[photophotoplasm]

> I would love to see a good source on the "circulating around the time of Jesus" claim. I've never been able to track down anything credible on that front.

Me too. The earliest writings I know of are Paul's letters and possibly the Didache, and neither of them were written until a couple of decades after Jesus' ministry.

[TheRevoltingX]

I thought Mark was written around 40 years after Jesus.

[tesmar]

Mark was written about AD 50, so about ~16 ish years after Jesus.

[olavk]

I believe the general consensus is that Mark were written around AD 70, making it closer to 40 years after Jesus.

[lotharbot]

There's some disagreement. Some date Mark to around 50 AD; others to between 65 and 72 AD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament#Dates_of_composit...