Carson and Moo’s Dates for the NT Books

The below list does not reproduce a particular chart from D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo’s Introduction to the New Testament (2d ed.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), but it is based on the text. They roughly date the twenty-seven New Testament books as follows (though the exact order of the twenty-seven books is fuzzy, e.g., re the prison epistles):

  1. James: around 46–48 (just before the Jerusalem Council)
  2. Galatians: 48 (just prior to the Jerusalem Council)
  3. 1 Thessalonians: 50
  4. 2 Thessalonians: either in late 50 or early 51
  5. 1 Corinthians: probably early in 55
  6. 2 Corinthians: 56 (i.e., within the next year or so of 1 Corinthians)
  7. Romans: 57
  8. Philippians: mid–50s to early 60s if written from Ephesus (61–62 if written from Rome)
  9. Mark: sometime in the late 50s or the 60s
  10. Philemon: probably Rome in the early 60s
  11. Colossians: early 60s, probably 61
  12. Ephesians: the early 60s
  13. 1 Peter: almost surely in 62–63
  14. Titus: probably not later than the mid-60s
  15. 1 Timothy: early to mid-60s
  16. 2 Timothy: early or mid-60s (about 64 or 65)
  17. 2 Peter: likely shortly before 65
  18. Acts: mid-60s
  19. Jude: middle-to-late 60s
  20. Luke: mid or late 60s
  21. Hebrews: before 70
  22. Matthew: not long before 70
  23. John: tentatively 80–85
  24. 1 John: early 90s
  25. 2 John: early 90s
  26. 3 John: early 90s
  27. Revelation: 95–96 (at the end of the Emperor Domitian’s reign)
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