Gospel?
1) First, a distinction: the Gospel was first understood as a
message, not a literary style, or a mode of communicating the story
about Jesus. The very early church understood the Gospel, which in
Greek means “Good News,” as the message of God’s love and salvation
of the world through Jesus the Christ. In the first century, the Gospel
was something proclaimed, heard and believed ((Mark 1:14, 1
Corinthians 15:3)
2) By the end of 1st century, the word “Gospel” also became a
literary style, a way of telling the story of Jesus IN WRITTEN FORM, as
opposed to the oral stories about Jesus that had floated through the
Christian church for the first 35 or so years after the death and
resurrection of Jesus. Hence, the Gospel (Good News) According to
Matthew became Matthew’s attempt to sketch out the life of Jesus in a
narrative, in a story.
3) The Gospels are not biographies in the modern sense of the
word—no real attempt to provide a complete picture of Jesus’ life (no
childhood scenes or birth narratives in Mark, the first Gospel, for e.g.).
No attempt to provide the fullest and complete details about Jesus’ life,
or provide a transcript of his life. And no attempt to be neutral about
their subject matter—the writers believed in Jesus as the risen Messiah,
crucified and risen from the grave, and living in the world through the
church.
4) Yet, the Gospels are not fiction either. The Gospels generally
take shorter stories about Jesus and craft and edit those stories
according to the editor/writers worldview and their particular desire to
show Jesus in a certain light (see Matthew 5 & Luke 6:7, 20-31—note the
subtle, but important differences). Most of the stories used in the first
three Gospels are short, and are shifted here and there, at times, in
order to make a point.
5) The four Gospels we have in our New Testament were not the
only texts claiming to be “gospels” in the first 200 years of Christianity.
We have known that there were other competing stories about Jesus and
sayings attributed to Jesus that the church finally rejected, though they
were eventually rejected for various reasons. Recent finding at Nag
Hammadi in 1945 have given us a clearer idea of what some of those
competing Gospels looked like. Some examples:
a. The Gospel of Thomas: an early collection of sayings attributed to
Jesus, but without a narrative or story structure. No miracle stories, no
account of his deeds, his birth, death or resurrection. Some of the
sayings resemble our New Testament Gospels, but there is much that
hints that pits matter and spirit against each other (Gnosticism) (http:
//home.epix.net/~miser17/Thomas.html)
i. A Reading from The Gospel of Thomas: 9 Jesus said, Look, the
sower went out, took a handful (of seeds), and scattered (them). Some
fell on the road, and the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on
rock, and they didn't take root in the soil and didn't produce heads of
grain. Others fell on thorns, and they choked the seeds and worms ate
them. And others fell on good soil, and it produced a good crop: it
yielded sixty per measure and one hundred twenty per measure. 10
Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I'm guarding it until
it blazes." 11 Jesus said, "This heaven will pass away, and the one
above it will pass away. The dead are not alive, and the living will not die.
During the days when you ate what is dead, you made it come alive.
When you are in the light, what will you do? On the day when you were
one, you became two. But when you become two, what will you do?"
b. The Gospel of Peter: Another Gnostic Gospel: (http://www.gnosis.
org/naghamm/gop.html)
c. The Gospel of Matthias: A Gospel attributed to Matthias, but
rejected by the early church for the most part. We don’t have the actual
text, but this link is to an interesting look at the historical argument
around this mysterious, but missing Gospel. (http://home.att.net/~david.r.
ross/matthias.html)
6) Why did the church reject these competing Gospels, and instead,
canonize the four Gospels we have in our canon?
a. The four Gospels of the New Testament were most widely
accepted in the New Testament churches, though the Gospel of John
was probably the most controversial inclusion of the four, for reason we’ll
see later.
b. The four Gospels place Jesus in the world, active and physically
alive, and they tend to reject an understanding a disembodied Jesus—
against Gnosticism, which pitted material and spirit against each other,
rejecting the former as inherently evil. John has been suspect at times
of being Gnostic, and there are moments where you can see that
tension, but, overall, it clearly rejects the dualism of Gnosticism.
Three Against One: Or Three Who Agree, And One Who Just HAS TO
BE DIFFERENT! The Synoptic Gospels And The Gospel Of John
1) From the first century on, it has been agreed that the Gospels of
Matthew, Mark, and Luke share a general framework of agreement in
terms of stories, timelines, and general tenor—they are called the
Synoptic Gospels. “Synoptic” means “view together,” and they are
readily and easily compared to each other
a. They seem to share at least a common oral tradition (the stories
verbally passed down from person to person about Jesus) but there
sometimes almost resemble each other verbatim, almost exactly.
b. Jesus uses parables extensively—a imagined story meant to
evoke a reality that lies beyond the literal level of the story or statement
(AB 432). A parable makes a point by analogy—or by comparison of
known fact, situation, or experience (Matthew 13:1-23, Luke 15:8-10)
c. An attempt to explain this verbatim resemblance (something you
would not expect in the passing of the stories from one person to
another verbally) is the two source-theory:
i. The base source: the earliest Gospel is Mark, and it was used as a
source for Matthew and Luke. This accounts for the agreement of the
common material they share, with Matthew and Luke expanding and
editing as they sought to tell the story from their point of view.
ii. The first source: a hypothetical body of stories about Jesus
named as “Q” (from the German for source, Quelle) by scholars that
Matthew and Luke have access to, and that they use to supplement Mark’
s Gospel (for e.g., Parable of the Great Dinner—not in Mark, but in
Matthew 22:1-14 and Luke 14:15-24)
iii. The second source: both Matthew and Luke have separate
material unique to each of them, “M” and “L”—For example, the birth
narratives assigned for this session. Mark has no birth narrative.
Matthew adds the story of Jesus flight to and return from Egypt. Luke
says nothing about this, but adds material about Mary’s visitation by an
angel, her trip to see Elizabeth, and the birth of John the Baptist. We
don’t know whether these unique sources “M” and “L” were written or just
oral traditions about Jesus found in the particular communities of faith
the writer/editor was a participant in.
2) The Gospel of John is unique for many reasons because the
Jesus in John:
i. Does not use parables to teach his disciples
ii. Substitutes “eternal life” rather than “kingdom of God” as the focus
iii. Does a lot more talking in John, in extended dialogues, rather
than the short units found in Synoptics
iv. Talks much more about himself than in the Synoptics
v. Does a lot less traveling, and spends much more time in Jerusalem
vi. Has a public ministry for 3 years, rather than one as implied in the
Synoptics
vii. Has a cosmic beginning in eternity, rather than in human
history—the eternal one who arrives out of nowhere in John 1
viii. Experiences unique stories, like the woman at the well in John 4
and the raising of Lazarus (John 11)
ix. Does a series of signs to mark himself as the Messiah—the Signs
Motif
x. Has a very hostile relationship between himself and “the Jews”—a
sign of what was going on in the late first century, when it was becoming
clear that the vast majority of Jews rejected the idea of Jesus being the
Messiah and Jewish Christians were being asked to leave the
synagogues. Jewish Christians saw their belief in Jesus as a completion
of their Judaism, not a rejection of it.
Differences In The Gospels
1) For many years, some tried to explain the clear differences in the
stories, especially the Synoptics, as resulting of two different experiences
altogether, thus “harmonizing” them (four different Last Suppers!)
2) More plausible is that these different accounts in our Gospels
represent different reports of the same incident—“and the differences
may reveal something more about the way in which a tradition was told
and used later” (Tuckett 74)
3) Why did the Gospel feel as if they had a right to edit the story in
whatever way they first received it to fit their own purposes? Because
the early church did not see Christ as being simply a person of history,
but a living presence in the world, speaking and present in the world,
even 35-65 after his death. If the Christ is still alive in us and in the
world, it is acceptable to allow the Christ to speak a slightly different way
in order to tell the story more completely. So they probably felt
comfortable molding and revising the stories to fit into their agenda,
which was to present the Christ to either the church community from
which came from, or to present Jesus to a new community of focus—for
evangelization purposes.
The Same…And Not The Same: Distinctive Aspects of the Three
Synoptic Gospels
Jesus On The Move! Mark
1) Some distinctive things about Mark:
a. Considered to be the first written Gospel of the Four Gospels,
and the basis of Matthew and Luke, though it is the shortest Gospel (late
60’s or early 70’s).
b. Jesus is always on the move—he’s constantly moving around,
entering and leaving
c. Jesus is always telling people not to reveal who he is, especially if
they “get” the secret of his identity—Messianic Secret. The disciples don’
t get it, but the minor characters do.
d. Jesus is resurrected, but there are no reports of his interactions
with the disciples—the original Gospel ends with 16:8, but someone has
added onto the story from 16:9-20
My First Crush: Matthew
1) Some distinctive things about Matthew:
a. Probably the second Gospel to be written of the four (70’s or 80’s)
b. The story is set up to show that Jesus fulfills the ancient Hebrew
Scriptures—“all this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the
Lord through the Prophet…” Fulfillment formulas
c. Probably written by a community with many Jewish Christians
involved
d. Avoids the “kingdom of God” (Jewish avoidance of the sacred
name) and uses the “kingdom of heaven” instead.
e. The favorite Gospel of the early church, hence its primacy as the
first Gospel in the ordering of the books.
Is The Doctor In? Luke-Acts
1) Some distinctive things about Luke-Acts
a. Most scholars treat the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the
Apostles as one literary work that at some point were divided into two
separate books
b. Tradition says that Luke-Acts was written a Christian physician
named Luke, though we don’t know whether that is the case or not.
c. Luke is very well-written, clearly by a well-educated Gentile person
d. If Matthew’s focus is on Christ’s Jewish roots, then Luke is firmly
rooted in the Gentile world (though there are MANY allusions to the
Hebrew Scriptures that are not explicitly alluded to in the text itself).
Probably a Hellenized Jew—a Jewish person whose roots are both in the
world of Rome and the synagogue.
e. Luke is obsessed with possessions and their hold on us—giving
up everything, including things, for Jesus.
f. Acts—the story of the church’s birth and its telling of the Gospel to
the world, immediately following the ascension of Jesus into heaven
g. Apostles are “one who are sent” –a delegate or representative;
Also a person who had known Jesus (disciples) or someone who had
been directly called by God (Paul) to preach the Gospels.
h. The focus shifts from Peter early in Acts to the Paul and his
ministry, noting the shift of focus of emphasis for the church—from a
evangelization of the Jews to an evangelization of the Gentiles (Acts 10)
