In the famous book written by Dan Brown one of the characters sir Leigh Teabing explains the mystery of the early Christian history and documents: “Jesus Christ was a historical figure of staggering influence, perhaps the most enigmatic and inspirational leader the world has ever seen… His life was recorded by thousands of followers across the land… More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative few were chosen for inclusion – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John among them”. Somewhat later, the great mind turns to the Gospels once again: “As I mentioned”, Teabing clarified, “the early Church needed to convince the world that mortal prophet Jesus was a divine being. Therefore, any gospels that described earthly aspects of Jesus’ life had to be omitted from the Bible”. His portray of early Christian history is flawed at numerous levels. The purpose of this text is not to get into every single thing Teabing said, but to pinpoint his insistence that there were eighty Gospels considered for inclusion in the New Testament. No, they weren’t. In the first century, they were (as far as we know!) only four gospels, and these gospels are part of the New Testament today. But, how do we know they date from the first century? Is it just a lucky guess? Is there maybe something more to it? In what follows, I’ll lay down basic arguments for the standard dating of canonical Gospels.

First of all, we can be sure that the Gospels weren’t written before Jesus’ death (30 CE). Terminus post quem non is certainly Irenaeus who, as mentioned in the previous text, explicitly refers in 180 CE to Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as authors of the Gospels. That would narrow down things to a period between 30 and 180 CE. But, there are other clues and pieces of evidence that can help us. For example, apostle Paul wrote his epistles between 49 and 64 CE. As you all probably know, Paul was one of the most important early Christian missionaries. He traveled around the Mediterranean establishing several communities of believers and making sure they function properly. It is interesting that Paul never ever hints that he knows of any written gospel! It is highly unlikely that he would deliberately omit such an important thing! The logical conclusion is that while he was alive there were mainly oral traditions about Jesus’ life spreading among Christian communities – but there weren’t any written Gospel yet! So, that puts us somewhere between 64 and 180 CE. The next logical step is to try to narrow the latter date by looking at the other clues. For example, the earliest piece of the New Testament manuscript is the so-called P52 – it is a fragment that contains parts of seven lines from the Gospel of John. The opinion of academia is that this fragments dates in the first half of the 1st. century (100-150 CE). Since it was found in Egypt, we can conclude that the original Gospel of John predates the found fragment by at least 10-20 years. Furthermore, we have quotations of Gospels in several early Christian documents that date to the end of the 1^st and the beginning of the 2^nd century. For instance, Didache quotes (almost verbatim) parts of the Gospel of Matthew. Because of the nature of the quotations, scholars are confident that the author of Didache quoted from a Gospel itself, not from an oral tradition. All of this helps us to narrow things a little bit more: somewhere between 64 and 100 CE.

Now, communis opinion is that the Gospel of Mark is our earliest gospel written somewhere around 70 CE. There are several reasons behind this conclusion, but the way the author hints at the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem is probably the strongest piece of evidence. On several occasions, “Mark” describes the destruction of the Temple that happened in 70 CE. For example: “As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’” A few passages later, Jesus warns: “But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains.” These passages certainly allude to the event from the 70 CE when Roman legions sacked and burned the city of Jerusalem. During that, they destroyed the Temple and all the buildings around it. Maybe the most significant part of the second quotation is the subtle comment made by the author itself. The author doesn’t quote only the alleged prediction made by Jesus but also puts in his own comment: ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω (“let the reader understand”). By making this comment, the author is trying to suggest to the reader that this prophecy had recently been fulfilled. However, there are other clues that point towards an earlier date: sometime between 65 and 70 CE. For example, details that are given about the destruction of the Temple aren’t historically correct. Jesus said, “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down”. But, we know that the Temple wasn’t fully destroyed. As the matter of fact, the remains of the Temple are still in Jerusalem – the so-called Western Wall – you can visit it yourself! In a nutshell, it’s tricky to pinpoint the exact date of composition, but most scholars think that “Mark” (or whoever he was!) wrote his Gospel between 65 and 70 CE during the chaotic and bloody conflict between Jews and Romans in Palestine. To remind you again, Gospels were probably written anonymously. The titles are given later on (see here).

The Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke rely heavily on Mark as a source. Therefore, they were probably written after the Gospel of Mark. This is also known as a “Two sources hypothesis”. Over half of the material in Matthew and nearly half of the material in Luke is copied from Mark. One of the reasons why scholars are convinced in the priority of the Gospel of Mark is connected to linguistic elements. Mark is written in simple Greek which often forces Matthew and Luke to correct his language to make it more idiomatic and easier to read. This process of correction (Matthew and Luke correcting Mark) makes more sense if we postulate Marcan priority. Furthermore, it is indicative that Matthew and Luke have stories that are not included in Mark. For example, Mark doesn’t have any in-person appearance of the resurrected Jesus. It is well known that the original Mark ends up with the women discovering the empty tomb. A young man tells them that Jesus had risen from the dead. Afterward, women fled from the tomb and, as the author notes, they didn’t tell anyone what they had seen, because they were afraid. Then the gospel abruptly ends, without Jesus having a post-resurrection appearance to his disciples. Contrary to that, Matthew and Luke include detailed descriptions of the appearances of Jesus. It is easy to understand why would they add these very important elements of a tradition while copying Mark as a source. On the other hand, if Mark was copying from Matthew and Luke, it would mean that he was reading two sources that contain a detailed description of Jesus post-resurrection, but for some crazy reason, decided not to include these elements in his own gospel. There are, of course, other reasons (see the excellent video presentation here), but I think this is more than enough for the confirmation of the Marcan priority. Knowing that Matthew and Luke wrote after Mark who composed his gospel around 70 CE and that there were external quotations of these gospels (e.g. Didache) before 100 CE, we can assume that they were written somewhere between 80-90 CE. That leaves us with the Gospel of John whose theology and philosophy bear witness of a later stage in Christian history. Also, there is an increased anti-Semitism which can be probably seen as a reflection of the situation in the late 1^st century by which point Christianity became predominantly a Gentile religion, and the process of the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity was fully in motion.

To conclude this brief survey on the date of the Gospels: based on internal and external evidence communis opinion is as follows:

1. Jesus death – around 30 CE
2. Paul’s epistles – 49 to 64 CE
3. Gospel of Mark – between 65 and 70 CE
4. Gospel of Matthew – between 80 and 90 CE
5. Gospel of Luke – between 80 and 90 CE
6. Gospel of John – between 90-100 CE

Unlike the theories put forward by Dan Brown’s novel, there aren’t any other surviving gospels from the 1^st century. Some scholars did try to push the dating of the Gospel of Thomas to an earlier stage (between 50 and 80 CE), but in my opinion, these theories are seriously flawed. They witness an overgrowing empathy towards “alternative forms of Christianity” (e.g. “Gnosticism) that has no basis in real historical work. It is more an ideological battle in which certain scholars (e.g. John Dominic Crossan who even tried to claim that the Gospel of Peter was written in the middle of the 1st century) are using the image of Jesus for their own conflicts with institutionalized religion. But, that’s a different topic about which Philip Jenkins wrote a book you can see here.