When and in what order was the New Testament written?

It seems only seven books of the New Testament were written during the lives of the apostles, according to a consensus of Biblical scholars. These books are the "undisputed" letters of Paul - 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, Philemon, Philippians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Romans. All or almost all of Jesus' contemporaries were dead by the time the other New Testament books, including the gospels, were penned.

This is a relatively new perspective for Christians; but as Christians come around to this view, should they give more weight to Paul's seven letters than to the other New Testament books? If they were to, then maybe the Free Grace theology of my fundamental Baptist upbringing wouldn't seem so overstated. There would still be funny phrases to wrestle with, like "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12), but at least James wouldn't be as big a problem.

But there could be other problems. Though these seven epistles go at length about salvation by grace through faith in the crucified and risen Christ, and though they call Jesus Lord, they don't call him God, they say nothing about a virgin birth, and they say nothing about an empty tomb (though that last one might not be such a problem for the orthodox when the risen Christ is mentioned). And they don't forbid women from speaking in church, or require them to ask doctrinal questions to their husbands rather than their pastors; but to the fundamentalists' comfort, Romans does start out sounding sufficiently homophobic.

The view that Paul's seven epistles are the only parts of the New Testament written during the lives of the apostles poses a serious challenge to what I call the "Ebionite myth" - the idea popular among modern Ebionites, Black Hebrew Israelites, some liberal Protestants, and Muslims, that there originally was a purely Jewish (if subversive) Christianity that centered around Jesus' teachings rather than his death, and then Paul came and messed it up. Given that the oldest records of Christian doctrine we have are written by Paul, it gets pretty hard to say that Paul's writings about salvation by grace and atonement through Jesus' death and resurrection are a perversion of Christianity.

I bet you could learn a lot about the development of very early Christianity by studying a chronological New Testament. The most famous one right now is by Marcus Borg. He dates various books differently than does Raymond Brown, who is one of Jericho Brisance's other sources. Borg sets James earlier in the sequence than Brown does, mostly because James looks like it might be closer to earlier Christianity. (Maybe it's the egalitarianism and the "faith without works is dead." I personally think "the Father of lights" makes the book sound a bit neo-Platonic or Gnostic, but anyway Jews had been in contact with Greek and Persian religion for centuries before the author of James was born.) Also, Borg sets John earlier than Luke, which I find strange because to me John looks like the biggest weirdo of the canonized gospels. I personally prefer Brown's dates over Borg's, but Borg's book looks worth the read.