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!
The notion that Jesus made three trips to Jerusalem is from John depicting Jesus in Jerusalem, away, in, away, and in again. Passages from St. John relating to the Last Supper are clearly not chronological: Judas is there, gone, back again, and then leaves. So it’s plausible that these three passages do not represent three separate annual trips, especially since the first trip parallels an event described by the other three gospels as taking place immediately before Jesus’ death (the clearing of the Temple). For some reason, literalists insist that if you don’t take the Gospel of John as chronological, you’re treating it as fictitious, and I don’t regard the point worthy of faction or scandal.
Dear Watchman,
Regarding the paper. I am NOT the author of it. It is something I found and have kept in my quiver of useful papers.
Thus don’t be concerned that I, GreyFriar, have dismissed modern scholarship. Personally, I do reject those who say that the books and letters in the New Testament were written no earlier than the 300s, 400s or later. my reasoning, if later folks wanted to give positive light to Christianity, would they have put in sections of Jesus telling Peter “Satan get behind me” or Peter’s denying knowing Jesus 3 times? Both cases it shows the weakness of Peter, whom Jesus knew would be the best person to lead his ministry after His resurrection.