Price notes that the Gospel of Mark was probably written in Rome.  It contains Latinisms like “centurion” even though it was written in Greek.  It makes sense that it was the venerated gospel of Rome, since it is 90 percent preserved in Matthew and 60 percent preserved in Luke, so if it was not venerated by the big time church in Rome it doesn’t make sense it was preserved unlike the Q document.  The original version of Mark seems to be Ur-Mark that was penned by Marcion and the gospel itself was circulated and expanded by his students into what we have today.  Marcion thought some of the additions were okay so he thought it was fine for publication.  Marcion’s materials often seem to be a re-write of old testament stories.  Excluding the Torah commandments, Marcion thought a lot of the OT stories weren’t that bad and so retooled them for Jesus – which reflects the general Greco-Roman imitation practice of mimesis.

Most think Mark is written in 70 CE citing such evidence as the Olivet Discourse in Mark 13 predicting the destruction of the temple during the Roman-Jewish war.  Apocalypses that predicted the future because they were actually written after the fact were common in ancient literature.  That tells us that Mark is probably not pre 70 CE, though an apocalyptic Jesus may have indeed made such a prediction, and this correct prediction could have inspired post-temple Mark to write about Jesus.  But while all of this suggests Mark is probably after 70 CE, it doesn’t tell us how much later and apologists like an early date because it is closer to the historical Jesus.  Apocalypses as a genre can be much later than the events predicted. 

Mark can’t be later than 175-180 CE because Irenaeus is the first writer to show he knows the four gospels.  Marcion was writing early in the second century.  Our earliest references to Jesus by the church fathers are sayings they seem to recite from memory, not narratives.  Students of Bultmann thought the gospels seemed apocryphal in nature.  Detering notes that in the Olivet discourse heralding the end Mark may have taken his apocalypse by revising some leaflets (as Eusebius notes) handed out before the second fall of Jerusalem from the Bar Kokhba revolt, a Jewish uprising against the Roman Empire that took place from 132–135 CE., which Matthew also had and so revised Mark thinking the leaflets more original.  They said there would be famines, pestilences, nations would go to war, earthquakes, etc.  Mark and Matthew would then be around 155 CE. 

It’s possible that the socio-political tensions reflected in the Matthew’s Gospel could resonate with the circumstances leading to the revolt. Matthew’s emphasis on Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy can be seen in light of the messianic fervor surrounding Bar Kokhba. The failure of the Bar Kokhba Revolt might have been used by early Christians, including by Matthew’s Gospel, to argue against Jewish messianic claims and reinforce their belief in Jesus as the true Messiah. The Gospel of Matthew contains themes of persecution (like in the Beatitudes, Matthew 5:10-12), which could resonate with the experiences of Jews and Christians during and after the Bar Kokhba Revolt. The revolt led to severe repercussions for Jews, including Christians, in Judea. The failure of the Bar Kokhba Revolt might have been seen by some Christians as divine judgment or as a sign pointing to Christian interpretations of eschatology and messianic prophecy, themes prevalent in Matthew.

I have argued previously one element that seems to push Mark back into the second century is his use of imagery from Plutarch.  One of the key points in Paul is he says despite the cross if Christ is not raised, your faith is in vain, and you are still in your sin.  Mark seems to respond to this by downplaying the resurrection (there are no resurrection appearances in Mark), and the dead crucified Jesus converts the soldier at the cross by how he dies (“this was God’s son”).  Matthew and Luke (“this man was innocent”) both give their own interpretation of this key event.  This notion of a dead crucifixion victim converting onlookers probably comes from Plutarch’s life of Cleomenes.  We read:

A few days after, those that watched the hanging body of Cleomenes, saw a large snake winding about his head, and covering his face, so that no bird of prey would fly at it. This made the king superstitiously afraid, and set the women upon several expiations, as if he had been some extraordinary being, and one beloved by the gods, that had been slain. And the Alexandrians made processions to the place, and gave Cleomenes the title of hero, and son of the gods …

ALTERNATE TRANSLATION:

And a few days afterwards those who were keeping watch upon the body of Cleomenes where it hung, saw a serpent of great size coiling itself about the head and hiding away the face so that no ravening bird of prey could light upon it. 2 In consequence of this, the king was seized with superstitious fear, and thus gave the women occasion for various rites of purification, since they felt that a man had been taken off who was of a superior nature and beloved of the gods. And the Alexandrians actually worshipped him, coming frequently to the spot and addressing Cleomenes as a hero and a child of the gods

Daniel Ogden relates this story to the cult of the anguineal Agathos Daimon in Alexandria (2013:286–291). He also cites this story in his discussion of the intimate relationship between serpents and the “heroic dead” in Greco-Roman traditions (2013:247–270). In Mark, the soldier recognizes Jesus as a great (figurative) soldier for Jesus following (God’s) orders even to his death despite great fear (Gethsemane, Cry of dereliction). In Matthew, the soldier is overcome by fear at the supernatural events at the death, and Luke’s soldier’s eyes are opened to the fact that they killed an innocent man.

I noted previously for Price Matthew is no earlier than around the turn of the second century because he bases Jesus’s nativity on Josephus’ account of the nativity of Moses.  Similarly, Luke bases his nativity on the account in Pseudo-Philo.  However, critical scholarship suggests Luke’s first two chapters were later additions and he originally had no nativity story.  Ehrman comments:

There are numerous other points that can be made about Luke’s genealogy, but I want to focus on just one issue, which I raise initially as a question that you may have had as well. Why is the genealogy in chapter 3 instead of ch 1? You would think a genealogy would be given at the beginning of a person’s life, since that’s where it seems most relevant. But this one is given, oddly, after Jesus baptism as an adult. Huh?

I think there is an economical solution to the problem, but it may be one that has not occurred to you (I’m guessing).  Scholars have adduced very good reasons for thinking that Luke was originally written without what are now the first two chapters, that the birth narratives of chapters 1 and 2 were added only as part of a second edition of the Gospel.  Here are some of the reasons that have been given, that taken as a group seem to me to be pretty convincing:

 (1) It is widely conceded that the solemn dating of the appearance of John the Baptist in 3:1-2 reads like the beginning, not the continuation of the narrative: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Casear, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee… the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness….”  So that is probably (possibly) where the Gospel originally began.

(2) Most of the central themes of chs. 1-2 – including the familial ties of John the Baptist and Jesus, Jesus’ virginal conception, and his birth in Bethlehem – are completely absent from the rest of the narrative, even though there were plenty of opportunities to mention them, had they already been narrated;

 (3) The book of Acts summarizes the preceding narrative as involving what Jesus “began to do and teach” (Acts 1:1), saying nothing of his birth; so too in Peter’s later summary of the Gospel, “beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John preached” (10:37).

(4) And, of relevance to the present discussion, the genealogy of Jesus does indeed make little sense in chapter 3, after his baptism, given the fact that he and his birth are already mentioned in chapter 2, and that would be the appropriate place to indicate his lineage.  But if the Gospel began in chapter 3 and the first thing that happened to Jesus was the declaration that he was the “Son” of God (in 3:23), then his lineage back to God through Adam makes sense where it is.

That is to say, if the Gospel began – like Mark’s – with the appearance of John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus, where God tells him he is his Son, then it makes sense that the next passage would describe the genealogy of Jesus, that traces his lineage back to Adam, the son of God.

There are good reasons for thinking that the Gospel originally was published – in a kind of “first edition” – without what are now the first two chapters, so that the very beginning was what is now 3:1 (this is many centuries, of course, before anyone started using chapters and verses.) If that’s the case, Luke was originally a Gospel like Mark’s that did not have a birth and infancy narratives. These were added later, in a second edition (either by the same author or by someone else).

If that’s the case then the Gospel began with John the Baptist and his baptism of Jesus, followed by the genealogy which makes better sense here, at the beginning, than it does in the third chapter once the first two are added.

But is there any hard evidence that a first edition began without the first two chapters? One of the reasons it is so hard to say is because we simply don’t have much hard evidence. Our two earliest manuscripts of Luke, P75 and P45, are fragmentary, lacking portions of Luke, including the first two chapters. We can’t say whether they originally had them or not. Our first manuscript with portions of the opening chapters is the third-century P4. But our earliest patristic witness is over a century earlier. As it turns out, the witness is the heresiarch Marcion, and as is well known he didn’t have the first two chapters!

As early as Irenaeus’s Adversus Haereses (1. 27. 2) Marcion was accused of excising the first two chapters of his Gospel because they did not coincide with his view that Jesus appeared from heaven in the form of an adult man in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar – that is that he was not actually born into the world.  But who is to say that Irenaeus, Tertullian, and their successors were right, that these are chapters that Marcion excised from his account?  It is at least possible, has occasionally been recognized, that the version of Luke in circulation in Marcion’s home church in Sinope, on the coast of the Black Sea, didn’t have these chapters, and that his view that Jesus simply appeared on the scene as an adult was surmised from the text as it was available to him.

Marcion interpreted his Gospel in such a way as to suggest that Jesus was a divine being but not a human being (hence he did not have a birth narrative).  But there were other Christians at his time – and earlier – who insisted just the opposite, that Jesus was a human being but not a divine being.   These Christians are often called “adoptionists” because they thought that Jesus was not by nature the Son of God, but that he was a human who was adopted by God to be his son.

I used to think that an adoptionistic Christology was more or less second-rate: Jesus only was adopted, he wasn’t the “real thing.”   But a recent book that I’ve read by Michael Peppard, and that I’ve mentioned on this blog, The Son of God in the Roman World, has made me rethink the issue.  Peppard points out that in the Roman world, adopted sons frequently had a higher status than natural sons; if an emperor had sons, but adopted someone else to be his heir, it was the adopted son who would become the next emperor, not the natural sons.  The adopted son was seen as more powerful and influential, as indeed he was.   So for Jesus to be adopted to be the son of God would be a big deal.

I mention this because without the first two chapters, in particular, Luke can be read as having an adoptionist Christology.   In part, that hinges on how you understand the voice that comes from heaven to him at his baptism (the first think that happens to him in this Gospel).  In most manuscripts the voice says: “You are my beloved son in whom I am well-pleased” (an allusion to Isa. 42:1, probably).  But in a couple of manuscript witnesses the voice says something completely different: “You are my son, today I have begotten you” (a quotation of Psalm 2:7).

I have a lengthy discussion of this passage in my book Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, where I argue (at some length) that this latter quotation of Ps. 2:7 is what the text originally said, and that it was changed by scribes who did not like its adoptionistic overtones.   If that’s right, and if that was the beginning episode of this Gospel, then it is indeed easy to see how an adoptionist would have read it in line with his or her particular theological views.

I’m not saying that the first edition of Luke was adoptionist.   I’m simply saying that it would have been particularly amenable to an adoptionistic reading.  Once that is said, though, one does need to wonder: was Luke himself an adoptionist?

So, in terms of dating Luke-Acts, the nativity may be left out but a second century date is still implied if we accept the late date for Mark!