If Jesus was crucified and resurrected around 33 AD, even the earliest dates proposed for authorship of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are two or three decades later (or more). Now, given the vital importance of these events and the immense centrality of these three accounts of the life of Jesus to Christians throughout history, it’s natural to ask why they waited so long to write their accounts. Waiting obviously invites the criticism that the events are less reliably recorded, and waiting seems to put things at the mercy of memories which dim over time. Even presuming the Christian belief that the Holy Spirit inspired the writers to be inerrant, doesn’t it still seem like a bizarre delay just from the perspective of how useful those texts could have been to the very early church during those decades? So why do you think God and the disciples waited so long to write the Gospels?
1 comment:
Jesus was adament about how He was comming back 'soon.' I believe the gospels weren't written earlier because the apostles thought there was no time. They weren't thinking about preserving the Word for the future because they believed there was no future.
It wasn't until it became apparent the second comming was going to take a while, that the task of preserving the Word moved to the top of the 'to do' list.
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