Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 71:2 (NA 2020)
Article: Dating Luke-Acts Further Arguments For An Early Date
Author: David Seccombe

TynBull 71:2 (2020) p. 207

Dating Luke-Acts
Further Arguments For An Early Date

David Seccombe

([email protected])

Summary

Alexander Mittelstaedt (2005) has provided new impetus to a long-standing opinion that Luke-Acts was written in the early 60s of the first century AD. Karl L. Armstrong (2017) provides a recent overview of the dating debate and argues that an early date makes best sense of the extensive evidence. This paper suggests three considerations arising from the historical character of the rest of the century which support Mittelstaedt’s and Armstrong’s view. The first: AD 66–98 was a time of intense anti-Jewish sentiment, in which articulation of the nationalistic Jewish hopes expressed in the third Gospel and Acts would have been dangerous, and unlikely for a careful author. Second, it was also a time that ill accords with Acts’ assumption of Jewish legitimacy and its plea for the acceptance of Gentile Christianity. Third, the attention given to the voyage as Acts draws to its conclusion bespeaks an author who knew nothing of the cataclysmic avalanche of events that took place from AD 62–70.

1. The Search For Historical Context

The absence of proven quotations or allusions to Acts prior to the time of Irenaeus made it possible in the mid-nineteenth century for F. C. Baur and the Tübingen School to propound a second-century date.1 A mass of scholarly reaction to the Tübingen hypothesis advanced a range of

TynBull 71:2 (2020) p. 208

considerations and soon repositioned Luke-Acts in the first century.2 By the end of the twentieth century few still plumped for a second-century date.3 Scholarly opinion in the twentieth century largely settled into three camps: the early 60s, shortly after the end of Paul’s first Roman imprisonment;4 the 70s and 80s (roughly speaking), after the Jewish–Roman war and before Domitian’s persecution, the author being a former companion of Paul;5 this latter period, but authored by a ‘Paulinist’, whose account is removed from the real Paul.6 The present century has brought with it a new push for a second-century dating.7

A majority of scholars favour a date between 70 and the early 90s primarily, I think, because of a difficulty with dating Mark early enough to allow a 60s date for Luke. For example, Craig S. Ke...