The earliest works which came to be part of the New Testament are the letters of the Apostle Paul.
The earliest of the books of the New Testament was First Thessalonians, an epistle of Paul, written probably in 51, or possibly Galatians in 49 according to one of two theories of its writing. Of the pseudepigraphical epistles, scholars tend to place them somewhere between 70 and 150, with Second Peter usually being the latest.[
citation needed]
In the 1830s German scholars of the
Tübingen school tried to date the books as late as the 3rd century, but the discovery of some
New Testament manuscripts and fragments from the 2nd and 3rd centuries, one of which dates as early as 125 (
Papyrus 52), disproves a 3rd-century date of composition for any book now in the New Testament. Additionally, a
letter to the church at Corinth in the name of
Clement of Rome in 95 quotes from 10 of the 27 books of the New Testament, and a
letter to the church at Philippi in the name of Polycarp in 120 quotes from 16 books. Therefore, some of the books of the New Testament were at least in a first-draft stage, though there is negligible evidence in these quotes or among biblical manuscripts for the existence of different early drafts. Other books were probably not completed until later, assuming they must have been quoted by Clement or
Polycarp.
However,
John A. T. Robinson, former Bishop of
Woolwich, Dean of
Trinity College and New Testament scholar argues for a much earlier dating. Robinson challenges almost all the judgments which teachers of the New Testament throughout the world commend to their pupils on the dating of the NT books. His reassessment has all of the New Testament completed before AD 70. Using inductive reasoning, he uses historical argument and historical knowledge as the basis of his theory. Robinson points to four major historical events of which, he argues, no New Testament authors make mention:
- the Great Fire of Rome (AD 64), one of the most destructive fires in Roman history, which Emperor Nero blamed on the Christians, and led to the first major persecution of believers
- the final years and deaths of Paul, who wrote most of the epistles, Peter, whom Catholics recognize as the first pope, and the other apostles
- Nero's suicide (AD 68), or
- the total destruction of the temple in Jerusalem (AD 70). He writes, "One of the oddest facts about the New Testament is that what on any showing would appear to be the single most datable and climactic event of the period—the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, and with it the collapse of institutional Judaism based on the temple—is never once mentioned as a past fact. Jesus prophesied its total destruction in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but the fulfillment of that prophecy never appears anywhere in the New Testament.
Therefore, Robinson claims that every book which would come to form the New Testament must have been written before AD 70.
[64][65] Robinson's proposed set of consistently early dates are rejected by the majority of scholars.
[66]
Most contemporary scholars regard
Mark as a source used by Luke (see
Markan Priority).
[67] If it is true that Mark was written around the destruction of the
Temple of Jerusalem, around 70,
[68] they theorize that Luke would not have been written before 70. Some who take this view believe that Luke's prediction of the destruction of the temple could not be a result of Jesus predicting the future but with the benefit of hindsight regarding specific details. They believe that the discussion in
Luke 21:5-30 is specific enough (more specific than Mark's or Matthew's) that a date after 70 seems likely.
[10][69] These scholars have suggested dates for Luke from 75 to 100.
Support for a later date comes from a number of reasons. Differences of chronology, "style", and theology suggest that the author of Luke-Acts was not familiar with
Paul's distinctive theology but instead was writing a decade or more after his death, by which point significant harmonization between different traditions within
Early Christianity had occurred.
[70] Furthermore, Luke-Acts has views on
Jesus' divine nature,
the end times, and
salvation that are similar to the those found in
Pastoral epistles, which are often seen as
pseudonymous and of a later date than
the undisputed Pauline Epistles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament#cite_note-71
