This is a short and selective review of Jonathan Bernier’s 2022 volume, Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament.
His fundamental conclusion is that the dates of the New Testament documents are earlier than is usually thought. He states that it is a sort of successor to Robinson’s 1976 study Redating the New Testament. Bernier confirms some of Robinson’s conclusions, disagrees with others, and perhaps most importantly of all, refines Robinson’s methodology. To anticipate, he does a very good job, although I think there is still room for improvement; but I do not wish to quibble. It is a welcome shower of cold water in a field too thoroughly dominated by the informal Bible studies establishment.
Bernier’s main contribution is, as I have indicated, in methodology; thus he writes:
It might be objected that the earliest Christians would not have written much because they expected this world to end soon. This … is not an argument but a hypothesis, one that must be tested against the data. … the undisputed Pauline epistles put the lie to this hypothesis. Few New Testament writers anticipate an imminent eschaton as clearly as does Paul. Nonetheless … Paul [was] … one of the most prolific writers of whom we are aware from the first Christian century.
… if this anticipated end had been a significant barrier to writing, then we would have had few if any texts that evince such an anticipation.” In the case of Qumran, the belief may even have been “an impetus to writing. 21
He comes up with what he calls: “… a threefold rubric by which to generate hypotheses: Synchronization seeks to establish the text’s temporal relationship to other events or situations, including the composition of other texts. Contextualization seeks to establish the text’s probable relationship to the general (28) course of early Christian development. Authorial biography proceeds from what we know about the author and seeks to establish when in her or his life a given text is best situated.” 27-28
Turning to Our Lord’s predictions of the destruction of the Temple in the Synoptic Gospels, Bernierconcludes that the passages “do not exclude a post-70 provenance for [but] … they are sufficient to render both Gospels significantly more intelligible in a pre-70 context.” 38-51
He notes that Matthew 24:15-31 and Mk 13:14-27 “associate the temple’s fate with the Parousia and the eschaton … How plausible [he asks] is it that this association emerged post-70 when we know that the temple’s fate did not coincide with either the parousia or the eschaton?” 49
Concluding, I think correctly, that since the Book of Acts closes with St Paul alive, it was almost certainly written before his execution, Bernier writes: “Either Acts was completed ca. 62, when the Acts narrative ends with Paul in Rome, or Luke’s aims in these last chapters remains opaque.” 62
He writes that Acts having been written ca 62, and Matthew being earlier than Luke, and Mark prior to Matthew, all Synoptics were written by 62. 67 The Gospel of St Mark must be, on contextual grounds, “most fully intelligible” if from the mid-40as, before there was a Gentile mission.
Turning to the Gospel of St John, Bernier states, once more, I think, rightly, that John 21 could have been written while Ss Peter and John were alive.
At pp. 93-96, he deals with Martyn’s arguments that the Gospel of St John has to be dated to after what he calls the expulsion of Christians from the synagogues, which he puts between about 85-90 AD. Bernier demolishes this argument; pointing out that the Birkat haminim nowhere mentions expulsion from the synagogues; and the earliest unmistakable reference to it is the last quarter of the second century. If there is one place where I am inclined to be angry, it is here. When I first came across these arguments, I was dumbfounded. I saw no evidence whatsoever that there had been a conference at that time, that it had inaugurated the expulsion of Christians from synagogues who until then had been attending, that the birkat had the effect of casting them out, and that the Gospel of St John had to be referring to this. Yet, every biblical scholar, even Raymond Brown faithfully repeated it. And it turns out that the entire argument was a fraud, a fabrication.
Bernier concludes that the Gospel’s references to the temple are “at least as intelligible before 70 as after,” while the reference to the pool of Bethesda is more intelligible before. Accordingly, he dates the Gospel of St John to between 60 and 70. At the top of p.108, he writes: “… we should be wary of dating John’s Gospel much earlier than the letters containing Paul’s “preexistence passages”: 1-2 Corinthians and Philippians. As such, John’s Gospel likely does not predate 60.”
But, since he dates these epistles to early 56, late 56 and 57-59 respectively, why does he then contend that John’s Gospel “likely does not predate 60”? Unless I have missed something, his arguments leave open a date earlier than 56, although not much so. Personally, I do think that a date not earlier than 60 is likely for St John’s Gospel, but that is because I assess it as later than the Synoptics, and my impression is that Luke and Acts were produced at about the same time, while Paul was a prisoner in Rome, in the 60s (further, I am inclined to accept the theory of Matthean posteriority).
It is no surprise that he dates the epistles of John ca.60-100 and Revelation ca. 68-70. But I am not sure why the epistles have to be so late. Why can they not come from the 50s, the 40s or even the late 30s? I see no objective hindrance.
Touching the Epistle of St Jude, he says that it is more likely that 2 Peter uses Jude than vice versa, “upon the supposition that a writer would more likely incorporate parts of a smaller letter into his writing than create a text that consists in large part of extracts from an earlier composition.”
He puts 2 Peter at no earlier than 60 and no later than 125. We cannot exclude a pre-60 origin for Jude. But no later than 125.
He Approves Bauckham, Jude and 2 Peter, 32: that it can only be excluded from the first generation of Christianity by “underestimating the role of tradition in Christianity from the first, and …. exaggerating the extent to which Jude’s language implies a fixed body of formal doctrine.”
The Epistle of Jude, he writes, could be dated “anytime prior to 125.” The report in Eusebius about Jude’s grandsons indicates that he had predeceased Domitian in 96. So it was no written later than 96.
Bernier also turns his attention to 1 Clement, which he places no earlier than 64 and no later than 70 because of the reference to the temple administration: and the Didache, dated to no earlier than 45 no later than 125, since the Didache probably knows Matthew which he dates 45-59.