Scholars who date Mark after the fall of the Jerusalem temple

Scholars who date Mark after the fall of the Jerusalem temple:

1. Burton Mack in A Myth of Innocence says “Southern Syria in the seventies would be about right for such an intellectual labor as the Gospel of Mark. Jesus’ apocalyptic instruction in Mark 13 is the important evidence for a post-70 CE date and for a place from which the events of the Jewish War could be closely observed, yet without immediate involvement.” (p. 315).

2. L.M. White concludes “Arguments based on internal evidence can be mounted on both sides, but tend to favor a date of writing after the destruction had taken place, hence sometime between 70 and 75.” (Scripting Jesus, p. 265.)

3. Fredrickson argues that “by ingeniously creating a prophetic synonymity between events circa 30 and events circa 70, between the fate of the Son of Man and the fate of the Temple, Mark preserved the authority of the threatened tradition by deploying it.” (From Jesus to Christ, p. 184.)

4. Udo Schnelle (The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings) concludes “From the viewpoint of the evangelist, Mark 13.2, 14 are vaticinia ex eventu, and the Gospel of Mark was probably written after the destruction of the temple early in the 70s (cf. also Mark 12.9, 15.38” (p. 202).

5. Theissen (The New Testament: History, Literature, Religion, p. 96) argues “The Gospel of Mark was written shortly after AD 70. The destruction of the temple is presupposed. Jesus prophesies it in Mark 13.1-2 as if it has in fact taken place.”

6. Paul Achtemeier, writing in the Anchor Bible Dictionary, sounds ambivalent when he states “a date around 70 is probably as good as any.”

7. Joel Marcus, “The Jewish War and the Sitz im Leben of Mark,” JBL 111, p. 460: “As for the “when,” Theissen is probably right in suggesting a date shortly after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70.”

8. J. S. Kloppenborg, “Evocatio Deorum and the Date of Mark”, JBL 124, p. 450: “As an element in Mark’s narrative, Mark 13:1-2 is best seen as a historiographic effort to provide a retrospective account of the dual fates of Jesus and the temple”

9. Neill Q. Hamilton, “Resurrection Tradition and the Composition of Mark,” JBL 84, p. 419: “The gospel ought to be dated, like all apocalyptically oriented literature, from the last event it knows correctly but pretends to predict. This, of course, is the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem.”

10. S. G. F. Brandon, “The Date of the Markan Gospel,” NTS 7, p. 130, refers to “the probable situation of the Christian community at Rome under the impact of the events of A.D. 70”

11. W. Kelber, The Kingdom in Mark, p. 110: “What comes to expression in the apocalyptic speech must be of ultimate concern to Mark. At issue, we shall see, is the very crisis which gave rise to the gospel composition, the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple.”

12. Morton Smith (Jesus the Magician, pp. 29, 155) puts the Gospel ca. 75 C.E. on the basis of Mark’s reports of conflict with the Pharisees, which Smith argues reflects the period after the revolt when reorganized Pharisaic groups came into conflict with the Jesus movement.

13. Willi Marxsen, Mark the Evangelist

14. Eyal Regev, “The Temple in Mark” in Kaiphas: der Hohepriester jenes Jahres: Geschichte und Deutung, p. 154, states “I have followed J. Marcus in regarding [the abomination that causes desolation] as pointing to the Zealot’s desecration of the Temple.”

15. P. Botha, “The Historical Setting of Mark’s Gospel: Problems and Possibilities”, JSNT 51, notes “Before 70 the synagogue probably was something of a secular meeting place for Jews in any given locality in which they gathered for a variety of purposes. Only after the destruction of the temple did the religious function of these houses predominate over their secular role. Incidentally, should one relate Mark’s situation to the apologetic sphere of Diaspora Judaism, it could be that Mark told his story during the decades after the war. In Mark’s story the Pharisees are pictured as fairly representative of and very influential in Jewish society, a picture that fits post-70 developments.”

16. Adam Winn, in The Purpose of Mark’s Gospel: An Early Christian Response to Roman Imperial Propaganda, p. 76 concludes, after a lengthy discussion: “Therefore, based on this piece of internal evidence, we must conclude that Mark was written no earlier than 70 C.E., at some point after the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple.”

17. H.N. Roskam, The Purpose of the Gospel of Mark in its Historical and Social Context, p. 76: “In my view, the ‘temple saying’ in Mark 13:2 is to be regarded as a vaticinium ex eventu, and therefore an indication that the gospel was written after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD.”

18. G.R. Beasley-Murray, Jesus and the Last Days. The Interpretation of the Olivet Discourse, pp. 363-364.

19. Brian Incigneri, The Gospel to the Romans, spends Chapter 3 arguing that Mark knew of the fall of the temple.

20. I. Head, “Mark as a Roman Document from the Year 69: Testing Martin Hengel’s Thesis,” Journal of Religious History 28, concludes “Hengel’s hypothesis is therefore feasible in part but is strengthened by shifting the date from 69 through to 71 … Hengel’s Year of the Four Emperors only ends with the triumph of Vespasian and Titus in 71. This fits perfectly with Raymond E. Brown’s ‘just after 70,’ which is where I began. There is sufficient in Hengel’s and Incigneri’s approach to persist with a larger interpretation of Mark that assumes that this Roman location and date is correct.”

21. J.D. Crossan argues that Mark was written in the early 70s (The Birth of Christianity, p. 99ff).