Was John’s Gospel written first or at least before AD 70?
Most scholars believe the Gospel of Mark was written first, sometime between 65-75 AD. Mark was then used by Matthew and Luke in the 80s, and perhaps used by John, fully or indirectly, in the 90s.
When it comes to the canonical Gospels, dating and determining literary dependency is about analogies, inferences, and a bit of guesswork. I’m happy to affirm the received scholarly wisdom on dating and literary relationships even though some wish to date Mark earlier (50s) and Luke later (120s). Also, while John’s tradition is mostly independent of the Synoptics, some people (myself included) suspect that John at least knew Mark’s outline or perhaps had heard Mark’s Gospel read out aloud.
I tease out these critical introductory issues in The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus and in The New Testament in its World.
However, there has always been that odd brave soul who says that we have the cart before the horse and it was John’s Gospel which was written first and the other evangelists are riffing off him.
One scholar who argued so with a mixture of vigor and idiosyncratic argumentation was J.A.T. Robinson, first in his book Redating the New Testament (1976), then more fully in his book The Priority of John (1984).
According to Robinson:
I shall be contending that there is no either-or between recognizing John as the omega of the New Testament witness, the end-term, or an end-term, of its theological reflection, and also as its alpha, standing as close as any to the source from which it sprang. His theology does not, I believe, take us further from the history but leads us more deeply into it (Priority, 33).
For Robinson, John, just like Mark, was reworking earlier materials, and he had an influence on subsequent literary representations of Jesus. Furthermore, John was the only apostle who wrote a Gospel and epistles, was a member of the earliest generation, a person who offers both testimony to Jesus and is a tradent of the Jesus tradition. A role that is true of John, but not the other evangelists.
Very recently, Prof. George van Kooten (Cambridge Uni) gave a paper at the British New Testament Conference in Glasgow which argued that John was written prior to AD 70 and is prior to the Synoptic Gospels. You can read his hand out here and read the excellent summary by Ian Paul here.
Some of this is not new. The fourth evangelist knows the topography of Jerusalem very well and was probably a Judean disciple of Jesus. There’s a good chance “John” was an eyewitness too. For me, less persuasive are references to the historical present in John 5:2, ‘Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool.’ Also, scholars are more likely to see John depending on Mark and Luke and maybe Matthew than vice-versa.
In any case, it’s a good reminder that scholarly assumptions are there to be critiqued and any consensus should be routinely challenged.
I never heard the paper, but it seems like it was a courageous proposal for reimagining the dating and literary relationships of the canonical Gospels.
What do you think of the theory that John had his Revelation of Jesus first and then wrote his gospel a decade or two after this (assuming that the John of Revelation is the writer of the gospel)? This could be a possible explanation for the difference in the Greek grammar between the two.
Thank you for your continued scholarship and work on this subject. The question bobbing around in my head relates somewhat to the Johannine contribution to the four gospels, but is more oriented toward the ideas in your book The Gospel of the Lord, and in particular a position you took in the interview with Eerdmans regarding your book. You made a statement to the effect that Paul is your guy and you like him, but that the Christocentric nature of the Christian faith necessitates that we experience the four gospels prior to encountering Paul. The issue I see with this is that this was not the experience of the early churches. They encountered an oral tradition of the gospel narrative, but if Acts is accurate (3:11-26, 7:1-53, 13:13-41), this narrative often began with the promises to Abraham, telling the highlights of the story of God's promise-plan (Kaiser), which emphasized the significance of who Jesus was and what He had accomplished... and how surprising his appearance was smack in the middle of history (like Beyonce dropping a surprise album), as well as the surprise that He was introducing something entirely new and building a global family from all nations of the earth (Jew+Gentile community - Wright). It was only after Paul and the apostles had established an empire-wide network of Jew+Gentile churches, who had both embraced the gospel and ordered their entire lives around a body of teaching (which Paul had delivered to them), that the written gospels emerged. My contention is that those gospels are written after much theological reflection on what Jesus' Spirit accomplished through the apostles, in the church, and therefore are not merely accurate records of what Jesus did while physically present on earth, but how His Spirit continued to "teach them everything else" (John 14:26) after He ascended to the Father. In other words the written gospels make sense of the things Jesus said and did, in light of the authors' reflections and matured understanding of what He continued to do via His Spirit and the apostles in the church. It finally made sense and they could recount the narrative of Jesus and talk about the things He said in a way that reflected His Spirit's ongoing work. I've written a short essay about this here, but perhaps just this comment is enough for you to see where I'm coming from and respond. Would love to hear your thoughts.
https://open.substack.com/pub/scottcanion/p/choosing-our-own-red-letters?r=2umspq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email