New Testemant Not Until 60 Yrs After Jesus? Options

[jayzeey]

Greetings

Jesus Christ is my Lord and savior and I praise him for all that he has done in my life, and the miracles he continues today. But I have a question that I can't answer. Why did Paul, Luke and others not begin wrting the New Testament until 60 years after Jesus had died? Why wait that long? How do I tell other non believers about their questions regarding how things can get twisted and mumbled over that long of a time period? I believe without the answer, just curious.

Thanks
Jacob

[semi]

jayzee -

First of all, no-one actually knows when each of the Gospels were written. Critics of the Word invariably argue for as late a date as possible. If they had their way they would date the Gospels as much as 200 years after Jesus died.

What is obvious from looking at all 4 Gospels is that each is a collection of accounts put together without much regard for chronological order - perhaps because they were not certain which event happened after another (they had after all gone through some shock there at the end of Jesus‘ Ministry). Therefore, the 4 Gospels do not follow each other's sequence of events. Actually, they didn't care - all that was really important was they witnessed these things and made some kind of lasting record of them.

However;, we can get sort of an idea of the order in which things must have happened from the nature of the events themselves. It's a brain-buster though.

My opinion is that the collection of notes that became the Gospel of Matthew was probably the first Gospel written. My theory is that Mark was second - mostly as dictated to John Mark by Peter who was a close friend of the family. Mark's Gospel is short and to the point much like Peter's temperament was.

Luke came later - very likely at the direction of Paul who wanted to be sire he had his facts straight. So that would mean that Luke would have written his Gospel some 18 or 19 years after Jesus' Ascension. Theophilis (to whom Luke addressed his works) means "Friend of God" or "Brother in God" and I believe "Theophilis" was Paul himself. Further, Paul at one point had said he had sent Luke to Jerusalem on a mission and I believe that mission was to verify what they had been teaching so that the Gospel of Luke and the first part of Acts is the result. The rest of Acts is in effect a "current events” journal.

It is said that John wrote his Gospel late in his life. I do not believe that but it may well have been after the other 3 Gospels. John was only a teen-ager when he became Jesus' disciple and so he was the youngest of the 12 chief disciples and outlived the other 11. But, John's Gospel is written with a distinct dislike for the Jews who attacked Jesus. This anger is NOT evident in his Epistles, so I suggest that his letters were written later than his Gospel - because John underwent a change of heart between writing his Gospel and writing his letters. John's accounts are also a collection of sorts focusing in the beginning and the last months of Jesus' Ministry with not many details about what occurred between the beginning and end.

There is a high probability a different people came forward giving their own accounts of certain events they had witnessed that these too were later included. It would go something like this: “Oh wow ! I had forgotten all about that.”

Various portions of Matthew's account I believe were actually written DURING Jesus' Ministry and then later assembled with other memories of those years after Jesus’ Ascension. I would not be surprised if it had been written within 3 or 4 years after Jesus' Ascension.

Shalom.

[Comyndoc]

From my study of the New Testament, it was written over a period of years from about 49 AD to 98 AD.
There are Gospels and Letters.
The first Gospel, which we do not have a copy was Matthew in Hebrew or Aramaic. This was written by Matthew prior to his Greek Gospel, which we currently have. Then we have Mark written next between AD 65- AD 70. Mark was the secretary of Peter, so here we have Peter's Gospel. After that, before AD 70, we have Luke and Acts, which was originally one large book. Later it was separated into our current system. John's Gospel was written last, some day in the late 60's but others in late 90's just before the death of John. He dictated it to scribes and completed it before dying. There were also written sayings of Jesus called Logia or sometimes "Q". Also we must remember that the oral tradition about Jesus kept the story alive. Many early believers were illiterate and relied on oral tradition and story telling. That was very common in the East of that day.

The letters of Paul were written from late 40's to 50's and oerhaps the 60's. They were all written prior to the Roman-Jewish War of AD 66-70. AD 70 was the destruction of the Temple. The bulk of the New Testament was written before this time. Revelation may well have been written during the time of Nero in the 60's, or maybe later in the late 90's. It both the context of both eras.

Hope this helps some.
Thanks and God bless you,
Bro. Gary