A good paper on When Were the Gospels Written and How Can We Know? is posted on attorney Doston Jones‘ blog. It was recommended by Dr. James DeFrancisco on 9/17/2024 in a BSA “conversation”. The following list is talking points extracted from his paper with the bold emphasis added by me. This analysis discusses the earliest and latest dates the four Gospels could have been composed. It does not drill down into the dates for each of the four.
- His summary statement – Sequentially, the Gospel of Mark was written first around 70 CE and was followed by Matthew (80 CE), Luke (85-90 CE), and then John’s gospel (95-100 CE).
- When it comes to evidence pertinent to establishing a lower date limit for the Gospels, the most glaring evidence would be that the Gospels make explicit reference to the Roman-Jewish War (66 – 73CE). Specifically, the Gospels refer to when Roman soldiers surrounded Jerusalem in 67 CE, and most notably the Gospels mention the complete destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, which happened in 70 CE (see e.g., Luke 21 and Mark 13).
- “We have at this day certain most authentic ecclesiastical writers of the times, as Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Hermas, Ignatius… who wrote in the order wherein I have named them, and who wrote after all the writers of the New Testament. But in Hermas you will not find one passage or any mention of the New Testament [Gospels], nor in all the rest is any one of the Evangelists named.”
- The first ostensible quotations of the Gospels come in the writings of Justin Martyr around 155 CE. Notably, though, when Justin cites verses that appear in our Gospels, he does not indicate that they were ever named Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. In fact, he does not refer to this literature as “Gospels” at all. Justin never delineates or otherwise distinguishes these writings into individual texts or specifically identified authors. To the contrary, Justin refers to this literature as a generic corpus that he called the “memoirs of the Apostles.”[3]
- The tradition that Mark and Matthew wrote Gospels is commonly traced back to the writings of 2nd century Church father Papias of Hierapolis (c. 110 – c. 150 CE).[4] While Papias refers to texts that he attributes to Matthew and Mark, there are several scholars who have aptly noted that we should not be so certain that Papias had in mind those texts appearing in the New Testament. There is indeed reason to suspect that Papias was not talking about our “Gospel of Matthew.” To start, Papias described the Matthew text as logia (“sayings”) written in Hebrew or Aramaic. However, our canonical Matthew is a Greek literary narrative that is textually dependent on Mark, which itself is an original Greek text. Papias also refers to Mark as a collection of logia (“sayings”) and as a non-organized compilation of ‘chreia‘ (short, pithy anecdote) without regard to proper sequence.
- Next comes Church father Irenaeus of Lyon, France (c. 180 CE). Irenaeus, writing roughly 150 years after the time of Jesus, is finally the first Patristic source to mention all four Gospels by name. It is within Irenaeus’ major five-volume work ‘Against Heresies’ that he formally introduces the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as being the only acceptable Gospels for the church.[5] In discussing the Gospel of Mark, Irenaeus echoed the remarks of Papias, explaining that Mark’s gospel was written after the deaths of Peter and Paul.
- In our undertaking to establish workable composition dates for the Gospels, the most crucial item to note from both Papias and Irenaeus is that the Gospel of Mark was written after the deaths of Peter and Paul. Why is this such a key piece of information? Well, according to Church records as detailed in the “Chronicle” of church historian Eusebius, the thirteenth or fourteenth year of Emperor Nero is given for the deaths of Peter and Paul. This means that Peter and Paul were killed in 67 or 68 CE![6] To connect the dots, the Gospel of Mark, our earliest gospel account was written at some time AFTER.
