When
Was The New Testament Written?
Critics claim that the New Testament was written so long after the events of Jesus’
life that all the eyewitnesses had died and thus the accounts are not accurate.
Can we answer this claim? Do we have any reason to believe that the New Testament
was written within the lifetime of eyewitnesses? Yes we do. Let’s start
with a timeline of the events we’ll be talking about.
4 to 1 BC – Jesus is born
30 to 35 AD – Jesus is crucified and resurrected
50 to 95 AD – The New Testament is written
Here are some reasons for dating the New Testament books early:
- Jesus had predicted that the Jewish temple would be
destroyed. This happened in 70AD yet none of the gospels, even John which
was written last, mentions it. The idea that, not one, but four different
gospel writers would not mention this fulfilled prophecy is simply hard to believe.
Some critics argue that the destruction of the temple is mentioned in chapters like
Matthew 24 but those verses are clearly talking about the Great Tribulation because
they mentioned Jesus returning and reigning forever. It’s foolish to suggest
that four different writers were smart enough to fool everyone into thinking Christianity
was true yet all were stupid enough to say that Jesus had returned and was reigning.
- Around 95AD the early church father Clement quotes
either directly or indirectly nearly every book of the New Testament.
- Throughout church history the authors of the gospels
have never been disputed. They have always been Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
This is very important because had these books been written by anonymous authors
many years later we would find two things:
1) There would be several different
traditional authors to each book
2) They would be named after more
important people
For point #1 we point out that there is not one different author suggested anywhere
in church history for any of the gospels. Not one. It’s only recent
modern “scholars” that claim the authorship of the gospels is in dispute.
The early church always knew who wrote them. We can prove this out.
Compare the gospels to the book of Hebrews which is anonymous. While the gospels
have only one author per book, Hebrews has no less then half a dozen different traditional
authors!
As far as point #2 goes, note that three of the four gospel writers aren’t important
people in the New Testament (John is the exception). Compare this to
books that are known frauds… The Gospel of Peter, The Gospel of Mary, The Gospel
of Thomas, all well-known figures. People who forge books would put famous
people’s names on them to give them credibility. The gospels don’t follow
this pattern.
The gospels claimed to be written either eyewitnesses (Matthew, John) or people
who had access to eyewitnesses (Mark, who served as Peter’s secretary and Luke who
had access to Paul and the other apostles). And it was nearly two thousand years
before anyone disputed this.
Now let’s see if we can find reasons to date some books earlier then 70AD:
- Paul, who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament, wrote
his works between 50-55AD. These dates are not seriously disputed. So,
if nothing else, we can say most of the Bible can be traced back as early as 15
to 20 years of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus
- Peter and Paul were both martyred around 66AD yet
the New Testament does not mention their deaths. After Jesus they are
the two most important people in Church history and yet not so much as one verse
is devoted to their deaths? Even stranger is that Acts, which
is the “sequel” to the gospel of Luke, ends with Paul in jail. So from this
we can conclude that Paul was still alive by the end of Acts.
Now if Paul died in
66AD then Acts must have been written before that. If Acts was written before
66AD then Luke must have been written even earlier then that. And since critics
say that Luke was written after Mark and Matthew then they both must have
been written very early. That means at least three of the four gospels were
written before 66 AD and most likely all were written before 70AD
- James, who authored the book of the Bible after the
same name was martyred in 62AD.
So before 70AD have at least Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians,
2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians ,
2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Philemon, James, 1 Peter, and 2 Peter
all written.
Now let’s take a different approach to prove our point. The fatal mistake
the critics make is they assume that there was 30 or more years of silence between
the death of Jesus and the birth of Christianity. Jesus, they reason, died
and long after all the eyewitnesses were gone the New Testament was written.
I think we can show this wasn’t the case and that the apostles were preaching about
Jesus from the beginning.
As we said before, the earliest New Testament writings come from Paul in the early
50’s. So right here we have the two-thirds of the New Testament written within
15 to 20 years of the crucifixion. What’s important is what Paul wrote. He
doesn’t talk much about Jesus life the way the gospels do. His writings build on
the foundation of the gospels. He assumes you’ve already heard the gospel account.
Also notice to whom he’s writing to. He writes to churches and elders and
instructs them on theology, church conduct, the importance of the resurrection (even
challenging people to verify the resurrection by talking to the eyewitnesses!),
and corrects false teaching. So from Paul’s writings we learn:
- He writes to people who knew the gospel story and
he is teaching them how to apply the gospels to their lives
- Christianity is so far advance that it’s organized
to the point where there are churches in many areas far away and they have elders
- The churches were having to deal with false teachers
who were coming to their churches
So within 15-20 years of the crucifixion Christianity has gained a following, spread
throughout different regions, organized meeting places for believers, established
a hierarchy within the church, and has been around long enough to develop problems
with false teachers. You can’t do all this overnight. And you can’t
do it at all if people hadn’t heard, and checked out for themselves, the claims
of the gospel.
Later on, with the rise of the false teachers the need arose for the gospels to
be written so future generations would know the truth about the good news of the
salvation that is found in Jesus Christ.