Some Points To Remember About The Dating Of The Gospels

- The author of the third gospel and Acts tells us the scope of his two-volume work in Luke 1:1-4 and Acts 1:1. He's addressing "the things accomplished among us" (Luke 1:1), which he recharacterizes as what Jesus did and taught in the world (Acts 1:1). So, the best explanation for the ending of the book of Acts is that the events there are the last significant events of Christian history that occurred before the author published his work. It apparently was published, then, in the early to mid 60s. It would be unreasonable to suggest that the author was writing significantly later, but didn't want to include anything after what's narrated in Acts 28, since those later events weren't important enough. Many highly significant things happened after the conclusion of Acts 28, including shortly afterward and including things the author himself had suggested would be noteworthy (Paul's martyrdom, the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, etc.). The interpretation of the opening verses of Luke and Acts I've just outlined is a far better explanation of the scope of the books than the popular appeal to Acts 1:8 to explain why Acts ends where it does. See here and here for discussions of the many problems with that appeal to Acts 1:8.

- The earliest external source to comment on the dating of Luke/Acts is 1 Timothy 5:18. It refers to Luke's gospel as circulating during Paul's lifetime. See here for more about that passage. Notice that its value as the earliest external evidence doesn't depend on Pauline authorship. We should accept and defend Paul's authorship of the document, but a critic of the early dating of Luke/Acts can't just object to Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy. He has to do more than that. Whoever wrote 1 Timothy and whoever the initial audience was, the document reflects an early belief in the early dating of Luke (and, by implication, Acts). As my post linked above explains, there's a way in which denying Pauline authorship of the document even increases its evidential significance in this context, since such a denial implies a larger initial audience for the letter. (And any sort of group authorship proposal would have a potential similar implication on the authorship side.)

- The later dates typically put forward for the gospels have much less of a negative implication for Christianity than is often suggested. Mark is usually dated roughly five years after Paul's death. And it's commonly suggested that Paul is a significantly early source, that there would be substantially more evidential value in a claim about Jesus if it appeared in Paul's writings, and so on. But five years doesn't have much significance in this context. There are many ways of illustrating that. One way is to think of the timespan involved in Paul's most widely accepted letters. They're typically dated anywhere from the late 40s to the mid 60s. If somebody dated Philemon five years after Romans, would anybody think those five years make Philemon much less historically credible than Romans when addressing events that happened before both documents were written? I doubt that anybody holds such a view. I doubt that the thought ever even entered the mind of most of the people who object to the alleged lateness of Mark's gospel. Does the person who dates 1 Thessalonians fifteen years earlier than Philippians consider 1 Thessalonians a far earlier source, as if those fifteen years justify placing the two documents in highly different categories? I doubt it. Or think of the time between Jesus' death and Paul's letters. Why assign so much more significance to something Paul wrote twenty-five or thirty-five years after Jesus' death than you assign to something written around forty years after his death? It should be noted that I'm not denying that people take factors other than dating into account when judging the credibility of a source (e.g., how Paul's value as a source is increased by his interactions with individuals like James and Peter). But the dating issue is often singled out, as if Paul's dating is much better or much less problematic than the dating of Mark and other sources. My point is that the significance of differences in dating is often exaggerated, regardless of what you make of other issues involved.

What methods are used to date ancient manuscripts?

How early are the New Testament books?

Dating Daniel

https://www.academia.edu/41459263/Daniel_s_Date_of_Composition

Dating Mark

This is a sequel to my previous post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/05/dating-gospels.html

1. Due to Markan priority, which is the mainstream view in NT scholarship across the theological spectrum (liberal, moderate, conservative), the date of Mark is a lynchpin for dating Matthew and Luke. Liberals usually assign Mark a post-70 AD date. Moderates and conservatives usually date Mark to the 60s, although some date it to the 50s, and a handful to the 40s. NT introductions by Guthrie (81-86) and Carson/Moo (172-82) have a useful overview of the patristic evidence and respective positions on dating and provenance.

Among conservative and some moderate scholars, a key factor in dating Mark is the way patristic testimony tethers Mark to Peter. This goes back to the testimony of Papias, who says Mark was Peter's "interpreter". Variations on this testimony are found in other early church fathers. However, Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria apparently disagree on whether Mark's Gospel was written during or after Peter's lifetime. This raises a number of methodological issues:

1. If Peter is Mark's sole informant, the question is when and where Mark and Peter cross paths. Rome? Caesarea? That affects dating schemes. 

2. Even if Peter is Mark's informant, it doesn't ipso facto follow that he wrote his Gospel at the time he met with Peter–although he might take notes. 

3. To what extent is subsequent patristic testimony independent of Papias? Do they have their own sources of information, or are these secondary notices, dependent on Papias? Are they simply repeating and passing along the tradition of Papias? Or does it dovetail with other available information? 

4. How early in church history would there be a constituency for a biography about Jesus? Seems to me people would be interested in the life of Jesus from the outset. And as the Christian movement rapidly radiated out across the far-flung Roman Empire, there'd be a need for a written life of Jesus.

5. I'm struck by the neglect of Acts 12:12 is discussions of Mark's Gospel. There's an entrenched scholarly tradition that takes patristic testimony as the starting-point, but while that's important, evidence gleaned from the Book of Acts is more important. That should be the point of departure. 

Scholarship often gets stuck in a rut. Scholars influence other scholars, so that has a conditioning effect what how the issues are framed–which in turn, selects for the range of answers.

But according to Acts 12:12, Mark's mother hosted a house-church in Jerusalem, which was known to Peter. That carries a number of highly suggestive implications:

Jerusalem was Mark's hometown. Presumably, he was living in Jerusalem during the public ministry of Christ. In addition, he had access to apostles living in Jerusalem. 

Jerusalem was a polyglot city, and Mark himself came from a Greek-speaking family (immigrants from Cypress). 

6. If we run with Acts 12:12, Peter might well be one of Mark's informants, but Mark would have access to other informants. 

7. It's quite likely that Mark first met Peter in Jerusalem, early on. 

8. In addition, it's stands to reason that Mark was an eyewitness to some events involving the public ministry of Christ.

9. Therefore, I see no good reason to tether the date of Mark's Gospel to the whereabouts of Peter. And even if Peter was his primary informant, Mark could have gotten his information from Peter when they were both living in Jerusalem–back in the 30s. But the inertia of mainstream scholarship makes it hard to turn the ship. 

Dating the Gospels

I. Conventional reasons to date the Gospels after 70 AD:

1. Form criticism

According to this theory, the sources of the gospels underwent extensive creative oral development before commitment to writing. Other issues aside, many NT scholars date the Pauline letters much earlier than the Gospels, yet if Christians could write letters in the 40s-60s, there's nothing to inhibit them from writing Gospels in the 40s-60s. So the form critical stipulation is arbitrary. 

2. Olivet Discourse

i) Liberal scholars don't think Jesus could foresee the fall of Jerusalem. Therefore, the Synoptic Gospels had to be written post-70 AD. Given Markan priority, that pushes Matthew and Luke further out. If, however, you accept the supernatural phenomenon of precognition, not to mention the deity of Christ, then that objection reflects unjustified naturalistic prejudice. 

ii) A more specific objection is that Luke's version of the Olivet Discourse (Lk 21:20-24) reflects knowledge after the fact. Luke allegedly rewrote the oracle with the benefit of hindsight. By way of response:

iii) Even on naturalistic grounds, the account uses stock siege warfare imagery from the LXX. 

iv) Jerusalem was a fortified city, so siege warfare would be the standard tactic.

v) This wasn't the first time Jerusalem had been surrounded by foreign armies (e.g. Babylonians, Assyrians, Romans). 

vi) Luke has his own sources, independent of Matthew and Mark. All of them may well be quoting what Jesus said, but excerpting different statements. Cf. D. Wenham, The Rediscovery of Jesus' Eschatological Discourse (Wipf & Stock 2003). What Luke records is more germane to his Gentile target audience while what Matthew records is more germane to his Jewish target audience. 

3. John's Gospel is more theological advanced than the Synoptics 

In a sense that may be true. However, this doesn't imply that his Gospel is later than the Synoptics–although it may be. For example, you can have two contemporaries who write about a war they lived through. One account may be more insightful than another. That has nothing to do with relative chronology. Moreover, John's Gospel uses Jewish categories and OT paradigms to express theology. 

II. Reasons to date the Gospels before 70 AD:

1. Authorship

i) If traditional authorship is correct, then that sets an outer limit for the composition of the Gospels inasmuch as they had to be written within the lifetime of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Minimally, that rules out the 2C. 

So that depends on evidence for traditional authorship, which is varied, including both internal and external evidence. One argument is the titles of the Gospels. Our Greek manuscripts are remarkably consistent in their authorial ascriptions. But it's hard to account for that uniformity if the titles are late editorial additions, considering the fact that ancient Christian scribes worked independently of each other. So that implies the originality of the titles. Detailed arguments are provided by scholars like Hengel and Bauckham. Cf. R. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Eerdmans, 2nd. ed., 2017); M. Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ (Trinity Press 2000). (Not that they affirm traditional authorship, which is ironic, and reflects a failure to follow through with the logic of their own arguments.)

ii) There's a sense in which authorship is more important than date. So long as the Gospels reflect living memory. So long as they were written by people who knew Jesus or knew people who knew Jesus. 

2. Historical accuracy

If the Gospels were written by people who were not eyewitnesses or didn't have access to eyewitness sources, then it's very hard to explain the historical accuracy of the Gospels. Cf. Peter Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels? (Crossway 2010). So that implies authors with firsthand knowledge. 

3. The date of Acts

The Book of Acts ends abruptly, without informing the reader about the fate of Paul. There's a steady buildup to Paul's impending trial before Caesar, only to leave that hanging in midair. The most natural explanation for lack of resolution is that Acts was written before the final disposition of Paul's case. For a classic exposition and defense, cf. C. Hemer, The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History (Eisenbrauns 1990), chap. 9. Readers are bound to be curious about Paul's fate. Although that argument is less popular among scholars than it used to be, it's still the most plausible, straightforward explanation. In addition, Acts lacks any reference to the demise of Peter and James (brother of Jesus), even though it records the demise of other church leaders (Stephen, James bar Zebedee). Assuming that Acts was written before Paul's execution, that pushes Luke's Gospel further back. 

4. The Synoptic Problem

i) On a conventional solution to the Synoptic Problem, Matthew and Luke made use of Mark. That entails Markan priority. The basic argument is that if a teacher read three student papers as similar to each other as the Synoptics, he'd logically conclude that there was collaboration or literary dependence. This doesn't mean Matthew and Luke are necessarily dependent on Mark for on their information, even in parallel accounts. There is evidence that they had their own sources of information, even in parallel accounts. Cf. L. McGrew, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts (DeWard 2017). 

ii) Even if that yields a relative chronology, it doesn't give an absolute chronology. But it provides a rough terminus ad quo and terminus ad quem. At one end, Mark could be as earlier as the 40s. Cf. https://legacy.tyndalehouse.com/tynbul/Library/TynBull_1972_23_04_Wenham_PeterInRome.pdf

At another end, if Acts was written before Paul's execution, then Luke was probably written around the late 50s, give or take. I have no opinion as to whether Matthew was written before or after Luke. It could date from the 50s-60s. 

5. John's Gospel

i) Patristic evidence may indicate that it was written in the 90s, during the reign of Domitian. However, that interpretation may be dubious. Cf. J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Westminster 1976),  256-58. 

ii) The epilogue to John's Gospel (Jn 21) supplies a terminus ad quem for the composition of the Gospel. It was either occasioned by the death of Peter or John (the "Beloved Disciple"). Scholars typically opt for John's death (or the "Beloved Disciple"), but if we accept the internal and external evidence for Johannine authorship, then by process of elimination, Peter's death is a better candidate. That's challenged on the grounds of third-person narration. However, illeism, as well as alternation between first-person and third-person narration, is a stock convention in ancient historiography. Cf. Rod Elledge, "Illeism in Classical Antiquity", Use of the Third Person for Self-Reference by Jesus and Yahweh: A Study of Illeism in the Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Its Implications for Christology (T&T Clark 2017), chap. 2. 

Mind you, so long as the Fourth Gospel was authored by the apostle John, or even an eyewitness other than John (assuming the Beloved Disciple and the apostle John are distinct), then the date of the Fourth Gospel is inconsequential. 

In sum, I think all four Gospels were probably written between the 40s-60s. I don't have a bulletproof argument, but historical reconstructions are rarely bulletproof. It's a matter of choosing the best explanation.

Parental guidelines for dating

http://www.christiansingleswebsite.org/Application-for-Dating-my-Daughter-10-Rules-for-Dating-my-Daughter.pdf

Calendar narratives

Flood stories were widespread in the ancient world. One distinctive of the biblical flood account is its use of dates. There are five dates in the Genesis flood narrative. This is remarkable, since those are the only dates in the entire book of Genesis. 

Typically in ancient literature, an event's timing was indicated by relating it to another event, not by using dates. Timeline dating–plotting events on a transcendent timeline with dates–is common today, but ancient texts used event sequencing, temporally marking an event by relating it to other events. 

Throughout Genesis, event sequencing is used. But five dates appear in the flood narrative and nowhere else in the entire book of Genesis.

An important insight emerges when these dates are potted against the festival calendar of Israel. Three of the five fall directly on Mosaic festival dates. The only exceptions are the first and last, which nonetheless fall at the midpoint of Israel's grain-harvest festivals. All five dates appear to be "scheduled" with reference to Israel's festivals. 

1. The beginning of the flood (Gen 7:11). The flood's beginning date (2/27) is at the center of Israel's grain festivals.

2. The ark's landing (Gen 8:4)…In later Israel, this date would fall during the Feast of Booths. 

3. When the mountaintops became visible (Gen 8:5)…In later Israel, that same date was a new-moon day in between israel's festival days.

4. When the waters were gone (Gen 8:13). By New Years Day (1/1) the waters were gone. New Year's Day is a natural "new beginnings" point.

5. When the ground was dry (Gen 8:14). The ground was completely dry on 2/27. The significance of the flood's beginning in the heart of the grain harvest has already been noted. The same applies to its conclusion on a date one year later and even ten days after. 

These correspondences suggest that the alignment between the five dated flood events and later Israel's festival calendar are not coincidental. Noah's flood was retold in a manner that related his "exodus" to Israel's festival worship and agricultural labors. If this reading is correct, one may still ask whether Noah's flood actually took place on these dates, or whether these dates were added anachronistically. One further feature indicates that these are not dates recorded from observation but are a literary construction: the flood narrative uses schematic, thirty-day months rather than actual varying-length months. This is prima facie evidence of a constructed (rather than observed) timeline. 

The flood narrative uses schematic, thirty-day months. The five months between the beginning of the flood (2/17) and the ark's resting on Mount Ararat (7:17) are rendered as 150 days (Gen 7:24; 8:3) being five months of thirty days each…The use of aesthetically balanced dates and numbers throughout the passage, such as 7s, 10s, 40s, 150, along with the use of schematic months, indicates the constructed nature of this narrative's dates for a legal (rather than journalistic) purpose). It is therefore proposed that the flood account is an agricultural and festival calendar in narrative form: a calendar narrative. 

This function for the flood narrative is comparable to the contemporary practice of telling Jesus' birth story on December 25. Churches do so, not to assure that Jesus was actually born on that date, but to inform Christian observances on that date. Similarly, the flood narrative re-maps the events of Noah's deluge to the calendar of Israel's agricultural labors and harvest festivals for its instructional value. 

There are at least three calendrical features of the flood narrative and exodus narratives that are also found in the creation week, suggesting all three date-laden narratives serve this calendrical purpose. First, the creation week is structured around dates like the flood and exodus narratives. The creation week does not provide month dates like those other calendar narratives, but it does give week dates. Days of the Hebrew week were identified by number. 

This reading cautions against both young-earth and old-earth efforts to read Genesis 1 as a chronology of original creation events…This reading leads to conclusions largely congruent with "analogical day," "literary day," or "framework" views. Michael LeFebvre, “Reading Genesis 1 with the Fourth Commandment: The Creation Week as a Calendar Narrative,” G. Hiestand & T. Wilson, eds.  Creation and Doxology: The Beginning and End of God's Good World (IVP 2018), chap. 1. 

There is hope, but not for us

There are stock arguments for the traditional authorship and dating of NT books like the Gospels, James, and Revelation. I think these are good arguments. But I'd like to explore a neglected line of evidence.

Moderate to liberal scholars typically date the Synoptic Gospels (esp. Matthew and Luke) to after the Jewish War (c. 67-73). I think that's easier to say if you're not a Jew who lived through the Jewish War. 

Admittedly, there's a sense in which that disqualifies me as well. But this is less about being Jewish or having a particular experience, then cultivating an awareness of the relevant sensibilities. 

Let's take a comparison. George Steiner and Edmund Wilson are both great literary critics. Steiner regards Kafka as a major writer, whereas Wilson regards him as overrated and ephemeral. Why the difference?

Simply put: Steiner is Jewish and Wilson is Gentile. Steiner is reading a Jewish author through Jewish eyes. He sees Kafka as a prescient allegory of the Shoah.

That's magnified by the fact that Steiner is, himself, haunted by the Shoah. His father had the wisdom to get his immediate family out of Dodge, but he couldn't save his extended family. He wrote them pleading letters. They ignored the threat and perished in the death camps. Steiner has the psychology of a Holocaust survivor (whether or not he meets the technical definition, which is disputed). 

By contrast, Wilson just doesn't get Kafka. He can't. Kafka doesn't speak to him at that level. It's too alien to his own experience. He has a waspish, patrician background. Hobnobbed with F. Scott Fitzgerald. He has no ear for Kafka. I don't necessarily say that as a criticism. It's not as if I can directly relate to Kafka's experience either. 

Let's draw another distinction. When people look back on their youth and childhood, there's often a sense of loss–assuming they had a happy childhood. But that can take either one two very different forms:

i) They may wax nostalgic about the past. Take writers like Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer) and Ray Bradbury (Dandelion Wine). Although that's tinged with a sense of regret, because it's irrecoverable, the loss was natural and gradual.

ii) But then you have writers whose happy youth or childhood was torn from their arms. Prematurely ripped away. Take Giorgio Bassani. His novels are set in pre-war Ferrera. And they reflect that place and period. They reflect his actual experience, making allowance for artistic license. 

Yet they are told with a view to the Shoah. Although the historical setting is prospective, the narrative viewpoint is retrospective, as a chain of events leads inexorably to the abyss. 

This is Holocaust literature. And it has Biblical precedent in exilic literature (e.g. Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Lamentations). In Jeremiah you have escalating despair as he foresees his people doomed by their own obduracy. What makes it so maddening is the self-fulling nature of their fate. They bring it upon themselves by their defiance. Ezekiel oscillates between elation and bitter rage.  And Lamentations gives voice to the unspeakable. 

Now, the Jewish War was an event similar in significance to the Holocaust and the Babylonian Exile. Even for Jews outside Palestine, Jerusalem was the epicenter of Judaism. It's hard to overstate the psychological impact that would have on survivors. There's medical evidence that children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors suffer from transgenerational trauma. And you'd have the same dynamic for analogous events. 

And that's a basic problem with the post-70 date for Matthew. If it was written after that cataclysm, why does it not read like Lamentations, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel? Although ostensively set in the time of Jesus, we'd expect the calamity of the Jewish War to cast a long backward shadow, just as we find in exilic literature and Holocaust literature. That's assuming it was, in fact, written after 70 AD. 

But Matthew doesn't begin to have the emotional register of someone who wrote from that harrowing vantagepoint. Yes, there are storm clouds on the horizon in the Olivet Discourse. But that lacks the direct transparency and intensity of searing personal experience. It's abstract. Future. Not the past as future.

Instead, the reader is treated to academic debates about Halakha and competing theories of the afterlife–from forty years before. And that's perfectly consistent with Matthew being precisely what it purports to be–rather than a retrojection. 

Compare that to Paul Celan, who lost both parents in the death camps. Who was repeatedly hospitalized for clinical depression. Who eventually committed suicide–unable to overcome the grief and guilt. Likewise, Primo Levi was another Jewish chronicler of the Shoah who survived the death camps, but succumbed to suicide. Ditto: Jean Améry. The memory was just unbearable. 

Conversely, the tone of Revelation calibrates very well with exilic literature and Holocaust literature. It's easy to imagine John writing that after the Jewish War. The emotional register parallels Ezekiel. 

But what about the Gospel of John? I think it might well have been written in the 60s. 

But suppose it was written in the 90s. Is that consonant with what I've been discussing? Possibly. People have different coping strategies. One way is to become more withdrawn. And, indeed, John's Gospel is detached and otherworldly. If the life you knew has been obliterated, that's one way to adapt. 

If Matthew was composed before 70 AD, and is literarily dependent on Mark, then Mark is however much earlier. 

The letter of James is written in a serene style that bears no trace of trauma to the collective psyche of 1C Jewry which you'd anticipate if it was penned sometime after the Jewish War. 

Luke is less susceptible to this style of analysis. Likely a Gentile convert to Judaism, and then to Christianity via Judaism. Although he's profoundly invested in Messianic Judaism, that's not a part of his formative experience, so even if his Gospel was written after 70 AD, I wouldn't necessarily expect it to reflect the same traumatization. There are, however, other arguments for dating its composition prior to 70 AD.

I've been using Jewish comparisons, but we could cast a wider net. Dabney was so demoralized after his side lost the Civil War that he moved to Texas. He just couldn't stand to live in Virginia any more. The life he'd known and loved was literally shot to pieces. Or consider the enduring psychological impact on dispossessed American Indians, driven from their ancestral lands.  

Finally, this may touch on the question of what happened to most of the apostles. After being listed in the Gospels, why did many melt away? You have traditions and legends, but that has an apocryphal flavor. A way of validating a national sect. 

One explanation may be that some of them perished in the siege of Jerusalem. Not because they were too devoted to the city, or nostalgic memories, but because they had relatives there, or because they had house-churches there where they ministered. Like missionaries who stayed behind in China during the Japanese invasion. Rather than abandon their flock, they suffered with them and died with them.  

World's oldest Koran may predate Muhammad

I wouldn't take this report as the final word on the subject, but it's interesting. Let's see if it holds up:

http://www.jpost.com/Not-Just-News/Oldest-Koran-in-the-world-may-predate-Muhammad-Oxford-University-researchers-say-413963

Waiting for your one true soulmate

https://allenlyeh.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/waiting.gif

Trophy wife

One popular justifications for SSM–in fact the primary justification–is the claim that so long as "two" people love each other, that's all that matters.

There seem to be a fair number of professing Christians who say that as well. 

A couple of quick counterexamples:

i) In the pop culture, there are many people who think girlfriends and boyfriends can "cheat" on each other. Now, I'm out of step with the pop culture in that regard. I think only married couples can cheat on either other. 

But let's grant pop cultural social mores for the sake of argument. If love is all that matters, why should boyfriends and girlfriends be exclusive? 

ii) Then there's the trophy wife. Say a young man marries a young woman right out of high school. He's very ambitious. His goal in life is to be rich. He finagles his way into Stanford or Yale for his undergraduate degree. Then he gets an MBA from Harvard, or maybe graduates from Harvard Law school.

He then joins a top law firm or Wall Street investment firm. His wife worked a job to help put him through college. Perhaps they have two or three kids.

Now, however, he's far more eligible than he was in high school. The marriage has lost its passion. He falls in love with a blond bombshell. Women like her were out of his league when he got hitched the first time.

So he trades up. He dumps his workhorse for a showhorse. 

BTW, when I was a kid, we used to call women like that "homewreckers." 

As long as love is the litmus test, he did nothing wrong. It all comes down to falling in love and falling out of love. You switch partners accordingly. She served her purpose. 

Do people who support SSM think he wronged his first wife? 

Diachrony in Biblical Hebrew

This is dry and technical. However, the general approach might be useful in defending the traditional dating of OT books:

http://themelios.thegospelcoalition.org/review/diachrony-in-biblical-hebrew

http://www.denverseminary.edu/resources/news-and-articles/diachrony-in-biblical-hebrew/

Dating the Gospels

There are different dating schemes for the canonical Gospels.

i) One common approach is to treat it like the domino effect. Assuming Markan priority, and the literary dependence of Matthew and Luke on Mark, if we have a date for Acts, then Luke's Gospel predates Acts, and Mark's Gospel predates Luke. So you work back from Acts as your chronological benchmark.

Likewise, it's sometimes argued that John's Gospel takes the Synoptic accounts for granted, making passing references that would be unintelligible apart from knowledge of those prior accounts ("undesigned coincidences"). 

According to one stock argument, Acts ends at that juncture because Luke takes the action up to the present. He says nothing more because nothing more had happened–at least nothing more of consequence. 

I think that's easily the most plausible explanation for the abrupt ending, which leaves things up in the air. 

a) Why would Luke devote a quarter of his church history to Paul's arrest/trial/appeal, only to say nothing about the final disposition, if this was written after Paul's execution? That's quite a build-up. He knew his readers would be curious about the outcome.

b) Moreover, Luke already mentions the martyrdom of two Christian leaders (Stephen, James), so why would he avoid mentioning the martyrdom of his hero (Paul), if it was written after the fact?

ii) Given (i), scholars date Acts to 62-64. But that in turn pushes Luke further back in time, and Mark further back in relation to Luke. 

iii) In addition, scholars like R. T. France have argued that Matthew refers to many topical Jewish customs and controversies which would be moot after the fall of Jerusalem. Would Matthew's selective account preserve information irrelevant to his audience?

iv) Admittedly, dating is less significant than authorship so long as a later date doesn't preclude traditional authorship.

However, a potential casualty of dating one or more Synoptic gospels to sometime after 70 AD is the argument from prophecy. In the nature of the case, prediction and fulfillment are more impressive if the prediction was publicly known in advance of the event. If, however, both the prediction and its fulfillment are recorded after the fact, then is that a prediction or retrodiction? 

If all three Synoptic Gospels were written after the fall of Jerusalem, then the prophecy of its impending downfall loses some evidentiary value. That invites the charge of prophecy ex eventu. 

There can, of course, be a significant gap between the time a prophecy is uttered and the time it's written down. The prophecy itself may be in circulation. Be remembered by the original audience who heard it, and, by word-of-mouth, for others who were not in attendance at the time. Oral tradition can precede a historical record. So it could still be common knowledge for people living before the event. In principle, they could vouch for the oracle. But, of course, later readers of the Gospel have only the Gospel accounts. We live on the other side of the event, looking back. 

In principle, Mark could be pre-70 AD while Matthew and Luke could be post-70 AD. In one respect, their record of the prophecy would be dependent Mark insofar as they copied and edited Mark's version, rather than independent corroboration.

If, however, they lived before the event, then even though they only wrote after the fact, that would still constitute independent attestation. And, indeed, Matthew and Luke do use earlier sources. So we need to distinguish between the date of their Gospels and the date of their sources.

If, however, all three antedate 70 AD, then that simplifies the argument from prophecy. In that case we clearly have priory and multiple-attestation alike. 

v) Here's a classic case for the earliest possible date of Mark:

http://www.tyndalehouse.com/tynbul/library/TynBull_1972_23_04_Wenham_PeterInRome.pdf

vi) Some commentators object that it's a dubious inference because Mark also has an abrupt ending. That, however, is a poor comparison, for the ending of Mark is, itself, considered to be problematic, requiring a special explanation.

vii) Some scholars think Mk 13 reflects a Roman setting, with specific reference to the Neronian persecution of Christians, which would date Mk to the late 60s. However, that's been challenged:

The linguistic data, for example, have come under fire from Theissen (Gospels, 244-49) and Marcus ("Jewish War," 443-46), who have argued that in 12:42 and 15:16, Mark is not substituting western terms for eastern equivalents but explaining imprecise Greek words by means of precise Latin ones.  

More importantly, although the persecution of the Roman Christians under Nero is the best-attested case of persecution of Christians in the first century, it is not the only such instance (for surveys, see Beare, "Persecution," and Potter, "Persecution"). Acts, the Pauline correspondence, and later church sources attest sporadic persecutions before Mark's time, in Judaea (Gal 1:13,22), particularly in Jerusalem (e.g. Acs 5:40; 7:54-8:3; 12:1-5; 21:27-36; 23:12-15; Josephus Ant. 20.22); in Damascus in Syria (2 Cor 11:32-33; Acts 9:1-2,23); in several cities in Asia Minor (Acts 13:50; 14:19; 19:24-34); and in Greece (Acts 16:19-24; 17:5-9,13; 18:12-13). Some of these persecutions seem to have been spontaneous acts of mob violence (cf. "hated by all" in Mk 13:13); Josephus, for example, mentions that James, the brother of Jesus and head of the Jerusalem church, was killed by a Jewish mob in 62 C.E. (Ant. 20:200), and in Acts the Christians' antagonists are often simply called "the Jews" (Acts 9:23; 12:3; 13:50; 14:19, etc.), though this term may sometimes denote Jewish authorities rather than the general populace (e.g. 13:50.  

In any event, some of the actions against Christians involved rulers as well (cf. the reference to trials before kings and rules in Mk 13:9). In Acts 12:1-5, for example, we hear of the involvement of Agrippa I of Palestine, sometime before his death in 44 CE., in the execution of James the son of Zebedee and the incarceration of Peter in Jerusalem, and in 1 Cor 11:32-33 we are told of an attempted arrest of Paul by agents of the Nabataean King Aretas in Damascus. Official persecution of some sort is also implied…by Paul's arrests of Judaean Christians before his conversion (Acts 8:3), by the letters he obtained from the high priest in Jerusalem to authorize the arrest of Damascene Christians (Acts 9:1-2), and by the punishment meted out against him after his conversion by the magistrates of Derbe in Asia Minor (Acts 16:22-24). Examinations of Christians before rulers, moreover, are described as taking place in Corinth (Acts 18:12-17), Jerusalem (22:30-23:10), and Caesarea (23:33-26:32), and beatings in synagogues or other Jewish venues, similar to those mentioned in Mk 13:9, are referred to as occurring in Jerusalem (Acts 5:40) and unspecified locations (2 Cor 11:24). The persecutions described in Mark 13:9-13, therefore, do not necessarily point toward Rome or the events under Nero. 

Indeed, it may even be questioned how well Mk 13 fits the circumstances of the Roman persecution described by Tacitus. If this chapter really reflected those events, in which Nero was such a dominating presence, would we not expect a Nero-like figure to be prominently featured in the Markan "prophecies"? Tacitus makes it clear that the persecution of 64 C.E. was instigated by Nero himself and that he played a central role in it, even using his private gardens for the slaughter of Christians. This information is intrinsically credible, since Nero would have had a plausible motive (scapegoating the Christians for a crime of which he himself was suspected) and since Tacitus himself had no love for the Christians and thus would probably not have invented the charge merely to slander Nero. But Mk 13 does not concentrate disproportionately on the wickedness of a Nero-like pagan king; there is only an incidental reference to hearings before rulers in 13:9, not the sort of preoccupation with regal wickedness that we see, for example, in the descriptions of the "beasts" in Dan 7 and Rev 13. And Nero is an unlikely candidate for the "abomination of desolation" in 13:14, since he never visited or even planned to visit Palestine, and the "abomination" is probably some sort of desecration of the Jerusalem temple. If Mk 13 really came out of the Neronian persecution, would we not expect it to focus more, as in Daniel and Revelation do, on a bestial, anti-God figure? Joel Marcus, Mark 1:8 (Yale U, 2002), 32-33.

The lowdown on the census of Quirinius

The material on the Quirinius census should change forever the way this topic is dealt with by scholars. The problem is well known: Luke presumably made a mistake when he stated that Quirinius (Cyrenius) was governor of Judea when a census was taken that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. However, it is “known” from Josephus that Quirinius did not come to Judea until A.D. 6. The approach of FATP is once again to start by examining the text. Luke does not strictly say that Quirinius was governor; the verb used means that he had governmental authority, not necessarily that he was the official governor of the province. After establishing the proper understanding of the text, Roman records are cited that are consistent with an empire-wide census taking place in 3 B.C. More significantly, Josephus gives contradictory information regarding Quirinius. He dates the coming of Quirinius to Judea just after the exile of Archelaus (A.D. 6) in Antiquities 18.1,2 (18.1.1) and 18.26 (18.2.1), but these passages also say that one of the acts after his coming was to depose the high priest Joazar from office. Joazar was installed by Herod the Great a few weeks before his (Herod’s) death in response to the golden eagle crisis, because Joazar cooperated with authorities in the matter of a census, and with Herod regarding his handling of the golden eagle incident. This made Joazar extremely unpopular with the people, and after the death of Herod they demanded that Joazar be removed from the high priesthood. This was done within a few months of Herod’s death, which means that Joazar, Quirinius, and the census are all associated together in the time shortly before the death of Herod and the time immediately thereafter, contradicting the A.D. 6 date for the coming of Quirinius to Judea. The internal contradictions of Josephus in these matters were pointed out years ago by Zahn, Lodder and other scholars, but new insights that help in unraveling the contradictory accounts of Josephus have been given by Dr. Steinmann’s colleague John Rhoads. FATP devotes 11 pages to sorting out the correct order of events and explaining why Josephus made the mistakes that he did in dating Quirinius and the census. These pages may require several readings to understand all the issues, but once this is done it is clear that the preponderance of evidence favors the enrollment associated with Quirinius to have been in 3 B.C., and perhaps continuing into early 2 B.C. 

http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2012/07/12/Book-Review-From-Abraham-to-Paul-A-Biblical-Chronology-Part-II.aspx#Article

Dating the Crucifixion

http://www.tyndalehouse.com/tynbul/library/tynbull_1992_43_2_06_humphreys_datechristscrucifixion.pdf

The Song of Songs

I'll make a few brief observations about the Song of Solomon:

i) It seems to be attributed to Solomon, and the setting reflects the Solomonic court. Likewise, Solomon is repeatedly mentioned. And the plot only has two main characters.  

ii) An objection to Solomonic authorship is that given his notorious promiscuity, he's a poor candidate to celebrate devoted love. 

One counterargument is that this work celebrates the love of his life. His one true love. Or first love. Moreover, it may have been written early in life, before he become so degenerate. 

There are, however, two other problems with the objection:

a) A minor correction is that his promiscuous reputation is somewhat exaggerated. The fact that he had 700 queens and 300 concubines doesn't mean he was sexually active with all–or even most–of them. Many were political marriages to seal a military or economic alliance with a neighboring city-state or nation. Likewise, harems were inherited. But by them, some of the harem girls were getting up in years.

This is not to deny that Solomon was promiscuous–even exceptionally promiscuous. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for kings to exploit their position in that respect. Classic abuse of power.  

b) In addition, there's no reason to presume that this work is strictly or literally autobiographical. Love stories and love poems are often fictional. They celebrate a romantic ideal. Indeed, poets sometimes resort to fiction in this regard precisely because they yearn for something that real life disappoints. It's a fantasy of how they wish things were. And the advantage of fiction is that you can control the action. The disadvantage is that fiction lacks the vividness of genuine experience.

So it's possible that while the work is informed by Solomon's sexual experience, the work itself is fictional. If so, then it could well celebrate monogamous love. People can sincerely honor and desire something they personally fall short of attaining. Indeed, their very failure may heighten the contrast between the hoped-for ideal and the frustrating reality.

Even if it's "based on a true story," the poet may exercise great literary license. It's hard to say how much is imaginative. And I don't think that detracts from the value of the work. It's not a historical narrative like Genesis.  

iii) Another objection is that this work doesn't specify marital love. 

However, one problem with that objection is that the lyric poetic genre leaves the narrative sequence somewhat ambiguous. The plot may not be rigorously linear. Rather, it may circle around in flashbacks or erotic dreams.  

Scholars differ on whether or not there's chronological progression. Is it single to married? Sexual coming of age (e.g. Garrett)? Or is the couple married throughout (e.g. Hess)?

But the gist of the narrative seems to be courtship followed by marriage. A couple falls in love. They experience intense physical longing to consummate their love. They are tempted to prematurely gratify their passion. So the first part accentuates breathless anticipation. 

In the second part we have the honeymoon. This is initially rapturous, yet the bride experiences a sense of letdown. After the initial climax, the rest of the poem describes the development of a more stable, enduring love. It gives the reader the typical ups and downs of falling in love, the wedding night, and the adjustment to life together. Anticlimax follows climax. What do you do for an encore? 

Also, insofar as the predominate narrative outlook of the work is from the perspective of the heroine, the bride is more likely to feel a sense of letdown than the groom. 

That's perfectly consistent with a monogamous storyline. They keep their passions in check before the wedding. That's somewhat obscured by the impressionistic quality of the presentation. 

iv) Thus far I've been viewing the work as a tribute to romantic love. And as one commentator notes, the canon would be unbalanced if it only addressed sexuality in terms of prohibitions, rather than a positive treatment. 

v) There is, however, a long history of allegorical interpretations. One of the most ironic is the Marian interpretation, favored by some Catholic commentators. That evinces the desperation of Catholics to prooftext their Marian dogmas. In addition, this work furnishes singularly intractable material to illustrate the perpetual virginity of Mary! 

vi) It's sometimes said, even by otherwise reputable scholars (e.g. Clines), that the account was allegorized to make it into the canon–or keep it in the canon. But other scholars says there's precious little evidence that it's erotic content was an obstacle to canonization. 

If Scripture can be very explicit about sexual immorality, why can't it be fairly explicit about marital love? 

Moreover, the imagery isn't really explicit. Rather, the poet skillfully uses provocative comparisons. The detailed descriptions are not about erogenous anatomy, but figurative analogues (e.g. a cluster of grapes). So there's nothing "pornographic" about the imagery. It uses prosaic words for sexual anatomy. The elaboration shifts to figurative imagery.

vii) Certainly the Bible uses marriage as a theological metaphor. That's deployed by turns to illustrate fidelity and infidelity. The marital metaphor is an emotional resonant and powerful image to illustrate the possessive and protective nature of God's love for Israel and/or the Church. 

But any analogy includes disanalogies, and the allegorical interpretation of the work would accentuate the disanalogies to an incongruous degree. Lovesick men and women have limited control over their feelings. The beloved can elicit emotions from the lover. It's an involuntary response. 

Surely that's a very unsuitable illustration of how God and Christians interrelate. Do we tug his heartstrings the way the beloved in this poem affects her lover? Is God crazy in love with sinners? Must he keep his passions under tight rein? 

I think the poem is clearly describing human romance. That can become a basis for theological metaphors, not vice versa. Not in this instance.

Getting to know you

http://lydiaswebpage.blogspot.com/2014/07/on-dating-getting-to-know-you.html

Fossil remains

http://blog.drwile.com/?p=12362#more-12362

Rabbits in precambrian

I mentioned this a few days ago, but I'd like to make a general observation:

http://blog.drwile.com/?p=11753

Ever since Darwin published his bombshell, you've have professing Christians who are prepared to reinterpret the Bible by any means necessary, or deny the plenary inspiration of Scripture, to accommodate Darwinism. You have professing Christians who commit apostasy. You have professing Christians who feel tremendous intellectual pressure to accept Darwinism. They think the evidence is compelling if not overwhelming.

Now we have to be very cautious about how to interpret residual soft tissue in dinosaur fossils. This requires further study. It would be premature to lay too much weight on this argument. Perhaps there's a natural explanation for how soft tissue can last that long under those conditions. 

Mind you, I don't know how that could be tested. Obviously it can't be tested directly. You can't treat samples in the laboratory, wait 60 million years, then check back on their state of preservation. 

But my point is this: it does show you how extremely fragile Darwinism is in principle. If it's not naturally possible for soft tissue to survive that long under those conditions, then that fact alone is sufficient to single-handedly falsify Darwinism. 

It's a requirement of Darwinism that some organisms go back millions of years. It's a requirement of Darwinism that some organisms precede other organisms by millions of yeas. To my knowledge, there's no give on that issue. 

If dinosaur fossils with remnant soft tissue are conventionally dated to 60 million years ago (give or take), and if soft tissue will decay or disintegrate by several orders of magnitude sooner than that, then that falsifies Darwinism at one stroke. That's the only evidence you need. Doesn't matter how much putative evidence can be marshalled for Darwinism. 

Whether or not that's a matter of fact remains to be seen. But it's worth noting how vulnerable Darwinism is to disproof, as a matter of principle.