Replies

I offer this chronology for your review and consideration:

http://www.bswett.com/2012NTChron.html

It begins: “This paper is a result of trying to understand when and where and by whom the books of the New Testament were written. I waded through numerous Internet archives and found that almost everything is controversial, with some scholars denying what others assert, so I decided to do my own research. I have relied on internal and external evidence, but not on modern scholarship, because so many modern scholars seem determined to justify their own preconceptions. For example, some say Matthew and Luke were written after 70 because they do not believe Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem (Matthew 24:1-2; Luke 21:5-6), but about 75 Josephus wrote that many people escaped from Jerusalem during a lull in the Roman siege (The Wars of the Jews 2.20.1), and about 325 Eusebius wrote that Christians remembered what Jesus predicted and fled from Jerusalem before it was destroyed (Ecclesiastical History 3.5.3).”

Of course if you need to see the actual, original letters, that is impossible.

I offer this chronology for your review and consideration:

http://www.bswett.com/2012NTChron.html

Thanks! I'm at work right now and can't spend a lot of time on this, but I will try to remember to look at it later.

I was initially concerned when you said that you had dismissed modern scholarship since there was quite a movement in the 1900's to attribute the New Testament books to 2nd and 3rd century writers. I see that you have not gone that route. Good!

The first thing I notice is a 2 year ministry of Jesus. Most hold to a 3 year ministry based on trying to count the passover trips to Jerusalem. I am fond of Johnston Cheney's work (published by the Baptists): "The Life of Christ in Stereo". Cheney had started with the original Greek text to build a harmony. He used every text discarding only those which he deemed as obvious duplicates. The resulting Greek was subsequently translated into English. He says that he could only make things "fit" by resorting to a 4 year ministry. I found this to be a compelling argument in order for me to leave the subject in abeyance.

Your date for Romans matches Walt Russell's (Biola University) conjecture that Romans was written by Paul just after the Jews, which had been ejected from Rome by Claudius, were allowed to return to Rome by Nero at the behest of his wife. That resulted in a 56 - 57 date.

Russell explains this position in his hermeneutics class which is provided free online from Biola. He contends that understanding the movement of the Jews and Christian Jews out of and into Rome is necessary to understand Romans 7 which is addressed by Paul to "those of you who understand the law"; i.e., Christian Jews as opposed to the Gentile Christians who had been left behind when Claudius threw the Jews out. His entire series of classes is time well spent!