We Know Who Wrote the Gospels, and We Probably Know When (Part 10)

As I said last time, we do not know for sure in what order the four gospels were written, or who relied upon who for their work. But here I want to show — mostly by quoting recent writers on the subject — that we can in fact know with confidence who actually wrote the four gospels (here we will concentrate on the “synoptic” gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke) and roughly when they were composed. The importance of this is obvious: if we are to have confidence in our earliest written sources for the life of Jesus, we need to know that they were written by eye-witnesses, or at least by people with reasonable access to eyewitnesses, and that they were not written so long after the events they describe that there was time for legendary material to grow and significantly distort the accounts.

1) We Know Who Wrote the Four Gospels

First of all, the theory that the original copies of the gospels were anonymous, and that the names of the authors were only added a hundred years or so later by the early Christians to add credibility to the accounts, has been thoroughly debunked by Brad Pitre in his outstanding book The Case for Jesus (2016). As I think Pitre lays this matter to rest once and for all, we will quote him at length here:

The first and perhaps biggest problem for the theory of the anonymous Gospels is this: no anonymous copies of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John have ever been found. They do not exist. As far as we know, they never have. … [T] earliest and best copies of the four Gospels are unanimously attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There is absolutely no manuscript evidence — and thus no actual historical evidence — to support the claim that “originally” the gospels had no titles. …

The second major problem with the theory of the anonymous gospels is the utter implausibility that [copies of a] a book circulating around the Roman Empire without a title for almost a hundred years could somehow at some point be attributed to exactly the same author by scribes throughout the world and yet leave no trace of disagreement in any manuscripts. And by the way, this is supposed to have happened not just once, but with each of the four gospels. … How did these unknown scribes who added the titles know whom to ascribe the books to? How did they communicate with one another so that all the copies ended up with the same titles? [NB: well, they might have read the writings in the mid-second century of early Christian writers like Papias, or the Muratorian canon, or St. Irenaeus, all of whom ascribe these gospels to their traditional authors — but by that time there were doubtless hundreds of copies of the four gospels circulating throughout the Mediterranean world] It is highly improbable that scribes scattered everywhere in the second century, each with their own copies of these works could act with 100% unanimity on this matter, with everyone adding just the same names to the same texts. Far more likely that the texts manifest such unanimity because they all had the traditional authorial names in their titles right from the start]. …

Moreover, the idea … fails to take into account the fact that from the moment there was even more than one Gospel in circulation, readers would have needed some way to distinguish one from the other. … Now we know from the Gospel of Luke that “many” accounts of the life of Jesus were already in circulation by the time he wrote (see Luke 1:1-4). So to suggest that no titles whatsoever were added to the Gospels until the late second century AD completely fails to take into account the fact that multiple Gospels were already circulating before Luke ever set pen to papyrus, and that there would be a practical need to identify these books. …

If the Gospels really got their titles from scribes falsely adding them to manuscripts up to a century later, we would expect to find (1) [at least some] anonymous copies — which as we have seen, don’t exist — as well as (2) contradictory titles, with some scribes attributing one copy of a Gospel to Matthew and another attributing the same Gospel to Peter or Jesus or whomever. …

The third major problem with the theory of the anonymous Gospels has to do with the claim that the false attributions were added a century later to give the Gospels “much needed authority.” If this were true, then why are two of the four Gospels ascribed to non-eyewitnesses? Why, of all people, would ancient scribes pick Mark and Luke …? (pp. 15, 18-20, 22)

In fact, Pitre points out that if we consult the earliest Christian writers outside of the four gospels, then there was no debate among them at all about who wrote these books: they are “completely unambiguous and totally unanimous about who wrote the four Gospels. Even more, some of these writings come from authors who either knew the apostles themselves, or who were only one generation removed from the apostles. … Some of these Fathers either knew the apostles personally (like Papias) or knew people who knew the apostles (like Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria” (p. 39, 41).

We have already seen (in article number nine in this series) some elements of the case for the authorship of Mark by John Mark, the interpreter of the apostle Peter in Rome. Pitre argues in detail for the traditional authorship ascribed to the other four Gospels as well. It may be fairly said, therefore, that we know who wrote the four gospels, and that they were either eyewitnesses themselves (Matthew and John), or in close contact with eyewitnesses and their testimonies (Mark and Luke), and therefore well able to provide us with historical memories of the life and teachings of Jesus.

2) We Probably Know When The Four Gospels Were Written

Most New Testament scholars point to the critical importance of one event above all others in the dating of the composition of the gospels: the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 AD. This was the climactic, and single most datable event in the religious history of Israel in that era. The subsequent collapse of institutional Judaism centered on the Temple had a dramatic effect on the history both of Judaism and Christianity alike. From that point on, there was no way that portions of the Christian Church could continue to try to be just a radical Jewish and Messianic reform movement: the Church as a whole came to understand itself more clearly than ever as the new and true fulfilment of the vocation of Israel in God’s plan. The truly remarkable thing, however, is that this critical event in Christian and Jewish history is never once mentioned as a past event in the entire New Testament.

The case for dating the gospels after 70 AD rests almost entirely on the fact that during his ministry Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. So (the argument runs) it must be the case that these oracles of Jesus were written after those events occurred, and placed in the mouth of Jesus by the early Christians and the gospel writers. Of course, this presupposes that Jesus could not have had the gift of prophecy from the Holy Spirit, and could not have made an accurate prophecy of the future. But apart from that issue, there is the obvious fact that the Temple and the city of Jerusalem had been completely destroyed once before in Jewish history — by the Babylonian invaders in 586 BC. The scene is described in the Old Testament in ways that offer striking parallels to what Jesus is recorded to have said in the New Testament, for example:

In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month — which was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon — Nebuzaradan, the captain of the body guard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. And he burned the house of the Lord, and the king’s house and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down. And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem. (2 Kings 25: 8-10)

As New Testament scholar C.H. Dodd once pointed out, there is nothing in Jesus’ forecast of the destruction of Jerusalem that could not have been gleaned from these Old Testament accounts:

And when he drew near and saw the city he wept over it, saying, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace! But now they are hid from your eyes. For the days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side, and dash you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you; because you did not know the time of your visitation. (Lk 19:41-44)

And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down. (Mk 13:1-2)

In short, Jesus may have been doing what any prophet of ancient Israel would have done: interpret the present faithlessness of Israel, and its consequences, in the light of the faithlessness of Israel in the past. Luke includes the saying that the city would be “surrounded by armies” (Lk 19: 43, above) and Matthew adds the prophecy that the city will be “burned” (Mt 22:7), but again, all this is also included in the accounts of the fall off Jerusalem in 586 BC (as a matter of fact, it would be impossible to lay siege to Jerusalem without surrounding it with armies). Again, everything Jesus said on this subject could have been gleaned by him from the Old Testament: There is nothing here that necessarily implies that the fall of Jerusalem has already happened, and that the gospel writers are just attributing to Jesus a prediction of the event “after the fact.”

Besides, the gospel writers include a saying of Jesus among these prophecies that makes no sense at all if it was attributed to him after the destruction of Jerusalem. In Mark 13: 14 and 18, and Matthew 24: 15 and 20, Jesus says “Pray that it may not happen in winter” — but as matter of fact, the final capture of the city and destruction of the Temple happened in the spring of 70 AD. So, why invent and put into Jesus’ mouth around 75 or 80 AD an instruction to pray that it might not happen at a time of year when everyone knew it had not happened?

In short, there is no clear statement anywhere in the gospels that implies that the authors knew of the siege and capture of Jerusalem by the Roman armies in 70 AD. Thus, it is unlikely that the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) were written after that date. An historical event so monumentally important to the history of Christianity and Judaism could not have failed to have been mentioned by these writers if it had already occurred.

The best clues to the dating of the synoptic gospels, however, come not from the gospels at all, but from the book called the Acts of the Apostles, the sequel that Luke wrote to his gospel that tells the story of the early Christian Church. Evangelical scholar and pastor Gregory Boyd has summed up the matter so clearly and succinctly in his book Letters from a Skeptic (2008) that I will close this installment of our series by letting him walk us through the points, and connecting the dots for us:

The key to dating the Gospels … is in dating the book of Acts, for it is accepted by all scholars (liberal and conservative) that Acts comes after the Gospels (with the possible exception of John). The Synoptic Gospels, then, cannot be dated later than Acts. So what is the dating of Acts? I would argue that it must be dated sometime in the early 60s of the first century. Here are my reasons.

Luke (the accepted author of Acts) makes no mention of the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. This would be most remarkable if Acts was written after this date, especially because Luke is, throughout Acts, centrally interested in events which occur in Jerusalem. In fact … Luke makes no mention of the war that broke out between the Jews and the Romans in AD 66 which led to the fall of Jerusalem, though throughout his work he is concerned with Roman-Jewish relations. For example, he mentions the minor skirmish which occurred between these two in AD 44. But how could he then pass up the much more significant war which occurred 22 years later, a war which resulted in the destruction of the Jewish temple and the sacking of all Jerusalem?

What really drives home this point is the fact that Jesus, in Luke’s gospel, prophesies that Jerusalem would fall (Luke 21). It is, I think, most unlikely to suppose that Luke missed this opportunity to show how this prophecy was fulfilled — especially when one considers that one of the reasons Luke wrote Acts in the first place was to show how the working of the Spirit in the early church carries on and fulfills the ministry of Jesus! …

Acts makes no mention of Nero’s persecution of Christians in the mid 60’s. In fact, Luke’s view of the Roman government is positively irenic. This requires us to place the document at a time when the Roman government was not hostile to Christians, a time prior to Nero.

Luke, in Acts, makes no mention of the martyrdom of Paul (AD 64) and Peter (AD 65), though he is very concerned to note the martyrdom of “lesser” Christian leaders (e.g., Stephen, James). This is especially remarkable because half of the book of Acts is about Paul, and a large part about Peter! This is impossible to make sense of if Luke were writing after their deaths.

Much of the subject matter of Acts concerns issues which are important before the fall of Jerusalem, but not after. This reflects the needs and interests of the audience, an audience which clearly has not yet experienced the fall of Jerusalem.

Luke’s record of people and events in the Roman Empire has time and time again been substantiated by archaeology. He reflects a detailed knowledge of the early first century, a knowledge which grows increasingly unlikely the later we place the date of this document.

Luke uses expressions in Acts which were used widely in early Christianity, but not later — not after AD 70. Jesus, for example, is called “the Son of Man,” but this title died out very early in Christian circles (replaced by “Son of God”).

So, I would argue, Acts can be dated no later than the mid-60s, and probably a bit earlier. The gospel of Luke was written just prior to Acts — they form a two volume work — and Luke, it is almost universally argued, was written after Mark. …

Here we have documents which were written no later than three decades after the event. That is very close, by any [ancient] historical standards. There was no time for significant “legendary” accretion. The eyewitnesses … were still living, and living in the very same vicinity as these works were being circulated. (The Gospels thus have a built-in “reality check.”) And much of the material which is incorporated into the Gospels goes back even further in proximity to the events being recorded. (p. 115-118)

Next Time: How Much Confidence Can We Have in the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Gospels?

Robert Stackpole, STD
© The Fellowship of Catholics and Evangelicals, 2017