When the Gospels were written?
A question is occasionally asked by people is: "If the New Testament was written so long after the death of Christ, how can you have so much confidence in the story of your life?"
in dating the Gospels, the tendency of many critics is to place them after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem (the year 70 AD). Often you hear say that the New Testament is nothing but the expression of the creeds of the first churches 50-80 years after the death of Jesus If so, we should note the influence of Hellenistic thought on the message of the New Testament. In fact, the historical evidence indicates that the New Testament books were written shortly after the death of Christ.
For example, the book of Acts, in which activity was recorded missionary of the early church was written by Luke, the gospel writer homonym. The book of Acts ends with the apostle Paul still living in Rome.
This book can then be written before Paul's death, as other major events of his life are narrated. Some evidence indicates that Paul was executed during the persecution ordered by Emperor Nero in 64 AD, so it is likely that the book of Acts was written before that year.
The Gospel of Luke, having been written before the book of Acts, by the same author, must therefore have been composed in the late 50th and early 60 AD. Christ's death took place around the year 30 AD, which bears the date of composition of Luke at the latest 30 years from those events.
The early church generally taught that the first Gospel to have been written were those of Mark and Matthew, which brings us even closer to the time of Christ. This leads us to believe that the first three Gospels were all composed over a period of 20-30 years from the time when these events took place, a time when opponents of the time they were alive and could easily contradict their testimony if was not accurate.
Recently, the scholar J. Robinson (a well-known liberal theologian) showed - in a study of 380 pages and 1300 concluding remarks - that the New Testament books dating back to much earlier than many scholars today believe. Robinson has shown that the entire New Testament can not be completed before the year 70 AD, then in the middle of the period they lived in the writers of the gospels. Tests indicate that the documents were written in a very short distance from the events. Recently, another scholar, JW Wenham, has published a detailed study in the same conclusions reached by Robinson.
Robinson points out that in the New Testament there is no reference to the persecution of Nero in 64 AD, or the killing of James, the brother of Jesus in 62 AD, is not even mentioned the revolt of the Jews against the Romans, which started in 66 AD, or catastrophic event was the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in AD 70.
In all probability the New Testament was completed before 70 AD, perhaps even before AD 64. We consider that the fall of the Temple Jerusalem would have fed the preaching of the Christian message that Jesus replaced the sacrificial system of the Temple (cf. John 1:29, Hebrews 10:11 ff.), and then the New Testament would certainly have referred to its destruction as a past event, if it had already occurred at the time of writing.
Examination of internal consistency also Tresmontant scholar, points out, for example, in John 5:2 we read that "in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate there is [not" was " , verb estin in greek] a pool, called in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porches. " Would not make sense to say that if the book had been written after the destruction of Jerusalem, since it was reduced to a pile of stones as Jesus had prophesied decades earlier (see Mark 13:1-2).
In the study by Robinson, 60, and a few hundred pages of notes are devoted to testing the dating of the following New Testament books:
1 Thessalonians 2 Thessalonians
AD 45-50 years: 50-51 years
1 Corinthians years 55
1 Timothy: 55 years
2 Corinthians Galatians
56 years: 56 years
Romans
Tito 57 years: 57 years
Philippians, Colossians
58 years: 58 years
Ephesians, 2 Timothy
58 years: 58 years
James: Judas
about 47-48: 61-62
about Peter, about 61-62
Acts: 57-62
about 2.3 and John 1: 60-65 period
about 1 Peter: 65 years
Marco: between 45-60
Matthew
between 40-60 + Luke +
57-60 by John probability. period 40-65 +
Among other scholars, including Carsten P. TheID date and identifies the fragments of the Gospel of Mark (7Q5) around the year 50 AD, and sets a date for the other books very similar to that found in the studies of Robinson.
the same conclusions are reached also C. Tresmontant, considering the language and the archaeological evidence, and then J. Carmignac, the famous philologist and scholar of Jewish texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Orchard and Matthew Riley dating to 43 AD, while Gunther Zuntz, an international authority on the Hellenic world, given a Mark no later than 40 AD (ie before the arguments made by Robinson).
KL Gentry, D. Chilton, and the same Robinson, also conclude that the last of the New Testament books, the Book of Revelation, has been completed before the year 70 AD.
Dr. Eta Linnemann, which was passed in a negative criticism in the wake of the New Testament by Rudolf Bultmann and Ernst Fuchs, he has denied those beliefs and now urges its readers to "throw" his previous works, wrote several papers that break down the positions of modern critics. She writes:
"eye witnesses (both those hostile as favorable ones) did not disappear from the scene in a flash after two decades. Many probably survived until the second half of the year 70 AD .. Who at that time would have dared to tamper with the 'primitive tradition' beyond recognition? "
We note, finally, that many critics forget that the Gospels could not fail to be immediately written by early Christians. The early Christian communities, in fact, coming from the "Religion of the Book" (Judaism), they could not ignore the need to carefully write the story of Jesus and confirmed by an authoritative point of view (the apostolic), to declare the message entrusted to them by Christ, and to protect by false representations by the heretics, which existed in apostolic times.
There is no reason to believe that only after a disciple of the apostles has collected the writings of the Apostles and produced the New Testament.
The Apostles John and Paul encouraged Christians to read and disseminate their writings already circulated among the churches. The apostle Peter wrote, "I know that soon I'll have to leave my tent, as our Lord Jesus Christ told me. But I will endeavor to ensure that after my departure you will always have a way to remember these things. In fact, we gave you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, not because we went behind a cleverly invented stories, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty "(2 Peter 1:14-16).
Later in the same epistle, he validates the work of Paul and confirms their use as canonical Scripture by of the Christian church: "... even as our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom that was given, and this he does in all his letters, which addresses these issues. In them there are some things hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable distort to their destruction as well as the other Scriptures "(2 Peter 3:15,16).
We can therefore conclude that even from the historical point of view the description offered by the witnesses of Jesus Christ eyewitnesses who wrote the Gospels is reliable. And we Christians have found the truth of the words of the New Testament, the apostle and acknowledge that "these things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing you may have life in His name" (John 20 : 31).
See also:
The prophecies of the Bible about Christ
Reliability and historical importance of the Bible
KJV Bible on this site
http://camcris.altervista.org/datavang.html
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