I appreciate Ralph Smith instigating this discussion regarding rethinking the dates of writing of the New Testament books. As he rightly points out, their dates of composition have numerous significant implications regarding authorship, interpretation, and even reliability. I also appreciate that Smith recognizes that Jonathan Bernier’s monograph on early dates of composition attempts to re-open some of this discussion. I further appreciate that Smith, following Bernier, has used explicit criteria in discussing the questions of dating. Finally, I agree with Smith that discussion of dating of New Testament books has involved assumptions of various sorts, perhaps many of them the direct result of the development of Enlightenment thinking.

Insofar as his conclusions are concerned, Smith agrees in many ways with Bernier. They may disagree over whether Matthew or Mark was written first, the exact dates for individual books, and especially over how to interpret the Olivet Discourse, but for the most part they agree regarding early dates of composition of the New Testament or at least of the Gospels and Acts.

And that is the major problem. Bernier represents a distinctly minority position within New Testament studies, so far as I can determine (and I admit that determining this is difficult), one which Smith seems to take even further. If the arguments are so convincing, and they appear to be for Bernier and for Smith, then how can it be that many scholars—even if the number is difficult to determine—do not endorse such conclusions? Are these scholars simply the victims of unscrutinized presuppositions inherited from rationalistic, naturalistic, and anti-supernatural belief of the Enlightenment?

There is no doubt that scholars have presuppositions and predilections, biases and prejudices, that influence their interpretation, not just of the dates of composition of the New Testament books but of virtually every area of New Testament study. This is the nature of the hermeneutical problem, so ably discussion by much twentieth-century hermeneutics, such as the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and many others. We also see such presuppositions in Smith’s discussion. His interpretation of the meaning of the Olivet Discourse, which admittedly follows the thinking of some other contemporary writers, is arguably one of the least probable interpretations of it, as Bernier himself points out. Nevertheless, Smith appears to have an apologetic intention when he argues that the Olivet Discourse must have in some tangible way been fulfilled in the events of AD 70, but even more than that, that it marked the end of the covenant with Israel, not the end of time, and the beginning of a new covenant indicated by the presence of the Son of Man in the heavens. He even goes so far as to state that to interpret the passage otherwise would indicate that Jesus was a false prophet, because the world did not end, and that such a view would jeopardize Smith’s own purpose in ministry.

I do not wish and do not have the time or space to argue in detail against this view, even though I also find it improbable. Besides the fact that this seems to me to indicate a kind of hyper-Reformed supersessionist view of the covenant—one that I would reject, less for theological than for exegetical reasons (I may be wrong in characterizing it in this way, but it certainly seems this way to me)[1]—I think that this example illustrates the very problem that Smith has identified regarding presuppositions—which may be theological just as much as naturalistic. I also think that it reflects a kind of strange literalism in interpretation, in which some elements must be taken literalistically (such as the time of its fulfillment, hence the problem to “explain”) and others metaphorically (natural phenomena are signs of judgment). Further, this interpretation seems to me to have very little to say about dating and authorship of the Gospels. Smith has already arrived at his estimation of the dates of the Synoptic Gospels on the basis of other criteria. However, because he takes an early date that places their composition before the fall of Jerusalem, he feels compelled to explain how such a passage can be within such early Gospels and yet unfulfilled—unless it was fulfilled—and still maintain the integrity of the New Testament and of Jesus as a prophet.

Perhaps even more important for this discussion is the fact that many New Testament scholars—even among those who would consider themselves orthodox and concerned with the same criteria that Smith enumerates regarding a basis for interpreting the Bible—do not arrive at this conclusion, but see the passage as indicating a future fulfillment, even if it is delayed in its fulfillment, and all that goes with that. If this is possible (and it must at least be possible, unless we are to believe that the church has misinterpreted some important passages in the New Testament throughout much of its history), then we can understand that there are possibilities of other dates for composition of books of the New Testament.

I in fact tend to take early dates for the composition of the New Testament, not unlike (although perhaps not quite as early) Bernier and Smith. I also agree on the major reasons for them in regard to historical context. However, I think that there are several other good reasons for early dates that perhaps have not been attended to as much as others. I too have written on the dates of books of the New Testament, although not a monograph. In fact, most New Testament scholars do not write such volumes (as Smith and Bernier have indicated), but many have addressed the date and authorship of individual books or sub-corpora within the New Testament in articles and commentaries and the like.[2]

I wish to make a couple of comments about dating books of the New Testament, both topics mentioned if not developed in Smith’s essay.

The first is the range of dates. In my article mentioned above from 2016 (not cited by Bernier, although we arrive at similar conclusions), I note—as does Bernier, followed by Smith—that there are usually three date ranges for each book, what I term a standard date and then a higher and lower date. In some ways, this is what one would expect to find with any similar grouping, the two extremes and a middle view. And it is probably what one might expect if one had a range of scholars discussing a topic such as this—relatively extreme views countered by a broad middle. What I have found interesting in much of the discussion (I will deal with Paul’s letters below), especially concerning the Gospels, Acts, and the Johannine literature, is that the middle position is often not an argued position but one that seems to attempt to consciously avoid the two extremes, a kind of compromise. This makes sense in light of the history of discussion of dating of books of the New Testament over the last two or more centuries. In the early nineteenth century, there were a number of well-known scholars who reacted to church tradition and posited radically different views on date of composition, placing a number of New Testament books—such as various Gospels, Acts, and some of Paul’s letters, such as the Pastoral Epistles—in the second century, to which there was often a reaction, even if it did not re-assert very early authorship.

A case in point is the date of John’s Gospel. Ferdinand Christian Baur and others proposed that John’s Gospel should be dated to around the middle of the second century, because of its developed or high Christology and other reasons. This had a major impact on Johannine studies. However, in 1935, a small fragment of John’s Gospel found in Egypt (P52, or the Rylands fragment) was published that was dated to the first half of the second century. If this date was accurate for this undated fragment (and I think that it is), a date of composition for John’s Gospel later than a copy that had been made in Egypt was impossible. The result was a significant increase in middle dates for composition of John’s Gospel, somewhere around AD 90 or so. What I find interesting is that in many of the discussions of this middle date, there is not a robust discussion of the kind of evidence that Bernier and Smith treat regarding why AD 90 seems like the correct date. One might be led to believe that this date is simply a compromise between the earlier traditional date that entailed John the son of Zebedee as the author and the late critical scholarly view. One can find other examples, such as on the date of Acts. In other words, there are many other factors that are also involved in the dating of New Testament books besides those that would appear to be based upon historical data, some of them even lacking such evidence.

The second issue concerns Paul’s letters. Smith states that regarding Paul’s letters there is a consensus regarding dating. I am surprised to read this, having written an introduction to Paul’s letters where—apart from the so-called Pauline Hauptbriefe, the four letters argued as authentic by Baur—I engage in discussion of authorship for each one.[3] In the early to mid nineteenth century there was much critical skepticism regarding Paul’s letters. Baur argued for four authentic letters, but it was even claimed that none of the letters was authentic (e.g. by Bruno Bauer). Some have arguably been misled into thinking that critical scholarship has settled on seven authentic Pauline letters (the four plus Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon). This would mean that all these letters must be placed within Paul’s lifetime (although there are still some scholars who believe some letters are composite and so may be based upon earlier Pauline letters assembled later).

But what of the other six letters directly attributed to Paul? Three of these are the Pastoral Epistles, where many claim that it has long been decided that they are non-Pauline, hence inauthentic, and may be dated anywhere from AD 65 into the second century. This raises another kind of problem for determination of authorship, since these pseudepigraphal letters are thought to attempt to address a Pauline or at least Pauline-like situation even if by a later faithful author. I find it interesting to note (as others have also observed) that most of the major recent commentaries on the Pastoral Epistles (written in the last twenty-five years or so) argue for Pauline authorship. So much for a scholarly consensus. I too have recently written a commentary on the Pastoral Epistles.[4] I argue for Pauline authorship, but not based upon the traditional categories used in such discussion. I attempt to introduce and use a set of linguistic criteria that have been developed by New Testament Greek linguists over the last twenty-five or so years. These criteria essentially argue that linguistic difference (something that some advocates for Pauline authorship tend to minimize) is better explained not by authorial difference but by situational difference. In other words, different situations of writing call for different authorial responses, just as this digital contribution differs from a scholarly article, even if written by the same author.

This is all to say that there is much more to be said about the dating of the New Testament books. I thank Ralph Smith for introducing some of these issues.

Stanley Porter is President, Dean, and Professor of New Testament at McMaster Divinity College, Hamilton, Ontario.

[1] See my essay on Romans 11, among others in Stanley E. Porter and Alan E. Kurschner, eds., The Future Restoration of Israel: A Response to Supersessionism, McMaster Biblical Studies Series 10 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2023).

[2] Stanley E. Porter, “Dating the Composition of New Testament Books and Their Influence upon Reconstructing the Origins of Christianity,” in In Mari Via Tua: Philological Studies in Honour of Antonio PIñero, ed. Israel M. Gallarte and Jesús Paláez (Córdoba: Ediciones El Almendro, 2016), 553-74.

[3] Stanley E. Porter, The Apostle Paul: His Life, Thought, and Letters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016).

[4] Stanley E. Porter, The Pastoral Epistles: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Baker, forthcoming 2023).