What occurred when the Gospels were written?

Answer 1

A:It is traditionally held that the New Testament gospels were written by the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and so must have been written within the lifetimes of those contemporaries of Jesus, although John is sometimes endowed by tradition with an extraordinarily long lifespan. Also, it would seem anomalous for the authors to have waited for decades after the death of Jesus before even attempting to write the gospels. for these reasons, the first gospel, assumed to be Matthew, is dated in the fifties of the first century, with the last gospel, that of John, in the eighties or nineties.

However, biblical scholars say that the gospels were originally anonymous and were only attributed to the apostles whose names they now bear later in the second century. not only do we not know who really wrote the gospels, scholars say they could not have been written by eyewitnesses to the events they portray. There is therefore no good reason to assume authorship took place in the middle of the first century, and a small number of scholars have even suggested the gospels were written well into the seocnd century.

By the end of the second century, the Church Fathers had realised that there was a literary dependency among the synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) such that two of them must have been copied from the third. They decided that Matthew's Gospel was the first one, and that Mark and Luke were copied from it. Scholars now realise that Mark's Gospel was really the first of the New Testament gospels and that Matthew and Luke were copied from it. John's Gospel is believed to have been inspired by Luke's Gospel, with some material taken direct from Mark.

There is clear evidence in Mark's Gospel that it was written approximately 70 CE. In Mark 13:2 Jesus was said to prophesy the destruction of the Temple, an event that occurred in 70 CE. According to Mark, Jesus went on to predict the end of the world within the lifetime of his followers. If Jesus had really prophesied the destruction of the Temple, he would have been correct, but he would have been in error about the imminent end of times. Since it can not be accepted that Jesus made predictions that were capable of being in error, these prophecies must have originated with Mark, writing at a time when he would have known of the destruction or imminent destruction of the temple and when it really seemed as iof the world was coming to an end. An apparent reference to the Book of Daniel indicates that it could not have been written later than the early 70s.

It is interesting of the early Christian writings that an anti-Jewish sentiment developed over the course of the decades. In his epistles, Paul says that he is proud of his Jewish heritage; Mark begins to show some antipathy to the Jews, or at least to their religious leaders; this is more pronounced in Matthew, and more so again in Luke. John's Gospel shows a strong displike for the Jews. This is one of the evidences that suggest the order in which the remaining gospels were written: Matthew, then Luke, then John.

The consensus of scholars is that Matthew was written in the 80s of the first century, although Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament) says that several years should be allowed either side of that decade.

The consensus is that Luke was written no earlier than 90 CE, and possibly later. Some scholars see a literary dependency on Antiquities of the Jews, published in 93 CE by the Jewish historian Josephus. If so, Luke is unlikely to have been written much before the end of the century.

John's Gospel was loosely based on Luke's Gospel, and it is generally agreed among scholars that it was written in the first two decades of the second century.

Luke's Gospel was well known to Marcion in the middle of the second century, and John's Gospel became more widely known around the same time. Although they are both thought to have been written much earlier, this certainly puts a latest possible date on the two gospels.

Answer 2

This is a subject worth a semester of study at a seminary. Briefly, current scholarly thought has it this way. After Jesus death and resurrection, the church collected oral stories about him from the disciples and formed an oral tradition around him consisting mostly of his parables and sayings. Later this oral tradition was written down, although we do not have a copy of that book today. It was in effect a handbook of the sayings of Jesus and did not have the associated events in it.

When the original disciples began to age and die or be killed, the church realized that they needed to record the stories the disciples told in written format to preserve them. Mark wrote his gospel first, recording (according to some) the stories of Peter and incorporating some of the oral tradition. A follower of Matthew wrote the gospel of Matthew next, followed by Luke who is associated with Paul. Each of them used the oral tradition and then added material that they had found during their researches but kept the general order of events found in Mark.

Lastly, John (or a follower of John) wrote his gospel, recording his unique perspective on the life of Jesus. Johns order of events is different in some cases, and Jesus speaks in long discourses, not in short sayings as in the other gospels. However, his gospel has always been included with the other three as being authoritative.