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
New Testament of the New Testament. These were all extremely important figures in the early church, writers would have mentioned their deaths if the New Testament had been written later. Furthermore, the Gospels contain numerous attacks on the Sadducees, a sect of Judaism that was wiped out with the destruction of the temple. Why, they ask, would later writers devote so much narrative space to attacking a group that no longer existed? John Robinson also notes that each book of the New Testament had to be written prior to the destruction of The Temple. Robinson notes that most scholars interpret the Olivet