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Dating the Gospels
✦ Most scholars believe Mark was the first Gospel written around 70 CE. Matthew and Luke were written soon thereafter and
may have copied text from Mark.
✦ The Gospel of John was written a few decades after the other three, possibly as late as the early second century.
✦ The first three Gospels (the Synoptics) provide a relatively consistent chronology of major events in Jesus’
travels/ministries. In the Gospel of John these events become disjointed, when trying to relate to the other three.
✦ The Gospel of John has several very important differences from the Synoptics:
John is the only Gospel that mentions any type of physical violence against Jesus while he was on the cross
(i.e., the stabbing of Jesus in the side with a spear after
he was supposedly dead). The stabbing
results from Jewish demands that the legs of the prisoners be broken and Rome’s reaction with breaking the other two, but not
Jesus’. The account of fluid expulsion from a corpse is medically improbable. Why does this story not occur in the earlier
accounts? In the first three Gospels, the Romans direct Simon of Cyrene to carry Jesus’ cross. John is the only Gospel
that states Jesus carried his own cross. John is the only Gospel to mention that women and his acquaintances were near the cross,
which contradicts all of the other three, which state they watched from a distance. The Gospel of John never uses the Greek term, evangelion.
Many theologians surmise that the author of John was sensitive to the use of this term and that it came from Jesus’ lips. The
author’s sensitivity may have been associated with the timing of the writing of that Gospel and the spread of Christianity to Rome. The first three Gospels quote Jesus as promising his disciples his “Second-Coming” would occur within their
lifetimes.
This quote is completely missing from the Gospel of John, probably when it became all too apparent in later years this was not going
to happen.
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