could anyone answer this question i ve heard it said that the accounts we have of christs life and ministry in the gospels were actually written many years after the event about years or so is this correct if so why the big time delay i know all scripture is inspired of god so the time of writing is i suppose un important but i still can t help be curious ivan thomas barr contact me at u athmail causeway qub ac uk the gospels aren t dated so we can only guess luke s prolog is about the only thing we have from the author describing his process the prolog sounds like luke is from the next generation and had to do some investigating there are traditions passed down verbally that say a few things about the composition of the gospels there are debates about how reliable these traditions are they certainly don t have the status of scripture yet scholars tend to take some of them seriously one suggests that mark was based on peter s sermons and was written to preserve them when peter had died or way about to die one tradition about matthew suggests that a collection of jesus words may have been made earlier than the current gospels in the ancient world it was much more common to rely on verbal transmission of information i think many people would have preferred to hear about jesus directly from someone who had known him and maybe even from someone who studied directly under such a person rather than from a book thus i suspect that the gospels are largely from a period when these people were beginning to die scholars generally do think there was some written material earlier which was probably used as sources for the existing gospels establishing the dates is a complex and technical business i have to confess that i m not sure how much reliance i d put on the methods used but it s common to think that mark was written first around ad and that all of the gospels were written by the end of the century a few people vary this by a decade or so one way or the other clh
