When were the Gospels Written? The External and Internal Evidence.

[Nishant Xavier]

"Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia." ~ 2nd Century Bishop, Saint Irenaeus.

Now, this St. Irenaeus was Bishop of Lyons in France, but also spent a significant time in Asia. He was thus well acquainted with the Tradition of both the East and West and he affirms without the slightest hesitation that the Eastern and Western Church, in the 2nd Century, believed the above. Had there been another opinion about Gospel Authorship common among some early Christians, St. Irenaeus would without doubt have mentioned it out of respect to them. But he does not because the above was Universally Accepted among all who read and received the Gospels from the Apostles or their Companions.

1. Now, let's define External and Internal Evidence as it applies to historical documents, for e.g. the writings of Josephus, Tacitus or the Gospels: (1) Internal Evidence is what the writing says about itself, for e.g. Josephus, Tacitus, or Luke or John, may sign their work or strongly imply they wrote it. (2) External Evidence is what other contemporary writers say about the work, or what ancient manuscripts (that contain "according to Matthew" etc) show about it. Above, we saw the Tradition of two whole continents, Europe and Asia, hands down that the Gospels were writtenby the traditional authors and in the traditional order. We have Tertullian in Africa who says pretty much the same thing. Therefore, it is the Tradition of Three Continents. These Church Fathers had little direct contact with each other. They could hardly have arrived at the same conclusion independently unless they had received this knowledge from the Apostles themselves.

Even some secular scholars acknowledge: "Ignatius of Antioch, the Didache, and Papias—all from the first part of the second century—show knowledge of Matthew, which accordingly must have been composed before 100 CE." That's right, but it goes further. St. Ignatius of Antioch was a companion/disciple of St. John the Apostle and Bishop of Antioch. He died in A.D. 107. As for the Didache, it was probably composed by some of the Apostles and predates 80 A.D. It was used for Gentile converts before Baptism. As for Papias, he was almost a contemporary of some the Apostles, born in 60 A.D. Papias too states matter-of-factly, that St. Matthew the Apostle, and St. Mark the companion of St. Peter the Apostle, wrote the Gospels: "Matthew put together the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language, and each one interpreted them as best he could." And about Mark: "And the presbyter said this. Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately whatsoever he remembered. It was not, however, in exact order that he related the sayings or deeds of Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied Him. But afterwards, as I said, he accompanied Peter, who accommodated his instructions to the necessities [of his hearers], but with no intention of giving a regular narrative of the Lord's sayings. Wherefore Mark made no mistake in thus writing some things as he remembered them. For of one thing he took special care, not to omit anything he had heard, and not to put anything fictitious into the statements."

2. Now, a strong case from Internal Evidence for the Early Authorship of the Gospels, well known to the Church Fathers, has often been overlooked by some secular scholars today. First, they themselves acknowledge that 2 Corinthians was written by St.Paul around 55 A.D.

So that's Premise 1. Premise 2 is the reference in 2 Cor to a Gospel written by a companion of Paul. Hmm, which Gospel could that be?

Premise I: St. Paul the Apostle wrote II Corinthians by 55 A.D.

For e.g. the Secular Encyclopedia Brittanica says: "The Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians (II Corinthians in the New Testament) was written from Macedonia in about 55 CE [A.D]". Correct, and we agree.

Premise II: 2 Corinthians contains a reference to the Gospel of Luke as already having been written.

2 Cor 8:18 "And we have sent with him the brother, whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches;"

Now, anyone who knows even the slightest thing about Church History, whether he himself is Christian or Atheist, knows that only one companion of Paul, namely St. Luke, wrote a Gospel. This is also evident from the Book of Acts, written like Luke to Theophilus, and which contains the First Person Plural in various places, where the Author and Paul travelled together. It therefore is clear Paul is referring to Luke's Gospel in this place.

Conclusion: Therefore, the Gospel of Saint Luke was written and distributed by 55 A.D.

This conclusion logically follows from the preceding premises. It is also logical for other reasons. Acts was written by a friend of Paul who happily would have written anything good that Paul did in the service of Christ. Paul's Martyrdom took place, together with St. Peter's, under Nero, around A.D. 67. If therefore St. Paul had already been martyred by the time Luke wrote Acts, why on Earth would Luke omit St. Paul's Glorious Martyrdom from his Narrative? Pretty much the only plausible explanation for the abrupt ending of Acts, around the time of St. Paul's Roman Imprisonment, in A.D. 61, is that it was written shortly after that time well before A.D. 67. And likewise, since Luke was clearly written before Acts, as the Intros to both show, and probably predated it by 5-10 years, we can arrive at pre-55 date for Luke in a 2nd Independent way as well. For a third evidence of early authorship of Luke, it should be noted St. Paul quotes from Luke and refers to it as Scripture in one of his Last Epistles, penned shortly before his Martyrdom for Christ: "For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer is worthy of his wages.” (1 Tim 5:18) This is a reference to Luke 10:7: "For the worker is worthy of his wages." While not perhaps directly showing a pre-55 date, it is, at the least, compatible with an Early Date for Luke. Incidentally, like St. Peter says the writings of St. Paul constitute Scripture, it also shows that St. Paul, and by extension the Early Church already in Apostolic Times, considered Luke etc to be part of Scripture along with the OT.

3. Thirdly, since even those who place Mark before Matthew generally agree that both Mark and Matthew were written before Luke, it remains, from the above, that both Mark and Matthew pre-date 55 A.D. The Gospels were not written late, that is a modern unhistorical sophism that follows from no ancient historical document, and is mainly upheld for ideological reasons, not historical ones, e.g. by those like Bart Ehrman who have an ideological grudge against Apostolic and Biblical Christianity. This is also confirmed by the 7Q5 Papyrus recently discovered.

(1) Mark and Matthew were written before Luke. (2) But Luke was written by 55 A.D. (3) Hence, Matthew and Mark were written by 55 A.D.
(2) Again, the 7Q5 Papyrus dates from before 50 A.D. (2) But this contains Fragments of Mark. (3) Hence, the Gospel of Mark predates 50 A.D.

Unsurprisingly, some sophists will try to assail either the reference in 7Q5 to Mark 6:52-53, or the pre-50 dating. Yet, both of these were attested independently, and well documented, before frightened liberals realized it would be problematic for some of their other pet theories. Hence, etc.

Finally, we will quote from Wiki about A.T. Robinson's Re-dating the New Testament. Keep in mind Robinson is generally considered a Liberal Scholar: "Although Robinson was considered a liberal theologian, he challenged the work of like-minded colleagues in the field of exegetical criticism. Specifically, Robinson examined the reliability of the New Testament as he believed that it had been the subject of very little original research during the 20th century. He also wrote that past scholarship was based on a "tyranny of unexamined assumptions" and an "almost wilful blindness".[29] Robinson concluded that much of the New Testament was written before AD 64, partly basing his judgement on the sparse textual evidence that the New Testament reflects knowledge of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70. In relation to the four gospels' dates of authorship, Robinson placed Matthew as being written sometime between AD 40 and the AD 60s, Mark sometime between AD 45 and AD 60, Luke sometime during the AD 50s and the 60s and John sometime between AD 40 and AD 65 or later.[30][31]" Please note said range was nearly Universally Accepted before around 1800 whether by Catholics, Protestants or Secularists. Shortly thereafter, some liberal sophists invented all sorts of theories. Now, many are going back to the traditional dates.

Thoughts?
Let's Debate.
God Bless.

[no one]

Why weren't they written by those first modern hoomans, you know 150,000 years or so ago?

Why is Hinduism a few thousand years older than your gospel, yet there is no mention of your gospel?

[Fake Messiah]

Here is a word from the expert:

Christian apologists often put out a lot of material, such as The Case For Christ, targeted toward lay audiences, who are not familiar with scholarly methods, in order to argue that the Gospels are the eyewitness testimonies of either Jesus’ disciples or their attendants. The mainstream scholarly view is that the Gospels are anonymous works, written in a different language than that of Jesus, in distant lands, after a substantial gap of time, by unknown persons, compiling, redacting, and inventing various traditions, in order to provide a narrative of Christianity’s central figure—Jesus Christ—to confirm the faith of their communities.

As scholarly sources like the Oxford Annotated Bible note, the Gospels are not historical works (even if they contain some historical kernels). I have discussed elsewhere some of the reasons why scholars recognize that the Gospels are not historical in their genre, purpose, or character in my article “Ancient Historical Writing Compared to the Gospels of the New Testament.” However, I will now also lay out a resource here explaining why many scholars likewise doubt the traditional authorial attributions of the Gospels.

Finally, Irenaeus (c. 175-185 CE) refers to the Gospels by their traditional names in the late-2nd century (see here). As such, there is a clear development in which the Gospels were first referred to anonymously by external sources, and only later associated with their traditional attributions. For this reason, Ehrman (Forged, p. 225) concludes:

It was about a century after the Gospels had been originally put in circulation that they were definitively named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This comes, for the first time, in the writings of the church father and heresiologist Irenaeus [Against Heresies 3.1.1], around 180-85 CE.

So, it is not until some century after the Gospels’ original composition, around the time of the church father Irenaeus, that they were even given their traditional authorial attributions.[20] Incidentally, Irenaeus wanted there to be specifically “four gospels” because there are “four winds” and “four corners” of the Earth (Against Heresies 3.11.8). This was the kind of logic by which the Gospels were later attributed…

Internal Evidence

To begin with, the Gospels are all internally anonymous in that none of their authors names himself within the text. This is unlike many other ancient literary works in which the author’s name is included within the body of the text (most often in the prologue), ...


And so on

https://infidels.org/library/modern/matt...l-authors/

[The Architect Of Fate]

The Case For Christ is apologist propaganda written by a lying hack

[The Grand Nudger]

You cant seem to tell us about your religion without complaining about The Liberal Conspiracy. Do you think you follow a religion of god, or a religion of politics?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

We have Tertullian in Africa who says pretty much the same thing. Therefore, it is the Tradition of Three Continents. These Church Fathers had little direct contact with each other. They could hardly have arrived at the same conclusion independently unless they had received this knowledge from the Apostles themselves.

I find this fascinating. Could you explain how Tertullian, who was born in 155 CE '...received this knowledge from the Apostles themselves.'?

Boru

[Nishant Xavier]

Why weren't they written by those first modern hoomans, you know 150,000 years or so ago?

Why is Hinduism a few thousand years older than your gospel, yet there is no mention of your gospel?

Well, that's obvious, isn't it? The Gospels were written after Jesus Christ died, and He died in A.D. 33 when Pontius Pilate was Roman Governor of Judea. [He began His Ministry, as I explained in another thread, in the 15th Year of the Emperor Tiberius, which we independently know to be 29 A.D.; and obviously none of the deeds which He did during His Ministry of Preaching and Miracles could be written down historically before He did them.] Since therefore they were written by His Apostles and Companions after He left the Earth, it is evident they would post-date 33 A.D. 

I find this fascinating. Could you explain how Tertullian, who was born in 155 CE '...received this knowledge from the Apostles themselves.'?

Well, Brian, there I was referring to the Churches of Africa, Asia and Europe as Churches. The Apostles of Christ founded Churches wherever they went. St. Thomas the Apostle came to my Country, India. I've seen his Tomb in St. Thomas Mount, Chennai, not far from where I lived. Likewise, St. Peter and St. Paul preached in Rome. St. Matthew in Ethiopia. One St. James in Spain. Another St. James, also called the Just, and Cousin Brother of Jesus, in Jerusalem itself. And so on and so forth with all the Apostles. Now, these Churches, whether of Africa, of Asia, or of Europe, preserved the historical memory of what the Apostles did, spoke, wrote, handed down etc. St. Irenaeus mentions this in refuting Gnosticism, that no Church founded by the Apostles ever heard of such a thing as the Gnostics claimed, or said like that; rather, they all preached the Apostolic Teaching, and handed down the Tradition they received from Apostles.

@Fake Messiah oh ok, so the "Infidels" Atheist Website are the "expert" now, are they? lol. You should cite some secular scholar, neutral between Christianity and Atheism, on the Date of the Gospels. For e.g. on the Principle of Contingent Causation thread, I cited Alexander Vilenkin, neutral between God and Atheism, on the Beginning of the Universe. He said his own opinion is that the BGV Theorem says nothing about God itself per se, but does say the Universe has a Beginning, as we will discuss further in the proper place; so likewise, show me some secular scholar, indifferent between Christianity and Atheism, who says the Gospels were written late, with reasons, and explanations for the dates.

Also, as mentioned, early writers like St. Ignatius (2nd century), Papias(1st century) , the Didache (1st Century) mention the Gospel of Matthew, so it is certainly historically near to the Life of Jesus Christ Himself. Then we have the 7Q5 Papyrus for Mark, Rylands Papyrus P52 for St. John etc.

GN, this is not about political conservativism, e.g. fiscal conservatism per se, although Moral or Social Conservatism might be related. But it is more about Conservative Scholars recognizing the Church Fathers are historically credible, while Liberal Scholars may try to cast doubt on that. 

Yet, even Liberal Scholars, who recognize that the Church wrote before certain dates, for e.g. 100 A.D. in the case of Papias etc, and when these same Church Fathers make mention of the Gospel writers in those writings, know then that the Gospels were certainly written before those dates.

And as mentioned, Liberal Scholar AT Robinson concluded Matthew and Mark were written before 60 A.D. and Luke also around that time or shortly after. Let me conclude with a final example. Sir William Ramsay was an Oxford-Educated New Testament Archaeologist. He was taught by liberals and had adopted prevalent errors on the alleged late origin and supposed non-historicity of the Gospels. Accordingly, he was a non-Christian. But later, after lifelong study of the Book of Acts, and himself having become a Recognized Expert in the field, he concluded about Luke: "Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy, he is possessed of the true historical sense; in short, this Author ought to be placed along with the very greatest of Historians". He said this after discovering loads of archaeological discoveries in Asia Minor that confirm in detail the historicity of the Gospel of Luke and Book of Acts. He recognized the early dates of Luke, and became a Christian.

Regards,
Xavier.

[no one]

My point, you absolute moron, why did jesus and his cock loving daddy wait?

[Fake Messiah]

@Fake Messiah oh ok, so the "Infidels" Atheist Website are the "expert" now, are they? lol. You should cite some secular scholar, neutral between Christianity and Atheism, on the Date of the Gospels.

I did, learn to read.

The mainstream scholarly view is that the Gospels are anonymous works and he just writes LOL.

Ignoring evidence = being a Christian.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Well, Brian, there I was referring to the Churches of Africa, Asia and Europe as Churches. The Apostles of Christ founded Churches wherever they went. St. Thomas the Apostle came to my Country, India. I've seen his Tomb in St. Thomas Mount, Chennai, not far from where I lived. Likewise, St. Peter and St. Paul preached in Rome. St. Matthew in Ethiopia. One St. James in Spain. Another St. James, also called the Just, and Cousin Brother of Jesus, in Jerusalem itself. And so on and so forth with all the Apostles. Now, these Churches, whether of Africa, of Asia, or of Europe, preserved the historical memory of what the Apostles did, spoke, wrote, handed down etc. St. Irenaeus mentions this in refuting Gnosticism, that no Church founded by the Apostles ever heard of such a thing as the Gnostics claimed, or said like that; rather, they all preached the Apostolic Teaching, and handed down the Tradition they received from Apostles.

I see, or I think I see. Tertullian didn't get his skinny directly from the Apostles, but from apostles of the Apostles. In legal and historical parlances, that's called 'hearsay'.

Boru