when were the gospels written? And what evidence do we have for this? Also to add to my point what evidence to we have for Mark being the first Gospel written.
2 Answers
...what evidence to we have for Mark being the first Gospel written(?)
First, as noted in my bio, I am an armchair scholar. However, I have many years of experience reading biblical scholarship. Also, I wanted to help test our new software here as well as try to point you in the right direction.
I took my time and read through the Wikipedia entries concerning Marcan Priority. I am satisfied with the information there, at least, as a starting point.
The entire section that you'd be interested in is under the main heading Evidence where you will find several sub-headings that inform us as to why biblical scholars have reached their conclusions for Marcan Priority.
One piece of evidence that Mark is the oldest, at least of the Synoptic Gospels, is that both Matthew and Luke use it as a source. Both consider it deficient in its lack of a birth narrative, and both consider it unfinished. Each of them adds a (different) birth story and each of them adds a (different) post-resurrection narrative, among the other material they add to their Markan framework.
