The mainstream Christian belief is that some of the New Testament, including John’s writings, was written after the First Jewish-Roman War. However, that cannot be possible if the model I’ve proposed in this chronology project is correct.

There are three reasons why we can be confident that the entire New Testament canon had to be completed before 70 AD:

• You had to be an apostle to write Scripture, and Paul described himself as the last apostle (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). All the apostles who hadn’t died before Jesus’ return would have been raptured when Jesus returned in Nisan of 70 AD.
• The “speaking by the Son” happened in the Last Days (Hebrews 1:1-2). Thus, the canon would be closed after the Last Days, which ended in 70 AD.
• Depending on the interpretation of Matthew 16:17-19, it is also possible that all New Testament Scripture required Peter’s official approval (or delegated approval, in Paul’s case – note that Peter approved Paul’s writings in 2 Peter 3:15-16) and thus must have been completed before the deaths of Peter and Paul in the AD 60s.

There is supporting evidence for this in the content of the New Testament books:

• No New Testament books reference the First Jewish-Roman War or the destruction of the Second Temple as past events.
• The Book of Revelation shows the temple as still in existence (Revelation 11:1-2).
• Peter references symbolism from Revelation at least once (1 Peter 5:13) and possibly a second time (2 Peter 3:8 might be a reference to the millennium of Revelation 20). Therefore, Revelation was written while Peter was still alive.

We therefore need a timeline for the composition of the New Testament that would allow for all the books to be completed during the Last Days. Here is my suggested (but not definitive) reconstruction.

Matthew

The apostles would have had to write a Gospel immediately after Jesus’ ascension (or even during His 40 days on earth after His resurrection) to help capture and communicate the story of Jesus’ life and ministry to the Jewish converts who joined the Church. This Gospel would have had to be Matthew or Luke, because neither Mark nor John record Jesus’ birth. Luke introduces his Gospel by suggesting that early accounts of Jesus’ ministry came from eyewitnesses, whereas his book was a result of a later investigation intended to produce an orderly account. As Matthew was an apostle and therefore an eyewitness, his Gospel would therefore be the natural candidate for first account.

Indeed, Matthew seems particularly geared towards Jews, which would make sense if it was written before the conversion of Cornelius. It also opens with a record of Jesus’ genealogy, implying that it is the beginning of a new deposit of Scripture, just like in multiple places in Genesis, in Numbers 3:1, and in Ruth 4:18.

Matthew ends his narrative before the ascension, so it was probably written during the 40 days between the resurrection and the ascension. Mark and Luke, by contrast, end after the ascension, implying they were written later. John, not being synoptic, ends where thematically appropriate.

Bonus: Putting Matthew first allows for the traditional ordering of the Gospels to match the order in which I’m suggesting they were written.

Mark

In 44 AD, Saul and Barnabas were commissioned officially by James and Peter and John in Jerusalem to minister to the Gentiles (Galatians 2:9), which was confirmed by the Holy Spirit in Antioch (Acts 13:2). When Saul and Barnabas left Jerusalem, they took Mark with them (Acts 12:25).

The Gospel of Matthew was both written toward Jews and also very long because of Jesus’ many speeches. This meant it was not ideal for a traveling ministry to both Jews and Gentiles. Therefore, Mark probably wrote his Gospel as a condensed, action-packed (heavy on the word “immediately”) alternative to Matthew for use on their mission trip.

Alternatively, Mark may have already been writing it on Peter’s orders before Saul and Barnabas arrived with the financial gift, and it was taken with them for their purposes, along with its author to help with its use. Either way, Peter and the apostles had the opportunity to give the Gospel their official blessing before it was taken on the trip.

Luke

After their first missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas eventually returned to Jerusalem, where the first church council resolved the issue of whether Gentiles had to keep the Law of Moses (Acts 15). The two apostles then went with a company of saints to Antioch to deliver the letter written by the apostles and the elders of Jerusalem to clarify the commandments applicable to Gentile Christians.

However, after some time in Antioch, they split up before setting off on their next missionary journey, because Barnabas wanted to bring along Mark, while Paul did not. Barnabas probably continued using the Gospel of Mark on his missionary travels (Acts 15:39), but Paul at this point probably would have wanted a new Gospel, one tailored specifically for his purpose of visiting and strengthening previous converts (Acts 15:36; Acts 16:5).

Note that the Gospel of Luke is addressed to “Theophilus.” There is disagreement about who or what “Theophilus” is, but I posit it simply refers to a Christian reader, so that Luke 1:3-4 literally says, “It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write to you an orderly account, most excellent lover of God, that you may know the certainty of those things in which you were instructed.” This would align perfectly with a ministry to the previously converted (at least as an initial intent).

Based on the use of the pronoun “we,” starting in Acts 16:10, we know that Luke, the author of Acts, accompanied Paul and Silas and Timothy on this trip. Just like Mark, Luke had written his Gospel either at Peter’s urging or with his blessing, gotten a seal of approval from the apostles in Jerusalem, then gone with Paul as he used the Gospel in his ministry (possibly Paul bringing Luke with him so his book could replace Mark’s initiated the tension between him and Barnabas).

Note that in 1 Timothy 5:18, Paul refers to Luke 10:7 as Scripture while writing to Timothy (whom Paul picked up as a ministry assistant just after splitting with Barnabas). This suggests that Luke was the Gospel they were accustomed to referencing in their work together.

John

John is not a synoptic Gospel. It contains no reference to Jesus’ early years, and it covers largely different ground than the other Gospels. Furthermore, Luke’s Gospel declared itself to be a sufficiently thorough and orderly account of the life of Jesus, making another such Gospel unnecessary. Therefore, John must have been written for a completely different purpose than the other Gospels.

Up to this point, a Gospel had been written every single time Paul went to Jerusalem (except for his first trip in 33 AD, when the Gospel of Matthew was still being used for the entirely Jewish church). Therefore, it’s plausible the Gospel of John was written during his last visit in Acts 21.

According to Acts 24:27, Paul was arrested in Jerusalem two years before Porcius Festus succeeded Felix as procurator, which happened around 59-60 AD. Therefore, we can know for certain that Nero was emperor when Paul was arrested. Paul also knew that he was going to speak to the emperor (he requested this in Acts 25:10-11, and God confirmed this mission in Acts 27:24).

Therefore, Paul would have needed a special Gospel for this purpose. Instead of being a thorough account of Jesus’s life, it would need to be an account that would make an impact on Caesar himself. Reasons why the text of the Gospel of John supports this:

• It begins with a meditation on Jesus’ role as the Word (Logos), which struck right to the heart of Greco-Roman philosophy. Roman kings considered themselves philosophers to some extent (based on Plato’s Republic), so this would have been deeply impactful to one.
• The last verse of John contains a reference to books being unable to capture all the deeds of Jesus. This alludes to the multiple times the Old Testament (especially 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles) mentions that all the deeds of a specific king are recorded in more comprehensive historical books. Jesus is presented here as the highest of kings, greater than any earthly king (because His reign cannot be thoroughly summarized), which would be how an apostle would finish a Gospel written for a king.
• John states toward the end of his Gospel that he chose to relay certain miracles of Jesus “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31). I posit that John was originally speaking to a specific person, Caesar Nero, not to a generic person (although it served a broader purpose later).
• John recounts Jesus’ prediction of Peter’s martyrdom at Nero’s hands (John 21:18), showing Nero that God was completely sovereign over history and all of the emperor’s decisions.

Unfortunately, Nero responded by killing the messenger (Paul) and the person recorded as the leader of the Christian church at the end of the book (Peter). Nero did not, however, kill John himself, but instead imprisoned him on Patmos (Revelation 1:9). Possible reasons:

• He may have been strangely touched by the message of John’s Gospel and wanted to spare him.
• He may have been spooked by John 21:22-23 into believing John could not be killed, and thus he chose to lock him away instead of risking a direct encounter with Yahweh’s providence, in some kind of mystical fear of God’s power.

The Gospel of John would therefore have been written and blessed by the apostles at some point between Paul’s final visit to Jerusalem and his departure for Rome.

Acts

Some time passed between Festus starting his time of service and Paul being sent to Italy. The journey to Rome took months, and then Paul spent an additional two years preaching and teaching before his trial (Acts 28:30-31). His trial was therefore probably around 62 AD, although it could have been 63 or even 64 AD (it had to be before the Great Fire of Rome, because in using Christians as scapegoats, Nero showed that he had already heard the Gospel preached to him by Paul, knew who they were, and had decided to oppose them instead of joining them).

It is hard to believe Luke would not have recorded an account of the trial if he had written Acts after it had taken place, so Acts had to have been completed just as the trial was about to start.

Other Books

Revelation would have been written somewhere between the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD (as the Great Tribulation under Nero had already started – Revelation 1:9) and the start of the First Jewish-Roman War in 66 AD, which was described as still in the future in Revelation 4:1.

As the first epistle of Peter references the symbolism of Revelation, both 1 Peter and 2 Peter would have been written after Revelation was written. They also would have been written before Nero’s death in 68 AD, as Peter mentioned his impending death in 2 Peter 1:13, which happened during Nero’s persecution of the Church.

1 John says it was written during “the last hour,” implying that all three of John’s epistles were also from that time and that the falling away of fake Christians had already begun (1 John 2:18-19), which was a sign of the end being very near (2 Timothy 3:1-9).

Jude’s whole letter was also about this falling away, which was happening at the time he wrote. His letter was quite possibly the last book of the New Testament to be written.