Evocatio Deorum and the Date of Mark‪.‬

The date of the Gospel of Mark is generally set a few years either side of the destruction of the Second Temple on the 9th of Av, 70 C.E. (1) The grounds for this dating vary. Earlier commentators tended to place considerable stock in the patristic testimony, which claimed that the author of the Second Gospel was a companion of Peter, which in turn implied a date for the Gospel either during Peter's lifetime or shortly after his death--in any event, before 70 C.E. (2) More recent scholarship has insisted on internal evidence of date, with attention mainly falling on Mark 13. There is no strong tendency apparent: although perhaps the majority hold that Mark looks back on the destruction of the Second Temple, (3) a few recent commentators, usually combining patristic testimony with internal evidence, hold that Mark ought to be placed shortly before 70 C.E. (4) The pertinence and reliability of patristic testimony are much in question, but in any event do not take us back much earlier than Clement of Alexandria and Irenaeus at the end of the second century. (5) The best place to begin is with the internal references. Several texts are routinely cited that point to a relatively early dating, but none of these permits us to narrow down the date to one side of 70 C.E. or the other. Mark 9:1 and 13:30 predict that some of Jesus' contemporaries will live to see the parousia, predictions that, given a mean life expectancy of forty years, would point to a date not too much later than 70 C.E. Such indications of date are not very strong, however, since Matthew, usually dated in the 80s, has taken over the two Markan predictions almost unchanged. If Matthew was able to tolerate failed or obviously failing predictions, then so might Mark. (6)