Recently, New Testament scholar Jonathan Bernier has put forth a powerful proposal about "Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament". He shows that in the era of modern Biblical scholarship, there have been three basic kinds of dates proposed for the writing of the New Testament:
Early dates: These propose that all of the New Testament was written between the late 40's and 70 CE, with a couple of possible books being written near the end of the first century (such as 2Peter and Revelation). This fits with the chronology proposed by the earliest Church fathers.
Middle dates: These propose that Paul only wrote some of the books attributed to him (usually 1Thessalonians, 1-2Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, Philemon). For these authentic Pauline writings, they were written from the 50's-mid 60's (when Paul was martyred). Most other books were written after 70 CE when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. These writings were completed around 110 CE when the earliest Church fathers began to quote these early books.
Late dates: These propose that almost all of the New Testament, except for some Pauline books, were written decades after the Apostles died, and are largely the results of communities who remembered their teaching and wrote in their name. Some New Testament writings may even be outright forgeries written in the name of various Apostles (such as 1-2 Peter). In this view, most of the New Testament was written after 70 CE to 150 CE or later.
Bernier points out that there have been several scholarly works devoted to unpacking the rationale and evidence for early dates, such as J.A.T. Robinson's "Redating the New Testament". There have been individual articles and portions of books upholding the middle date positions (but no comprehensive book length studies). And the late date position seems to have been held by some scholars in the 1800's, but have never received any serious scholarly argumentation or support. Long story short: In terms of scholarship and evidence, the early date position seems strongest, and the late date position seems weakest.
To be honest, I’ve always been skeptical of many middle and late dates for most of the NT books. The elephant in the room is this: If the Temple was destroyed— as Jesus predicted using the common knowledge that the Romans would destroy the Temple if the Judaeans ever rebelled— then surely the early Christian literature would have reported it. Even bragged about it! Jesus told you X was coming, and X happened, so join us now. It is not as if early Christian literature was reticent to pronounce woe on religious opponents (cf. Matthew 23, Galatians, Revelation 1-3, etc.). So if the implosion and destruction of the Judaean ethno-state happened, and if the key message of the early Church was that God was creating a trans-ethnic covenant people through Jesus, then it is literally impossible that the literature would not have explicitly bragged and pointed to that destruction as a sign of the inbreaking of God’s Kingdom.
But that explicit reference and brag do not happen. Which makes me strongly suspect they were written before 70 CE. For the regnant assumption of late dates, the emperor has no clothes. Now, to his credit, Jonathan Bernier notes that this argument, as powerful as it feels, has a fatal flaw: It is an argument from silence. An argument based on a LACK of evidence. And he is right. But for me, this silence is deafening. It is a silence much louder than dozens and dozens of other tentative hypotheses for late New Testament dates based on inference from evidence that could be read in a number of ways.
Do I personally “like” the idea that the NT documents were probably written early, and that this date might contribute to an overall sense that they are even more reliable? Yes. So, I am predisposed to like his scholarship. BUT— and here’s a huge but— I’m not sure it matters. Let’s take the assumption that the NT documents were written as late as they feasibly could have been from a "middle date" perspective. Let’s assume they were ALL written between 70-110 CE, except for “genuine” Pauline material we must grudgingly put in the 50-60’s. This 20-90 year gap between events and writing is still earlier than the vast majority of texts from other religions and philosophies.
Hinduism’s historical basis lies rooted centuries if not millennia before the mythicized narratives of Rama and Krishna and the other tales found in the Mahabharata. We have no Buddhist texts datable within 3 centuries of Buddha, whose historicity and basic teachings are fairly reliable anyway. Likewise, the texts of Judaism are famously centuries after the events they describe and often historically “inexact” (to put it nicely). The texts of Taoism and Confucius fare no better, although arguably there is more of the original voice in those documents than one might find in 1-2Kings or Psalms (although many of the Hebrew prophets seem to carry the authentic voices of their oracles). I don’t think even Islam fared better in terms of textual proximity to originating events. The poems that made the Quran were collected and compiled within 30-40 years after their prophet’s death (and any suspect or deviant texts were destroyed). But the stories of the life of Muhammad (the various Hadith) were not compiled until a century or more after his life. And that was with the help of a strong state apparatus— the court of the Caliph— collecting and organizing the material.
So, the fact that a decentralized, geographically distant, illegal, and persecuted Christian movement was able to collect, distribute, and preserve documents written THAT close to the originating events is beyond miraculous. And that is true whether the documents were penned 40-70 CE or 50-110 CE. If you add in all the “apostolic fathers” written between circa 110-200 CE who quote and comment on the New Testament writings it is even more miraculous. The sheer number of sources collected in unfavorable circumstances, the confluence and agreement in message, and proximity to founding events, are without precedent in world history.
Whatever the actual date range is on the NT, it is clear that this group of texts were providentially preserved so humanity could read them. Could this be the work of the God of Love, who is known in Jesus Christ, leaving behind a witness so that we can share in the Divine Love that has been reaching out across time and space in every culture and religion? I am betting my life on it.
Why is this the case? On one hand, empirical facts are facts. They happen regardless of what value we assign to them. Let's say we have a pool table, and a white ball is hit with such velocity at such angle in order to cause four other balls to go into holes without the white ball going in. It is simply physics. No need to resort to other causes or values to explain how such events happen given the physics applied. On the other hand, if we are watching the pool championship, we might assign value to it as a supreme demonstration of skill to intentionally sink four balls in one shot. In the same way: There are a ton of sociological, political, economic, and geographic causes that may be applied to the preservation of NT documents which offer a compelling explanation of how they got to us early and largely intact. But from a wider perspective, especially when compared with other similar spiritual movements, it seems like there is a highly skilled Operator working the angles to preserve the texts we have.
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