How Reliable are the Dates for the Gospels?

How reliable are the traditional dates we assign to the four canonical Gospels—Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John? Scholars usually date Mark to around 70 CE, with the others following in the late 1st or early 2nd century. But are these estimates too generous? In this video, Dr. Robyn Walsh explores why the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple likely shaped Gospel composition, the challenges of dating ancient manuscripts, and why we may need to rethink these timelines.

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#Jesus #Christianity #BibleStudy #Gospels #NewTestament

[danielalindan]

Dr Ehrman's hair sure looks more voluminous than I remember it.

[adventurefilmclub]

Love these shorter, more digestible summations of the big topics.

[Lasselucidora]

On to the subject at once. Love it. Thanks. So respectful to me as a listener.

[StormOracle]

Robin, as always, this was fascinating, I love your teaching style. I'm a member of BSA and absolutely love it. There is so much to learn for those of us who geek out on the history of the Bible. You will find it is for Christians and non-Christians alike.

[jjschereriv]

You, lady, are another example of the world-class people Bart is attracting to his team. . . Thank you!

[SkeletalBasis]

It seems that 100 CE poses a kind of psychological barrier. The closer you get to that, and certainly if you slip beyond it, the easier it is to accept that the gospels are productions that reflect the concerns of certain people living at certain times and places, like every other text in the history of texts. This is obviously the right way to *begin* thinking about them, and we're getting there at last. Walsh is among those leading the way.

[tehray]

Thank you for the video. The arguments were presented and narrated with remarkable precision and grace.

[philosophicallogic]

This was a great video Robbin! Thank you for the quick rundown of the dating of the Gospels. I agree that it is perhaps quite a bit too generous to date Mark as early as 70. Thank you for the knowledge!

[LennyMemery]

What a wonderful and articulate scholar.

[prenticedarlington]

Perfect. This is exactly the kind of content I need. A serious information download without the fluff, albeit rather brief.

[matthewmessner]

Your thoughts about the post dating are something I’ve never knew how to put into words. I think/feel the authors going back and saying “what did we miss, let’s reflect” is an excellent theory. Great video

[Virgo_Moon_]

So much information explained so efficiently - thanks👍🏻

[fepeerreview]

1:43 The assumption that the author knew of the destruction of the Temple gives an early bound for dating Mark. It means that is the _earliest_ it could have been written. But it doesn't rule out, for example, that it was written 30 years later.
3:33 10 years - Again, an estimation based on assumptions. "Matthew" might have known "Mark" personally and had access to the document the day after it was written ... or not, perhaps only seeing it 20 years later. Each layer of uncertainty _increases_ the total amount of uncertainty in the conclusion. Ditto for Luke.

Of course, the earliest physical evidence we have, the earliest papyri are from decades and generations later. And those are mostly scraps. We need to move to the end of the 2nd century and into the 3rd before we start getting passages of significant length. What's important here is that we're also moving into the period when Christianity is becoming an important political force in the Roman Empire, on its way to becoming the state religion. We see important individuals rising up within the movement, looking to weed out the "apocrypha" and control the message, bring order both to the organization and to its essential texts.

It's my belief that this is when the gospels we know of today were essentially written. I think they amount to a highly edited collection of the most popular writings of the earlier generations. Various sects vied with each other to get their favorite version in. And the process of synthesizing and balancing these groups is what gave rise to the New Testament we know today. This explains why there are still some discrepancies between the gospels but at the same time they present a much more unified message than what you get when you look at the 4 gospels as being just 4 among many, many more (now apocryphal) accounts.

There's another possible twist, that the gospels we read today may not be the same as those which bear their names in the past. For example, early Church fathers such as Papias, Origen, and Iranaeus referred to the gospel of Matthew having been written in Hebrew or Aramaic rather than Greek. Were they perhaps reading some entirely different text than the one we know of today as by "Matthew"?

[annaclarafenyo]

The author of Mark, as Richard Carrier pointed out in "On the Historicity of Jesus", is basing his narrative on Jesus Ben Ananias from Josephus, so he either is using Josephus as a source, or he is using another branch of the same story Josephus used. The events of Jesus Ben Ananias took place just before 70AD, confirming a post 70AD date for Mark. Carrier establishes conclusively that Luke used Josephus as a source, likely placing Luke in the 90s.

[tomsawyer]

Robin, where were you when I was in bible college? You seem to know your stuff!

[namzarf]

Not complaining, but I had to watch this twice. I got lost in the teacher's radiance.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge, Dr Walsh.

[jamesleadley]

Exactly what I expect a scholar's room to look like!!!

[markjohnson]

Excellent presentation, which makes some great points. However, the fact that Jesus and his disciples lived a life that was not temple-based is not conclusive. One of the three main Jewish sects of the time, the Essenes, were very anti-temple. although Jesus and his followers are never specifically identified as Essenes (except for hints in the Sermon on the Mount, as the Essenes were known as "The Poor"), they may very well have been a sort of quasi-Essene group, or movement based on some of the same teachings. The close association with John the Baptist may lend support to this idea. John was out in the wilderness, living apart from the Temple and preaching a doctrine similar to Essene teachings. He may have also been a sort of quasi Essene.

[dvonzosch]

@3:56 onward... The book attributed to John was written when the believers realized that Jesus _was never coming back in his followers' lifetimes, as he promised_ ---- Jesus is never coming back. FULL. STOP.

[happyrich]

Like the summary format. If Jesus was in fact a real person, and not just an archetype, the temple he was referring to was the temples on your head and the divine aspect of urself is available via your pineal gland. Namaste 🙏