(approx. 150-500)
 

Robinson's Dates Used When Able

• 40-60 : Didache: Teaching of the Twelve

• 60-: Acts of the Apostles : Western Text

• -c. 70?: The Epistle of Mathetes

• 70: 1 Clement

• 75: Barnabas

• 75-: Apocalypse Of Baruch

• -c. 85: Shepherd of Hermas

• 70-80: Esdras 2 (4 Ezra)

• 70-160: Gospel of Peter

• 100: The Odes of Solomon  "Because He is my Sun and His rays have lifted me up and His light hath dispelled all darkness from my face. In Him I have acquired eyes and have seen His holy day:  The way of error I have left, and have walked towards Him and have received salvation from Him, without grudging. I have put on incorruption through His name: and have put off corruption by His grace. Death hath been destroyed before my face: and Sheol bath been abolished by my word"

• 110: Ignatius

Alan Patrick Boyd :  "The majority of the writers/writings in this period [A.D. 70-165] completely identify Israel with the Church." (Boyd, "Dispensational Premillennial Analysis," p. 47.)

Gary Demar : "Some of the earliest writers commenting on the Olivet Discourse, most likely writing before the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, were referring to the judgment coming of Jesus, an event that the gospel writers tell us was to take place before that first-century generation passed away"

OTHER WORKS FROM THIS PERIOD

• 0020: "Assumption of Moses"

• 0070: Apocalypse of Baruch

• 0070: Mara BarSerapion

• 0075: Ascension of Isaiah

• 0075: Josephus

• 0080: Sibylline Oracles IV/V

St. Chrysostom
(4th Century)

"Having in remembrance, therefore, this saving commandment and all those things which have come to pass for us: the Cross, the Grave, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the Sitting at the right hand, and the second and glorious Coming" (St. Chrysostom's Liturgy)

Proof of the Gospel
(314)
Eusebius of Caesarea
"..how can we deny that the prophecies of long ago have at last been fulfilled?"

• 150: Justin Martyr - Dialogue with Trypho, a Jew

• 150: Pseudo Clement: Recognitions

• 150: Melito - Homily of the Pascha "Who will contend against me? Let him stand before me. It is I who delivered the condemned. It is I who gave life to the dead. It is I who raised up the buried. Who will argue with me? It is I, says Christ, who destroyed death. It is I who triumphed over the enemy, and having trod down Hades, and bound the Strong Man, and have snatched mankind up to the heights of heaven." "The battle between Christians and Jews over possession of the name "Israel" goes back to the earliest days of Christianity..  the past-tense verbs found in (Melito's) Peri Pascha 99 may indicate that the author is referring to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE."

• 175: Irenaeus - Against Heresies "the temple constructed of stones was indeed then rebuilt (for as yet that law was observed which had been made upon tables of stone), yet no new covenant was given, but they used the Mosaic law until the coming of the Lord; but from the Lord's advent, the new covenant which brings back peace, and the law which gives life, has gone forth over the whole earth, as the prophets said: "For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem ; and He shall rebuke many people; and they shall break down their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks, and they shall no longer learn to fight."

• 185: Clement of Alexandria - The Stromata

• 198: Tertullian - An Answer to the Jews "among us, who have been called out of the nations, -'and they shall join to beat their glaives into ploughs, and their lances into sickles; and nations shall not take up glaive against nation, and they shall no more learn to fight.'  Who else, therefore, are understood but we, who, fully taught by the new law, observe these practices, - the old law being obliterated, the coming of whose abolition the action itself demonstrates?"

• 200: Tertullian - Against Marcion

• 230: Origen - The Principles

• 235: Hippolytus

• 248: Cyprian - Testimonies Against the Jews

• 250: Origen - Against Celsus | John | Matthew "I challenge anyone to prove my statement untrue if I say that the entire Jewish nation was destroyed less than one whole generation later on account of these sufferings which they inflicted on Jesus. For it was, I believe, forty-two years from the time when they crucified Jesus to the destruction of Jerusalem."

• 260: Victorinus - Apocalypse Commentary

• 273: Alexander of Alexandia - Epistle on Arianism  "The Father, raising Him to His right hand, hath seated Him upon a throne on high, and hath made Him to be judge of the peoples, the leader of the angelic host, the charioteer of the cherubim, the Son of the true Jerusalem, the Virgin's spouse, and King for ever and ever. Amen."

• 306: Peter of Alexandria - Letter to the Church at Alexandria  "By the later who lived after the destruction of Jerusalem, it was shown to possess a most clear and evidently definite period, especially because in some places the reaping is early, and sometimes it is late, so as to be sometimes before the time and sometimes after it, as it happened in the very beginning of the giving of the law, before the Passover, according as it is written, "But the wheat and the rye were not smitten, for they were not grown up."

• 310: Eusebius - Theophania

• 310: Peter of Alexandria - Fragments

• 312: Eusebius - Demonstratio Evangelica

• 319: Eusebius - Proof of the Gospel - Lightfoot "probably the most important apologetic work of the Early Church." (D.C.B. ii.331.)

• 319: Athanasius - On the Incarnation | Refutation of the Jews

• 320: Eusebius - History of the Martyrs

• 325: Eusebius - Ecclesiastical History

• 330: Lactantius

• 345: Aphrates - Demonstrations  “The theology and writings of Aphrahat draw extensively on the Old Testament reflecting a religious milieu of 4th century Mesopotamia in which Christianity was seeking to define itself as separate from Judaism. (Aphrahat) praises Jesus Christ as the divine conqueror of death and fulfillment of all types and prophecies of the Old Law.”

• 359: Gregory of Nyssa - On Virginity

• 360: Ephrem the Syrian - Selected Works Translated out of the Original Syriac (1847 PDF)

• 367: Athanasius - Festal Letters - "Now, however, that the devil, that tyrant against the whole world, is slain, we do not approach a temporal feast, my beloved, but an eternal and heavenly. Not in shadows do we shew it forth, but we come to it in truth."

• 370: Pseudo Hegesippus - On The Ruin of the City of Jerusalem

• 386: Chrysostom - Homilies Against the Jews "In the late fourth century Chrysostom, in his apologetic works on Christianity and Hellenism, again uses the Temple's destruction as proof of Judaism's illegitimacy."

• 387: Chrysostom - Homilies on Matthew 24 "Was their house left desolate? Did all the vengeance come upon that generation? It is quite plain that it was so, and no man gainsays it."

• 388: Chrysostom - Homilies on Second Timothy

• 390s: Epiphanes

• 390s: Pseudo Chrysostom

• 390: Ambrose of Milan

• 401: Sulpicius Severus - Sacred History

• 408: Jerome - Commentary on Daniel

• 410: Jerome - The Nativity of Christ

• 412: Isidore of Pelusium

• 417: Augustine - On Pelagius

• 420: Augustine - On Doctrine | The Bondage of the Jews

• 420: Cassian - Conferences

• 426: Augustine - City of God

• 428: Augustine - Harmony of the Gospels

• 500: Andreas "And I saw, when he had opened the sixth seal, and behold there was a great earthquake, and the sun became as black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood. And the stars from heaven fell upon the earth, as a fig-tree casteth its green figs when it is shaken by the wind." [Apocalypse 6:12-13] "There are not wanting those who apply this passage to the siege and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus."

• 507: Joshua the Stylite - Syriac Chronicle "On the region of Mesopotamia also, in which we dwell, great calamities weighed heavily in this year, so that the things which Christ our Lord decreed in His Gospel against Jerusalem, and actually brought to pass.." (XLIX)

• 540: Arethas

• 550: St. Remigius - Commentary (On Rev. 7:1) "Here, then, were manifestly shown to the Evangelist what things were to befall the Jews in their war against the Romans, in the way of avenging the sufferings inflicted upon Christ."

• 600: Veronica" - The Avenging of the Saviour

• 725: Irish Book of Questions on the Gospels  "One commentary, an Irish Book of Questions on the Gospels, written about 725, interpreted Christ's coming in Matthew 24 in light of the Judean war, as a coming in judgment through the Roman armies." Quoted in Gary DeMar and Francis X. Gumerlock: The Early Church and the End of the World

• 731: Venerable Bede

• 851: Maurus Rabanus

• 999: St. Symeon

"During the period extending from Gregory the Great to the time of Luther (A.D. 600 to A.D. 1500), the true exegetical spirit could scarcely be expected to maintain itself, or produce works of great merit. The monasteries became the principle seats of learning, and the treasuries of theological literature gradually found their way to them as to so many asylums. Superstition and ignorance effectually hindered the progress of critical inquiry." (Biblical Hermeneutics, p. 661)