The Priority of John?
Can we date the Fourth Gospel before the other Gospels?
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.
I think there is a strong case that all 4 Gospels were written pre-70 AD.
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.