The case for the early dating of the Gospels-countering scholarly laziness & blindness

(1) With regard to Mark, the first argument assumes that “the Christian theology” was not in fact Jesus’ own. To say it is “developed” assumes that it was once “primitive.” Actually the argument cuts both ways: one could argue that because Mark was written early, the theology is not” developed,” but truly characteristic of what Jesus taught.

(2) The second argument assumes that Jesus did not have divine power to predict the future as the gospels state He did. In other words, the argument assumes in advance that Jesus was merely human. But if He really was the Son of God, as the gospels state, then He could have prophesied the future.

(3) With regard to the arguments for a post-70 date for Luke, the first assumes Mark was not written before A.D. 70. But that assumption is itself founded on mere assumptions. The whole thing is like a house of cards. At face value, it makes more sense to say Mark was written before A.D. 70, for it seems unbelievable that Mark (whom critics agree was John Mark mentioned in Acts) would wait thirty to forty years to write down his gospel. Is it really plausible to think that Mark would wait decades before writing his brief gospel, which would be so valuable in sharing and leaving with newly established churches as the gospel preachers went about teaching and preaching?

(4) The second argument against an early date for Luke assumes again that Jesus did not have supernatural power to foresee the future. And really, even on a purely humanistic account of the matter, there is no reason those predictions could not have been given before A.D. 70. Prophets often predicted Jerusalem’s destruction as a sign of God’s judgment, and Jesus’ predictions may have concerned its destruction at the end of the world, not A.D. 70. As a matter of fact, Jesus’ prophecies are actually evidence that the gospels were written before A.D. 70, for Luke never casts the Romans in the role of enemies in his writings. In the predictions, Jerusalem is destroyed by her enemies. Since Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70, Luke must have written before that event. If he wrote afterwards, he could not have portrayed the Romans only as friends. Besides that, we have Josephus’s descriptions of the sacking of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and many of the striking peculiarities of the city’s destruction are absent from the prophecies. But if the “prophecies” had been written after the event, then those peculiarities would surely have been included. So really the argument from Jesus’ predictions supports a pre-70 dating of the gospels.

In any case, it is very apparent that the arguments for a post-70 date of the gospels hang together on certain unproved assumptions. If one goes, they all go. No wonder Robinson can compare the current arguments for the dating of the gospels to a line of drunks reeling arm in arm down the street. (end of quotes from William Lane Craig)

Actually several lines of solid evidence point to a date for Luke-Acts before A.D. 64.

These six lines of evidence combine to present a powerful case that Acts was written before A.D. 64. (This evidence is both compelling and authoritative, and as far as I know, has not been refuted convincingly by any reputable scholar.) Since Luke wrote his gospel before he wrote Acts (Acts is a continuation of the gospel), the gospel of Luke must have been written around A. D. 57 or the very early sixties. This is a conclusion of tremendous importance, for it means the gospel of Luke was written just about the same time as Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (A.D. 55). Luke therefore ought to be regarded just as historically reliable as Paul.

“But wait a minute,” someone will say. “Granted that Luke and Paul wrote about the same time, still Paul had earlier sayings and sources to go on.” But so did Luke. He specifically states that his information concerning the events of the gospel was “delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word” people who saw and heard what he reports in his gospel. Luke was probably a traveling companion of Paul’s (Acts 16:10-17; 20:5-21:18; 27:1-28:16) and spent time in Jerusalem, where he could gather information firsthand from those who had been with Jesus and had witnessed the resurrection appearances. Therefore, Luke’s information should be regarded as reliable as Paul’s.

But more than that: since one of the sources used by Luke in writing his gospel was probably Mark’s gospel, this means Mark was written even earlier than Luke. Robinson suggests a date of A. D. 45 for Mark. And of course, Mark’s sources then go even further back. When we remember that Jesus died in A.D. 30, we begin to see how hopeless the legend hypothesis is. According to Professor Sherwin-White, generations are required for legends to prevail over historical facts. But we are talking about less than fifteen to thirty years. Remember, we are not talking about deliberate lies; we are talking about legends. It is unreasonable to charge Luke or his sources with being liars. [2]

In 1 Corinthians 15 (written from AD 53 to 57), Paul summarized the gospel message and reinforced the fact that the apostles described the eyewitness accounts to him:

In his letter to the Galatians (also written in the mid-50s), Paul described his interaction with these apostles (Peter and James) and said that their meeting occurred at least fourteen years prior to the writing of his letter:

This means that Paul saw the risen Christ and learned about the gospel accounts from the eyewitnesses (Peter and James) within five years of the crucifixion (most scholars place Paul’s conversion from AD 33 to 36, and he visited Peter and James within three years of his conversion, according to Gal. 1:19). This is why Paul was able to tell the Corinthians that there were still “more than five hundred brethren” who could confirm the resurrection accounts (1 Cor. 15:6). That’s a gutsy claim to make in AD 53–57, when his readers could easily have accepted his challenge and called him out as a liar if the claim was untrue.[4]

We know from the introductory lines of the book of Acts that Luke’s gospel was written prior to Acts, but we must use the remaining circumstantial evidence to try to determine how much prior. The fact that Paul echoed the description of Jesus that was offered by the gospel writers is certainly consistent with the fact that he was aware of the claims of the Gospels, and his quotations from Luke’s gospel in 1 Tim. 5:17-18 and 1 Corinthians 11:23-25 reasonably confirm the early existence of Luke’s account, placing it well before AD 53-57. Paul was able to quote Luke’s gospel and refer to it as scripture because it was already written, circulating at this time and broadly accepted. Paul’s readers recognized this to be true as they read Paul’s letters.

Luke told us that he was gathering data from “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word” (Luke 1:2). As a result he either referred to or quoted directly from over five hundred verses that are found in either the gospel of Mark or the gospel of Matthew. It is reasonable to infer that these accounts were in existence prior to Luke’s investigation. If this is the case, Mark’s gospel would date much earlier than Luke’s, and can be sensibly placed in either the late 40s or very early 50s. This then explains some of the characteristics we see in Mark’s gospel. There appears to be a sense of urgency in the gospel, similar to the crime broadcasts that are made by responding officers, and Mark appears to be protecting key players in the account as if they were still alive at the time of his writing.

While skeptics would like to claim that the Gospels were written well after the alleged life of the apostles and much closer to the councils that affirmed them, the evidence indicates something quite different. The circumstantial evidence supports an early dating for the Gospels. The gospel writers appear in history right where we would expect them to appear if they were, in fact, eyewitnesses.[5]

There is a growing acceptance of earlier New Testament dates, even among some liberal scholars. To illustrate this point, former liberal William F. Albright and radical critic John A.T. Robinson.

William F. Albright wrote, ‘We can already say emphatically that there is no longer any basis for dating any book of the New Testament after about AD 80, two full generations before the date between 130 and 150 given by the more radical New Testament critics of today.’ (Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands, 136). Elsewhere Albright said, ‘In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written by a baptised Jew between the forties and eighties of the first century (very probably sometime between about AD 50 and 75)’ (‘Towards a More Conservative View,’ 3).

This scholar went so far as to affirm that the evidence from the Qumran community show that the concepts, terminology, and mind set of the Gospel of John is probably first century (‘Recent Discoveries in Palestine’). ‘Thanks to the Qumran discoveries, the New Testament proves to be in fact what it was formerly believed to be: the teaching of Christ and his immediate followers between cir. 25 and cir. 80 AD’ (From Stone Age to Christianity, 23).

…John A. T. Robinson wrote a revolutionary book titled Redating the New Testament, in which he posited revised dates for the New Testament books that place them earlier than the most conservative scholars ever held. Robinson places Matthew at 40 to after 60, Mark at about 45 to 60, Luke at before 57 to after 60, and John at from 40 to after 65. This would mean that one or two of the Gospels could have been written as early as seven years after the crucifixion. At the latest they were all composed within the lifetimes of eyewitnesses and contemporaries of the events. Assuming the basic integrity and reasonable accuracy of the writers, this would place the reliability of the New Testaments beyond reasonable doubt.[6]