John A. T. Robinson - Redating the New Testament (1976) FREE ONLINE BOOKS ON FULFILLED PROPHECY AND FIRST CENTURY HISTORY Materials Compiled by Todd Dennis Redating the NEW TESTAMENT Written in 1976 By John A.T. Robinson (1919-1983) Prepared by Paul Ingram and Todd Dennis "One of the oddest facts about the New Testament is that what on any showing would appear to be the single most datable and climactic event of the period - the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, and with it the collapse of institutional Judaism based on the temple - is never once mentioned as a past fact. " For my father arthur william robinson who began at Cambridge just one hundred years ago file:///E|/2006_Websites/www_preteristarchive_com/Books/1976_robinson_redating-testament.html (1 of 323)12/18/2006 4:36:34 PM John A. T. Robinson - Redating the New Testament (1976) to learn from Lightfoot, Westcott and Hort, whose wisdom and scholarship remain the fount of so much in this book and my mother mary beatrice robinson who died as it was being finished and shared and cared to the end. Remember that through your parents you were born; What can you give back to them that equals their gift to you? Ecclus.7.28. All Souls Day, 1975 CONTENTS Preface Abbreviations I Dates & Data II The Significance of 70 III The Pauline Epistles IV Acts & the Synoptic Gospels V The Epistle of James VI The Petrine Epistles & Jude VII The Epistle to the Hebrews VIII The Book of Revelation IX The Gospel & Epistles of John X A Post-Apostolic Postscript XI Conclusions & Corollaries Envoi file:///E|/2006_Websites/www_preteristarchive_com/Books/1976_robinson_redating-testament.html (2 of 323)12/18/2006 4:36:34 PM John A. T. Robinson - Redating the New Testament (1976) PREFACE I really have no more to say than thank you — to my long-suffering secretary Stella Haughton and her husband; to Professor C. F. D. Moule from whose New Testament seminar so small a seed has produced so monstrous a manuscript, on which he gave such kindly judgment; to my friends, Ed Ball, Gerald Bray, Chip Coakley, Paul Hammond and David McKie, who advised or corrected at many points; and finally to Miss Jean Cunningham of the SCM Press for all her devoted attention to tedious detail. John Robinson Trinity College Cambridge ABBREVIATIONS AF Apostolic Fathers JTS Journal of Theological Studies Ant. Antiquities Kritisch-exegetischer Kommentar über das Neue KEKNT AP Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha Testament Annual of the Swedish Theological NCB New Century Bible ASTI Institute n.d. no date ATR Anglican Theological Review NEB New English Bible Bb Biblica n.f. neue Folge BJ Bellum Judaicum NovTest Novum Testamentum BR Biblical Research n.s. new series BZ Biblische Zeitschrift NT New Testament CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly NT Apoc. New Testament Apocrypha CH Church History NTC New Testament Commentary Chronologie der Altchrislichen Litteratur NTI New Testament Introduction Chron. (see p.4 n. 8) NTS New Testament Studies CN Conjectanea Neotestamentica OT Old Testament CQR Church Quarterly Review par(s). parallel(s) DR Downside Review PC The Primitice Church EB Encyclopedia Biblica PCB Peake's Commentary on the Bible ed(d). editors(s), edited by file:///E|/2006_Websites/www_preteristarchive_com/Books/1976_robinson_redating-testament.html (3 of 323)12/18/2006 4:36:34 PM John A. T. Robinson - Redating the New Testament (1976) EGT Expositor's Greek Testament PL Patrologia Latina EQ Evangelical Quarterly PP Past and Present ET English Translation RB Revue Biblique ExpT Expository Times RBén Revue Bénédictine FG The Four Gospels RE Review and Expositor HBC Handbook of Biblical Chronology RHPR Revue d'Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses HDB Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible RHR Revue d' Histoire des Religions HE Historica Ecclesiastica RSR Recherches de Science Religieuse HJ Heythrop Journal RSV Revised Standard Version HJP History of the Jewish People SBT Studies in Biblical Theology HNT Handbuch zum Neuen Testament ST Studia Theologica HTFG Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel TLS Times Literary Supplement HTR Harvard Theological Review TLZ Theologische Literaturzeitung HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual TR Theologische Rundschau IB Interpreter's Bible tr. translated ICC International Critical Commentary TU Texte and Untersuchungen IDB Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible USQR Union Seminary Quarterly Review INT Introduction to the New Testament VC Vigiliae Christianae JBC Jerome Biblical Commentary VE Vox Evangelica JBL Journal of Biblical Literature v.l. varia lectio JEA Journal of Egyptian Archeology ZNW Zeithchrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft JRS Journal of Roman Studies ZTK Zeithchrift für Theologie und Kirche JSS Journal of Semitic Studies ZWT Zeithchrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie I Dates and Data WHEN WAS THE New Testament written? This is a question that the outsider might be forgiven for thinking that the experts must by now have settled. Yet, as in archaeology, datings that seem agreed in the textbooks can suddenly appear much less secure than the consensus would suggest. For both in archaeology and in New Testament chronology one is dealing with a combination of absolute and relative datings. There are a limited number of more or less fixed points, and between them phenomena to be accounted for are strung along at intervals like beads on a string according to the supposed require­ments of dependence, diffusion and development. New absolute dates will force reconsideration of relative dates, and the intervals will contract or expand with the years available. In the process long-held assumptions about the pattern of dependence, diffusion and development may be upset, and patterns that the textbooks have taken for granted become subjected to file:///E|/2006_Websites/www_preteristarchive_com/Books/1976_robinson_redating-testament.html (4 of 323)12/18/2006 4:36:34 PM John A. T. Robinson - Redating the New Testament (1976) radical questioning. The parallel with what of late has been happening in archaeology is interesting. The story can be followed in a recent book by Colin Renfrew. [C. Renfrew, Before Civilization: the Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe, 1973.] As he presents it, there was in modern times up to about the middle of this century a more or less agreed pattern of the origins and development of European civilization. The time scale was set by cross-dating finds in Crete and Greece with the established chronology of the Egyptian dynasties, and the evidence from Western Europe was then plotted by supposing a gradual diffusion of culture from this nodal point of Aegean civilization, to the remotest, and therefore the most recent, areas of Iberia, France, Britain and Scandinavia. Then in 1949 came the first radio-carbon revolution, which made possible the absolute dating of prehistoric materials for the first time. The immediate effect was greatly to extend the time span. Renfrew sums up the impact thus [Ibid., 65f.]: The succession of cultures which had previously been squeezed into 500 years now occupied more than 1,500. This implies more than the alteration of a few dates: it changes the entire pace and nature of the cultural development. But ... it did not greatly affect the relative chronology for the different regions of Europe: the megalithic tombs of Britain, for instance, were still later than those further south. ... None of the changes ... challenged in any way the conventional view that the significant advances in the European neolithic and bronze age were brought by influences from the Near East. It simply put these influences much earlier. There were indeed uncomfortable exceptions, but these could be put down to minor inconsistencies that later work would tidy up. Then in 1966 came a second revolution, the calibration of the radio­carbon datings by dendrochronology, or the evidence of tree-rings, in particular of the incredibly long-lived Californian bristle- cone pine. This showed that the radiocarbon datings had to be corrected in an upward (i.e. older) direction, and that from about 2000 bc back­wards the magnitude of the correction rose steeply, necessitating adjustments of up to 1000 years. The effect of this was not merely to shift all the dates back once more: it was to introduce a fundamental change in the pattern of relationships, making it impossible for the supposed diffusion to have taken place. For what should have been dependent turned out to be earlier. The basic links of the traditional chronology are snapped and Europe is no longer directly linked, either chronologically or culturally, with the early civilizations of the Near East. [Ibid., 105.] The whole diffusionist framework collapses, and with it the assumptions which sustained prehistoric archaeology for nearly a century. [Ibid., 85.] file:///E|/2006_Websites/www_preteristarchive_com/Books/1976_robinson_redating-testament.html (5 of 323)12/18/2006 4:36:34 PM John A. T. Robinson - Redating the New Testament (1976) This is a greatly oversimplified account, which would doubtless also be challenged by other archaeologists. Nothing so dramatic has happened or is likely to happen on the much smaller scale of New Testament chronology. But it provides an instructive parallel for the way in which the reigning assumptions of scientific scholarship can, and from rime to time do, get challenged for the assumptions they are. For, much more than is generally recognized, the chronology of the New Testament rests on presuppositions rather than facts. It is not that in this case new facts have appeared, new absolute datings which cannot be contested - they are still extraordinarily scarce. It is that certain obstinate questionings have led me to ask just what basis there really is for certain assumptions which the prevailing consensus of critical orthodoxy would seem to make it hazardous or even impertinent to question. Yet one takes heart as one watches, in one's own field or in any other, the way in which established positions can suddenly, or subtly, come to be seen as the precarious constructions they are.