When were the Gospels Written? ("Historical Criticism" of the Gospels)
The Methodology and Ideology of “Liberal” Historical Criticism No matter who you are, efforts to assign dates to biblical books involves presuppositions. Most of the so-called “historical criticism” approach to the biblical text brings the assumption that the text is only a man-inspired and man-made composition. Much of this study stems back to Germany (the Tubingen School) in the 1800s. This might be an over-generalization, but the assumption is that God, if he exists, does not communicate to man through a written “inspired” text. The Bible is a literary-theological construction of man, not the revelation of the Creator to man. Main theory: Source or Document Hypothesis : the Synoptic Gospels are interdependent, one to the other In connection to the Synoptic Gospels Matthew, Mark and Luke, the main hypothesis of liberal scholarship is sometimes called the Two-Document, or Two-Source Hypothesis. Two main written texts are postulated to be the sources for Matthew and Luk