A Pre-70 Date for the Gospels & Acts: Views Across the Centuries
A sampling of quotes by scholars and commentators from the 1600s to the present.
This post is related to my previous article, “The Implications of 70 AD on the Date of the Gospels and other NT Texts.” Click here to read that article.
The quotes provided below are from a variety of commentators who have advocated a pre-70 date for the Synoptic Gospels & Acts over the past few centuries. For a list of similar quotes related to the Fourth Gospel from writers such as William Whiston (1712), Johann Bengel (1742), John Wesley (1756), Johann David Michaelis (1795), Friedrich Blass (1907), and numerous other scholars down to the present day, click here.
Jacques Abbadie (1679)
St. Luke wrote not the Book of Acts till some time after he had composed his Gospel, as he testifies himself in…Acts 1:1. Besides, it seems that St. Luke had written the Book of Acts before the destruction of Jerusalem because he is so far from speaking of that event, that on the contrary he speaks of Jerusalem as of a city that was still in being, and wherein there was a flourishing Christian church…It may be further asked whether [Jesus’] prophecy might not have been inserted in the Gospel by some zealous Christians, who having seen the destruction of Jerusalem, might have took occasion from thence to honour their master by pretending he had foretold it. For the clearing of this doubt we shall observe…that the disciples having confounded together two very remote events in the question they asked their master, viz. the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world…what likelihood is there that a man who had seen the destruction of Jerusalem…should make the disciples utter such a question without making Jesus answer the least thing for the clearing of it?…How were it possible he should have intermixed [these things] if he composed the prophecy after the event? But do we not fall here from one difficulty into a greater?1
Thomas Newton (1754)
The Gospel of St. Luke was written before the Acts of the Apostles, as appears from the preface to the latter; and the Acts of the Apostles concluding with St. Paul’s dwelling at Rome two years, it is probable that this book was written soon after that time, and before the death of St. Paul. It may be concluded then as certain, that three of the four Gospels were written and published before the destruction of Jerusalem…2
Nathaniel Lardner (1755)
We have supposed this to be a very cogent argument, that the books of the New Testament were writ before, or soon after the destruction of Jerusalem, which happened in the 70th year of the Christian era. And if these books were writ by persons who lived before the destruction of Jerusalem: that is, if they were writ at the time in which they are supposed to have been writ, the things related in them are true and uncontestible.3
William Paley (1794)
If the evangelists, at the time of writing the Gospels, had known of the destruction of Jerusalem, by which catastrophe [Jesus’] prophecies were plainly fulfilled, it is most probable that, in recording the predictions, they would have dropped some word or other about the completion; in like manner as Luke, after relating the denunciation of a dearth by Agabus, adds, “which came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar” (Acts 11:28), whereas the prophecies are given distinctly in one chapter of each of the first three Gospels, and referred to in several different passages of each, and in none of all these places does there appear the smallest intimation that the things spoken of had come to pass…The admonitions which Christ is represented to have given to his followers to save themselves by flight are not easily accounted for on the supposition of the prophecy being fabricated after the event. Either the Christians, when the siege approached, did make their escape from Jerusalem, or they did not: if they did, they must have had the prophecy amongst them: if they did not know of any such prediction at the time of the siege, if they did not take notice of any such warning, it was an improbable fiction, in a writer publishing his work near to that time…
I think that, if the prophecies had been composed after the event, there would have been more specification. The names or descriptions of the enemy, the general, the emperor, would have been found in them. The designation of the time would have been more determinate. And I am fortified in this opinion by observing that the counterfeited prophecies of the Sibylline oracles, of the twelve patriarchs, and, I am inclined to believe, most others of the kind, are mere transcripts of the history, moulded into a prophetic form.4
Joseph Priestley (1797)
Besides the unanimous testimony of the early Christian writers that the gospels were written before the destruction of Jerusalem, it may be clearly inferred from the Acts of the Apostles…[in which] we have a very circumstantial account of the travels of the apostle Paul, and it ends with his confinement at Rome, which must have been A.D. 62; and in the introduction to it he mentions his former work, which was therefore, no doubt, written before that time.5
Albert Barnes (1832)
There is very clear evidence [that the Gospel of Matthew was] written before the destruction of Jerusalem. The destruction of the holy city is clearly and minutely told; but there is not the slightest intimation in it that these predictions had been accomplished; a thing which we should naturally expect if the gospel was not written until after these calamities came upon the Jews. Comp. Acts 11:28…6
Mark Hopkins (1844)
[T]he authenticity of the New Testament is confirmed by the language and style in which it is written. It could have been written only by men who were born Jews, and who lived before the destruction of Jerusalem. Every where their Jewish prejudices and habits of thought appear, and the references to Jerusalem and the temple, as then standing, are so blended with the whole narrative, that we feel it impossible it should not have been written at that time. This, however, is still more obvious from the peculiar language in which the New Testament is written. Greek was then a kind of universal language; but the Greek spoken in Palestine was not the Greek of Attica. It was Hebraic Greek—that is, Greek mixed with the peculiar dialect of Hebrew then in use in Palestine; and in such Greek are the Gospels written. After the destruction of Jerusalem, this peculiar dialect ceased…But, if these books were written before the destruction of Jerusalem, they must be authentic, because no books could have been forged in the names of the apostles, while they were yet living, and have been undetected.7
Henry Alford (1849)
We may safely assume that the “former treatise” of Acts 1:1, can be no other than [Luke’s] Gospel. And on that follows the inference that the Gospel was published before the Acts of the Apostles. Now the last event recorded in the Acts is an interview of Paul with the Jews, shortly after his arrival in Rome. We…cannot suppose that so careful a recorder as Luke would have failed to bring his work down to the time then present..I assume then the publication of the Acts to have taken place…in the Spring of A.D. 63…We have therefore a fixed date, before which the Gospel must have been published.8
F.W. Farrar (1884)
We may thank God for the certainty that the three Gospels, like every other book of the New Testament, even the Gospel and Epistles of St. John, were written in the same generation which had witnessed the death of Christ, crucified as he was in early manhood. Fortunately, the epoch of the Old Dispensation was closed by an event so stupendous that it completely revolutionised the religious history of Judaism, and fundamentally affected the thoughts of Christians. That event, of which the results are still unexhausted, was the fall of Jerusalem. Had that catastrophe preceded the writing of the Synoptic Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul, nothing is more certain than that it must have been directly mentioned, and that it must have exercised an immense influence on the thoughts and feelings of the Apostles and Evangelists. No writer, dealing with the topics and arguments and prophecies with which they are constantly occupied, could possibly have failed to appeal to the tremendous sanction which had been given to all their views by God himself, who thus manifested his providence in human history, and showed all things by the quiet light of inevitable circumstances. It may then be regarded as certain—it is indeed, admitted by many sceptical critics—that the Gospels were, and from their own internal evidence must have been, published before A.D. 70, and therefore within forty years after our Lord’s crucifixion. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of this fact in estimating the evidences of historic religion.9
Augustus Hopkins Strong (1886)
In the synoptic gospels, the omission of all mention of the fulfillment of Christ’s prophecies with regard to the destruction of Jerusalem is evidence that these gospels were written before the occurrence of that event. In the Acts of the Apostles, universally attributed to Luke, we have an allusion to ‘the former treatise’, or the gospel by the same author, which must, therefore, have been written before the end of Paul’s first imprisonment at Rome, and probably with the help and sanction of that apostle.10