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And remember that this weighty statement was written by a scholar who wants to
establish an earlier date for the Gospel!
Dr. Graham Scroggie states "the concurrent of testimony converges on the close of the
first century as the time this Gospel was written, and we may regard the reasons for this
belief as conclusive . . . . . it is safe then to assume this Gospel was written in the last
decade of the first century and probably about 95A.D." (A Guide to the Gospels).
Professor F. F. Bruce in his work on the Gospel writes:
"If, as seems probable, the Gospel was published in the province of Asia some sixty
years after the events it narrates . . . . ." (p.2).
"But it is a reasonable inference from the growth of the report that the beloved disciple
lived on to an advanced age, probably surviving Peter by many years . . . . ." (p.215).
Dr. Robinson also writes:
"100: H. Dodd ascribes the Gospel to an Ephesian elder writing between 90A.D. and
100" (Redating the New Testament, p.263).
Thus we can safely say that the majority of antiquity was against an early date for
John's Gospel and the majority of present scholarship is also against it. There is
uniformity of testimony of a late dating, and those who base doctrine on an early date are
on a very insecure foundation.
Occasionally Mark 10: 39 and John 5: 2 are used to support an early date, but these
texts, when rightly regarded, do not do this. Concerning Mark 10: 39, the Lord Jesus not
only said that the disciples would drink His cup, but also they would be baptized with the
baptism He was baptized with, and this latter phrase speaks of suffering, not death, so
either suffering or death would fulfil this prophetic statement. Dr. Tasker writes "not
again does the reference to the sons of Zebedee drinking the cup, and being baptized with
the baptism of Christ necessarily imply that they both were destined to come to a violent
end" (New Bible Dictionary, p.602).
In John 5: 2 the present tense is used of the verb to be, "there is at Jerusalem a pool",
not "there was at Jerusalem a pool", but this does not support an early dating, because it
refers to the time of the action being described, not the time when the Gospel was written.
It was the time when the infirm man wanted to get into the pool for healing.
Even if we accept Dr. Robinson's earlier date for the Gospel, 65A.D., there was still
five (5) years to run before the Romans destroyed the Temple and city in 70A.D., and yet
the Gospel would have been written after the period covered by the Acts (Acts 28: is
62A.D.).
To whom was the Gospel addressed?
This can only be decided by considering the internal evidence of the Gospel. There
are key words in it such as life, light, witness, glory, abide, world. The last word world