My basic assumptions here ---
1) The letters of Paul are the product of a Jewish evangelist working among Gentiles under the name of Paul, and (at least the 5) letters addressed to his communities are adequately intact for detailed analyses of his work and his system, and
2) GMark is the earliest of our extant NT Gospel stories and was written sometime after the first Roman-Jewish War, and the author was dependent on Paul’s letters for crafting his story.
Using only the information in the letters, reliable internal time-markers are lacking for narrowing-down Paul’s letters except within relatively wide parameters. Paul’s story in 2 Corinthians of his escape from the ethnarch in Damascus under a King Aretas is fraught with uncertainties. Using broader time markers, one might place Paul’s letters between the late 1st C BCE and the Roman-Jewish war in 66-73 CE.
Many within Christian Bible scholarship use Acts to attach specific dates to Paul’s activities. But for a great many critical scholars and other critical investigators, Acts provides a good source of 2nd century Christian traditions, but does not serve as a reliable source of historical information of early Christian origins and activities.
But it was the author of GMark that placed the death of Jesus Christ at the hands of Pilate, and the later Gospel writers followed suit with that timeline, as did the author of Acts with the continuation of the story-line.
So it was the governorship of Pilate over Judea in 26-36 CE that set the parameters for the timeframe for the death of Jesus in GMark, and all the subsequent NT authors followed suit. The date range for Pilate’s governorship over Judea is quite well established from multiple sources and other evidence.
In Mark 15:6, the author tells about a custom of how Pilate “used to release” a prisoner at the festival. It takes at least a couple of years to establish a customary practice, so the death of Jesus at the hands of Pilate in Mark’s story would have been between 29 and 36 CE.
For how this relates to Paul --- using 29-36 as end-points for the death of Jesus at the hands of Pilate from GMark, and accounting for the events that might follow that death based on Paul’s claims in his backstories in his letters ---
Two to 6 years for Paul to learn of the death of Jesus, for assemblies to form in Judea that had faith in Jesus as some sort of anointed-by-God figure, and for Paul to harass them, plus,
A year or so for Paul’s sojourn in Arabia after his revelation from God, plus,
Paul’s “then after 3 years” for his visit with Cephas in Jerusalem (Galatians 1:18), plus,
Paul’s “then after 14 years” for his visit with the Pillars in Jerusalem (Galatians 2:1; is the 3 years included in, or, in addition to, the 14 years?) ---
This would place Paul sometime after his initial visit with the Galatians and after his claimed visit with the Pillars, and reasonably close to the approximate time of writing his letter to the Galatians.
Doing the math here with the Pilate dates of 29-36, provides a ball-park range of dates of 46 to 60 CE for the writing of the letter Galatians. The lower-end of this estimate is based on a death in 29, 2 years for Paul to become a harasser, and the 3 years and 14 years in Galatians inclusive (i.e., 14 years from Paul’s revelation from God). The upper-end estimate is based on a death in 36, 6 years for Paul to become a harasser and the 3 years and 14 years in Galatians additive (i.e., 17 years from Paul’s revelation from God). In a middle-ground estimate with a death in 33, 3 years for Paul to become a harasser (plus a year in Arabia), and 17 years from Paul’s revelation yields a date for the writing of the letter Galatians of 54 CE.
The vast majority of dates suggested in the scholarship for the writing of the letter Galatians fall well within the ball-park range of the dates of 46-60 estimated here, with most estimates in the scholarship in the late 40’s to early 50’s. Of course that’s no surprise --- the consensus dating is derived from very much the same kind of analysis I have done here.
This dating of Paul’s letter seems to depend on Mark’s story of Jesus Christ having been crucified at the hands of Pilate --- that is, apparently based on a historical Jesus. But that is not necessarily the case at all.
Just to set the stage a bit here first. That the author of GMark was dependent on Paul’s letters is gaining wider traction in NT scholarship --- whether one might claim that it has become a consensus or a majority opinion, I couldn’t say. But for me, the dependence is as clear as the nose on my face and something I am not inclined to waste time debating.
I have long-admired the way Professor Burton Mack described the use of Paul’s “Christ myth” by the author of GMark ---
“Mark took the basic ideas from the Christ myth but dared to imagine how the crucifixion and resurrection of the Christ might look if played out as a historical event in Jerusalem … “ 1/
Professor Paul Tarazi takes the relationship a bit further --- that GMark was written in order to shed light on Paul’s teachings and that the author of GMark was a member of the Pauline group after Paul’s death. I disagree with some of Tarazi’s line-of-reasoning on the topic, but certainly agree with those characterizations. 2/
I have speculated previously on this forum about why a Pauline-oriented author might find the need for a new and more efficient way to spread the good news and accumulate patrons other than the cumbersome and time-consuming process of demonstrating from a pile of OT scrolls about Jesus Christ.
In a historical Jesus scenario with the governorship of Pilate as the starting point, Paul’s letters can be dated by counting forward in time using the internal events in those letters that Paul included as his back-stories. I think that process is valid, but backwards. Consistent with a non-historical Jesus in recent times, I think the process took place in reverse order.
I think the author of GMark, a dedicated Paulinist, started with Paul’s letters and the events of Paul’s back-stories in those letters and counted backwards in time. Having chosen to set his story in Judea, the time of the governorship of Pilate was an easy winner for the setting of his story --- the best setting in time for a heavenly spirit to possess a man Jesus and to come in the likeness of man, for Paul’s Pillars to be portrayed as younger men chosen by Jesus to be his primary disciples, and along with the rest of Mark’s tale that fits very well with the time-frames Paul described in his letters of how he came to be the last among the ‘chosen’ apostles.
The author of GMark was an exceedingly clever writer. And, in the absence of an actual historical Jesus in recent times, Mark could have set his story within a wide range of time. But he was careful to craft his prequel in such a way so that Paul’s backstories meshed seamlessly.
In the context of a non-historical early-1st century Jesus, I think GMark provides significant evidence for the consensus dating of Paul.
robert j
1/ Burton Mack, Who Wrote the New Testament, HarperCollins, New York, 1995, p. 152
2/ Paul Tarazi, The New Testament: An Introduction: Paul and Mark, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1999.