WHERE WE ARE

In order to make a reasonable case for the resurrection of Jesus, one must first put together a set of relevant historical facts about Jesus, especially about his arrest, trials, crucifixion, burial, and about alleged appearances of Jesus to his disciples after he was crucified and allegedly buried.

This is a key premise, namely premise (1), in a skeptical argument that I am developing (see my post: “Why Christian Apologists are Doomed to FAIL“) about the impossibility of constructing a reasonable argument for the resurrection of Jesus:

1. One can construct a reasonable argument for the claim that God raised Jesus from the dead ONLY IF one has first obtained dozens of relevant historical facts about the arrest, trials, crucifixion, and burial of Jesus, and about alleged appearances of a living and physically embodied Jesus after his crucifixion.

2. Given our currently available information, NOBODY can obtain dozens of relevant historical facts about the arrest, trials, crucifixion, and burial of Jesus, and about alleged appearances of a living and physically embodied Jesus after his crucifixion.

THEREFORE:

3. Given our currently available information, NOBODY can construct a reasonable argument for the claim that God raised Jesus from the dead.

Our main sources of information about Jesus are the four Gospels in the New Testament. So, if these four Gospels provide historically unreliable accounts of the life of Jesus, then it will be very difficult, or even impossible, to obtain enough relevant historical facts to make a reasonable argument for the claim that God raised Jesus from the dead.

In this current post, I will begin to evaluate the historical reliability of the Fourth Gospel.

THE DATE OF THE WRITING OF THE 4TH GOSPEL

The Gospel of Mark is generally dated to about 70 C.E. The Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke are generally dated from 80 C.E. to 90 CE. The Gospel of John is usually dated from 90 CE to 100 CE. Given these dates of composition, the Fourth Gospel, also known as the Gospel of John, was the last of the Gospels to be written.

New Testament scholars disagree on the dates of composition of the four Gospels. Various considerations and arguments are weighed by scholars, and they arrive at estimated dates or ranges of dates for the Gospels, but the dates are not certain; they are only probable. But when we lack certainty, we must rely on probability.

Here are estimated dates of composition for the 4th Gospel from some prominent NT and Jesus scholars:

Raymond Brown: …the body of the Gospel [was composed] in the 90s and the additions of the redactor ca. 100-110.[1]

René Kieffer: The final version of the gospel was probably produced about 90-100…[2]

Mark Powell: Thus John’s Gospel is almost universally regarded today as a late first-century document, probably reaching its final form around 90-100 C.E.[3]

Marcus Borg: John is probably (but not certainly) written a few years after Matthew and Luke [Borg thinks Matthew and Luke were composed between about 75 CE and about 90 CE] and most likely before the year 100.[4]

Gail R. O’Day: The intensity of the conflict with the Jewish leadership, and the pivotal role it plays in shaping the religious and social identity of the community that read this Gospel, suggests 75-80 CE as the earliest possible date of composition; the external evidence…makes a date much later than 100 CE unlikely.[5]

M.M. Thompson: One date that has been widely accepted by scholars of all persuasions places the Gospel in the period A.D. 90-100.[6]

James Dunn: One other strand of evidence leads most scholars to the conclusion that John’s Gospel was not written until the last ten or fifteen years of the first century AD. …the discourses of the Fourth Gospel reflect a breach between the followers of Jesus and ‘the Jews’ which did not take place till the 80s.[7]

Geza Vermes: I subscribe therefore to the opinion held by mainstream New Testament scholarship that the work was published in the early second century, probably between the years 100 and 110.[8]

New Testament and Jesus scholars commonly date the Gospel of Mark to around 70 C.E.:

Raymond Brown: DATE: 60-75, most likely between 68 and 73.[9]

C.M. Tuckett: Mark is to be dated after 70 CE (though probably not long after).[10]

Mark Powell: Most scholars agree that Mark’s Gospel was written around the time of the Jewish War with Rome (66-70 C.E.). …Some scholars think Mark is postdating the prophecy [about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem] he attributes to Jesus here, writing his Gospel a little later than 70.[11]

Marcus Borg: Mark is next [after Q]. Written around the year 70, it is the earliest surviving gospel…[12]

Pheme Perkins: Since Mark must have been written before Matthew and Luke, and since the turmoil in Judea, which led to the destruction of the Temple, appears to have been in progress or recently completed by the time the Gospel was written, most scholars agree that Mark wrote his Gospel probably around 70 CE.[13]

R.A. Guelich: According to our earliest tradition…Mark wrote after Peter’s death in Rome, assumed to be c. A.D. 64-65… Most scholars…follow the [earliest tradition]…and debate only whether he wrote before or after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70…
[…]
Perhaps a time c. A.D. 66-67, before the final siege of Jerusalem but when the inevitable end of Jerusalem and the Temple was in sight, corresponds more closely to the details [of the discourse in Mark 13:3-37] than a date during or after the siege.[14]

James Dunn: A very large consensus of contemporary scholarship dates Mark somewhere in the period 65-75 CE. …So far as the value of Mark as a source is concerned, we shall have to be content with the firm consensus that Mark is the earliest written Gospel to have survived intact, that it appeared about forty years after Jesus’ death, and that it contains traditions about Jesus which must have circulated in the generation prior to that date.[15]

Geza Vermes: …I will start from the assumption that the general scholarly dating of the Synoptic Gospels is acceptable. Mark will be taken as originating shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70; Matthew and Luke follow somewhat later, say, between A.D. 80 and 100.[16]

Because the Gospel of Mark is the earliest of the Gospels, its account of the life and ministry of Jesus should be given priority over the account of the life and ministry of Jesus given in the Gospel of John, the last Gospel to be written. This does not mean that the Gospel of Mark is historically reliable, nor does it mean that the Gospel of John is historically unreliable. What it means is that when the accounts of these Gospels conflict with each other, as I will show they do in future posts, the account in the Gospel of Mark is more likely to be historical and accurate than the conflicting account in the Gospel of John, other things being equal.

In some particular cases, things might not be equal. For example, if the account of an alleged event in the Gospel of Mark contradicts some established historical or geographical facts and a conflicing account of the alleged event in the Gospel of John does NOT contradict any historical or geographical facts, then it would make sense to favor the account in the Gospel of John over the account in the Gospel of Mark, in terms of historicity and accuracy.

But when other things are equal, we should give greater weight to the account of an alleged event in the Gospel of Mark over a conflicting account in the Gospel of John, because the Gospel of Mark was written earlier than the Gospel of John. Furthermore, this difference is significant because we are talking two or three decades passing between when the Gospel of Mark was written and the Gospel of John was written.

If the Gospel of Mark was written in 70 C.E. and the Gospel of John was written in 100 C.E., then the Gospel of John was written three decades after the Gospel of Mark. Most, possibly all, of the adult eyewitnesses to the crucifixion of Jesus would be dead by 100 C.E. That is about 70 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. So, someone who was 25 years old when Jesus was crucified would be 95 years old in 100 C.E. Eyewitnesses to the crucifixion of Jesus would be much more likely to still be alive in 70 C.E. as compared to 100 C.E., so that gives the Gospel of Mark a significant historical advantage over the Gospel of John.

Again, this is not sufficient reason to conclude that the Gospel of John is historically unreliable, but it is a significant consideration for evaluating the historical reliability of the Gospel of John if there are significant conflicts between the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Mark and/or the other two Gospels (which were probably written after the Gospel of Mark but before the Gospel of John).

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END NOTES

1. Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York, NY: Doubleday,1997), p.334 (see also pp. 374-376).
2. René Kieffer, “60. John” in The Oxford Bible Commentary, edited by John Barton and John Muddiman (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), p.961.
3. Mark Powell, Fortress Introduction to the Gospels (Minneapolis, MN, 1998), p.126.
4. Marcus Borg, “The Historical Study of Jesus and Christian Origins” in Jesus at 2000, edited by Marcus Borg (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), p.134.
5. Gail R. O’Day, “The Gospel of John” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 505.
6. M.M. Thompson, “John, Gospel of” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, edited by Joel Green, Scott McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), p.370.
7. James Dunn, The Evidence for Jesus (Louisville, KY, 1985), p. 41.
8. Geza Vermes, The Changing Faces of Jesus (New York, NY: Viking Compass, 2000), p.11.
9. Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, p.127.
10. C.M. Tuckett, “58. Mark” in The Oxford Bible Commentary, edited by John Barton and John Muddiman (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), p.886.
11. Mark Powell, Fortress Introduction to the Gospels, p.48.
12. Marcus Borg, “The Historical Study of Jesus and Christian Origins” in Jesus at 2000, p.133.
13. Pheme Perkins, “The Gospel of Mark” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume VIII (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 517.
14. R.A. Guelich, “Mark, Gospel of” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, edited by Joel Green, Scott McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), p.514.
15. James Dunn, Christianity in the Making, Volume 1: Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), p.146.
16. Geza Vermes, The Changing Faces of Jesus, p.161.