[ p. 238 ]
THE study of the Gospels, as we now have them, is fascinating, and this study is made even more fascinating in the light of modern criticism. This reconstructs for us the methods by which our present Gospels took form. They are shown to be very human —not exactly what they were supposed to be by devout readers of a former generation, but actually much more real and natural. And they show the same Figure which men have always found as they read the story—one who stands in a unique position to God and men, claiming unmeasured authority over his disciples and receiving from them unquestioned recognition of his authority and power.
Matthew’s work was not the present Gospel which bears his name, but a much smaller document, made up largely of sayings and parables, with a few dialogues. [1] It had no passion narrative; but, beginning with the Baptist, it gave an orderly account of Jesus’ teaching by topics, concluding with predictions of the final judgment. Its date we do not know; probably not far from the year 45, say fifteen years after the [ p. 239 ] death of Jesus. The place of writing was presumably Jerusalem. Its translated form can be reconstructed roughly by taking the passages in St. Luke that agree closely with St. Matthew but have no parallel in St. Mark. We may call it the “Sayings.”
This work had a wide circulation, as was natural because of its authority; hut it omitted many things and was soon supplemented by other writings. Luke tells us of “many” who undertook to write narratives. Of these “many,” however, we can identify only two. One of them was Mark. The other was a Greekspeaking Jewish-Christian of Palestine—possibly Philip the Evangelist, who is mentioned in Acts. He drew up a collection not unlike the “Sayings,” although written in a very different Greek style; added to it more miracles, a passion narrative, and an account of the Jerusalem resurrection experiences, prefixing to the whole an account of Jesus’ birth. As this work was used extensively by Luke, it is customarily called “L.” It seems to have been written around the year 60, certainly in southern Palestine. This book and the “Sayings,” according to modern theory, were woven together by Luke into a continuous narrative nowadays called “Proto-Luke.”
That St. Mark is the earliest of our present Gospels is no longer doubtful. The Evangelist wrote in Rome, about the year 70. His readers were familiar with Jesus’ general teaching, and there are many things about the Gospel that suggest that they—and he—used the “Sayings.” At any rate, while the “Sayings” includes little but sayings and parables, St. Mark contains [ p. 240 ] chiefly dialogues, miracles, and a passion narrative which admirably supplements the “Sayings.” [2] A very old tradition, which Papias quotes, says that St. Mark reproduces the teaching of Peter. This is corroborated by the contents of the book. It really begins with Peter’s call. It relates events at which he was present with extraordinary vividness; we constantly feel that we are in the presence of an actual eyewitness. From Acts we learn that Mark, as a young man, was a member of the Jerusalem community in which Peter lived and taught, and that Peter was a familiar visitor at the house where Mark’s mother dwelt.[3] During his most retentive years, then, Mark heard Peter tell the stories over and over again, until he knew them all by heart. Then Mark himself took up missionary work, and so in turn told the stories himself, day after day, for twenty years or more. Toward the end of Peter’s life he worked with the aged apostle in Rome, and may well have been a witness of his martyrdom. After Peter’s death, at any rate, he wrote down the stories of the Lord’s life and teaching as he had heard them from the lips of Peter himself.
His plan, as always in the early teaching, was topical; “not in order,” says Papias. [4] The Gospel itself [ p. 241 ] shows this. After an introductory chapter, we are given five anti-scribal dialogues; then five scenes illustrating various opinions of Jesus; then three parables; then five miracles illustrating faith and lack of faith; and so on. We observe, moreover, that while the basic material is Petrine, Mark arranged and annotated it in such a way as to insist on the universality of Christianity, so giving to Peter’s tradition a Pauline coloring.
Matthew’s “Sayings” and Mark’s Gospel made up together an ideal account of Jesus and his work, but to have different types of tradition in separate documents was inconvenient. Consequently Luke, who in his “Proto-Luke” had already united the “Sayings” with L, enlarged his work by adding to it copious extracts from St. Mark; the result was his Gospel as we now have it. At about the same time, some unknown Jewish Christian united the “Sayings”—which he reproduced more fully than Luke [5] —with St. Mark almost entire. Too modest to give his own name to his production, he let it stand to the credit of the apostle who had written the “Sayings”; it has been called ever since “The Gospel according to Matthew.” Both Luke and this unknown author wrote shortly after the year 70. The Gospel according to Luke was composed for the use of Gentiles, although it is not as Pauline as St. Mark. All conjectures as to the place where it was written are mere guesswork. St. Matthew presupposes Jewish-Christian readers, and it is not in any way [ p. 242 ] “Pauline.” Although it approves of the Gentile missionary work, it considers Jewish Christianity the purest form. It must, therefore, have been composed somewhere on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, probably in Palestine.
These three Gospels rapidly displaced all earlier and rival works; indeed, for a while St. Luke and St. Matthew threatened to displace St. Mark. They are known as the “Synoptists,” and the relations between them constitute what is called the “synoptic problem.” We have sketched these relations, as they are generally understood today, but certain consequences of the Evangelists’ methods should be observed.
The oldest part of the written tradition is found in the “Sayings.” Experts agree that this work is, generally speaking, very trustworthy. The sayings contained in the “Sayings” are homogeneous, betray no interests later than the lifetime of Jesus, and are uniformly on the highest level. Students, therefore, in reconstructing what Jesus taught explicitly, always begin with this work.
As St. Mark is the earliest of our Gospels, his account is usually to be preferred to parallel versions in the other Gospels, [6] for, nine times out of ten, the parallels are merely St. Mark rewritten. In using St. Mark, however, we must distinguish between the older material he employed and the notes he added; a rather delicate task in some cases. We must also be on our [ p. 243 ] guard against assuming that all of St. Mark’s tradition is from Peter, although probably the great bulk of it is.
Of the material in St. Matthew and St. Luke which does not come from either St. Mark or the “Sayings” the most unquestionable tradition is the parables. Otherwise there is very little additional matter in St. Matthew. The L source in St. Luke is not easy to reconstruct without some experience in synoptic work and a good knowledge of Greek. As it contains little that in one form or another is not paralleled in the “Sayings” or St. Mark, [7] the task of analysis would best be left to the experts.
When one feels assured that he has worked back to the oldest and most reliable tradition, he must be warned to keep in mind one other fact. We are dealing with sources arranged topically. We have, therefore, no right to suppose (say) that the events in St. Mark’s fifth chapter occurred after those in his second. Moreover, since the first tradition was quite indifferent to topography, it is a serious error to assume that we can recover much topographical information from it. Maps of the “journeys” of Jesus drawn out of Mark’s narrative mean literally nothing. It is for this reason that in our treatment of Jesus’ ministry we have made little attempt to describe his movements. The tradition was not concerned with such detail. Its whole thought dealt with more vital matters.
We must remember, too, that the separate paragraphs of our tradition were arranged for pedagogical [ p. 244 ] purposes, the teacher adding or omitting whatever seemed needful for the immediate lesson. It is sheer waste of energy to spend much time in analyzing the psychological progress of thought in any of these sections.
Even when our three Synoptic Gospels were written, they were already in need of explanation. The atmosphere of their tradition is that of Palestine around the year 30, and their vocabulary is technically Jewish. Toward the end of the first century, most Christians were Gentiles. They knew very little about Jewish religious terms and customs. The very title, “Messiah,” “the Anointed One,” was obscure, since anointing as a religious rite was unknown among the Greeks. “The Kingdom of God” demanded so much explanation that the phrase was little used. “Son of Man” had become a meaningless title to those who knew nothing of its Jewish significance. Few Christians had ever seen a Pharisee. The temple, now destroyed, was as remote to them as it is to us. Their interest in apocalyptic study was rapidly declining, except at moments of special stress. These Christians, moreover, while intensely anxious to believe aright, had neither the time nor the ability to concern themselves with the past stages in the formulation of their beliefs. Christ, as God’s eternal Son, meant everything to them, but the steps by which Jesus’ Messianic consciousness had developed meant little or nothing. Much of the synoptic tradition, therefore, they made no attempt to understand, or, if they tried, understood most imperfectly, [ p. 245 ] often even altogether erroneously. [8] The time had come to rewrite the story in terms of permanent validity, and this task was taken up by John. His purpose was to use language which no one of his readers could fail to grasp.
Nothing in this Gospel is left in a halfway stage. The method is admirably illustrated by the writer’s use of Jesus’ parables. When we read the parables in the older tradition, we sometimes say to ourselves: “Exquisite, but precisely what does it teach?” John was determined that no one should be in doubt as to what was taught. In his two famous parables, that of the Good Shepherd and the Parable of the Vine and the Branches, he thoroughly works the interpretation into the parables themselves. [9] “I am the Good Shepherd”; “I am the Vine.” So, while on occasion he uses traditional Jewish terms, he normally replaces them by simpler equivalents. In this way, “Kingdom of God,” in almost every instance, becomes “Eternal Life.” The apocalyptic is carried back into the present life. It is the decision we take now that determines God’s judgment for us. Jesus, in his historic teaching, purposely made the Messianic implications in his words ambiguous, although, as we look back, the correct meaning is clear enough. John saw no reason why Christian readers should be made to puzzle themselves with such ambiguities. [10] Why not make such passages say what they actually mean? Thus all obscurity is removed [ p. 246 ] from Jesus’ sayings about himself; from the beginning, in the Fourth Gospel, he proclaims himself as what he actually was.
Nowadays, to explain an obscure writing we furnish it with a commentary. But, even nowadays many people are unable or unwilling to use a commentary, while in John’s age a commentary would have been an absurdity. The narrative is therefore made to provide its own commentary. The readers, he felt, could not possibly go wrong, now, with the story thus interpreted for them. The result is that his Gospel is the most popular and the most useful of all the four. It not only makes clear the meaning of both the words and deeds of Jesus, but in anything that has to do with the nature and person of Christ its guidance is definite and sure.
On the other hand, the fact that the narrative is its own commentary makes it difficult for us to use it for purely historic purposes. Just how far the interpretation colors the story is a matter much disputed among scholars, especially as to some of the events which John narrates. Are these events also made self-interpreting? Is there woven into the history something of the significance of the history? In some cases we may be reasonably sure that the accounts are wholly objective; in other cases we cannot be so sure. In this book, therefore, we have preferred to keep on the “safe” side, for the most part using St. John only to illustrate the meaning of the story taken from the older tradition.
The author of the Gospel was certainly named “John,” and was certainly an “Apostle.” Whether he [ p. 247 ] was one of the Twelve or a Jerusalem disciple is still a matter of debate. His work was first published after his death, with a supplementary chapter—the twentyfirst—by one of his own disciples, explaining how it was possible that the aged saint could die before the Lord came again. The date of publication was close to the year 100, and the place was Ephesus.
Such miracles as were included were for the sake of accompanying teaching, and had dialogue form. ↩︎
The Gospel, as Mark wrote it, ends with xvi: 8, before the risen Christ appears. The remainder is supplementary and from another hand. Either the original ending has been lost, or Mark intended to write a second treatise, beginning with Jesus’ resurrection. ↩︎
As has been said already, this house was possibly the place where the Last Supper was held. ↩︎
Although we do not know exactly what idea Papias had in speaking of “order.” ↩︎
This is simpler than to suppose, as some do, that he used still a fourth written source. ↩︎
This does not apply to Luke’s passion narrative, which was taken from L. ↩︎
Always excepting the passion narrative. ↩︎
Only those who have studied early Christian Gospel interpretation realize how very wrong it often was. ↩︎
The result is what we call “allegory.” ↩︎
Some of which were interpreted in an amazingly perverse fashion, ↩︎