@JonEricson I don't see why those need to be mutually exclusive. Granted, the 19th century hyper-critical scholars would have argued that this passage must have been composed after the event. But already by 1924 B.H. Streeter argued that Paul was thinking of this prophecy when he wrote about the Man of Sin in 2 Thessalonians.

But Streeter also argued that Mark included this passage in his gospel precisely because Mark saw Jesus' prophecy as referring to current events.

And that's been the position of most scholars, with the exception of Evangelicals, since.

But "current events" can be ambiguous. By the time Rome sent its armies toward Jerusalem, presumably most people who kept up on current events would know what was going to happen.

So Mark might have expected his readers to understand that this prophecy was about to be fulfilled, or he might have expected them to understand that it had just been fulfilled.

But in terms of Mark's purposes, there is no difference between these two scenarios.

That's what Goodacre is trying to get at in the link above. In terms of understanding Mark's purpose for including this passage in his gospel, it makes no difference whether the fulfillment had already happened or whether it was just about to. The point is that Mark is showing his readers how Jesus' words applied to current events.

@JonEricson So while I agree that the details don't quite match up points to a pre-70 date, I would say that is the date of the prophecy itself, and not the date it was written.

Because there are other factors, like the place it was written. If Papias and Irenaeus from the 2nd century are correct, Mark was with Peter in Rome during the Neronian persecution. Peter was killed but Mark escaped, and then wrote his gospel.

But if he wrote it post-70, he might have known about the temple's destruction but not had many details.

Because regardless of the reason for the discrepancies...

These little details point to the prophecy's existence pre-70, whether or not the gospels were written at that time.

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The question, in terms of dating the gospels, is what would motivate the evangelist to include or exclude a passage. Because, as we can see by comparing any two gospels, none of them thought it was worthwhile to include everything.

If Mark was written around the time of the temple's destruction, the inclusion of this passage makes sense. If it was written much earlier (or much later, for that matter), this passage wouldn't necessarily have any relevance for the original readers.

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So we've got two lines of evidence--Paul's allusion to this prophecy in 2 Thessalonians, and the details that don't quite fit the actual situation--pointing to the prophecy's existence pre-70, and these are accepted even by most scholars who hold to a post-70 date for Mark's gospel itself.

@JonEricson No need to wonder any more why else anyone would cite the siege of Jerusalem as pointing to a post-70 date for the gospels. The reason is because the evangelists are believed to be connecting Jesus' words with events that the readers would recognize from their own time. Maybe the readers have even heard this prophecy as part of the oral tradition, but have not yet made the connection. Or maybe they have made the connection, and seeing it in writing helps confirm it.

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That said, I tend to lean toward a pre-70 date myself (but just barely).

Not just because of this passage (which is a little ambiguous by itself), and the witness of tradition, but also because of the consistent mention of persecutions and the disciples' struggles to trust and remain faithful to Jesus. These would be comforting to Roman Christians who were probably facing the same struggles during the Neronian persecutions. These passages might not be so helpful at other times and other places.

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I've probably rambled too long.

@BruceAlderman Yes. That's the key point that many people miss. As an evangelical, I'm so used to the miraculous being used as "evidence" that the Bible is untrustworthy, that I reflexively react to any suggestion that a miracle didn't occur. I don't think I'm unusual in this respect.

But if Mark was written within a few years of the destruction of the temple either direction, his account of Jesus' prophesy would still have come from an older tradition that would have been available to his readers.

And the prediction need not be miraculous even if it did predate the events in question.

It would be like someone predicting 9/11 in the 1990s. It would be a very good or very lucky guess to predict an attack on the World Trade Center using civilian aircraft, but it would be easily explainable without divine intervention.

Same with the Roman army destroying the temple. The winds of world events had been blowing in that direction for years before it finally happened.

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@BruceAlderman I think our schedules are offset. (And I've been busy with many things. ;-)