The best estimate for the dating of Acts places the work between AD 62 and 64. J.P. Moreland lists several reasons why Acts should be given this early date (Moreland, SSC, 152-154).
–evangelical authors, Josh and Sean McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, p. 45
J.P. Moreland’s reasons for the early dating of Acts:
-Luke shows a particular interest in the city of Jerusalem.
-Acts reports many events that took place in Jerusalem, from the Day of Pentecost to the imprisonment of Paul. Yet Luke fails to mention one of the most important events to have ever happened in the city: the destruction of the temple in AD 70.
-Luke records the martyrdoms of Stephen and James the brother of John, but he is silent about the martyrdoms of Peter, Paul, and James. These three prominent figures in the book of Acts died between AD 61-67.
-a major theme in the book of Acts is…how the Gentile Christians should relate to Jewish believers. This was a very important matter before the destruction of the temple in AD 70.
-distinctively Jewish expressions used throughout the book of Acts indicate a pre-70 Jewish-Christian audience.
-Luke does not mention the wars against the Romans, beginning in AD 66.
Gary: What is Moreland’s principle evidence for his belief that Acts was written in the early to mid 60’s? Answer: The failure to mention the Roman-Jewish wars and the destruction of the temple, events which occurred beginning in 66 CE (AD).
Yet, when we skeptics point out that the Apostle Paul seemed to know nothing about Jesus’ miraculous virgin birth in Bethlehem; Jesus’ burial in the rock tomb of Joseph of Arimathea; any of Jesus’ miracles; or any of Jesus’ sermons such as the Sermon on the Mount— based on the fact that Paul never once mentions these alleged historical events in any of his letters—we are told by conservative Christians that the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence; i.e, the lack of mention of these “facts” is not proof that Paul didn’t know about them. These topics were simply not pertinent to the theme of Paul’s writings to the specific churches.
So why couldn’t the same be true of the Book of Acts? Maybe the purpose of the Book of Acts was to demonstrate theological issues in the early decades of the Church, not to write a biography of the life of Paul. Paul’s death and the later destruction of the temple are not mentioned because they were not pertinent to the theme of the book. The lack of mention of these events is not proof that the author of Acts did not know about them.
Conservative Christians accuse liberals and skeptics of dating the Gospels late because we do not believe that Jesus had the power to foresee the future (predicting the destruction of the Temple), yet conservative Christians turn around and date the Book of Acts on the assumption that the absence of any mention of the wars with Rome and the destruction of the temple is proof that the book was written before 66 CE.
Both dating systems are based on assumptions and biases!
Let’s all drop our biases. As New Testament scholar NT Wright states: No one knows who wrote the Gospels nor when the Gospels (and Acts) were written.
Escaping Christian Fundamentalism 
As a person who claims to go where most scholarship does, you surely know that most people date the Gospels: Mark 70’s, Matthew, Luke and Acts 80’s, John 90’s.
These aren’t late. By standards of ancient history, those are not late.
Also quote mining aren’t you?
Here’s NT Wright too:
“The crucial thing to say about this new theory is that the argument for the substantial historicity and accuracy of the Gospels never depended on their dating, anyway. True, lots of scholars have argued as though that was the case, with ‘radical’ scholars dating the Gospels late (and so darkly suggesting that they were all unreliable) and ‘conservative’ scholars dating them early (and so brightly suggesting that everything in them was taken down by eyewitnesses at the scene). But this is actually a mistake. The historicity and accuracy of the Gospels depends on our putting together the whole jigsaw of the first century, with Judaism and early Christianity side by side (and indeed confusingly intertwined with each other), and with Jesus as the middle term straddling both. The historicity of the Gospels depends, not on when they were written, but the historical plausibility of the picture they describe.” – N.T. Wright
This was taken from N.T. Wright’s The Original Jesus: The Life and Vision of a Revolutionary
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I don’t see anything in Wright’s statement that contradicts what I said in my post. I have never said that “everything” in the Gospels is false. What I have said is that not everything in the Gospels is historical.
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Why do you think Paul ever needed to mention virgin births, empty tombs, or sermons on the mount? His letters seem to convey exactly what he wanted to convey without bringing those things up.
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What is more odd to me is that Paul never refers to any of Jesus’ teachings or sermons in his own teachings and sermons. Such as, “As the Lord taught us, broad is the road that leads to destruction.” He never does.
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Also Paul wasn’t writing a biography like the Gospel writers were. He was writing letters addressing particular issues in particular churches.
These churches already knew the stories that we read about in the Gospels.
But since Paul is alive at the end of Acts, and Luke was writing the history of Paul it is very unlikely that Paul’s death and the fulfilment of Jesus’s prophecies of the destruction of the temple wouldn’t be recorded, since Luke was trying to validate the Christian faith to Theophilus.
It doesn’t seem as if you grasp how a double standard works. A real double standard is saying that only eye-witness testimony makes valid history, lambasting the Gospels and NT not being eye-witness testimony, dismissing it as historical, but not making that a requirement for Tacitus, Jospehus, Heredotus and all the other ancient historians that are our accounts of the ancient world.
That’s a double standard.
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These churches already knew the stories that we read about in the Gospels.
Assumption, assumption, assumption.
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Gary – Has it occurred to you that there is such thing as “safe assumptions”?
If everything in “historic scholarship” required the kind of “legal precision” that you seem to want to place on everything, then nobody could ever *assert* anything new.
You really need to get over this cheezy thing you do, like “assumption, assumption, assumption”. Sounds like sixth-grader, not someone who is actually talking in an educated and scholarly fashion.
Now, regarding this: “These churches already knew the stories that we read about in the Gospels”.
This is entirely correct. Paul wrote “Paul writes “you also became imitators of us and of the Lord ” (1 Thess 1:6)
And, here’s the deal: The congregation could not have become imitators of Paul and his ministry companions without having known what they were like, nor could they have become imitators of the Lord without already having known what he (Jesus) was like. Obviously, then, Paul was writing to people who already knew the “Jesus Story”.
Paul, throughout his letters, repeatedly refers to knowledge *about* Jesus that is already *known* by those that he is writing to. Jesus, born of a woman, a descendent of David, son of God, equal to God, existing “as God” (and hence, “before Abraham”), being humble and in the form of a servant, preaching of the Kingdom of God and righteousness, doing miracles, preaching “you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself”, “don’t judge…”, “bless those who persecute you”, “delivered over”, sharing a meal with his disciples on the night before he was crucified, then betrayed, crucified, died, buried, resurrected, and sending the Holy Spirit.
And, if I looked longer and harder, I feel positive I’d find more stuff that clearly shows that Paul was talking about a “Jesus” that both he and the churches he was writing to, knew something about “historically”.
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And, here’s the deal: The congregation could not have become imitators of Paul and his ministry companions without having known what they were like, nor could they have become imitators of the Lord without already having known what he (Jesus) was like. Obviously, then, Paul was writing to people who already knew the “Jesus Story”.
We have no idea what the original “Jesus Story” included. Did it include a virgin birth in Bethlehem? Did it include the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery? Did it include include the detailed appearance stories as described in Luke, Matthew, and John (but not Mark)?
We don’t know!
For you to claim that the Christians in Corinth, Thessalonica, Ephesus, et al. definitely knew in the 50’s as historical fact everything that the authors of the Gospels wrote in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s is the height of arrogance and/or foolishness.
Once again: Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions!
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Gary –
re: “For you to claim that the Christians in Corinth, Thessalonica, Ephesus, et al. definitely knew in the 50’s as historical fact everything that the authors of the Gospels wrote in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s is the height of arrogance and/or foolishness.”
And, I made no such claim at all.
Assumptions, assumptions, assumptions.
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Paul regarded himself as an imitator of ‘Christ’, yet he never met Jesus, appears not to know (m)any stories about him and by his own admission didn’t acquire his ‘knowledge’ of him from any earthly source (Galatians 1.11-12).
If Paul could do it, then there is no reason to suppose early followers in Thessalonica couldn’t also be imitators of ‘Christ’ (a very different animal from the Jesus of the synoptic gospels, in any case) relying only on the hocus-pocus Paul had made up and passed onto them.
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Well, Neil, are you basing this on the scan info we have from a mere seven “authentic” letters?
How the heck do YOU know what Paul knew? seriously? You really think the sum-total knowledge that Paul had about Jesus is spelled out in it’s entirety in those seven letters?
I hear this kind of argument from skeptics all the time, and it’s the most insanely ridiculous argument one could make. You’re trying to look at a menu at a restaurant to come up with a biographical picture of the restaurant owner…
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