Historical background of the New Testament that the Temple would not be rebuilt in their lifetimes, Christianity reflected the acknowledgment of early Christians that the Second Coming of Christ and the establishment of God's kingdom on earth was not to happen in their lifetimes. The critical analysis of the Gospels involves, at least in part, a consideration of how these concerns affected the Gospels' accounts of Jesus. According to historian Paula Fredriksen (1988: 5), critical scholars rely on four basic criteria for extrapolating an "authentic" historical account of Jesus out of the New Testament sources: As Fredriksen observes, these criteria do not guarantee an accurate historical
Oxyrhynchus Gospels and Luke 9:50, but the differences in phrasing show they are textually independent of the Gospels. A precise date for composition is unknown; 50 is possible, though a date of around 150 AD. is more widely accepted by scholars. John Dominic Crossan notes the mutilated condition in his introduction to the fragmentary text in "The Complete Gospels" resulting in highly conjectural reconstructions of the text, which, however, "does not seem to be dependent on the New Testament gospels... As an independent gospel, it belongs, insofar as its fragmentary state allows us to see, not with discourse gospels involving the risen