When Were The Gospels Written?

Synopsis: Christian researchers tend to date the gospels as early as possible, while atheists and militant anti-Christians tend to come up with much later dates. Neither side can be trusted and it's very difficult, if not impossible, to find reliable information on the issue.

Quote: "Dating the gospels is very important.  If it can be established that the gospels were written early, say before the year A.D. 70, then we would have good reason for believing that they were written by the disciples of Jesus himself.  If they were written by the disciples, then their reliability, authenticity, and accuracy are better substantiated.  Also, if they were written early, this would mean that there would not have been enough time for myth to creep into the gospel accounts since it was the eyewitnesses to Christ's life that wrote them.  Furthermore, those who were alive at the time of the events could have countered the gospel accounts; and since we have no contradictory writings to the gospels, their early authorship as well as apostolic authorship becomes even more critical." Source: Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry.

Comment: This is about as straightforward a declaration of research bias as you can get and it's not an isolated case. Christian scholars have traditionally dated the gospels and epistles as early as possible because they think that this tends to support the authenticity of the content and supposed authorship of these documents. In other words, the earlier the gospel, the more likely it is that it's true and was written by an apostle of Jesus.

Putting aside the admission of bias for a minute, there are some obvious problems with this argument. First of all, when it comes to transmission errors, even if it could be shown that the Book of Mark, for instance, was written in, say, 50 AD, there's no way to know if our copy of the document is the same as the original. We would have to have an original copy before we could say it was free of transmission errors and interpolations introduced by later copyists. Also, while it's true that early documents are less likely to contain mythical material inserted by later copyists, that doesn't mean that the original writer didn't insert a lot of mythical material himself.

Secondly, while it's true in a general sense that a document written around the time of the events it describes is probably more historically reliable than one written hundreds of years later, the dating of a document has nothing to do with its authenticity or accuracy. Even if we had the original Book of Matthew, for instance, and could prove that it dated to around the time of Jesus' supposed death, that doesn't prove that it was actually written by the apostle himself or that the events it describes actually happened. After all, someone else could have written it under the apostle's name and contemporary accounts don't always provide accurate descriptions of events. You can see that just be reading the news today.

Another problem with Christian dating methods is that even if they're correct, nobody really knows when Jesus was born. The assumption that he died around 30 AD is just that--an assumption based on Biblical legends like the Slaughter Of The Innocents, a story which is so absurd it couldn't possibly have happened (besides being totally implausible, the story isn't mentioned in Josephus or any pagan sources). So these Christian scholars are trying to date the gospels as close as they can to the date of Jesus' death, a date which probably isn't accurate in the first place.

But never mind all that. The main issue here is the obvious bias of modern Christian scholars. They start with the conclusion and then look for evidence to support it. I should qualify this by saying that not all Christian scholars work this way, but it's hard to believe that any Christian scholar would conclude, for example, that the gospels were actually written in 200 AD or any other late date that would cast doubt on their authenticity. They need to come up with early dates in order to support their religious beliefs and, sure enough, that's exactly what they come up with.

I have to point out, though, that this kind of bias works both ways. If Christian scholars can't be trusted when it comes to the dating of the gospels, then neither can militantly atheist or anti-Christian scholars. If the Christians want to find early dates to support their argument that the gospels are authentic, the atheists want to find later dates to support their argument that the gospels aren't authentic. As a general rule, Christian research always ends up supporting Christianity and research by atheists always ends up undermining Christianity. They all have their agendas.

Needless to say, all this bias complicates the issue, as anyone can testify who's tried to find a trustworthy source for the dating of the gospels. Scholars who research this stuff always seem to end up supporting their own preconceived conclusions, and while I don't claim to be a scholar, I guess I'm no exception. At this point, all I can say is that the canonical gospels were probably written sometime during the period between, say, 50 AD and 200 AD, which is more or less what I thought before I started this fruitless search.

To be continued, maybe...