Category: Synoptic Problem

The Gospel of John gets a bad rap among skeptical scholars, and many place less value on it than on Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

One reason is that they date it later than the other Gospels.

But when was it really written?

Let’s look at the evidence . . .

 

Physical Evidence

A couple of centuries ago, it became fashionable in biblical scholarship to assign very late dates to John.

For example, the famed German scholar F. C. Baur (1792-1860) dated it to between A.D. 160 and A.D. 170 (The Church History of the First Three Centuries 1:163-164, 175).

Such dates fell out of favor after more recent discoveries. One of the most important was a document known as “the Rylands Papyrus” (aka P52) which is held in the John Rylands University Library in Manchester, England.

The fragment is small (3.5 by 2.5 inches). One side contains text from John 18:31-33 and the other from John 18:37-38.

This fragment has commonly been dated to the first half of the second century, say around A.D. 125 (though this is disputed).

This pushed the date of John back to the beginning of the second century or to sometime in the first century. According to Raymond Brown, SJ, the Gospel is commonly dated by scholars today sometime between 80 and 110 (An Introduction to the New Testament, 334).

However, this view is not well supported.

 

The Evidence of Revelation?

Sometimes scholars, including conservative ones, date all the Johannine literature (John, 1-3 John, Revelation) to the A.D. 90s, seemingly because they aren’t sure when else to place them and this is a popular date for the book of Revelation.

This is problematic for several reasons:

• It is based on the idea that the recent persecution referred to in Revelation is one that occurred under the emperor Domitian, but there was no Domitianic persecution.
• As we will see below, we actually have good reason to date Revelation considerably earlier, in the late 60s.
• People’s literary careers can span decades, and there is no necessary connection between the time Revelation was written and the time the Gospel was.

Revelation thus does not serve as a good anchor for the writing of John’s Gospel.

 

John’s Advanced Age?

Sometimes a late date for John’s Gospel is advocated because of a remark the Evangelist makes to rebut a rumor that he would not die before the Second Coming (John 21:20-23).

This has been taken to indicate that John must have been at an advanced age and saw his death approaching, motivating him to rebut the rumor before he died, lest it cause consternation among the faithful.

However, this does not require a date in the 80s or 90s. If John were written in the mid 60s (as we will argue below), then he already would have been quite mature, even if he were among the youngest of the disciples.

Witnessing the increasing persecution of Christians and actual or approaching martyrdom of apostles (Acts 12:2, John 21:18-19), he could have felt the need to respond to the rumor by the mid 60s.

 

Situational Arguments

Sometimes scholars argue that John should be assigned a date late in the first century because of the situation it suggests the Church was in. For example:

• The book has a very high view of Christ’s divinity (John 1:1-5, 14:6, etc.), suggesting a late date.
• The book refers to people being put out of the synagogues (John 9:22, 12:42, 16:2), suggesting a date after the final break with Judaism, which is often claimed to be around A.D. 85.
• The book refers to “the Jews” as a separate and frequently hostile group (John 1:19, 2:18, 20, etc.).

Situational arguments like this are quite weak. A given generation can have theological savants in it—like John and Paul—who may sound decades more sophisticated than their contemporaries, and there’s nothing in the substance of John’s Christology that isn’t found in Paul. (This argument also ignores the role of Jesus himself; if Jesus had a high view of his own divinity then we would expect at least some of his disciples—like John—to mention it!)

Similarly, as we’ve noted, persecution in the synagogues was a familiar experience for Jewish Christians all the way through New Testament history. Jesus himself was killed, and there is no reason to think that some of his followers weren’t being ostracized even earlier. Indeed, we would expect them to be!

Finally, we find other books of the New Testament referring to “the Jews” as a distinct and frequently hostile group (Matt. 28:15, Acts 9:22-23, 12:3, 13:45, 2 Cor. 11:24, 1 Thess. 2:14), and these books were written in the mid first century. Acts was written around 60, 2 Corinthians was written in 54 or 55, and 1 Thessalonians was written between 49 and 51!

 

Before the Fall of Jerusalem?

Like the Synoptic Gospels, John does not refer to the fall of Jerusalem or the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70.

However, it is harder to make a case from this that John was written before 70 because—unlike the Synoptics—it does not contain a straightforward prediction of the temple’s destruction.

Jesus does allude to it (John 2:19), as does Caiaphas (John 11:48). But Jesus’ reference is only implicit, and the high priest only makes a conjecture. In neither case does Jesus say that the temple will be destroyed, as he does in the Synoptics.

Without an explicit prophecy of the temple’s destruction, we would not expect a prophetic fulfillment notice, and so the fact that John doesn’t give us one amounts only to a weak argument from silence.

Yet there is a verse which does imply a pre-70 date:

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Hebrew called Beth-Zatha, which has five porticoes (John 5:2).

The Greek word here for “is” (estin) is present tense, indicating a present state of affairs: John is saying that the pool Beth-Zatha (aka “Bethesda”), with its five porticoes, exists in Jerusalem at the time he is writing.

He would not have made this claim after Jerusalem fell, for as the Jewish historian Josephus reports, the Roman general Titus “ordered the whole city and the temple to be razed to the ground, leaving only the loftiest of the towers, Phasael, Hippicus, and Mariamme, and the portion of the wall enclosing the city on the west” (Jewish War 7:1:1-2).

John 5:2 thus gives us reason to hold that the Gospel was written before the destruction in 70 (see Daniel B. Wallace, “John 5, 2 and the Date of the Fourth Gospel”).

If this is correct, A.D. 70 would serve as the upper boundary for when John was composed.

What about the lower boundary?

 

John and the Other Evangelists

The early Church Fathers commonly regard John as the last of the Gospels to be written.

The work itself does not say this, but its last verse at least hints that several Gospels were written previously:

But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written (John 21:25).

This suggests that John was aware of several previous books about Jesus’ deeds, and these likely included one or more of the canonical Gospels.

There is quite good evidence that John knew the Gospel of Mark. In fact, there is evidence that he used Mark as a template around which to organize his own Gospel. I have argued this here. It is also argued by the British scholar Richard Bauckham in his chapter “John for Readers of Mark” in The Gospels for All Christians.

There are also reasons to think that John knew Luke’s Gospel. I have been struck by the way John seems to expand upon events mentioned in Luke, particularly in the latter’s Resurrection Narrative. For example:

• Luke’s statement, “Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home wondering at what had happened” (Luke 24:12) is expanded upon by John 20:1-10.
• Luke’s statement, “And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them” (Luke 24:41-43) is expanded upon by John 21:1-14.
• Luke exclusively focuses on post-Resurrection events that occurred in or near Jerusalem (Luke 24:1-51), in contrast to Matthew and Mark, who focus on post-Resurrection appearances that occurred in Galilee (Matt. 28:7, 10, 16-20, Mark 16:7; cf. Matt. 26:32, Mark 14:28). By contrast, John indicates that Jesus appeared to the disciples both in Jerusalem and in Galilee (John 20:19-21:23).

It thus seems that there are good reasons to think that John knew Mark, which was composed around A.D. 55, and Luke, which likely was published in A.D. 59.

These dates would put the composition of John between 59 and 70—i.e., in the A.D. 60s.

But there is one Gospel that we still have to consider.

What about Matthew?

 

John and Matthew

While a significant number of scholars have thought that John shows awareness of Mark and Luke, fewer have thought that he shows awareness of Matthew.

The claim that he does has been recently argued by James Barker in his book John’s Use of Matthew.

I am still evaluating the case that John knew Matthew. On independent grounds, I have argued that Matthew was written in the A.D. 60s, say around 65—the same period to which we have dated John.

If Matthew was written in this period, and if it had come into John’s hands, then he may have had little time to assimilate it, resulting in the lesser impact it had on his Gospel compared to Mark and Luke.

At present, I don’t have a judgment on whether Matthew was written first or whether John was. So far, we can only say that it looks like both were written sometime in the 60s.

 

The Book of Revelation Redivivus

The dating of the book of Revelation now returns to affect the dating of John’s Gospel. As I mentioned before, we have evidence that Revelation was written considerably before the date it is often assigned in the 90s.

Specifically, it appears to have been written shortly before the fall of the temple in A.D. 70, during the brief reign of the Emperor Galba (the one emperor who “is,” after the five who have fallen; cf. Revelation 17:10). Galba reigned from June 8 of A.D. 68 to January 15 of A.D. 69.

We also know that Revelation was written when John was in exile on Patmos (Rev. 1:9). This is likely responsible for the difference in the Greek styles of Revelation and the Gospel of John.

While in exile, John may not have had access to the kind of editorial help he may have employed when writing the Gospel (i.e., he may not have had access to a good amanuensis to polish his Greek).

Unfortunately, we do not know much about when John’s exile to Patmos began or ended. However, it is likely both that he was in exile before Galba’s brief reign began and that he remained in it through 69, the chaotic “Year of Four Emperors.”

He thus was likely in exile during at least the last two years of the 60s, meaning the Gospel would have been written in the early or mid 60s.

 

Peter’s Martyrdom

There is one additional factor that may help us date the Gospel. Toward its end, Jesus tells Peter:

Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go (John 21:18).

John then adds:

This he said to show by what death he [Peter] was to glorify God (John 21:19).

This is commonly understood to mean that John’s Gospel was written after Peter’s martyrdom and that John was looking back on the event.

In a currently unpublished study, I have dated the martyrdom of Peter to the mid 60s. It likely took place in mid 65 or mid 66. If so, then the Gospel would have been written in a very short time frame, say in 66 or 67.

However, there is reason to question the premise on which this argument is based.

Most English translations of John 21:19, including the RSV (quoted above), make it sound like Peter’s martyrdom is a past event. They speak of the death by which “he was to glorify God.”

But the Greek text actually has the future tense at this point. The relevant verb is doksasei (“he will/shall glorify”). Some of the most literal translations thus render the passage along these lines:

And this he said, signifying by what death he shall glorify God (John 21:19, Young’s Literal Translation).

I’m uncertain why most translations render the passage the way they do. It may simply be due to the prevalent view among translators that John was written after Peter’s death. However, the Greek verb is future tense.

If the more literal translation is correct, it would appear that Peter’s martyrdom is still in the future at the point that John is writing—or at least that it occurred so recently that John has not yet received word of the martyrdom.

Word of Peter’s death would have spread quickly in the Christian world, though it would have taken months to make its way around the Mediterranean.

If John was in Ephesus at this time, he likely would have heard within a few weeks. (The ORBIS ancient travel database indicates a minimum travel time of just over 12 days between Rome and Ephesus during the spring and summer months, when Peter likely was martyred.)

If the literal translation of John 21:19 is correct, the latest possible date for John’s Gospel thus would be within a few weeks of Peter’s martyrdom, which would still leave us in the 65-66 time frame.

 

Conclusion

In view of the above, I estimate that John’s Gospel was written between the publication of Luke in 59 and the martyrdom of Peter in 65-66. For the sake of convenience, I will reckon it as approximately 65.

This would give us the following dates for the publication of the Gospels and Acts:

• Mark: approximately 55 (info here)
• Luke: approximately 59 (info here)
• Acts: approximately 60 (info here)
• Matthew: approximately 65 (info here, here, here, and here)
• John: approximately 65

It thus appears that the historical books of the New Testament were written in the span of about a decade.

It’s more challenging to figure of the date of Matthew’s Gospel than either Mark or Luke, but we’re finally within striking distance of doing so.

In previous posts, we’ve seen that Matthew was written after Mark, which means after about A.D. 55.

We’ve also seen that it was written before A.D. 70.

That gives us a range of about 15 years, but can we narrow it down further?

Let’s look at the evidence . . .

 

Matthew and Luke

We have a good date for the Gospel of Luke, which was written around A.D. 59, so if we can establish Matthew’s relationship to Luke, we could get a more precise date for his Gospel.

We thus need to consider some theories about how the two Gospels are related:

1. Matthew and Luke were written independently of each other
2. Luke used Matthew in composing his Gospel, so Matthew came first
3. Matthew used Luke, so Luke came first

 

The Independence Hypothesis

This is the most common view among scholars today. According to it, Matthew and Luke wrote their Gospels independently, seemingly without displaying any knowledge of each other’s work.

According to this hypothesis, both used Mark’s Gospel, but there also are over two hundred verses that they also share in common, and if they were truly independent of each other, they needed to get this material from some common source.

Scholars have given this source the name “Q,” from the German word Quelle, which just means “source.”

For this view to work, Matthew and Luke would have had to be written at about the same time.

Otherwise, whichever was written first would have had enough time to spread in the Christian community for the other to have read it, and we would expect to see it reflected in some way in the other Gospel.

I estimate that would have taken no more than five years, so let’s assume that if this view is true then Matthew would have been written within about five years of Luke.

That would put it between roughly A.D. 55 and 65.

This is consistent with our previous finding that it was likely written between 55 and 70, but is there a way we can test this hypothesis?

 

Testing the Independence Hypothesis

For the Independence Hypothesis to work, the hypothetical Q source needs to have existed.

The two strongest arguments for the existence of Q are the fact that Matthew and Luke diverge significantly at the beginnings and the ends of their Gospels. That is, Matthew and Luke read very differently in their accounts of Jesus’ birth and childhood (the “Infancy Narratives”) and in their accounts of his resurrection (the “Resurrection Narratives”).

To put the matter concisely: If one knew of the other’s Gospel, why are their Infancy and Resurrection Narratives so different?

I’ve looked at this matter before, and I’ve concluded that there actually are good reasons both for why their Infancy Narratives read differently and why their Resurrection Narratives read differently.

I thus don’t think the key arguments for Q are persuasive. In addition, there are significant arguments against Q:

1. Q is an entirely hypothetical source. We don’t have independent evidence for its existence, and thus we should only propose it if we have other, solid grounds for thinking neither Matthew nor Luke knew the other.
2. Q is billed by the scholars who advocate it as a “sayings source” that preserves the sayings of Jesus, but this does not reflect the facts (see also here).
3. If Q were a distinct source from Mark, we wouldn’t expect to see Matthew and Luke blending the two, and blending them in the same way, but we do. These places are known as “Mark-Q overlap” passages.
4. If Matthew and Luke used Mark independently of each other, we would expect to see them making minor modifications in the way Mark phrases things, but we wouldn’t expect to see them modifying Mark in exactly the same way. Yet we do. There are numerous instances where Matthew and Luke phrase things in a way that differs from Mark. These are known as the “minor agreements” against Mark.

The problems with the Q Hypothesis are more fully explored by the British scholar Mark Goodacre and his colleagues in the books Questioning Q and The Case Against Q.

 

If Luke Used Matthew

The idea that Luke used Matthew’s Gospel when writing his own is known as the Farrer Hypothesis.

It assumes that both Matthew and Luke used Mark’s Gospel, but it does away with the need for Q because Luke simply took the two-hundred-plus verses that he shares with Matthew directly from the latter’s Gospel.

This does away with the problems of Q’s hypothetical nature, its role as a “sayings source,” the Mark-Q overlaps, and the “minor agreements.”

Presently, the most forceful exponent of the Farrer Hypothesis is Marc Goodacre, who explores it (among other places) in his book The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze.

Based on the dates we have proposed, the Farrer Hypothesis would place the composition of Matthew’s Gospel in a very small window: between the composition of Mark, around A.D. 55, and Luke, in A.D. 59.

On this view, we could place Matthew confidently around A.D. 57.

But there’s another possibility we need to consider . . .

 

If Matthew Used Luke

The idea that Matthew used Luke’s Gospel when writing his own is known as the Wilke Hypothesis.

It also does away with the problems associated with the Q Hypothesis.

The Wilke Hypothesis has, rather inexplicably, been long neglected by scholars, but is presently receiving some much needed attention, and several books have appeared on the subject, such as Robert MacEwen’s overview Matthean Posteriority. Alan Garrow also has a helpful series of videos on the subject.

Based on the dates we have proposed, the Wilke Hypothesis would place the composition of Matthew’s Gospel in the A.D. 60s, between the publication of Luke in 59 and the destruction of the temple in 70.

So we need to ask a question . . .

 

Which Came First?

The issue of whether Matthew or Luke was written first—like the Synoptic Problem in general—can get very technical, very quickly, and we don’t have space to descend into the details here.

I will therefore look only at a few top level considerations.

The best argument for the idea that Matthew wrote first appears to be the argument from “editorial fatigue.” This is the idea that, in copying Matthew, Luke introduced certain changes but then unconsciously began to slip back into Matthew’s way of describing things, thus showing that Matthew was his source.

Goodacre explores this idea here.

I have evaluated the argument here, and ultimately I do not find it convincing.

By contrast, the basic argument I would make for the idea that Luke wrote first is that Matthew simply appears to be a more developed literary work.

This occurs on multiple levels, from the organization of Jesus’s sayings into Matthew’s five great discourses, to tiny tweaks, such as when Luke’s unqualified “Blessed are you poor” (Luke 6:20) becomes Matthew’s “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matt. 5:3) to bring out the significance of spiritual rather than merely material poverty.

Particularly striking is the fact that sayings of Jesus that are scattered all over the place in Luke are organized into obvious, topical blocks in Matthew.

This is easy to explain if Matthew wrote later: He was simply an organizer, and so he organized the sayings he found in Luke.

However, the reverse is harder to explain: If Luke used Matthew then he would have had to smash Matthew’s beautifully organized blocks and scatter the material around in a far less obviously organized way.

Defenders of the Farrer Hypothesis argue that Luke had reasons for doing this, but, if so, they are not obvious, whereas Matthew’s organizational scheme is clear.

At least on the level of appearances, it is hard to avoid Reginald Fuller’s rather brusque assessment that, if the Farrer Hypothesis were true, Luke would present us with “a case of unscrambling the egg with a vengeance!” (The New Testament in Current Study, 1963).

B. H. Streeter put the matter even more brusquely when he argued that the way Luke would have to treat the material he drew from Matthew, in comparison with what he drew from Mark, by saying that “a theory which would make an author capable of such a proceeding would only be tenable if, on other grounds, we had reason to believe he was a crank” (The Four Gospels, 183).

Streeter is too harsh, but given the problems with the Q Hypothesis and the fact that it’s easier to explain Matthew’s use of Luke rather than the reverse, I come to the tentative conclusion that Luke wrote before Matthew.

This would put the writing of Matthew in the decade between the publication of Luke and the destruction of the temple, say around A.D. 65.

 

External Evidence?

It’s always good to support deductions from evidence internal to the Gospels with evidence external to them, and it happens that in this case there is a piece of confirmatory, external evidence. Writing around 189, St. Irenaeus of Lyons states:

Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter (Against Heresies 3:1).

Note that Irenaeus states Matthew wrote his Gospel “while Peter and Paul were preaching in Rome.” That would place its composition between Paul’s arrival in Rome, which I have dated to A.D. 58, and their martyrdoms, which occurred in the mid 60s (likely 65 or 66 in the case of Peter and 67 in the case of Paul).

Irenaeus thus confirms the general date I have proposed for Matthew.

However, we must not place too much weight on this fact, for Irenaeus appears to imply that Mark was written after Peter and Paul’s deaths, and thus after Matthew, which would not be correct. Also, he states that Matthew wrote among the Hebrews “in their own dialect” (Greek, tê idia dialektô), which could merely mean that he wrote in a Jewish style—which would be true—but which more naturally would mean that he wrote in the Aramaic language, which appears not to have been the case.

Despite these difficulties, it is possible that Irenaeus, writing about 125 years later, preserves an authentic memory of when Matthew’s Gospel was written.

 

Conclusion

Regardless of what one thinks of Irenaeus, we have the following approximate dates for the Synoptic Gospels:

• Mark: around 55
• Luke: around 59
• Matthew: around 65

But what about John? That’s what we’ll turn to next.

Recently we’ve been looking at the question of when the Gospel of Matthew was composed.

In our first post, we argued that Matthew was written sometime between A.D. 55 and 100, and since then we’ve been trying to narrow down the range.

A key event falling in the middle of this period was the conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of its temple in A.D. 70.

In our previous post, we looked at arguments that Matthew was written after this traumatic event and found that they lack force.

But do we have reasons to think that the Gospel was written before 70?

Let’s look at the evidence . . .

 

Authorship by the Apostle?

The external evidence found in the writings of the Church Fathers is strongly in favor of the Apostle Matthew as the author of the Gospel attributed to him.

Some have argued that it would be unlikely for Matthew to have written after A.D. 70, meaning it had an earlier date than this.

I’ve studied the likely ages of the apostles, and it can be reasonably estimated that Matthew was born sometime around A.D. 4. He thus would have been in his 60s when Jerusalem was destroyed, and that’s by no means an unreasonable age for an author in the ancient world.

While it’s true that the ancients had shorter lifespans than ours, this is primarily due to the high infant mortality rate. Anyone who survived to adulthood—like Matthew—would have a lifespan almost equal to our own. Thus Raymond Brown, SJ, comments:

Most who think that the apostle Matthew himself wrote the Gospel tend toward a pre-70 dating (although obviously the apostle could have lived till later in the century) (An Introduction to the New Testament, 216).

Similarly, D. A. Carson and Douglas Moo observe:

If the apostle Matthew is judged, on balance, to be the evangelist, a date before A.D. 70 is more plausible (though certainly not necessary—there is excellent evidence that the apostle John was active for at least two decades after 70) (An Introduction to the New Testament, 2^nd ed, 155).

The argument thus has some weight, but it is far from decisive.

 

Passages Presupposing the Temple?

Matthew contains a number of passages that envision the temple as still functioning:

If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift (Matt. 5:23-24).

Have you not read in the law how on the sabbath the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are guiltless? (Matt. 12:5).

He who swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; and he who swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it (Matt. 23:20-21).

It could be argued that Matthew is simply quoting things Jesus said during his ministry and that this has no further significance, but that is open to challenge.

We need to ask the question: Why did Matthew choose to record these things, of all the Jesus traditions he had at his disposal? Surely, he thought they were relevant to his audience, and they would be more relevant if the temple were still standing.

The first and the last, especially, would be more relevant to his audience of Jewish Christians if the temple were standing, because otherwise they could not go to Jerusalem and offer a gift at the altar—nor would they be tempted to swear by an altar or a temple that had been demolished as a result of God’s judgment.

These passages thus add weight to the case for a pre-70 date.

 

The Temple Tax

A passage deserving special note is the one dealing with the temple tax:

When they came to Capernaum, the collectors of the half-shekel tax went up to Peter and said, “Does not your teacher pay the tax?”

 He said, “Yes.” And when he came home, Jesus spoke to him first, saying, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their sons or from others?”

And when he said, “From others,” Jesus said to him, “Then the sons are free. However, not to give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook, and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a shekel; take that and give it to them for me and for yourself” (Matt. 17:24-27).

Jesus thus implies that he and Peter do not need to pay the temple tax but should do so anyway to avoid giving offense.

The reason this is significant for our purposes is not just that Jewish Christians wouldn’t need to pay the temple tax once the structure was in ruins, it is that the Romans repurposed the tax so that it supported the temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest—i.e., the Capitoline Temple in Rome! The Jewish historian Josephus reports:

He [Domitian] also laid a tribute upon the Jews wheresoever they were and enjoined every one of them to bring two drachmae every year into the Capitol, as they used to pay the same to the temple at Jerusalem (Jewish War 7:6:6[218]).

Similarly, the Roman historian Cassius Dio states:

From that time forth it was ordered that the Jews who continued to observe their ancestral customs should pay an annual tribute of two denarii to Jupiter Capitolinus (Roman History 65:7:2).

Some Jews tried to avoid paying this tax (which amounted to just two days’ wages), even by the expedient of posing as Gentiles. Yet payment was rigorously enforced, at times in humiliating ways. The Roman historian Suetonius reports:

Besides other taxes, that on the Jews was levied with the utmost rigor, and those were prosecuted who without publicly acknowledging that faith yet lived as Jews, as well as those who concealed their origin and did not pay the tribute levied upon their people. I recall being present in my youth when the person of a man ninety years old was examined before the procurator and a very crowded court, to see whether he was circumcised (The Twelve Caesars “Domitian” 12:2).

Diverting tax money that originally supported the temple in Jerusalem to support the key temple in Rome was an enormous insult to Jewish sensibilities, and the fact they were forced to pay it was a profound humiliation.

For Matthew—if he was writing after A.D. 70—to portray Jesus as condoning the payment of this tax would have risked confusing, alienating, or outraging members of his audience. Jesus could even be understood as financially supporting idolatry so as “not to give offense”!

The inclusion of the passage in his Gospel is far more understandable if Matthew were writing before 70, when Jewish Christians still needed to wrestle with the question of whether to support the temple whose officials had rejected and crucified Jesus and whose destruction he had prophesied. Carson and Moo state:

Even if for other reasons Matthew had wanted to preserve this pericope, it is hard to see how, if he was writing after 70, he could have permitted such an implication without comment (p. 156).

 

An Exhortation to Pray

Matthew 24 contains a major prophetic discourse dealing with the events leading up to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple.

During the course of the discourse, Jesus says that when the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel appears “standing in the holy place” that those in Judea are to “flee to the mountains” (Matt. 24:15-16). He warns them to flee immediately, not going back for anything, and then he says:

Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a sabbath (Matt. 24:20).

It is well known that the Christian community in Jerusalem did flee the Jewish War, taking up residence in the Jordanian settlement of Pella (Eusebius, Church History 3:5:3).

Like all ancient authors, Matthew was conscious of the need to save space in his book so that it would fit on a single scroll, and he regularly drops words and phrases from Mark for just this reason.

So why would he preserve this exhortation to Judean Christians to pray that their flight not take place in winter or on a sabbath (when travel would be difficult) if the flight had already occurred and the need to pray no longer existed?

 

No Fulfillment Notice

Another, even weightier aspect of Matthew 24 is the fact that it’s Jesus’ major prophetic discourse in the Gospel, and it’s focused on the destruction of the temple, which Jesus predicts at the very beginning of the chapter (Matt. 24:1-2).

Despite the fact this is Jesus’ longest prophecy, and thus of great importance to Matthew, he nowhere records that it has been fulfilled.

This requires explanation. The Evangelists regularly report it when Jesus made a prophecy that was later fulfilled, as it shows his credentials as a true prophet.

Thus when they record Jesus predicting his arrest, death, and resurrection, the Evangelists correspondingly report these prophecies being fulfilled.

Matthew, of all the Evangelists, is especially noted for including prophetic fulfillment notices in his Gospel (Matt. 1:23, 2:6, 17, 23, 3:3, 4:14-16, 13:14).

Similarly, Matthew breaks the flow of his narrative to report on conditions in his own day (Matt. 27:8, 28:15).

In view of these factors, we would expect Matthew in particular, of all the Evangelists, to comment on the fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy concerning the temple. As the German scholar Theodor Zahn commented:

If “to this day” (27:8, 28:15) were after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, we would expect that an author who values so highly as does Matthew proof based upon the occurrence of prophecy and its fulfilment for the justification of Christ over against Judaism, would indicate somewhere and in some manner that the prophecy of Jesus had been fulfilled in this judgment (Introduction to the New Testament, 571).

Yet he does not do so. This puts the destruction of the temple in the same category as other yet-to-be-fulfilled prophecies, such as the Second Coming.

Particularly in light of the space Matthew devotes to the prophecy, the fact he does not give us a fulfillment notice strongly argues for a pre-70 date.

 

No Disentanglement

Even more striking, Matthew makes no attempt to disentangle the Second Coming from the events leading up to the temple.

Each of the Synoptic Gospels speaks of there being a “coming” of Jesus in the discourse about the temple’s destruction (Matt. 24:30, Mark 13:26, Luke 21:27).

In my view, this was not the Second Coming but a coming in judgment, as when the Old Testament describes God “riding the clouds” when he comes in judgment on a people (Ps. 104:3; Isa. 19:1-2; Jer. 4:13-14).

However, to the first Christians (and many since), it would have been easily confused with the Second Coming of Christ.

We would thus expect the Evangelists—if they were writing after 70—either to drop the references to this coming from the discourse or to somehow clarify for the audience that it wasn’t the Second Coming.

To fail to do this could scandalize the audience by making it look like Jesus predicted the Second Coming at a time when it failed to occur.

Yet they do not do so. Contemporary scholar Donald Hagner comments:

Matthew’s redaction of the Markan eschatological discourse makes no attempt to disentangle the references to the fall of Jerusalem and the end of the age (chap. 24). Luke very deliberately does so in his redaction of Mark 13, and we might expect Matthew to do the same had it been written after 70. Indeed, the evangelist aggravates the problem considerably by his insertion of eutheôs, “immediately,” in 24:29, which leaves the clear impression that he expected the parousia of the Son of Man to occur in close succession to the fall of Jerusalem (Word Biblical Commentary, Matthew 1-13, vol. 33A, lxxiv).

The fact that the Synoptic Evangelists neither drop the “coming” language nor clarify that it doesn’t refer to the Second Coming strongly implies that they—Matthew included—were writing before the destruction of the temple.

That would indicate that Matthew’s Gospel was written sometime between Mark—around A.D. 55—and the destruction of the temple in 70.

But can we be more specific? That’s what we’ll look at in our next and final post on Matthew’s date.

Many scholars hold that the Gospel of Matthew was written after the traumatic events of A.D. 70, when the Jewish War came to its climax and the Jerusalem temple was destroyed.

In a previous post, we argued that Matthew was written sometime between A.D. 55 and 100, but what are we to make of the arguments that it was composed after 70?

Let’s look at the evidence . . .

 

Presupposing the Destruction of the Temple?

Some have argued that Matthew was written after 70 because it depicts Jesus predicting the destruction of the temple (Matt. 24:1-2).

However, this is not a good argument, for it presupposes that Jesus could not have predicted such an event.

Indeed, one doesn’t even have to suppose that Jesus was a genuine prophet, just that he was a shrewd observer of “the signs of the times” (Matt. 16:3) and could deduce the likely outcome of Jewish anti-Roman passions and the war that they would produce.

The temple had already been destroyed once, and the fear it might happen again was real.

Jesus wasn’t even the only person to predict its destruction in advance. (More here.)

The weakness of the argument in this form is acknowledged by many scholars, and so a refinement has been proposed that argues Matthew’s Gospel contains passages which presuppose that the event has already happened. Raymond Brown, SJ, writes:

For instance, the omission in Matt. 21:13 of the description of the Jerusalem Temple as serving “for all the nations” (Mark 11:17) and the reference in Matt. 22:7 to the king burning the city may reflect the destruction at Jerusalem by the Roman armies in A.D. 70.

These arguments are both quite weak. Note that Brown only says the passages “may reflect” the events of 70.

 

“For All the Nations”

The first passage reads:

He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you make it a den of robbers” (Matt. 21:13).

It’s true that Mark adds “for all the nations” after “a house of prayer,” but one can’t argue that Matthew deleted this out of animus for Gentiles after the Romans destroyed the temple.

As we’ve seen, Matthew is far from being hostile to Gentiles, and the theme of their evangelization and salvation is a prominent one in his Gospel.

If we want an explanation for why he would delete this phrase, we need look no further than the fact Matthew incorporates 90% of the material in Mark and thus needs to shorten it so that he can fit in all of the additional material he wants to include in his Gospel.

Matthew thus regularly drops words and phrases from what he takes from Mark.

 

“And Burned Their City”

The second passage Brown cites occurs at the end of the parable of the wedding banquet, where we read this about the king who is snubbed:

The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city (Matt. 22:7).

This also proves nothing. As D. A. Carson and Douglas Moo observe:

The language of Matthew 22:7, including the reference to the burning of the city, is the standard language of both the Old Testament and the Roman world describing punitive military expeditions against rebellious cities. Granted that Jesus foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem (as did many prophets before him), the language he used does not in any detail depend on specific knowledge as to how things actually turned out in A.D. 70. In fact, [John A.T.] Robinson goes so far as to argue that the synoptic prophecies about the fall of Jerusalem, including Matthew 22:7, are so restrained that they must have been written before 70 (An Introduction to the New Testament, 2^nd ed., 153).

The last argument is that the prophecies about the destruction of Jerusalem are so general and in keeping with ordinary Roman practice that they don’t betray a knowledge of the details of what happened in 70, and so they were written before that event. Robinson was a liberal English scholar, and liberal German scholar Adolf von Harnack concurred, stating:

Chap. 22:7 and many other passages are rather in favor of composition before the catastrophe (The Date of the Acts and the Synoptic Gospels, 134, n. 2).

Fundamentally, if Jesus could foresee—supernaturally or otherwise—the conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of its temple, he could similarly foresee the burning of the city.

 

The Church

Matthew’s Gospel is unique in that it refers to his “church.” In Matthew 16:18, he says “I will build my church,” and in 18:17 he says “tell it to the church.”

It is argued that this reflects a developed understanding of the Church, but this hardly requires a date after A.D. 70.

St. Paul uses the Greek word for church—ekklesia—61 times in his epistles, all of which were written before A.D. 70.

St. Luke uses it a further 23 times in Acts, which was also written before A.D. 70 (specifically, in A.D. 60, as we discussed before).

The word “church” for the community of Jesus’ followers thus was well established long before the events of 70.

 

Separation from the Synagogue?

Sometimes it is argued that Matthew displays knowledge of the final separation of church and synagogue in passages like these:

Beware of men; for they will deliver you up to councils, and flog you in their synagogues (Matt. 10:17).

Therefore, I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town (Matt. 23:34).

The final separation of church and synagogue is then argued to have taken place around A.D. 85, when the Birkath ha-Minim (Hebrew, “blessing concerning the heretics”) is said to have been introduced into Jewish prayer and thus prevented Jewish Christians from participation in Jewish worship, since it was directed against them.

However, there are multiple problems with this argument.

First, the history and interpretation of the Birkath ha-Minim is highly debatable, making it too uncertain to use as a marker for dating.

Second, the alleged introduction of it around 85—if that even is when it was introduced—is a dividing line of convenience. The separation of church and synagogue was a lengthy process that cannot be assigned to a single date.

Third, the verses in question do not speak of Jewish Christians being excluded from the synagogue by the introduction of a prayer. They speak of them being beaten in synagogues.

Fourth, the verses actually speak of a time before the separation was complete. They envision a time when Jewish Christians were still attending the synagogue and thus could be subject to beatings there.

Fifth, the persecution of Christians attending synagogues, including beatings, is precisely what we see in the book of Acts (9:2, 20-23, 13:43-50, 14:1-6, 17:1-5, 10-13, 18:17, 22:19, 26:11), and the events it records took place between A.D. 33 and 60.

Sixth, this objection presupposes that Jesus could not have—supernaturally or otherwise—foreseen the consequences of the spread of the Christian message for his followers (despite the fact he foresaw his own death and undertook actions he knew would provoke the Jewish authorities).

 

“To This Day”

Matthew 27:8 refers to the fact that the field where Judas died has been called the field of blood “to this day,” and Matthew 28:15 reports that the idea the disciples stole Jesus’ body has been circulating among non-Christian Jews “to this day.”

Concerning such passages, Raymond Brown argues:

Two passages (27:8; 28:15) describe items in the Matthean passion narrative that are remembered “to this day,” using an OT phrase to explain place names from long ago (Gen. 26:33; 2 Sam. 6:8). Such a description would be very inappropriate if Matt was written only two or three decades after A.D. 30/33 (An Introduction to the New Testament, 216).

This is very weak. The phrase “to this day” may be used in the Old Testament to refer to things that started in the distant past, but this is far from a required condition.

Despite Brown’s reference to “two or three decades,” in context he is using this as an argument against Matthew having a pre-A.D. 70 date. The difference between A.D. 30 and 70 is four decades, and Brown himself places Matthew’s composition in “80-90, give or take a decade” (p. 172).

So . . . “two or three decades” would be a “very inappropriate” period to warrant the use of the phrase “to this day” but four or five would make it appropriate?

That’s hardly plausible. All that the phrase indicates is that some period of time which the author deems significant has passed, and a distance of 30 years—quite long in the lifetime of an ancient person—would be quite sufficient.

 

Conclusion

We haven’t found any good arguments for Matthew being written after A.D. 70.

Are there good arguments for it being written before 70?

That’s what we’ll turn to next . . .