Hello, friends, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ. This will be the most in depth gospel-study ever written by the time we are through with it. If you're new here, you can acquaint yourself with this study by reading the Introduction, which can be found here.
Please note that we are developing an index of Christ's sayings as we move forward through the Gospel. We are collecting certain data along with each saying that will allow us, one day, to peer into Christ's morality with a precision that has been (at least in recent times) unrivaled. That index of sayings can be found here.
For the last six weeks, we spent a preposterous amount of time and effort to show the invalidity of the cosmology of Satan as a critical component of Jesus' moral teachings. Going forward, at least for a while, I hope for there to be little more to say about that topic. I appreciate the patience of those of you who stuck it through with me.
Today, we're going to talk a little more about the authorship of the Gospel, and then continue our reading of The Gospel According to Matthew.
Salud.
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A Brief Overview of the Authorships of the Gospels of Christ
When they're growing up, most American Christians today are taught (if they're taught anything about them at all) that the four gospels were written by the persons named in their titles; that The Gospel According to Matthew was written by a guy named Matthew; that The Gospel According to Mark was written by a guy named Mark, etc. It is factually dishonest to teach people these ancient traditions. Incorrect information about the nature and origin of the gospels has led to incorrect interpretations of the gospels. Today, we will work to dispel some of these inaccuracies.
What did the ancient Christians say about the authorship of these four books?
The ancient tradition holds that The Gospel According to Matthew was written by the Apostle Matthew, an eyewitness to the events of Jesus' life, who is mentioned in The Gospel as one of The Twelve. The ancient tradition says that The Gospel According to Mark was written by John Mark, a figure occuring in The New Testament and sometimes described as "Peter's Interpreter." The ancient tradition holds that The Gospel According to Luke was written by a certain Syrian from Antioch named Luke. Finally, the ancient tradition says that The Gospel According to John was written by none other than John of Zebedee, an eyewitness to the events of Jesus' Galilean Ministry.
I hate to be the burster of bubbles, but none of that is likely correct.
Let's take this one at a time, in search of the actual authors. Follow me.
The Gospel According to Matthew
Author - Anonymous
The Gospel According to Matthew, as we've mentioned, is anonymous. There is no byline in the text, and the author of the text does not insert himself into the narrative at any juncture. He never says "on summer evenings, me and Jesus used to wander out to the edge of town for prayer," or "I saw Jesus as they took him to be crucified."
The Gospel according to Matthew, far from being an original work, can actually be shown to be a combination of at least three different sources that existed prior to it. Matthew is a combination of The Gospel According to Mark, the "Q-text," and what scholars call "M." Recall that "Q" stands for the German "Quelle" meaning "Source," and indicates the source of work that Matt and Luke have in common that is not found in Mark. "M" stands for "Matthew" and indicates written and oral traditions available to the author of Matthew but not reflected in the other two synoptics*.
Matthew is a compilation, not a firsthand account. If the author of Matthew had been Matthew of The Twelve, he wouldn't have needed to avail himself so heavily of Mark and Q.
The Gospel According to Mark
Author - Anonymous
The Gospel According to Mark, the oldest extant Gospel, is attributed in the ancient tradition to a gentleman named John Mark. John Mark makes several appearances in The New Testament as a travelling companion of Paul and Barnabas, and as a subordinate of the Apostle Peter. John Mark apparently never knew Jesus, but might have known people who knew Jesus. To reiterate: the ancient tradition holds that Mark was not authored by an eyewitness.
It is not possible to say for sure who wrote Mark, as the text has no byline, so most modern scholars will simply tell you "we don't know who wrote Mark."
The Gospel According to Luke
Author - Anonymous
The Gospel According to Luke, as you may recall, is part-one of a two-part series that modern scholars call "Luke-Acts." Part-two of Luke-Acts is The Acts of the Apostles, the first text to appear in The New Testament after the four Gospels. Most scholars concur that the two texts are indeed of a common author.
Luke-Acts was ascribed, in the ancient tradition, to Luke, a physician and travelling companion of Paul. This travelling companion is mentioned in a few instances in The New Testament, but it is hard to verify the character as an actual doctor, let alone the author of Luke-Acts.
The texts themselves are, in fact, anonymous, and most scholars will tell you "we aren't sure who wrote Luke-Acts." What scholars will tell you is for sure is that Luke-Acts is not an eyewitness account, as evidenced by the prologue at the beginning of Luke, in which the author speaks of "those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning." This means that two out of three of The Synoptic Gospels were understood in the ancient church to be non-eyewitness accounts.
The Gospel According to John
Author - Anonymous
The authorship of The Gospel According to John is perhaps one of the most important topics we will ever cover here at The Moral Vision. There are a number of reasons for this, many of which will only become totally clear sometime in the future when our study has had time to mature.
When reading the Gospel straight through, The Gospel According to John feels like a sucker-punch after the three homogeneous Synoptics. The tone of the writing, the style of the writing, and the cosmology conveyed by John are all markedly different than its Synoptic brothers. Even the simple chronology of events is different in John. In the Synoptic gospels, for instance, Jesus celebrates a Thursday Passover meal the night before his execution on Good Friday. The Gospel According to John, however, indicates that the execution occurred the day before Passover.
We will write volumes about the incoherency between John and the other Gospels. Today, as far as authorship is concerned, we will avail ourselves of the notation provided as an introduction to John in The New American Bible, Revised Edition. The NAB notes the following about John:
Critical analysis makes it difficult to accept the idea that the gospel as it now stands was written by one person. Chapter 21 seems to have been added after the gospel was completed; it exhibits a Greek style somewhat different from that of the rest of the work. The prologue apparently contains an independent hymn, subsequently adapted to serve as a preface to the gospel. Within the gospel itself there are also some inconsistencies, e.g., there are two endings of Jesus' discourse in the upper room (14:31; 18:1). To solve these problems, scholars have proposed various rearrangements that would produce a smoother order. However, most have come to the conclusion that the inconsistencies were probably produced by subsequent editing in which homogeneous materials were added to a shorter original.
Other difficulties for any theory of eyewitness authorship of the gospel in its present form are presented by its highly developed theology and by certain elements of its literary style.
To be clear, this passage constitutes the Roman Catholic Church admitting that John was likely not an eyewitness account.
Ancient tradition said that John was written by John of Zebedee, an eyewitness to - and key figure of - the Galilean Ministry. Ancient tradition ascribed the Epistles of John and the Book of Revelation to the same author. There are many American Christians who still hold these ancient views today. About the authorship of Revelation, the NAB has this to say:
The author of the book calls himself John, who because of his Christian faith has been exiled to the rocky island of Patmos, a Roman penal colony. Although he never claims to be John the Apostle, whose name is attached to the fourth gospel**, he was so identified by several of the early church Fathers, including Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Hippolytus. This identification, however, was denied by other Fathers, including Denis of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory Nazianzen, and John Chrysostom. Indeed, vocabulary, grammar, and style make it doubtful that the book could have been put into its present form by the same person(s) responsible for the fourth gospel.
Scholars generally agree that The Gospel According to John was the last of the Gospels to find its present form, sometime between 90 and 110 AD.
So, what can we say about the Gospel, generally?
Each book of it arrives in its modern form anonymous. Ancient attributions of these works have turned out to be questionable in every case. None of the Gospels claim to be an eyewitness accounting of events, and modern scholarship indicates that ancient traditions attributing any of these books to eyewitnesses are incorrect.
So, we have no first-hand account of the life of Jesus Christ. What we do have is four anonymously composed and compiled texts that sometimes disagree with one another. Because they sometimes disagree, these texts must bear the maximum amount of literary scrutiny before they can be accepted as truly representing the teachings of Jesus. And that, friends, is really the whole point of our broader endeavor. Our study together constitutes this requisite scrutiny.
Now, let's get back to our Gospel.
Matthew 4:18 through Matthew 4:20
18 As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen.
19 He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
20 At once they left their nets and followed him.
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You will tire of me saying "this is one of my favorite parts," but this is one of my favorite parts.
Jesus has just began his Galilean Ministry, and he needs to recruit some help. He walks down to the shores of the Sea of Galilee and sees our man Peter (a.k.a. Simon, a.k.a. The Rock) fishing with his brother Andrew. He calls out to them with Jesus Saying #6, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
I love the abruptness to this scene. There's an economy of language to Jesus here that makes him seem powerful. "Fishers of men" resonates in my head like a bell.
I love that, without a word, the brothers leave their nets, or their careers, behind. What could it have been about the personality of this man that other men would just abandon their trades and follow him? This scene affords us a good opportunity for this kind of reflection. One thing that is fairly constant throughout the Gospels is Jesus' charisma and ability to captivate others. I like to imagine what someone would have to say, or how they might have to act, in order to convince me to abandon my nets the way these boys immediately did.
This personality must have been a force. Whoever he was, he must always have been the center of attention. Instantly the most important guy in every room.
I love how obedient Simon and Andrew are here. "At once" they followed him. They don't argue or make any excuse, but are so motivated by Christ's personality that they simply obey his words instantly.
Great reading.
Next time, we will see this scene replayed for the recruitment of the brothers Zebedee, neither of which authored The Gospel According to John. Rapidly, we approach Jesus' "Sermon on the Mount," which contains some of the richest data we have about Jesus' moral code. Join us again, because we are finally getting to the good stuff!***
Please share this writing.
Love.
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* The "Synoptic" Gospels are the first three: Matt, Mark and Luke. "Synoptic" comes from the Greek "sunopsis" - literally "to see together." This term is used to describe these Gospels because these Gospels share the same story arc, generally. The term excludes The Gospel of John, because that Gospel is markedly different than the first three.
** Many Bible scholars call the gospels by their number, since we don't know who wrote any of them. For them, "Matthew" is "the first gospel." "Mark" is "the second gospel," and so forth.
*** Who am I kidding? Ancient history is all good stuff.
* The "Synoptic" Gospels are the first three: Matt, Mark and Luke. "Synoptic" comes from the Greek "sunopsis" - literally "to see together." This term is used to describe these Gospels because these Gospels share the same story arc, generally. The term excludes The Gospel of John, because that Gospel is markedly different than the first three.
** Many Bible scholars call the gospels by their number, since we don't know who wrote any of them. For them, "Matthew" is "the first gospel." "Mark" is "the second gospel," and so forth.
*** Who am I kidding? Ancient history is all good stuff.
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To read what's next, click here.
To read what came prior to this, click here.
To read what's next, click here.
To read what came prior to this, click here.
For the index of Christ's words, click here.
