When Was the Gospel of Luke Written?

When were the four Gospels written?

Ultimately, from a faith perspective, the precise dates do not matter. What matters is that they are divinely inspired and thus authoritative for faith.

However, by showing that the Gospels were written in the first century, within a few decades of Jesus’ life, we strengthen their credibility even from a secular perspective.

Today virtually all scholars—whether skeptical or believing—acknowledge that the Gospels are first century documents.

The real question is how early in the first century they were written.

That’s what we’ll examine in this series.

 

The Importance of Acts

More than a century ago, the liberal German scholar Adolf von Harnack published a work titled The Date of the Acts and the Synoptic Gospels in which he considered this question.

As the title suggests, he considered the date of Acts first, the reason being that it’s easier to establish this date and then determine the dates of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) with respect to it.

Acts is important because it’s the sequel to the Gospel of Luke (Acts 1:1-2), so the date of Acts determines the latest possible date for Luke.

So . . . when was Acts written?

 

Its Sudden Ending

The first twelve chapters of Acts are concerned principally with St. Peter, and from chapter 13 onward, St. Paul becomes the focus of the narrative.

Beginning in chapter 21, Paul makes a fateful trip to Jerusalem, being prophetically warned along the way that if he goes there, he will be arrested. This indeed happens, and the rest of the book is taken up with the consequences of this event.

Paul spends years in custody, and in chapter 25 a turning point occurs when the new Roman governor, Porcius Festus, arrives. To avoid having the outcome of his trial affected by the hostile Jewish authorities, Paul invokes his Roman citizenship and the right to have his case tried before Caesar (the Caesar in question being Nero at this time). Festus then replies:

You have appealed to Caesar; to Caesar you shall go (Acts 25:12).

The rest of the book is taken up with the events leading up to Paul’s voyage to Rome and what happened on that trip. Acts ends in chapter 28 with Paul under house arrest in Rome, awaiting his trial. Luke simply says:

And he lived there two whole years at his own expense, and welcomed all who came to him, preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ quite openly and unhindered (Acts 28:30-31).

That’s it! We get no resolution on what happened when Paul appeared before Nero.

 

The Significance of the Ending

Many scholars have pointed out that the book’s abrupt ending is highly significant for when it was written.

It makes no sense, if Luke knew the outcome of the trial, for him to cut off the narrative at this point. He has been building toward this climactic event for eight chapters, and yet he doesn’t tell us what happened!

This is all the more striking, because whatever happened to Paul would have suited Luke’s purposes:

• If Paul was acquitted at this trial then Luke could portray Paul and the gospel as gloriously vindicated.
• If Paul was imprisoned or martyred then Luke could portray Paul as gloriously and heroically suffering for the gospel, as he has done so often in the book.

We learn from later sources that the first is actually what happened, that Paul was released and conducted a further period of ministry, only to be re-arrested and martyred after Nero found it convenient to blame Christians for the Great Fire of Rome in A.D. 64.

Yet Luke gives us neither of these endings. The only reasonable conclusion is that he didn’t do this because he couldn’t: The trial had not yet happened.

Adolf von Harnack comments:

Throughout eight whole chapters St. Luke keeps his readers intensely interested in the progress of the trial of St. Paul, simply that he may in the end completely disappoint them—they learn nothing of the final result of the trial! . . .

The more clearly we see that the trial of St. Paul, and above all his appeal to Caesar, is the chief subject of the last quarter of the Acts, the more hopeless does it appear that we can explain why the narrative breaks off as it does, otherwise than by assuming that the trial had actually not yet reached its close. It is no use to struggle against this conclusion. If St. Luke, in the year 80, 90, or 100, wrote thus he was not simply a blundering but an absolutely incomprehensible historian! (pp. 95, 97).

Harnack also points out that Luke repeatedly records prophecies of future events in Acts, yet he makes no mention of Paul’s ultimate fate:

St. Luke allows Agabus to foretell a famine, to foretell St. Paul’s imprisonment in Jerusalem; he suffers St. Paul himself (on the voyage) to foretell, like a fortune-teller, the fate of the ship and all its passengers; he in many chapters of the book deals in all kinds of “spiritual” utterances and prophecies—but not one word is said concerning the final destiny of St. Paul (and of St. Peter)! Is this natural? There are prophecies concerning events of minor importance, while there is nothing about the greatest event of all! (pp. 97-98, emphasis in original).

This further reinforces the conclusion that Acts was written before the events to which it has been building were concluded.

 

The Date of Acts

So in what year was Acts written? When does its narrative break off?

This is disputed by scholars. The problem is that we do not know precisely when the governor Festus arrived in Judaea.

This is the key event for determining when Paul’s voyage to Rome began and thus when his two-year period of house arrest began.

Many estimate that Festus arrived in A.D. 59, and so Paul arrived in Rome early in 60, and his house arrest lasted from 60 to 62.

However, I have done a (currently unpublished) study of the issue, and I agree with scholars such as Jack Finegan and Andrew Steinmann that Festus arrived in 57. That would mean that Paul arrived in Rome in early 58, and his house arrest lasted from 58 to 60.

I thus conclude that Acts was written in 60.

 

The Date of Luke

The Gospel of Luke was written before Acts, but how much before? A careful study of the end of the Gospel suggests it was not long.

This can be seen by comparing its end with the end of one of Luke’s sources—the Gospel of Mark. The original ending of Mark may have been lost, but it concludes in a way that indicates what would have happened. An angel tells the women who have come to Jesus’ tomb:

But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you (Mark 16:7; cf. 14:28).

Mark thus envisions a post-Resurrection appearance of Jesus to the disciples in Galilee. This is also what happens in Matthew (see Matt. 28:7, 10, 16-20).

However, Luke omits this reference and focuses instead on post-Resurrection appearances that occurred in Jerusalem and its vicinity (Luke 24:13-53). He makes no mention of the disciples going to Galilee. Instead, Luke records Jesus telling the disciples:

Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high (Luke 24:46-49).

Notice: Repentance is to be preached to all nations “beginning from Jerusalem” and the disciples are to “stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high.”

Although this difference has led some to see Luke as contradicting Mark and Matthew, in reality there is no conflict. The truth is that Jesus appeared to the disciples both in the vicinity of Jerusalem (John 20:19-31) and in Galilee (John 21:1-23). Luke simply focuses on the first location, while Mark and Matthew focus on the latter.

For our purposes, the question is: Why did Luke choose to end his Gospel as he did?

The obvious answer is that he was already planning what he was going to write in Acts. Thus at the beginning of the latter, he records Jesus telling the disciples:

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8).

This directly echoes the end of Luke’s Gospel:

• “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” refers to the events of Pentecost and corresponds to “stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49).
• “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” is the outline of the book of Acts and corresponds to “repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in [Christ’s] name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things” (Luke 24:47-48).

Other elements of the end of the Gospel are also recapitulated in Acts, including the Ascension (Luke 24:51// Acts 1:9-11), the disciples return to Jerusalem (Luke 24:52//Acts 1:12), and their regular worship in the temple (Luke 24:53//Acts 2:46, etc.).

The presence of these elements at the end of Luke, and particularly the way he diverges from Mark, indicates that he was already planning what he would write in Acts.

This indicates that no long period of time can have passed between the composition of Luke’s Gospel and its sequel. If years had elapsed then we wouldn’t find the Gospel ending the way it does.

I therefore estimate that Luke was finished immediately before Acts, likely in A.D. 59, and that Luke used the two-year period of Paul’s house arrest in Rome to finish gathering material for and to compose his two masterworks.

In fact, much of the material found in the first twelve chapters of Acts—which focus on Peter—as well as some of the material unique to Luke’s Gospel, likely came from interviews that Luke conducted with Peter in Rome during this period.

We thus find there are good reasons for thinking that Luke and Acts were both composed in Rome, around A.D. 59 and 60, respectively.

What can we say about the other Gospels? That’s what we will turn to next.