Erik Manning recently wrote a blog post arguing for a pre-70 date for the canonical gospels. I wrote up some thoughts in a Facebook comment responding to a query about the post, and I thought I'd make those thoughts (and a couple others) available here.
1) Manning seems to refer to all dates for the gospels after 70 as "late." The implication is that pre-70 dates are "early." I don't think this is a particularly helpful typology. There is surely a significant difference between someone who dates Luke's Gospel c. 80 and someone who dates Luke's Gospel c. 120. I prefer to use a typology of "lower" (pre-70), "middle" (between 70 and 100), and "higher" (after 100), as this allows us to differentiate more fully between the majority position within scholarship (which is for the most part a "middle" chronology, on this typology) and the minorities who hold respectively to "lower" and a "higher" ones.
2) Manning's evaluation of post-70 dates is a bit of a straw man. He suggests that the only thing going for such dates is the denial of the supernatural. His reasoning goes like this: Jesus predicted the fate of the temple; scholars who "rule out" the supernatural deny that he could have done so pre-70; therefore such scholars conclude that the gospels must post-date 70. Moreover, he argues, this is the only reason to affirm a post-70 date for the canonical gospels. This is a straw man in at least two regards. First, while the canonical gospels' treatment of the temple's fate is probably the single strongest argument in favour of a post-70 date for each of the gospels, it is hardly the only one. Second, there are scholars who "rule out the supernatural" yet affirm that at least one canonical gospel predates 70. This is because one need not believe in the supernatural to believe that Jesus could have anticipated the destruction or desecration of the temple (both anticipations appear in the gospel tradition). It's entirely plausible that someone writing before 70, familiar with the various Jewish writings that talk about the destruction of the first temple and the desecration of the second under Antiochus IV, could think that perhaps one day the temple might be destroyed or desecrated. And I'd add moreover that a pre-70 date for one or more of the gospels does not require one to affirm that Jesus anticipated either the temple's destruction or desecration, merely that someone (whether Jesus, a tradent operating after Jesus, or the evangelists themselves) operating prior to 70 could have anticipated such. Cultural hand wringing about the supernatural is entirely a red herring.
3) Of the seven reasons given for a pre-70 date for the gospels, the majority actually speak to a pre-70 Acts. If indeed Acts is the sequel to Luke's Gospel, and if indeed Luke's Gospel used Mark's Gospel as a source, then a pre-70 Acts would establish a pre-70 Luke and Mark. It might under more controvertible conditions speak to a pre-70 Matthew or John.
4) Let us now consider Manning's seven reasons, enumerating them by Roman numerals.
i) Manning notes that Paul is still alive and well at the end of Acts. (He incorrectly states that Paul was under house arrest in Malta. The house arrest is actually and famously in Rome). Of the different explanations for the ending of Acts, I still think that the strongest argument is that Acts ends where it does because Paul was yet alive when the book was written. I find it exegetically baffling that a full quarter of Acts is devoted to the legal and other processes that result with Paul pending trial in Rome, only for the book to end without any report upon how his legal case turns out. As such, I find it easier to read the ending of Acts sometime between 62 (the likely year in which the house arrest in Rome ended) and before 68 (the latest likely year of Paul's death) than I can after 68. One should however note that other explanations remains viable: just because I think this explanation the strongest does not demonstrate that the others must be wrong.
ii and iii) Manning argues that we should expect Acts to mention Peter's death (likely between 64 and 68) or James (certainly in 62), and that since he doesn't the book must predate these events. I'm not persuaded that we should expect such death notices. Neither Peter nor James feature significantly in the second half of Acts (actually, James really doesn't play that significant a role in the book overall), so the fact that their deaths go unmentioned is hardly surprising. There's also a crucial matter of timing. As noted above, the latest event explicitly mentioned in Acts almost certainly dates to 62, the same year in which James died. As such, even on the earliest possible date for Acts, the author almost certainly knew of James' fate yet chose not to report it. Our knowledge of Peter's death is sufficiently murky that I'd really not want to place much weight on what the author of Acts might have been expected to know and when. That being said, since Manning is concerned actually with the date of the gospels and not of Acts, it is somewhat surprising that he fails to address the fact that John 21:18-19 might very well suppose the death of Peter as a past event (I'm actually not convinced that it does, but it is nonetheless far from impossible and thus must be addressed).
iv) Manning argues that Luke would surely have reported the Neronian persecution that broke out sometime c. 64 or 65 had he known of it. This is really a variant of 1: if the author knew that Nero began to persecute the church within a couple years of the end of Acts, then how likely would he have been to overlook this fact and pointed a rosy colour of Christian-imperial relations? And indeed, it is not unreasonable to think that the author could have anticipated that a reader might go "Okay, sure, things were fine at the end of Paul's two years in Rome, but how did we get from that to Nero persecuting the church just a couple years later?" That having been said, I cannot rule out that Luke knew of the persecution and had reasons now opaque for not mentioning it. Further, there has been some work of late trying to show that the Neronian persecution never happened. Admittedly I find this work less than persuasive, but intellectual integrity requires us to engage with the arguments and more to the point recognize that if they are affirmed then Manning's argument "iv" loses all weight. In any case, given such issues, I'd be wary to put much weight on the absence of reference to the Neronian persecution.
v) Manning argues that surely if the gospel writers were writing after 70 then they would have made clear that Jesus' predictions of the temple's fate indeed came true. It is indeed tantalizing that they don't make this clear. Nonetheless, insofar as this is articulated as an argument from silence, I'd be wary of affirming it. That being said, there are certain particularities in the way that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John discuss the fate of the temple that I think make greater sense before than after 70. Luke's treatment I think is equally intelligible both before and after; the matter of 70 has no bearing as to the date of the Lukan Gospel.
vi) This is probably Manning's weakest argument. Manning argues that such issues as Gentile inclusion and division between "Palestinian" and Hellenistic Jewish Christians holds little relevance after the destruction of 70. He adds as empirical support that "first century" writings such as 1 Clement, the Epistle of Polycarp, and Didache are not concerned with such matters. There are some insuperable problems here. First, there are chronological issues. 1 Clement could reasonably date as late as c. 100, or (less likely) into the second century; Polycarp is almost certainly writing in the second century (quite plausibly as late as c. 120, and some would argue--I think without adequate warrant, but nonetheless--into the 140s); and Didache could conceivably date as late as the early second century (I'd be inclined to date it earlier than that, but nonetheless I can't exclude a date in the second century). As such, even if we could demonstrate that Acts predates these texts, Acts could yet date potentially into the second century. Second, and more fundamental, I am far from convinced that the events of 70 would have obviated questions about the relationship between "Palestinian" and Hellenistic Jewish folk. There's good reason to think that there was still a "Palestinian" Jewish Christian community based in Jerusalem until 135, and after that we know of communities in the Galilee into at least the fourth century. That having been said, it is probably fair to say that Jewish-Gentile and intra-Jewish issues began to recede during the latter part of the first century, but I don't think that we know enough about the timing of this recession to support a pre-70 date for Acts. This brings us to the third and most fundamental issue with vi: as of this time we have neither the data nor the methods to establish the chronological development of Jewish-Gentile and intra-Jewish concerns among early Christians. Quite simply, arguments from these sorts of developments are among the weakest when it comes to establishing the dates of NT texts. This cuts both ways, though: for instance, older arguments that say that John's Gospel must date later than the other canonical gospels because its Christology is so "developed" simply do not hold up to empirical scrutiny.
vii) Manning argues that Paul quotes Luke's Gospel in 1 Timothy 5:18, and thus Luke's Gospel must predate Paul's death (and thus predates 70). This might well carry the day, but only after a lot more work. There are three issues, minimally. First, and most fundamentally, the overwhelming majority of New Testament scholars do not think that Paul wrote 1 Timothy. This near-consensus is not unassailable, but nonetheless intellectual integrity demands that it be confronted. Second, while it is true that 1 Timothy 5:18 quotes words found verbatim in Luke 10:7, it is also the case that almost exactly the same words are found in Matthew 10:10. There is but one word difference, and given that ancient writers often quote texts imprecisely such similarity with the Matthean variant makes it entirely plausible that 1 Timothy 5:18 is quoting Matthew's Gospel rather than Luke's. This brings us to the third issue: while I do think it most likely that the author is quoting Luke 10:7 and slightly less likely that he is quoting Matt. 10:10, I cannot rule out the possibility that the quote comes from a no-longer-extant text (the author refers explicitly to a "writing," which to me makes it unlikely that he's quoting oral tradition). Ultimately, I'd more inclined to use Matthew's Gospel and Luke's to establish the earliest possible date for 1 Timothy than to use 1 Timothy to establish the latest possible date for either of these gospels. That is to say, if indeed 1 Timothy 5:18 quotes either Matthew's Gospel or Luke's, then 1 Timothy must postdate the earliest of these.
Cumulatively, I think that Manning makes a reasonable but not unassailable case for dating Mark's Gospel, Luke's Gospel, and Acts prior to 70; he makes a weaker case when it comes to Matthew's and John's.
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