- Cults/Religions
- Christianity
- Apologetics
Dates
Even most liberal scholars date the Gospels as follows: Mark in the 70s, Matthew and Luke in the 80s, and John in the 90s. The Gospels were completed, then, no more than some 60 years after the death of Christ. Many eyewitnesses were still alive to confirm the Gospels as fact. Furthermore, many were still alive who could refute the Gospels as lies if the biographies of Christ were not true.
Compare this to the earliest biographies we have of Alexander the Great, written by Arrian and Plutarch more than 400 years after Alexander died in 323 BC. Historians accept the history of Alexander the Great as fact even with such a large gap between the events themselves and the recording of the events. The Gospels leave a gap of only some 60 years at the most.
As convincing as the early dates for the Gospels are, we can prove that they were written even earlier than that. For instance, Acts ends with Paul under house arrest, and never mentions his death. Since Paul died around AD 62, and we can assume that Paul had not died yet (or else Luke would have mentioned it in his letter), we have good evidence that Acts was written before AD 62. Since Luke wrote Acts after he wrote the Gospel of Luke, we can date Luke as even earlier than Acts. Since Luke incorporates some material from Mark, we can date Mark even earlier than that. This dates Mark and Luke at no more than about 30 years after the death of Christ. (Lee Strobel, Case for Christ, 33-34)
Manuscript Copies
Over 5000 Greek manuscripts exist of the Gospel texts. The next highest number of manuscripts is for Homer's Iliad, with only 650 Greek manuscripts. What's more, these come from the second and third centuries AD, and the original was written in about 800 BC--a gap of 1000 years! Scholars accept the manuscripts for the Iliad. Surely the Gospel manuscripts are even more reliable! The earliest manuscript we have is from the Gospel of John, dated AD 100-150. All in all, there are over 24,000 manuscripts in various languages (Greek, Latin, Ethipoic, etc). (Lee Strobel, Case for Christ, 60-63)
