DATE
DATE
During the past 150 years, suggestions as to the date of the fourth gospel have varied from before A.D. 70 to the final quarter of the second century. Dates in the second century are now pretty well ruled out by manuscript discoveries (see discussion below in
5. John, TEXT). But apart from this limitation, none of the arguments is entirely convincing, and almost any date between about 55 and 95 is possible. Probably John 21:23 "suggests it was probably nearer the end of that period than the beginning.” 73 Some dates seem implausibly early. Probably the inference to be drawn from John 21:19 is that Peter had by his death glorified God when chapter 21 was composed.
Peter died in A.D. 64 or 65; dates earlier than that for the composition of the fourth gospel seem unlikely. Those who hold to a date before 70 (but after 65) point to details of Palestine presented as if Jerusalem and its temple complex were still standing; for example, "Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool” (John 5:2), the evangelist writes. The argument would be conclusive, except that John frequently uses the Greek present tense to refer to something in the past. The silence of the fourth gospel on the destruction of the temple is considered powerful evidence for a pre-70 date by some authors. Arguments from silence, however, are tricky things. At first
glance there is some force to this one, since the theme of the evangelist in, say, 2:1922, could have been strengthened if the overthrow of the temple had been mentioned. But the evidence is far from compelling. How prominent the temple was in the thinking of Jews in the Diaspora varied a great deal. If some time had elapsed, perhaps a decade, between the destruction of the temple and the publication of this gospel, so that the initial shock of the reports had passed, there is no reason to think that the evangelist should have brought it up. Indeed, John is a writer who loves subtle allusions. If he wrote in, say, 80, he may have taken the destruction of the temple as a given and let this fact make its own contribution to his theological argument. Other arguments for a date before 70 do not seem any more convincing.
Those who defend a date toward the end of the first century, say between A.D. 85 and 95, commonly resort to four arguments:
1. Many theologians appeal to the tradition that the fourth gospel was written under the reign of Emperor Domitian (ruled A.D. 81-96). But Robinson has shown that this tradition rests on very little. 74 There is good, early tradition that the apostle John lived to a great age, surviving even into the reign of Emperor Trajan (98-117; see Ireneus, Adv. Haer. 2.22.5; 3.3.4; quoted by Eusebius, H.E. 3.23.3-4). Jerome, admittedly in the fourth century, places John’s death in the sixty-eighth year "after our Lord’s passion” (De vir. ill. 9), or about 98. 75 There is also good patristic evidence that John was the last of the evangelists to write his book (Ireneus, Adv. Haer. 3.1.1; Clement, as cited by Eusebius,
H.E. 6.14.7; Eusebius himself, H.E. 3.24.7). "But that he wrote as a very old man is an inference which only appears late and accompanied by other statements which show that it is clearly secondary and unreliable.” 76
2. A strong contingent of scholars argue that both the concept and the term meaning "put out of the synagogue” (John 9:22; 12:42; 16:2; άποσυνάγωγος [aposynagogos, G697]) betray a period after the decision of the Council of Jamnia to ban Christians from the synagogue. In other words, they find in this expression an irreducible anachronism that dates the gospel of John to a period after A.D. 85. Yet at every point this thesis has been challenged, 78 and today it is beginning to wield less influence than it did a few years ago.
3. Numerous details are often taken to indicate a late date. For instance, this gospel makes no mention of the Sadducees, who contributed much to the religious life of Jerusalem and Judea before A.D. 70 but who withered and became of marginal importance after that date. The argument would be weighty, except that John is similarly silent on the scribes, whose influence actually increased after 70. And John does make it clear that the priests, with rapidly diminishing influence after 70, were largely in control of the Sanhedrin in the time up to Jesus’ passion. Other matters of detail are no more convincing.
4. Perhaps the most pervasive reason for a late date is that in the prevailing reconstruction of early Christian history, John’s gospel best fits into a date toward the end of the first century. For example, the ready ascription of deity to Jesus and the unapologetic insistence on his preexistence are said to fit a later date.
The issue turns in part on countless exegetical and historical details that cannot be canvassed here. Nevertheless it must be noted that the New Testament passages closest in theology to John 1:1-18 are probably the so-called Christ-hymns (e.g., Phil. 2:5-11; Col. 1:15-20; see Rom. 9:5), which were doubtless already circulating in the
mid-fifties. Moreover, no gospel stresses the functional subordination of Jesus to his Father more strongly than does John. In other words, the emphasis in the fourth gospel on the deity of Christ must not be allowed to eclipse complementary emphases.
Attempts to date the fourth gospel by charting Christological trajectories do not appear very convincing.
If a date for the publication of the fourth gospel must be suggested, we may very tentatively advance A.D. 80-85, for these reasons:
1. There is no convincing pressure to place the gospel of John as early on the spectrum as possible, but there is a little pressure to place John rather later on it, namely, the relatively late date at which it is cited with certainty by the Fathers.
2. Although the arguments from theological trajectories are, as we have seen, rather weak, yet if any weight is to be given to them at all, at several points John’s gospel uses language that is on its way toward the less restrained language of Ignatius—in particular the ease and frequency with which Ignatius refers to Jesus as God, his sacramental language (where in our view he has misunderstood John rather badly), and his sharp antitheses.
3. Although the fall of the temple may not have had as much impact in the Diaspora as in Palestinian Judaism, yet it is hard to believe that, if the fourth gospel was written after A.D. 70, the date was immediately after 70, when the reverberations around the empire, in both Jewish and Christian circles, were still being felt.
4. If, as is argued later in this book, the Johannine Epistles are concerned in part to combat an incipient form of Gnosticism, predicated in part on a Gnostic misunderstanding of the fourth gospel, then some time must be allowed between the publication of the gospel and the publication of the epistles of John. That tends to rule out a date in the nineties.