The Rightly-Guided Injil

Timeline

Dates are approximate and follow the mainstream scholarly range; “c.” means circa. The timeline runs from the birth of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam to the fixing of the Christian canon and the revelation of the Qur’an, and it is here so that a reader can see at a glance how far each gospel, each letter and each manuscript stands from the events it reports. Where a date is disputed, the range is given.

The first century

  • c. 6-4 BCE: Birth of Jesus, in the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 BCE (Matthew 2:1). Luke’s census of Quirinius (2:2) falls in 6 CE; see the discrepancy tables.
  • 26-36 CE: Pontius Pilate prefect of Judaea.
  • c. 27-30 CE: Ministry of Jesus, after John the Baptist; crucifixion under Pilate, most often dated to 30 or 33 CE.
  • c. 33-36 CE: The call of Paul of Tarsus (Galatians 1:15-17; Acts 9).
  • c. 36-39 CE: Paul of Tarsus’s first visit to Jerusalem, “after three years” (Galatians 1:18).
  • 41-44 CE: Herod Agrippa I king of Judaea; death of James the son of Zebedee (Acts 12:2).
  • c. 48-50 CE: The meeting in Jerusalem (Galatians 2:1-10; Acts 15) and the dispute at Antioch (Galatians 2:11-14).
  • c. 50 CE: 1 Thessalonians, probably the earliest surviving Christian writing.
  • c. 50-57 CE: Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, Romans: the seven letters of Paul of Tarsus.
  • c. 57 CE: Paul of Tarsus’s last visit to Jerusalem and his arrest (Acts 21).
  • 62 CE: James, the brother of Jesus, stoned in Jerusalem on the order of the high priest Ananus (Josephus, Antiquities 20.200).
  • 64 CE: Fire of Rome; Nero’s persecution of Christians (Tacitus, Annals 15.44). The deaths of Peter and Paul of Tarsus are traditionally placed in these years; no contemporary record of either survives.
  • 66-73 CE: The Jewish War. The Jerusalem church is said by Eusebius to have fled to Pella.
  • 70 CE: Destruction of the Temple by Titus. Mark is written within a few years of this, before or after.
  • c. 80-90 CE: Matthew and Luke-Acts.
  • c. 90-110 CE: John; the letters of James, 1 Peter and Hebrews are placed by most scholars in the same decades.
  • c. 50-140 CE: The Gospel of Thomas, a collection of 114 sayings, compiled somewhere in this range; Stephen Patterson argues for about 70-80 CE in eastern Syria. Hippolytus of Rome (222-235 CE) is the first to name it.
  • c. 93 CE: Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, with its references to John the Baptist, to Jesus and to James.

The second century

  • c. 100-130 CE: The Pastoral Letters (1 and 2 Timothy, Titus) in Paul of Tarsus’s name.
  • c. 110-130 CE: Papias of Hierapolis records the traditions about Mark and Matthew later quoted by Eusebius.
  • c. 112 CE: Pliny the Younger writes to Trajan about the Christians of Bithynia.
  • c. 125-175 CE: Papyrus 52, a fragment of John 18, the oldest known piece of any gospel.
  • c. 140 CE: Marcion’s canon: one gospel (a shortened Luke) and ten letters of Paul of Tarsus. The first known list of Christian scriptures, drawn up by a man the church expelled.
  • c. 150 CE: Justin Martyr quotes the “memoirs of the apostles” without naming them. The Protevangelium of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas are written in this century.
  • c. 170 CE: Tatian’s Diatessaron, a single harmony of the four gospels, which the Syriac churches used in place of the four until the fifth century.
  • c. 180 CE: Irenaeus of Lyons names the four gospels and argues that there can be neither more nor fewer, and describes the Ebionites.
  • c. 200 CE: Papyrus 46 (the earliest collection of Paul of Tarsus’s letters, without the Pastorals), Papyrus 66 and Papyrus 75 (John and Luke). The Muratorian fragment, an early list of accepted books, is dated by most scholars to around this time.
  • c. 200 CE: Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1, the oldest fragment of the Gospel of Thomas, in Greek; P.Oxy. 654 and 655 follow in the third century.

The third and fourth centuries

  • c. 230-250 CE: Origen writes on the disputed books and on the Ebionites.
  • 303-311 CE: The persecution of Diocletian; Christian books are ordered burnt.
  • 313 CE: Constantine and Licinius grant toleration.
  • 325 CE: Council of Nicaea defines the Son as “of one substance” with the Father.
  • c. 325 CE: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, sorts the Christian writings into accepted, disputed and rejected.
  • c. 330-360 CE: Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, the two oldest complete Greek Bibles; both end Mark at 16:8 and omit John 7:53-8:11.
  • c. 350-450 CE: Nag Hammadi Codex II, with the only complete text of the Gospel of Thomas, in Coptic; found in Egypt in 1945.
  • 367 CE: Athanasius lists the twenty-seven books of the New Testament in his Easter letter, the first list that matches the present canon.
  • c. 375 CE: Epiphanius, Panarion, with the fragments of the Gospel of the Ebionites.
  • 382-405 CE: Jerome’s Latin Vulgate.
  • 393 and 397 CE: Councils of Hippo and Carthage ratify the twenty-seven books for the Latin West.

The fifth century to the Qur’an

  • 431 CE: Council of Ephesus declares Mary Theotokos, God-bearer.
  • 451 CE: Council of Chalcedon defines two natures in one person. The churches of Egypt, Syria and Armenia reject it; the Christians nearest Arabia are divided among Chalcedonians, Miaphysites and the Church of the East.
  • c. 570 CE: Birth of Muḥammad in Mecca.
  • 568-645 CE: The radiocarbon range of the Birmingham Qur’an folios, two leaves of Sūrat Maryam in Ḥijāzī script, among the oldest Qur’anic manuscripts known.
  • 610-632 CE: The Qur’an revealed. 622 CE: the Hijra to Medina. 632 CE: death of the Prophet.
  • c. 650 CE: The Qur’an collected in the codex of ʿUthmān.
  • c. 820s CE: The Christian apology under the name of al-Kindī, the earliest surviving full statement of the argument that the Qur’an certifies the Bible.
  • c. 860 CE: Death of al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm, who retold Matthew through the Qur’an; see how this gospel was composed.
  • 1985 CE: Ahmad Shafaat, The Gospel According to Islam, the base text of the gospel on this website.

Sources

  • Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, for the dating of each book.
  • Bruce Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance.
  • Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, books 18 and 20; Tacitus, Annals 15.44; Pliny, Letters 10.96.
  • University of Birmingham, Cadbury Research Library, on the Birmingham Qur’an manuscript (Mingana 1572a).