When were the Synoptic Gospels Written?

"The gospel writers were not shy about pointing out fulfilled prophecy (Luke 24:44-8; Mark 15:34 [quoting Psalm 22]; Mark 14:27 [quoting Zech. 13:7]). Matthew, whose gospel was directed toward the Jews, was careful to note many fulfilled Messianic prophecies from the Old Testament (Mat. 1:22; 2:15; 2:17; 2:23; 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; 13:14; 13:35; 21:4; 26:54-56; 27:9-10, 57-60). 

Surely, if any of the synoptic gospels had been reduced to writing after the destruction of the temple, that gospel would have mentioned the fulfilment of Jesus’ prophecy.  So 70 AD marks an upper limit on the dating of the three synoptic gospels.

The Book of Acts was written after the Gospel of Luke by the same author, the physician Luke (Acts 1:1-2):

In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.

So Luke’s gospel was his “former book,” a book already written when he began to write the book of Acts.

The last chronological marker in Acts is when Porcius Festus replaced Felix as procurator of Judea

(Acts 24:27).  Based upon a coin issued in Festus’ name in the fifth year of Nero’s reign as emperor, we believe this change was effected in 59 AD.  Acts tells that Paul left Caesarea for Rome very soon after Festus took over as procurator, but the voyage took several months, including three months wintering on Malta (Acts. 28:11).  The last thing mentioned in Acts is that Paul was under house arrest in Rome for two years (Acts 28:30-31).  So if Paul left Caesarea in 59, arrived in Rome in 60, and spent two years under house arrest, his arrest ended in 62.  And since this is the very last event noted in the book, Luke probably wrote it in 62 AD. 

So we know that the Gospel of Luke, which was written before Acts, was written before 62 AD.

The dating of Luke as being from the early sixties, at the latest, is confirmed by the fact that Paul quotes Luke in his first letter to Timothy, Chapter 5, verse 18.  In stating that the elders who rule well should be compensated, Paul notes that:

“Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing,’ and ‘The laborer is worthy of his wages.’”

The bit about muzzling the ox is from Deuteronomy 25:4, but in the second part, the worker being worthy of wages, Paul is quoting Christ, as per the Gospel of Luke, chapter 10, verse 7.  Now, obviously, Paul could not have quoted a passage of Scripture that had not yet been written.

Luke’s gospel is the only one that says, “This do in remembrance of me.”  Matthew and Mark do not include that phrase in their gospels (Mat. 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25). 
Paul also appears to be referring to a written gospel, or gospels, when he says:

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures . . .” (1 Cor. 15:3-4)

Here Paul is referring to a gospel story regarding the death, burial and resurrection of Christ that was written down and had become “Scripture” before Paul wrote First Corinthians.
When did Paul write First Corinthians?  The consensus among conservative scholars is that First

Corinthians was written circa 53-56 AD. So now we know that Luke must have been written before 56 AD, possibly before 53 AD, just 23 years after the death of Christ. 

Luke seems to be quoting liberally from both Mark (350 verses) and Matthew (250 verses), which obviously indicates that Matthew and Mark were already written when Luke wrote his gospel. 
If Luke was written by 53 AD, that means that Matthew and Mark were written even earlier, probably around 50, or even in the 40s. Thus, it is very reasonable to believe that Matthew and Mark were both written less than 20 years—less than one generation—after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

 According to several of the church fathers, including Papias of Hierapolis (ca 70-163 AD), Irenæus (died AD 202), Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-215), Tertullian (155-240 AD), and Origen (ca 185-254), Mark wrote his gospel based largely upon what he had heard from Peter. 

The first piece of biblical evidence that supports a close connection between Peter and Mark is that in First Peter, Peter refers to Mark as “my son.”  1 Peter 5:13. Obviously there was a close relationship between Peter and Mark. 

Second, there are several places where details recorded in other gospels about Peter—details that might have been awkward or embarrassing for Peter—were not included in Mark’s gospel.

There are also passages in Mark that show Peter’s role in some events, such as that Peter led a search for Jesus (Mark 1:35-37), that Peter and Andrew owned the house in which Jesus stayed in Capernaum—so naturally Peter remembered that a hole was cut in the roof of his house (Mark 1:21,

29-31; 2:1-5 compared to Mat. 4:13-16), that Peter pointed out the fig tree that withered in fulfilment of Jesus’ prophecy (Mark 11:20-21; Mat. 21:18-19), and that Peter was one of the disciples that asked Jesus when the temple would be destroyed. (Mark 13:1-4; Mat. 24:1-3)...the same early church tradition that holds that Peter was the source of the stories in the Gospel of Mark also tells us that Mark was written in Rome at the behest of Peter’s Roman congregation. 

Peter wrote in 1 Peter 5:13, “The church in Babylon [figurative Rome], chosen together with you, sends you greetings, as does my son Mark.”

There are also many things about Mark that indicate that this gospel was written for gentiles, not Jews. 

First, Mark supplies no genealogy, nor is there a nativity story.  Instead, Mark begins with John’s baptism of Jesus.  The genealogies provided by both Matthew and Luke were critically important for showing the Jews how Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies regarding the ancestry of the Messiah (1 Chron. 17:11-14; Isa. 9:6-7), and the nativity story also showed how Jesus fulfilled Old Testament prophecies (Mat. 1:22-23, compared to Isa. 7:14; Mat. 2:6 compared to Micah 5:2, etc.).  But the genealogy and the nativity story would have had little significance to Mark’s gentile Roman readers. 

Second, Mark explains Jewish customs that would have needed no explanation had his intended

audience been Jewish (e.g., 7:3, 11; 14:12; 15:42-43).  Aramaic expressions are translated into Greek (e.g., 3:17; 5:41; 7:34; 9:43; 14:36; 15:22, 34), indicating that the intended audience was not the Aramaic-speaking Jews of the Levant. Mark refers to four watches of the night (6:48; 13:35), a Roman system that contrasts with the Jewish system of three night watches. 

Instead of finding a Greek equivalent, Mark transliterates Latin terms into Greek, by which I mean that he spells out the Latin word phonetically using Greek letters. Mark does this with military terms (legion in 5:9; speculatores [an army scout or spy] in 6:27; praetorium in 15:16; centurion in 15:39) and commercial terms (denarius in 12:15; quadrans [a quarter] in 12:42) among others.

Eusebius’ work "Chronology" places the writing of Mark’s gospel in the third year of Claudius, and since Claudius became emperor after the assassination of Caligula in late January, 41, his third year was 43 to early 44 AD.  It would be better if we could prove this date by chronological markers contained in Scripture.  But it was also Eusebius who reported the tradition that Peter was the source of Mark’s gospel, and that Mark was writing for a Roman audience, and both of these assertions are correct based upon internal scriptural evidence from the Gospel of Mark itself.    

So Eusebius tells us that Mark was written in the 40s in Rome.  A fragment found in a cave in Qumran near a jar labeled “Rome” is paleographically dated to no later than 50 AD.  Later, that fragment is shown to be from the Gospel of Mark.  It all adds up. " Fulcrum7/DavidRead