Roland

Why do people so readily accept the 1st century dating of the four gospels when none are mentioned by name until the middle of the 2nd Century? The best we have are a few vague comments Eusebius claims Papias made about Matthew and Mark. Yet Earl Doherty shows how, even if these comments by Eusebius are reliable, the references do not seem to match up with the Mark and Matthew we are familiar with today.

On what basis, then, do most scholars assume Mark was written as early as 65 A.D., Matthew 70, Luke 80 and John 90? Aren't later dates actually more likely?

judge

Whom do you think may have written about them in the first century? I mwean is there a first century writer whose works we have who you think should have quoted from them?

FordMadoxBrown

Roland, most fundamentalists woudl consider dates of 70-80 CE LATE!

I favour 70 to 100 CCE as a time when they were compiled and added to, largely because the jewish history of that period (and persecutions in Rome, etc)provides the most likely motives for such writings.

jbernier

I think that the dating of the synoptics is largely based upon the fact that they spend so much time on the destruction of the temple (particularly Matthew and Luke). The assumption is that 70-80 is when this would have most likely been a prominent issue - that by 100 or after it would have been old news. If you date Matthew and Luke in the 70-80 range and if you accept that they copied from Mark then you reasonably have to date Mark sometime before c. 80 - but earlier enough that both Matthew and Luke would have gotten ahold of the text and would have considered it important enough to base a document of their own upon it. Truth is that the 70-80 range is an educated guess but I am inclined to agree - that there is no period that makes more sense than this particular range of years. That having been said I certainly think a later date is possible for the synoptics.

We know John had to be written no later than about 125 as we have papyrus containing parts of John from around that time. I am not entirely clear why the c. 95 date became so standard - it is pretty much just assumed by most scholars I read and very few give the reasoning for it. A bit embarrassing to admit my ignorance given that the Gospel of John is the text that much of my own research focusses upon. However, near as I can tell, it is based upon Irenaeus' testimony. Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, wrote c. 180ish that as a youth he sat at the feet of Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna (near Ephesus in Asia Minor). He claims that Polycarp claims to have known the apostle John as a young man and thus Polycarp learned from John himself that John was the author of the gospel. So, let us assume that John was born no later than 10 CE as he was an adult during the ministry of Jesus. Assuming that he could have lived no more than 90 or so years that puts the latest date at 100. The problem with this is that it gives a whole lot of epistemic weight upon traditions whose veracity we simply cannot verify - and have strong reason to suspect as Irenaeus had good rhetorical reason to demonstrate apostolic authorship of John (it was being used by the Gnostics and Irenaeus just hated Gnostics - he was trying to prove that, no, it was not a gnostic writing).

Then there is the assumption that Revelation was also written by the apostle John. Truth be told I think it unlikely that either was written by an associate of Jesus nor by the same person. Now, we can fairly reasonably date Revelation to the 90s (although some prefer a 60s date, which is not unreasonable). Thus if John wrote Revelation in the 90s couldn't he have also written John in the 90s? So goes the reasoning.

I think it fair to say that John was written sometime between 30 CE and 125 CE - much more than that is probably speculation.

FordMadoxBrown

Excellent post, jbernier. Please don't take this as a criticism, but I do think that survival of a papyrus from 125 CE doesn't date the whole Gospel to that date. The fragment could have been one of 'John''s sources. But I agree if one gets much later , theories about dating tend to fall apart.

gregor

Roland:

I think the crux of your post has been missed. What I think you are asking is, "If all we have are scraps of documents dated to 150 CE and later, and don't have complete documents for several hundred years thereafter, and with contradictory descriptions of extant records by early Church fathers, why should we assume any dating earlier than the time when we have more supportive evidence -i.e. after 150 CE.

I believe yours is a very valid question.

If P52 is the first scrap, and it is dated to 150 CE, why assume (i) it's a complete John and (ii) that John existed any earlier?

I've always considered that the dating of 70 - Mark, 80 - Matt, etc. to be the EARLIEST dates that a written document could exist, and find no reason to assume that was the actual date of authorship.

JBernier
And, as to the dating of the Apocalype of John, I think Burton Mack made a compelling argument that the assumed date of 90 CE under Domitian is too early. He argues the first systemic persecution did not occur until 115 CE. And I would welcome any link to any well-written paper asserting that the Apocalypse of John was authored under Nero in 60s CE. I've never seen anything other than wild conjecture.

jbernier

Truth be told it has been a long time since I really looked at the material re: when the gospels or Revelation were written. I have tended to stay away from it simply because I find it so darn speculative. I would say, though, that I would be likely to favour a later date rather than an earlier, for a variety of reasons.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Not really, jbernier... The destruction of Jerusalem also happened in 135CE, so this wasn't only an issue in 70-80.

There are really two separate issues here.

1. When was the earliest gospel (or gospels) written?

2. When were the final editions of the 4 gospels written?

In reply to #1, your suggestions may well be correct, although there's no hard proof.

And in reply to #2, the answer is most likely "very late".

By the time of Irenaeus, ca 190 CE, we have the gospels more or less in their final shape. But this is still not our canonical text.

Our canonical texts of the gospels:

Byzantine/KJV text was a 4th c. recension.

Nestle/Aland text (all modern Bibles) was a 19th c. recension.

That's the basic story here.

You've been taken in. This is, in fact, one of the biggest deceptions in NT studies.

THE RYLANDS PAPYRUS FRAUD
www.trends.ca/~yuku/bbl/rylands.htm

All this is just a pious myth.

That's right, on both counts!

Again, there was the original version, and then various later editions.

All the best,

Yuri

Vinnie

I demontrated in another thread here on Papias a while back how those comments do describe the text of GMark quite well. This makes it more likely it does refer to Mark, a popular text given two other authors redacted it around the same time period. Though certainty is not to be had here given that Justin's reference is not perfectly clear.

Whether or not Papias' Matthew is our Matthew is far less certain and likely. In fact, we lack the necessary evidence to make the positive confirmation that they do match. For Mark we have some grounds for affirming this but not perfectly solid ones.

Vinnie