A couple of centuries ago it was becoming fashionable to date the gospels and other works of the New Testament very late, such as to the second half of the second century, more than a hundred years after the events they record.
This was due to an extreme skepticism regarding their reliability, coupled with various forms of flawed methodology.
As time has progressed, scholarship has pushed back the dates of the New Testament documents earlier and earlier, to the point that now almost all biblical scholars date them to the first century, with one or two possible exceptions (e.g., 2 Peter).
Some scholars, such as John A. T. Robinson date them to before A.D. 70—a view that I am inclined toward, personally.
Dates later in the first century, though, are still common. For example, it is common to date the Gospel of John to the A.D. 90s. This is quite a bit earlier than the older, more skeptical dating.
One of the things that pushed the dating back was the discovery of a small parchment fragment that is commonly called “the Rylands Papyrus” (pictured). It contains material from John 18, and based on the scribal penmanship it is written with, paleographers (experts in old writing) date it to the first half of the second century. More specifically, the penmanship the Rylands Papyrus uses most closely conforms to the styles that were in use during the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117-138).
If we have a physical copy of part of the Gospel of John that dates to the first half of the second century then obviously it couldn’t have been written with one of the extravagantly late dates that used to be proposed for it.
But how early was it written?
One sometimes encounters an argument in this regard that I find particularly lame.
The idea is that the probable composition of the document was some years earlier because it took time for the work to “spread” to Egypt, where the papyrus fragment was discovered.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to see arguments for an early dating for John. In fact, I personally think it likely dates to between A.D. 64 and A.D. 70, but the “spread” argument is lame.
Why is that?
The Gospel of John is, obviously, attributed to an author named John, and it has been from the earliest records of it we have. There is some question about who this John was. Most have attributed it to St. John the Apostle, the son of Zebedee and the brother of James. However, there is an alternative view that links it to a different disciple of Jesus, not one of the Twelve, who was known as John the Elder or John the Presbyter. (Note: Pope Benedict links the Gospel of John with John the Elder in his book Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 1.)
Whichever John is behind the gospel, there is a strong tradition linking the gospel and its author with the Roman province of Asia, which is in modern Turkey. Specifically: There is a tradition linking it with Ephesus, which is on the coast of Turkey, near the modern port of Kusadasi.
If the gospel was written at Ephesus, as many think likely, then it was composed at a port city on the northern coast near the east end of the Mediterranean Sea.
How might it get to Egypt?
The first large Christian community in Egypt was at Alexandria, which is a port city on the southern coast near the east end of the Mediterranean Sea.
Is it really hard to connect these dots?
All you have to do is sail down through the Greek islands and cross the Mediterranean, north-to-south (the short way). This is a journey of less than 500 miles, and at the time it took only 4-5 days by ship under favorable conditions.
In the first century there were well-established trade routes all over this part of the Mediterranean, with Ephesus and Alexandria both being major trade centers. So there were ships sailing in and out of the cities all the time.
They may not have had the Internet in the first century, but they did have the newly-built network of Roman roads, which allowed rapid over-land transportation as well. The Emperors were able to send and receive messages for and from distant parts of the empire and have them delivered in days.
Ordinary people used slaves or associated who were traveling to the desired locations and, though the process was slower in their case, they typically had their messages delivered in only a matter of days or weeks.
The idea that it would have taken years from an important Christian document to spread from one part of the eastern empire to another is just crazy.
We have rather striking proof of this in the New Testament itself: Paul’s letters.
When St. Paul wrote a letter from one community (say, Ephesus or Corinth) to another (say, Corinth or Rome), he would send it off and expect it to be received and read not in a period of years but of days or weeks.
The early Christians thus had the kind of communications infrastructure available to them to transport any document they wanted across the empire in a very short space of time. As St. Paul’s letters show, they could and did make use of this infrastructure.
The only question is: Would they want to in the case of a particular document?
One might argue that in the case of a letter written to a specific person or church, that this might indeed “spread” slowly through the Christian community. If it was addressed to a specific recipient, there might be only one copy of it, and it would be up to the recipient to decide whether to copy it further. It might then take time to spread broadly among Christians.
There is merit to this argument, as we have mentions in the writings of St. Paul of letters he wrote that at least appear to be lost (though there is some controversy about that). These could represent letters whose recipients either didn’t have them copied or didn’t have them copied widely enough that they became part of the canon.
On the other hand, there is also evidence in Paul’s epistles that he expected them—or some of them—to be read more broadly. For example, he tells the Colossians to get a copy of the letter he sent to the Laodiceans (a neighboring city with a Christian community) and to send the Laodiceans a copy of the letter he sent to them.
Whatever may have been the expectations for how broadly a Pauline letter was to be published, it can scarcely be imagined that a work like a gospel would be intended only for private use.
No disciple in the first century would have gone to the effort of writing a biography of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and intended for there to be only one copy of it. Such documents were too important, and they were clearly destined for public use in the churches. This is true even of St. Luke’s gospel, which appears to be dedicated to a single individual (who he calls Theophilus, though this may be a pseudonym to protect the dedicatee’s identity).
St. John’s gospel, in particular, is clearly intended for public use, with its passages stressing that it was composed so that the readers might believe based on the testimony of the eyewitness author.
One could suppose it would take years for a gospel to spread only if it were viewed as a private document intended by the author to only have a single copy or if it were viewed as an unimportant document that first century Christians wouldn’t care that much about and would take their time copying and circulating.
Neither of these is the case with a gospel.
Most likely, as soon as an evangelist finished a gospel, he would take it to a scribal service (the ancient equivalent of Kinko’s) and have multiple copies made. These would then be given to key individuals in the local church and sent to neighboring churches.
(In fact, it may be due to an accident at the scribal service that explains why the original ending of Mark’s gospel appears to be missing; only an accident with a very early edition could explain the omission if there was originally a longer ending.)
For something as important as a gospel, the recipients would almost certainly start making and distributing their own copies with zeal, and it is wholly unwarranted to suppose a period of years for a gospel to spread throughout the empire.
Sure, it could have taken years to get to some places, but jumping from one major Christian community (like Ephesus) to another (like Alexandria) could have been accomplished in mere days or weeks.
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Excellent article.
The book by John A.T. Robinson to which Jimmy refers is “Redating the New Testament.” For those who are interested in this topic, I quite recommend it (although it is not “light” reading). Robinson is cited in subsequent works by Jean Carmignac (‘The Birth of the Synoptics’) and John Wenham (‘Redating Matthew, Mark, and Luke’). It is also mentioned in the Foreword of ‘The Hebrew Christ’ by Claude Tresmontant. (I highly recommend these other three as well. All three propose early dates.)
From: The Lives of the Twelve Caesars By C. Suetonius Tranquillus, written ca. 120 AD This is in reference to Domitian (81 - 96).
“With equal arrogance, when he dictated the form of a letter to be used by his procurators, he began it thus: “Our lord and god commands so and so;” whence it became a rule that no one should (style) him otherwise, either in writing or speaking.”
Now note this from the Gospel of John 20:26 Now a week later his disciples were again inside and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
This is not a coincidence. The writer of John threw down the gauntlet to the Emporor Domitian saying in effect -
“No Domitian, you are not our lord and god - Jesus is our Lord and God.”
I would date John from the reign of Domitian - probably in the 90’s when Domitian was particularly nasty.
It is important to note that one must read “Jesus of Nazareth I” to see how Pope Benedict XVI “links up” the “possible” involvement of John the Presbyter with the Gospel—for it is rather nuanced and it is important to note that he does not say that John the Apostle per se did not write the Gospel. I add this so some do not get the idea that Pope Benedict XVI infers this (not that Jimmy was inferring such..in is note in passing)
The fact that Mark Anthony and Cleopatra landed in the port city of Ephesus is evidence enough of how quickly people could travel. Indeed, until the latter half of the 1800’s, the modes of travel were not significantly faster of better than those that existed in Biblical times. Considering that ordinary people in Europe commonly made pilgrimages to far away places in Europe and the Holy Land, it’s not hard to imagine that the gospel or parchments containing the Gospel would quickly spread throughout Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East and even India (St. Thomas.) I would argue that the idea that they could not, is almost ludicrous. Look at how quickly Rome established Roman rule throughout the empire. Such rule and societal conformity with the Roman norms could only be established if travel was not only possible but also frequent.
There is no real argument that the Gospel of John, or in fact any other document, could have travelled from Asia Minor to Egypt in a matter of weeks. The fragment from Egypt gives a ‘no later than…’ date, so the Gospel of John could have been written No Later Than the 120s. It is a fragment, which has survived from hundreds, possibly thousands of copies circulating at that time. It might not be (and probably isn’t) the earliest copy of John in Egypt.
It is also generally considered, by Christian and non-Christian scholars, that John was the last Gospel to be written, so the other three Gospels are earlier.
However, we also know that the Church was ‘up and running’ in the time of Claudius (41-54), and of course, Nero (for the persecutions of 64, including the martyrdom of Peter). Consequently the Gospels were clearly written for the Church, and not vice versa.
Thank you for an interesting article and subsequent comments. While it is difficult to determine exactly when the Gospels were written or more probably finished, common sense dictates that the evangelists most likely began compiling their Gospels as soon as the need and resources became available. In my studies I remember reading “Everyone translated Matthew’s Hebrew Gospel into Greek the best they could” (not an exact quote). Jesus called a tax collector named Levi (also known as Matthew)to be an Apostle. As a tax collector, Matthew would have to be literate, in fact he probably would need to know not only the language of the land he lived in, which would be Aramaic in the 1st century Holy Land, but also the language of the people he served, which means Latin or at least Greek. I suggest the Hebrew Matthew refered to above is the recording of Jesus’ sermons, sayings, and teachings as Jesus spoke them. This earliest Gospel was obviously recorded before Jesus’ death, and could be the Q source suggested by many scholars. When we read the extant Gospel’s we notice that while Matthew, Mark and Luke have much in common they are completely different from John’s Gospel, except in the Passion/Resurrection narratives where they have more in common. This makes sense because the first stories recalled by the early Church would have been about the Resurrection and the circumstances of Jesus’ death. As the Church grew in understanding and Faith the oral stories recalling Jesus’ life would be expanded and eventually written down from memory and the notes of the tax collector translated into Greek. Luke states that he used other Gospel’s in the compilation of his own and an analysis of John’s Gospel shows that it was added to in at least two places. The end of chapter 14 flows right into the beginning of chapter 18, so the other three chapters, 15, 16, & 17 are later redactions. This does not mean that these chapters are not John’s work (consider how one composes a term paper, adding to the work already completed as you recall different things your teacher said), but they could have also been inserted by John’s disciples as they recall the oral testimony of their Bishop. This is certainly the case in chapter 21’s conclusion(the second conclusion in John’s Gospel)when they write “we know his testimony is true”. I believe the anti-Catholic German politicians who convened the so-called council of Bismark purposely suggested the late dates for the gospels because they knew that would help their cause of discrediting Catholic teaching authority by raising doubt of the veracity of the Gospel message, because later dates means less accurracy in their mind. In reality the Gospel of Matthew began to be compiled during the lifetime of Jesus and the final redactions, inspired by the Holy Spirit, gave us the Gospels we read today, which were completed before the end of the first century.
This article is a keeper - what a fascinating subject!
Excellent and thought provoking
A very helpful article that feeds the believer. Jimmy, this is your true
vocation. We can’t get enough of your expertise on The New Testament.
What about the scholarship that claims Matthew did not write Matthew?
Michael F Brennan
St Petersburg Fl
Jimmy:
Your post is interesting, but the idea that a sacred author had copies of the document made, post haste, is a stretch.
A couple of reasons:
1) Scribes existed but were not common in the first century, A.D. Having access to a scribe was a state or religious enterprise. That meant you needed money or state power. The scribes in the Gospels were, almost invariably, employed by the Temple or the state.
2) Even if there were scribes well-disposed to copying a document which was at that time illegal, it would have taken time. It would have taken several weeks, at a substantial cost.
3) It is more likely that the recipient community subsidized the cost of the production of the text. It would have been simply too expensive to imagine John or the Johannine community ordering multiple copies of the Gospel for future distribution.
It is more likely that the Gospels were hand-copied after a Christian community had heard, via word-of-mouth, that a another community had produced a credible account of the Good News. Thus, when word circulated that there was a Johannine Gospel, Alexandria likely sent an emissary to Asia Minor (with a letter of recommendation) to ask for permission to inspect and then copy the text.
In fact, given that the practice of Christianity was illegal, the circulation of texts was closely guarded. Not only was it illegal, but christians were put to death for possessing sacred scripture.
We know that was the case in the second and third centuries AD.
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