The Gospels Were Written Early, Not After AD 70

#bible #gospels #apologetics

Most scholars say that the Gospel of Mark dates from AD 66–70, Matthew and Luke around 85–90, and John 90–100. Skeptics like Bart Ehrman imply that they’re too late to be reliable, as a decades-long time gap leaves plenty of room for myths and legends to creep in.

When it comes to history, chronological closeness matters. But where exactly are critics coming up with these later dates?

In this video, I look at one bad reason biblical critics date the gospels late and one underrated reason that some critics give the Gospels an early date, including skeptical scholars.

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Ehrman photo credit: Dan Sears, CC BY 4.0

Outro music:
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

[TestifyApologetics]

Correction: Paul was executed approximately 64 AD, not 62. That's when James the brother of Jesus died and I think that might've been part of what was stuck in my head. Luke would've ended Acts around 62 while Paul was awaiting his trial.

[JanSobieskiIII]

Imagine a historian saying a book about WW2, written in 1970, cannot be trusted simply because it was written nearly 30 years after the events. What a horrible argument! Dr. Bart isn’t half as logical as people think, but he is very crafty and a brilliant debater. All said and done, great video! The books definitely were not written before 70AD, the second coming of our Lord.

[liquidoxygen]

The “late dates” still seem pretty early to me. Ehrman-types making a mountain out of a molehill. I’d be concerned if they were clearly written hundreds of years later, not 30-70 years. I’m not even Christian, btw

[pigzcanfly]

This is Creme of the crop scholarship. May God bless your ministry. I applaud your work and await further content.

[JustUsCrazyBoyz]

Even if they were written after 70 AD, by ancient document standards this is still genuin LoL. Theres a hell of a lot of documents dated much later for other events in history that are still counted as valid.

[indianasmith]

One small correction: Paul was martyred around 68 AD, AFTER the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, which Nero blamed on the Christians. Early tradition says that Peter and Paul were killed the same day, shortly before the death of Nero in 68 AD.

[orthodoxomnibus]

Stumbled across your channel, no regrets in doing so as you explain everything clearly and concisely. Not to mention your research is thorough. Great video.

[natebozeman]

Totally agree. The anti-supernatural question begging isn't a reason to believe late dating.

[Pikee]

Testify does a great service by combating the constant falsehoods and fallacies of the secularists

Inspiring Philosophy sent me here and I subbed ThX 🙏

[macrofuture]

This is possibly the most important video on YouTube I have seen. Nailed it. Early dating needs to make a comeback

[dogscatsandallcuteanimals]

In the past week, i had been thinking hard about the dating of the gospels only to come across this video. You have satisfied my curiosity. Mob love from Kenya

[generalkenobi]

Thanks for this video! I don’t like it when people say the Gospels are late because the scholars say so.

[Fede_uyz]

I spent a year living in another country, imagine saying that i cannot reliably tell you what was my life like those 20 years ago simply because it was in the past

[tedgrant]

I'm so happy to learn something about the holy gospels.
I don't think I could live without all the excellent information.
(Matthew 17:29)

[hadmiar]

Notice also that Luke spends the last 8 or so chapters of his book on 4-5 years of history, after covering the first 25 or so years of the Church in the first 20. He spends so much more time on the events at the end probably because they had just happened and were more fresh in everyone's minds.

[bigol]

The obvious counterpoint you can foresee from a late-dater is that these details are just someone writing later and pretending to be someone writing earlier, so leaving out information to be "in character"

[AV-lxjd]

I'm not an expert but I'd have to say that it would make sense that there could have been bits and pieces written down of what Jesus said and did, during or immediately after Jesus' life on earth. And eventually were collected and harmonized into books. 🤷🏼‍♂️

[Lilskidmarks]

Thank you so much for your work brother. I pray this video reaches many people!

[geograph-ology]

The apostles who were Aramaic speakers and mostly illiterate, were sent out to spread the Word...that does not leave a lot of time to learn scholarly Greek, write gospels, and get martyred. They may have had converts who said, "Hey, this is pretty good. You should write it down. Do you mind if I take notes?" Later on, the converts in Rome, Ephesus, Damascus, Alexandria, and elsewhere started comparing notes of what the different apostles said (and the new guy, Paul) and voila...a Bible.