Dating the New Testament

• Contemporary Catholic Biblical Scholarship: Certitudes or Hypotheses?--A Commentary by Msgr. Michael J. Wrenn
  

  "[W]e can also say that between the years 30 and 65, there was already a certain form of sporadic persecution coming from Jewish circles, though this does not mean that there was already a complete break between the synagogue and the "New Way." This is more in line with the position of the Gospels having been written before the year 60 - the Roman persecution beginning in full force in the year 64."

• Critical Concerns regarding the Johaninne Epistles by Dr. Darin Wood
  

  Dr. Wood examines the stucture, genre, authorship, and date of all three epistles and defends their canonicity.

• Date and Authenticity of the New Testament
  

  "Because of these considerations and others, in the second half of the twentieth century there was a trend toward an earlier dating of the New Testament. For example, in a 1963 interview with Christianity Today magazine, William F. Albright (1891-1971) stated: 'In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written by a baptized Jew between the forties and eighties of the first century A.D. (very probably sometime between about 50 and 75 A.D.)'"

• Dating the Books of the New Testament -or- The Emperor Has No Clothes by Jim Seghers
  

  "The resulting interpretations of many modern biblical scholars are so methodologically flawed that they should be the subjects of derision not serious study. Unfortunately, just as in the fable there were many that gawkishly admired the Emperor’s invisible attire, so today there are many who fawn over these illusionary conclusions based on invisible data. At the college and university levels these speculations are taught with indiscriminate dogmatism."

• Dating the Oldest New Testament Manuscripts by Peter van Minnen
  

  "For about sixty years now a tiny papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John has been the oldest "manuscript" of the New Testament. This manuscript (P52) has generally been dated to ca. A.D. 125. This fact alone proved that the original Gospel of John was written earlier, viz. in the first century A.D., as had always been upheld by conservative scholars."

• Evidence For Early Existence Of The New Testament
  

  "As stated by Nelson Glueck, former president of the Jewish Theological Seminary in the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and renowned Jewish archaeologist: 'In my opinion, every book of the New Testament was written between the forties and eighties of the First Century A.D.'"

• Excerpt from Scaling the Secular City -- Chapter 5: The Historicity of the New Testament by J.P. Moreland
  

  "So a strong case can be made for dating Acts at 62 to 64. But this means that Luke should be dated just prior to that. Further, Matthew and Mark should be dated even earlier, perhaps from the mid-40s to mid-50s. The picture of Jesus presented in the Synoptics is one that is only twelve to twenty-nine years removed from the events themselves. And they incorporate sources which are even earlier."

• Genre, Historicity, Date, and Authorship of The Acts of the Apostles (revised Word version, for the older html version, go here)
  

  Discusses the date of Acts in Chapter 3, concluding that "a date between 62 AD and 90 AD is the best answer to the evidence."

• Greek Qumran Fragment 7Q5: Possibilities and Impossibilities
  

  Vittoria Spottorno, the new editor of the Spanish journal Sefarad, has published an article which claims to shed new light on the most important Greek papyrus fragment from Cave 7, "7Q5". In it, she proposes "una nueva posible identificacion de 7Q5", Zechariah 7,4-5."

• The Historical Reliability of the New Testament Text -- Part Four by Jim Seghers
  

  "The fact that both conservatives (F. F. Bruce, John Wenham) and liberals (Bishop John A. T. Robinson) have penned defenses of early dating for the New Testament is a witness to the strength of the data for an early date."

• How Old Are the Most Ancient New Testament Manuscripts Known Today?
  

  "However, for more than a century archaeologists and papyrologists have been recovering ancient manuscripts of the NT that contradict the assumptions of mainstream academia. The belief that large gaps of time passed between the time of Christ and the writing of the NT is no longer tenable, and all conclusions based on such speculation (no matter how dogmatic or clever) must now be rejected."

• Internal and Archaeological Evidences for Early Existence of the New Testament
  

  "The heel bone of a first century man found at Giv'at ha-Mivtar among other remains, showing evidence of crucifixion. The picture shows a seven-inch long nail embedded in the bone. Several fragments of olive wood were found still attached to the nail."

• N.T. Ancient Manuscripts
  

  "Magdalen Papyrus (P64)- The papyrus scraps had been housed at the library of Magdalen College . . . . Using new tools such as a scanning laser microscope along with more conventional handwriting analysis, Thiede re-dates the fragments, previously dated in the mid- to late second century, to sometime between 30 and 70 A.D. In three places on the Magdalen Papyrus, the name of Jesus is written as 'KS', an abbreviation of the Greek word Kyrios, or Lord. Matthew 26."

• New Testament Manuscripts from the First Century by Kyle Pope
  

  "In 1995 the German scholar Carsten Peter Thiede took another look at Papyrus 64 in light of recent discoveries. Thiede concluded that based upon comparison with other papyri known to date to the late 1st century and before, an earlier date of 70-100 AD. should be assigned to Papyrus 64 (and thus the other two papyri produced by the same scribe)."

• The New Testament at Qumran? by Pastor V.S. Herrell
  

  "In their controversial 1978 book The First New Testament . . . Professor David Estrada and linguist William White, Jr., have described in a popular format the evidence to believe that papyrus manuscripts found in Cave 7 at Qumran include several New Testament manuscripts. Their thesis is controversial because long before the identification was attempted, scholars agreed that the script on them was written between 50 B.C. and A.D. 50!"

• The papyrus 7Q5 of Qumran: a Jewish text or a Christian text? with original French Version found here.
  

  "The papyrus 7Q5 comprises 20 letters (including 10 incomplete) out of 5 lines. With line 3, for example, one guesses a letter with half erased by a tear, which would be an eta ( H ) according to Boismard and O' Callaghan, and a sigma ( C) according to Spottorno. Then one notices a space, a spatium (announcing verse 53 estimates Thiede which supports O' Callaghan) then the three papyrologists read KAI."

• Wasn't the New Testament written hundreds of years after Christ? by Matt Slick
  

  "Though this information is basic, it supplies enough evidence to support the apostolic authorship of the New Testament documents. The debate on the dating of the books may never be absolutely settled, but as scholarship and archaeology advance, confirmation of early authorship of the New Testament continues to be validated."

• When were the books of the New Testament Written?- A listing of conservative and liberal scholars' opinions from their writings as to when the various New Testament books were penned.
  
  
• 7Q5: The Earliest NT Papyrus? by Daniel B. Wallace, Ph.D.
  

  "But to identify this as Mark 6:52-53 requires (1) two significant textual emendations (tau for delta in a manner which is unparalleled; and the dropping of ejpiV thVn gh'n even though no other MSS omit this phrase); and (2) unlikely reconstructions of several other letters. Add to this that the MS is from a Qumran cave and that it is to be dated no later than 50 CE and the case against the Marcan proposal seems overwhelming."