When Was the Gospel of John Written? It’s Later Than You Think!

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

When was the Gospel of John written? Recently, a friend of mine returned from a trip to Rome with a story that perfectly illustrates how most people think about the Gospels. During one of the tours, the guide began weaving together remarkable tales about Jesus’ apostles.

He spoke of Peter’s martyrdom, of Thomas traveling all the way to India, and of John, “best known for writing the fourth Gospel in the New Testament.” My friend, intrigued at first, later admitted feeling disappointed. The guide had presented these legends as solid historical facts, without even hinting that scholars have long questioned their historical reliability.

If you ask most Christians today, they would likely repeat a version of that same story: that the Gospel of John in the New Testament was written quite soon after Jesus’ death, by one of his closest disciples, the Apostle John himself, an eyewitness who faithfully recorded what he saw and heard. 

It’s a deeply appealing idea. After all, the Gospel’s intimate tone and vivid dialogues seem to come from someone who was there, personally knew Jesus and wished to preserve his memory.

However, according to critical scholars, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The theory most contemporary experts hold tells a very different (yet no less fascinating) story about how this Gospel came into being.

Rather than a straightforward eyewitness account, the Gospel of John appears to be the result of decades of reflection, interpretation, innovation, and theological development within the early Christian movement.

So that you won’t be left as frustrated as my friend in Rome was, this article will take you behind the traditional stories to explore what historians and biblical scholars have actually discovered.

We’ll look at who really wrote the Gospel of John, the sources that may have shaped it, and (most importantly) when and why it was composed.

When Was the Gospel of John Written? A Brief Look at the Issue of Authorship

The issue of when the Gospel of John was written is inseparable from the question of its authorship. From the time of Irenaeus in the late 2nd century, Church tradition maintained that the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, composed the fourth Gospel.

Irenaeus claimed to have received this information from Polycarp, who, in turn, was believed to have known John personally. This attribution, once accepted, became the dominant view in Christian thought and remained virtually uncontested throughout the Middle Ages.

Generations of theologians and believers regarded the Gospel as the direct testimony of an eyewitness who had walked with Jesus, witnessed his miracles, and faithfully recorded his words. Only with the rise of modern biblical criticism in the Enlightenment period did scholars begin to question whether the Apostle John could truly have been its author.

Even as late as the twentieth century, some of the most respected experts on the Gospel of John still defended the traditional view. Raymond E. Brown, one of the most erudite Johannine scholars of his generation, initially argued that the apostle remained the best candidate.

In his Commentary on John, Brown wrote:

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As we’ll see shortly, Brown later revised this opinion, moving toward the growing scholarly consensus that the Gospel wasn’t written directly by the apostle but perhaps by a later follower within the Johannine tradition.

Still, even today, a number of highly trained and deeply learned scholars continue to defend the older position. Craig A. Keener, for example, in his extensive Commentary on the Gospel of John, concludes:

However, most critical scholars today would argue against Keener’s conclusion. Let us take a brief look at the evidence they use to challenge the traditional attribution.

Arguments Against the Traditional Attribution

“Parenthetically, I am inclined to change my mind … from the position that I took in the first volume of my AB commentary identifying the Beloved Disciple as one of the Twelve, viz., John son of Zebedee.” With this candid admission in The Community of the Beloved Disciple, Raymond E. Brown signaled a decisive shift in his thinking.

First, the internal evidence offers little to confirm apostolic authorship. Nowhere in the Gospel does the author identify himself by name, and the “beloved disciple” functions more as a literary and theological symbol of faithful witness than an autobiographical signature.

Moreover, the final chapter (John 21) appears to distinguish between the beloved disciple and the actual writer: “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true” (21:24). 

The shift from he to we suggests that an editor or group within the community is affirming the reliability of the beloved disciple’s witness while composing the final version of the text.

Second, the external evidence for John’s authorship emerges far too late to carry historical weight. The first explicit attribution comes from Irenaeus around 180 C.E., more than a century after the events. Irenaeus claimed that Polycarp, his teacher, had known “John the disciple of the Lord,” but this link is tenuous.

Irenaeus thought that the same person wrote both the Gospel and the Book of Revelation. Yet, beginning already in the 3rd century, scholars and (even!) Church writers have rightly questioned this conflation. 

The evidence clearly suggests that the Gospel and the Apocalypse were written by different individuals, and thus Irenaeus’ testimony likely reflects a degree of confusion or harmonization in his understanding of who “John” actually was.

Even if genuine, Irenaeus wrote at a time when early Christians were eager to anchor their Gospels in apostolic names. Similarly, his words must be interpreted in the light of Irenaeus’ polemical battles against other popular Christian movements that, for him, were nothing more than common heresies! 

A third difficulty lies in the socio-historical and linguistic context. The idea that a Galilean fisherman from the lower classes could compose such refined Greek prose stretches historical plausibility. 

Literacy rates in the 1st-century eastern Mediterranean were strikingly low. Catherine Hezser’s comprehensive study Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine estimates that only a small percentage of the population (mostly urban males from the elite) were literate beyond the most basic level. 

The Acts of the Apostles (4:13) explicitly describes Peter and John as “agrammatoi,” meaning “unlettered” or “illiterate,” which fits what we know of their social background. Even Josephus, a member of the Jerusalem aristocracy and trained scholar, admitted he struggled with Greek and had to rely on assistants.

It’s extremely unlikely that John, a rural fisherman from Galilee, could have authored a Gospel marked by sophisticated vocabulary, rhetorical elegance, and philosophical reflection worthy of a Hellenistic intellectual.

For these and related reasons (textual, historical, and linguistic) most critical scholars today conclude that the Apostle John didn’t write the Fourth Gospel. That, of course, brings us to the main question of this article: When was the Gospel of John written? Let’s take a look!

When Was the Gospel of John Written?

Dating any ancient text is an inexact science. Historians and biblical scholars rely on two main categories of evidence: internal clues, drawn from the text’s own language, themes, and historical references, and external evidence, such as quotations by later authors or surviving manuscript copies.

But even with these tools, determining when a work was written often involves educated reconstruction rather than certainty. The Gospels, written anonymously and without explicit historical markers, are especially challenging in this regard.

When it comes to when the Gospel of John was written, scholars have long agreed on at least one thing: it’s the latest of the four canonical Gospels. The precise date, however, continues to invite debate. 

The majority position in contemporary critical scholarship situates the Gospel’s composition somewhere between 75 and 110 C.E., after the Synoptic Gospels had already circulated.

This range reflects both caution and consensus! Caution because the evidence isn’t as good as we would like it to be, and consensus because the Gospel’s theology and social context still presuppose a later stage of Christian reflection.

Yet, when one tries to narrow this broad window, disagreements emerge among otherwise like-minded scholars.

Robert Kysar represents one of the more moderately early voices within the scholarly discussion. In his influential work John, the Maverick Gospel, he proposes that John was written between 75 and 85 C.E., within a decade or so after the destruction of Jerusalem’s Temple.

Kysar’s reasoning rests on several converging observations. 

First, the Gospel’s concern with the conflict between Jewish believers in Jesus and the synagogue authorities (as seen in John 9:22 and 16:2) reflects the decades immediately following 70 C.E., when Jewish communities were redefining their identity after the catastrophe. He argues that the Johannine community was likely expelled from synagogue life during this transitional period, giving the Gospel its distinctive tone of tension and separation.

Second, Kysar points to the Gospel’s pastoral, rather than missionary, purpose. The book’s long, meditative discourses, he suggests, weren’t aimed at converting outsiders but at strengthening an internal, suffering community. Such a setting fits naturally in the years following the Temple’s fall, when Jewish-Christian groups were clarifying their beliefs and facing social exclusion.

While Kysar’s thesis is compelling and elegantly argued, most critical scholars, including Raymond E. Brown, push the date of composition somewhat later, into the last decade of the first century, around 90-100 C.E.

Brown’s argument is notable for its extraordinary balance and breadth. 

He begins by rejecting overly simplistic theories that once dated John as late as 150-170 C.E. He observes that theological development cannot serve as a reliable clock. Paul’s writings, which predate the Synoptics, already contain a “high” Christology, and, therefore, John’s theological sophistication doesn’t necessarily require a 2nd-century setting.

Likewise, the Gospel’s apparent ecclesial organization doesn’t imply a late Church structure, since comparable organization existed among 1st-century Jewish and Christian groups, such as the Qumran community. In other words, nothing in John’s theology or church life demands a post-1st-century origin.

Brown then turns to external evidence, where he meticulously dismantles the claim that no one knew John before 150 C.E. 

Drawing on studies by François-Marie Braun, Christoph Maurer, and John S. Romanides, he shows that the Gospel was recognized and used in orthodox Christian circles by the early decades of the 2nd century, in Egypt, Rome, Syria, and Asia Minor! 

Ignatius of Antioch (c. 110 C.E.) appears to echo the Johannine language, and Justin Martyr (c. 150 C.E.) almost certainly knew the Fourth Gospel. This wide and early circulation makes it impossible to push the Gospel’s composition much beyond 100 C.E.

Moreover, Brown refutes the old notion that John originated in Gnostic circles and only later entered the Church. The Nag Hammadi discoveries (such as the Gospel of Truth and the Gospel of Thomas) show that 2nd-century Gnostic works are far more removed from primitive Christian thought than John. 

Furthermore, no 1st century Gnostic text has been discovered and most experts today believe that ‘Gnosticism” was a 2nd century phenomena. 

Next, Brown examines John’s relationship to the Synoptic Gospels. If John depended literally on Matthew or Luke, it would imply a later date, but Brown sides with those who see independence rather than dependence.

If you’d like to learn more about the scholarly discussions on the relationship between John and the Synoptic Gospels check out Mark Goodacre’s new book, The Fourth Synoptic Gospel. Furthermore, if you purchase his amazing 16-lesson course, The Mysteries of the Synoptic Gospels, this (2025) October, you’ll receive a free copy of the book. It’s a fascinating, accessible deep dive into one of the most hotly debated topics in New Testament scholarship.

Moreover, the Gospel preserves a remarkably accurate knowledge of Palestinian geography, customs, and topography, suggesting that its underlying traditions were formed before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., when such local details were still remembered. 

This early stage (which Brown calls Stage 1 of the Gospel’s composition) was then developed over several decades into the final written form. It would be implausible, he argues, for such a living Palestinian tradition to remain unrecorded well into the 2nd century.

Perhaps Brown’s most decisive argument comes from manuscript evidence. The famous Rylands Papyrus P52, containing a few verses from John 18, is dated to around 125 CE or earlier, demonstrating the Gospel was already being copied and circulated in Egypt within a generation of its composition.

Additional witnesses, such as the Bodmer Papyri P66 and P75, dated to the late 2nd or early 3rd century, already reflect distinct textual traditions, implying the text had been circulating long enough to develop local variations. 

For that to happen, Brown concludes, the Gospel must have been written no later than 100-110 C.E., and probably closer to 90-100 C.E.

Finally, Brown weighs internal indicators. The Gospel’s references to believers being expelled from synagogues, in his opinion, fit best in the period 80-90 C.E, when Jewish communities, reacting to growing Christian claims about Jesus, began excluding his followers.

The Gospel also presupposes the death of Peter (John 21:18-19) and possibly the death of the Beloved Disciple (21:20-23), both of which suggest composition after the passing of the apostolic generation. 

Its realized eschatology (the emphasis on eternal life already present rather than a future expectation) reflects a theological response to the delay of Jesus’ return, a theme that arose only after decades of unfulfilled hope.

These cumulative internal clues point naturally to the last decade of the 1st century as the moment when the Gospel reached its final form.

Thus, Mark A. Powell, in his book Introducing the New Testament concludes:

Similarly, Keener notes:

Finally, German scholar, Udo Schnelle is more skeptical, concluding:

Now that we have examined what scholars say about the authorship and when the Gospel of John was written, we can turn to the next major question: what sources and traditions lie behind it, and how does it relate to the earlier Synoptic Gospels?

Sources Behind the Gospels and John’s Relationship to the Synoptics

The issue of when the Gospel of John was written is also related to the question of its sources. Today, most scholars are quite certain that no canonical Gospels were written by eyewitnesses of Jesus’ life.

As far as the evidence allows us to tell, evangelists were second- or third-generation Christians, living decades after Jesus’ death. These authors inherited a growing body of traditions about Jesus (some oral, some written) and wove them into coherent narratives aimed at preserving, interpreting, and proclaiming the story of Jesus to their communities.

Scholars have spent more than two centuries reconstructing the literary relationships among the Synoptic Gospels whose overlapping material, sequence, and wording make them clearly interdependent. 

The prevailing consensus, known as the Four-Document Hypothesis, holds that Mark was written first, probably around 70 C.E., and that Matthew and Luke independently used Mark as one of their primary sources. 

In addition to Mark, both seem to have drawn on a second written source, now lost, known as “Q” (from the German Quelle, meaning “source”). 

This hypothetical collection of Jesus’ sayings would account for the material shared by Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark. Each evangelist also had access to his own unique sources, traditions or documents sometimes labeled “M” (for Matthew) and “L” (for Luke).

Yet even this well-established model isn’t without dissent. A number of respected scholars have challenged the existence of Q, arguing that Matthew and Luke need not have shared an additional written source at all. Among the most prominent voices is Mark Goodacre, who contends that Luke used both Mark and Matthew directly, thus rendering the hypothetical Q unnecessary. 

Goodacre’s argument has gained considerable traction in recent years and remains an important reminder that even long-standing scholarly models are subject to revision. 

When we turn to the Gospel of John, the picture changes dramatically. For more than a century, scholars have recognized that John stands apart from the Synoptics in both content and style. 

Its narrative structure, chronology, and theological outlook diverge sharply. Jesus speaks in long, reflective discourses instead of short parables; his ministry extends over several years rather than one; and his self-understanding and portrayal are more overtly divine. 

These differences raise the question: Was the author of John aware of the Synoptic Gospels, and did he depend on them in any way?

According to Brown and his Commentary on John, the answer is no! 

In his exhaustive comparison of parallel episodes (the cleansing of the Temple, the feeding of the five thousand, the anointing at Bethany, and the passion narratives) Brown found no consistent pattern of dependence on any one Synoptic Gospel.

At times, John seems closer to Mark or Luke, yet, just as often, he diverges completely. If John had used one or more of the Synoptics as a written source, the resulting inconsistencies would require assuming that he deliberately altered nearly every detail for no apparent reason.

For Brown, such a scenario strains credibility. Instead, he concluded that John drew on an independent stream of tradition, rooted in early Palestinian memories of Jesus but transmitted through a distinct community of believers.

This doesn’t mean, however, that John was composed in total isolation. Brown allows for the possibility of limited cross-influence between Johannine and Synoptic traditions, most likely at the level of oral storytelling rather than written borrowing.

Yet overall, Brown insists that John’s Gospel preserves an independent theological and narrative vision, concluding:

Similarly, Robert Kysar believes that John is, strictly speaking, based on earlier independent traditions that circulated within a stream of the early Christian movement separate from the one that produced the Synoptic Gospels. 

According to Kysar, both the Synoptic and Johannine communities drew from a common reservoir of oral stories, sayings, and theological reflections about Jesus, but each group interpreted and organized these materials in different ways to address its own historical situation. 

For Kysar, the most striking evidence of John’s independence lies in the Gospel’s distinctive structure, style, and theology. 

Rather than recounting a linear ministry culminating in the Passion, as Mark does, John reshapes the story around a series of revelatory “signs” and extended theological discourses that reveal Jesus as the preexistent Word made flesh.

Even where John includes stories known from the Synoptics (such as the cleansing of the Temple, the feeding of the five thousand, or the Passion) he transforms them into vehicles for theological reflection rather than historical narrative. 

The discrepancies are too systematic to be mere editorial revisions of existing Gospels. They instead show that John’s author was working from a distinct interpretive framework and oral base, translating older traditions into the idiom and theology of his own community.

Kysar further observes that John’s language and worldview bear the marks of a long process of community reflection rather than dependence on written sources. The Gospel’s unique vocabulary (words like light, life, truth, and world) and its absence of key Synoptic expressions, such as Kingdom of God or parable, indicate that the Evangelist wrote in a different conceptual universe. 

Likewise, its chronology, which stretches Jesus’ ministry across three Passovers and places his death on the eve of the festival rather than during it, reflects deliberate theological shaping, not historical error or copying. 

For Kysar, these differences make best sense if the author wasn’t revising the Synoptics but reworking independent traditions through the lens of particular Johannine theology.

Consequently, Delbert Burkett, in his book An Introduction to the New Testament, notes:

Conclusion

When was the Gospel of John written? As we have seen, the question has intrigued scholars for centuries and continues to shape our understanding of early Christian history. 

While the exact date cannot be determined with certainty, the evidence points to a period between 90 and 110 C.E., when the first generation of eyewitnesses had already passed away and Christian theology was significantly more developed in contrast to the earliest years of the Jesus movement. 

In this sense, the Gospel of John in the New Testament occupies a unique place. It stands at the culmination of a decades-long process of reflection, offering an interesting perspective on who Jesus was and what his life and death meant for the particular community whom this text was written to.

It's independence from the Synoptic tradition underscores the diversity of early Christian thought, while its profound unity of theme and vision demonstrates how memory, theology, and innovation could merge into one of the most enduring works of the Christian canon.

The Gospel of John thus serves not only as a witness to the historical development of early Christianity but also as a timeless expression of how later believers sought to understand and articulate Jesus’ public ministry and alleged resurrection.

Appendix: To Whom Was the Gospel of John Written?

Most scholars today agree that each of the New Testament Gospels was originally written with a particular community of Christians in mind. These weren’t general-purpose documents produced for the entire Church at once, but pastoral and theological works addressing the concrete needs, questions, and challenges of specific groups of believers.

The Gospel writers sought to preserve the story of Jesus for their own congregations, communities that had already embraced faith in the resurrected Jesus but were wrestling with how to live it out in the complex world of the late 1st century. 

The Gospel of John, in this light, appears to have been written for a distinct group of Christians shaped by their conflict with the synagogue. 

Previous generations of scholars (early 20th-century) believed that John is primarily a Hellenistic Gospel, without any strong Jewish ideas. However, that isn’t the case in contemporary scholarship.

As Burkett explains:

The second reason is the fact that the text, as already noted, repeatedly alludes to followers of Jesus being “put out of the synagogue” (John 9:22; 16:2), suggesting a community of Jewish believers who had come to see Jesus as the Messiah and were consequently expelled from Jewish communal life. 

These believers, separated from their roots yet still deeply formed by Jewish Scripture and symbols, seem to have developed a theology that presented Jesus as the ultimate revelation of God, the one who replaces the Temple, fulfills the feasts, and embodies the divine Word. 

The Gospel’s high Christology, rich symbolism, and reflective tone all make sense when seen as the product of a group struggling to define its identity apart from both Judaism and the broader Greco-Roman world.

At the same time, the Gospel’s repeated emphasis on “the world” and its concern with faith and unbelief suggest that the author also hoped to strengthen and unify an expanding Christian audience.

While rooted in a particular local situation, the Gospel’s language about truth, light, and eternal life transcends its setting, and has the ability to speak to believers of every generation. Perhaps, that is, at the core, the most vivid literary and theological force of this composition!