Dating 1 John

[jaydam]

In Johannine class, they take 1 John 2:18 "last hour" and say the only last hour John and other believers would be looking to would be the 2nd coming of Christ. Thus, John is writing about Christ's 2nd coming. They also date 1 John as having been written in the 90's AD.

Given a date of 90's AD I might agree with them, but I see doubt upon their reasoning of the only last hour John would look for.

Having listened to Steve's lectures on Mt 24, I see that John could have been looking to another last hour also, the last hour of the temple and the temple system as Christ told 4 of them (including John) what to look for then. This consideration would obviously require that 1 John be written prior to 70 AD.

I found one commentator who briefly says 1 John is one of the hardest books to date, admits it could have been written in the 60's AD but gives no decent support, and then goes on to say that he believes it was written in the 90's AD and provides fairly extensive support for such a date.

Other than that, I cannot find somebody who provides more evidence for a possible 60's AD writing. Anybody have more evidence for a 60's AD date or know of a commentary that supposes such a dating and looks at 1 John in that light?

Or is a pre-70's AD date really not that plausible?

Thanks for anybody's insight or help.

[steve]

John A.T. Robinson wrote a book called "Redating the New Testament," in which he argued for a pre-AD70 date of writing for every New Testament book. This is unusual for a liberal scholar. They usually want to late-date everything.

[jaydam]

Great, I'll check out the book. Thanks Steve.

[jaydam]

In case anyone cares, the book is out of print, but here is a link to the free PDF

http://richardwaynegarganta.com/redating-testament.pdf