The Authorship and Dating of the New Testament

    One requirement for exploring the validity of the New Testament is that we must understand as much as we can about the authors who wrote it, and when they wrote it.  The dates must be early enough that the story has not gotten too corrupted by memory degradation before it is written down.  There also must not be too many people transmitting the story between Jesus and the authors.  Oral traditions are more prone to corruption than written traditions.

    Unfortunately, these questions are not cut and dried.  The ancients did not have the modern understanding of historical criticism.  None of the authors use footnotes or copyright dates.  They rarely list their sources.  There is substantial variation in the traditions.  As time went by, Christians began to realize the importance of these questions and began to record what they knew of the authorship of the texts.  To determine authorship as best we can, we use the earliest of these sources and the internal evidence of the texts.  Always, though, the impression is of looking at distorted reflections of the facts rather than solid facts.

    However, we are saved in that even in the most pessimistic, but rational, reading of the data, we still come out with authors that are close enough to the events to be able to give an accurate picture.  Much will be uncertain, but this we will know, and this is what we need.

A Model for the Evolution of Tradition

    Much of the information we have about the authors of the New Testament comes from the church fathers.  There is an unbroken chain of writers discussing the New Testament that goes back to soon after the Gospels were written.  The writings of the early church fathers are referred to as "the tradition" in most discussions of this subject.  Early is defined vaguely, but for my purposes, I will look at all available information from before 430 A.D.  All information from after this time either depends on earlier available sources or is suspect because we are unable to determine what the earlier sources are.  

    In order to be able to use the tradition to glean information, we must have a clear understanding of how traditions change with time.  At the origin of a tradition, there is the true story.  This is what actually happened.  Those who see or experience the events, whom I call first witnesses, tell others about it.  These others, I call second witnesses.  The second witnesses tell third witnesses and so forth.  Each retelling can be either oral or written.  With each retelling, there is a certain number of mistakes made.  That is, the true story gets corrupted.  Because each witness tells many of the next generation of witnesses, and each make different mistakes, there becomes many different, though related, traditions.  Written traditions are more stable than oral traditions, because paper disintegrates slower than memory.  The more important a tradition is, the more stable it is, because people are more careful when they give and receive it.  The more people that know and agree on a tradition, the more stable it is, because they correct each other.  Also, we must remember that not every tradition gets retold.  If a tradition is not believed, or is considered unimportant, it will not be repeated.  The traditions that get pruned will be those that are the least popular, but not necessarily the least true.  In summary, over time traditions split and are pruned.  The orthodox (most popular) tradition will then be subject to drift as traditions grow and split in one place and are pruned in another.  Therefore, in order to keep the true story, it is critical that the tradition drifts slowly with respect to the passage of time.  Now, when we have many traditions available, when can use this model to analyze the relevance of each tradition.

The Traditions and Textual Information

    This useful site gives quotes of all of the relevant passages from the early tradition.  Look under the heading "Traditional Opinions."  The analysis is good too.  I occasionally disagree with it, which is less than I usually disagree with something.  In general, he takes the most pessimistic, but still reasonable, view.  If you want to avoid the homepage, go to the following links:

Papias (A.D. late 1st cent. - mid 2nd cent.)

Irenaeus (ca. A.D. 120 - 203)

Clement (ca. A.D. 150  - 213)

Origen (ca. A.D. 184 - 254)

Jerome (ca. A.D. 347 - 420)

Augustine (ca. A.D. 354 - 430)

To get more information about these authors, you can look in the 2003 Catholic Encyclopedia.

    We also must look at what the Gospels themselves tell us.  The dominant understanding of the ordering of the texts is the following.  Mark was written first.  Contemporary with this, a collection of sayings of Jesus, called Q, was written.  After this, Matthew and Luke were written.  They were not aware of each other and both used both Mark and Q as sources.  This is the dominant understanding, because the textual evidence for it is overwhelming.  See here.  Also apparent is that the author of John did not use the other Gospel's as sources, and the other Gospel's did not use John as a source.  This is apparent from even a casual reading of John and the other (called the synoptic) gospels.  John almost never uses the same words to describe events and only occasionally describes the same events.  If John was aware of the other Gospels he was more concerned about recording what they did not write about that what they did.  

Now, I will summarize what we know that the church fathers wrote about each of the Gospels, and I will say when and by whom they were written.  I only claim here what I believe can be shown beyond a reasonable doubt. 

The Gospel According to Mark, written by Mark, an associate of Peter (A.D. 55-70).

The Gospel According to Luke, written by Luke, an associate of Paul (A.D. 60-75), and The Acts of the Apostles (A.D. 65-85), written by the same person.

The Gospel According to Matthew, written by an anonymous Jewish Christian (A.D. 60-85) and Q, written by Matthew the apostle (A.D. 45-70).

The Gospel According to John, written by the Johannine community based on the testimony of John the apostle, (A.D. 90-130).

The Letters of Paul, written by Paul, (A.D. 49-67).

The other Letters, section to be added.

Revelation, section to be added.

We then have that the vast majority of the New Testament was written by second or third witnesses, in the range of 20 - 100 years after the death of Jesus.  This is a critical piece upon which the reliability of the New Testament rests.

    I used many sources when working on this section and its subsections.  My biggest sources were the 2003 version of the New Catholic Encyclopedia, the web page of Mahlon H. Smith, and the book The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? by F.F. Bruce.  I also used bits and pieces of various web sources to help fill out some of the details.  I have not introduced many, or possibly any, genuinely new arguments, but I believe that I have presented them in a more organized and substantiated way than is usually done.