding is that Luke attempted to compile everything that had come before him, and then to carry on the narrative of the spread of Christianity through the events of the church in Jerusalem and then the missionary journeys of the apostles, including Paul.  His purpose was to summarize the entirety of the story for his patron Theophilus.  (An interesting theory is that Theophilus is a defense council and legal advocate for Paul during the course of his trial in Rome. Since Theophilus was a Roman official, he would not have known much about Christianity, and Luke drew up his two books to inform Paul's defender exactly what he was on trial for.)

4.  In 1 Timothy 5:17-18, Paul appears to quote from Luke's gospel as if it were scripture, "The laborer is worthy of his wages". Paul could only quote Luke in 62 AD if that work had already been published and widely circulated to the extent that it was considered as scripture. 

Minor Points

A.  Irenaeus says that "Matthew also issued a written gospel among the Hebrew in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the church."  So a leading church father attests that Matthew's gospel was written while Paul and Peter were still active in Rome, about 60 AD.  Irenaeus studied with Polycarp, who was a student of John the Apostle.

B.  In 1 Corinthians, Paul appears to refer to Luke as one "whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches."  This suggests that Luke's Gospel was already published and widely known by the time of writing this letter, about 54 - 57 AD.  

C.  Here is a more speculative theory:  One interesting event in Paul's life is his interactions with John Mark, the writer of the earliest gospel.   Mark had come from the Jerusalem church where Peter and James were prominent leaders.  Paul had open disagreements with the church leadership and eventually left on his first missionary journey, taking as his companion Barnabas and Barnabas' nephew John Mark.  During the course of this first trip, Mark left Paul to return to Jerusalem, which Paul considered to be a betrayal. Paul was so bitter about it that he refused to take Mark on his second mission trip and even split with Barnabas over the issue.

The question is, why was Paul so hurt by this decision by Mark?  The answer lies with Jerusalem.  Paul had ongoing discussions with Peter and James about the role of Jewish ritual in the Christian church among other things.  There is evidence of a growing confrontation between the men over issues of church leadership.  So when Mark left Paul's mission trip, he wasn't simply returning to Jerusalem, but he was also returning to the teaching and mentorship of Peter.  I speculate that Paul considered it a betrayal that Mark chose Peter over himself.   I believe that it was at this time, around 48 - 50 AD, that Mark began compiling the material from Peter and James to write his gospel.  

It is after this time that Paul began to associate with Luke.  Maybe he had aspirations that the educated and well spoken Mark would become his chronicler and assist in writing his letters.  Instead, he turned to other scribes and began to work with Luke to create the history of his journeys. 

D. Mark, then, wrote his gospel from the memories and teaching of Peter and others in Jerusalem, around 48 to 50 AD.  It is possible that he had begun collecting information even earlier as he listened to Peter's teaching.  

D 1.  I propose a further concept that at this time in the early church, many of the apostles and other followers of Jesus were active and assembled in the church in Jerusalem, and that at this time many of the sayings and acts of Jesus during his ministry were shared among Jesus' followers.  This would be a collection that was collected, written down, and various eye witnesses would compare notes and memories and a compilation of the events of Jesus' years would have emerged. This compilation may have been curated by Matthew, or it may have been a work that Mark as a young man took up and completed as he was listening to and studying with Peter. 

This was likely the earliest form of Jesus' assembled biography, and was enthusiastically accepted in the Jerusalem church, from which it would have widespread circulation to surrounding Christian communities.  

E.  Working from this, Matthew began a more mature and scholarly effort, researching each of the elements of the stories more fully, and finding new information such as the recounting of Jesus' birth.  This means that Matthew's gospel was likely finished between 55 and 60 AD.  Matthew was a direct disciple of Jesus, one of the Twelve, and so was an eyewitness to the events in the gospel.  As a tax collector, he was an educated man, but also a Jew himself, so that he offered a distinctly Jewish perspective on the events in Jesus' life.  

F.  It appears that Luke relied heavily on the details in Matthew's gospel, so Matthew must have completed his work in time for Luke to have consulted it.  This creates a preference for an earlier date, possibly in the mid-50s AD.  

Charles Swindoll writes, "The largely Jewish character of the book also suggests it was written at a time when much of the evangelism by Christians was directed more exclusively at Jews, something that became less and less common as the decades passed."  (Swindoll puts the date of Mark at 57-59 AD having been written when Peter was imprisoned in Rome, and suggests that Luke was written immediately afterward.  The problem with this theory is that it creates a flurry of gospel-writing, with Mark finishing his gospel in 59, and Luke and Matthew beginning their own narratives almost immediately afterward, so that the entire effort is compacted into a few years before 64 AD when Paul was executed.  It seems more reasonable that Mark, studying with Peter in Jerusalem, had been working on Jesus' biography for many years, and that he began this effort in the late 40's rather than the late 50's.)