Who Wrote the Gospels?

hi this is matt baker welcome to episode 5 in my series on who wrote the bible in previous episodes we looked at what christians call the old testament or what we jews simply call the bible so we looked at the torah also known as the pentateuch the navaim which means prophets and the katavim which means writings together these three sections make up the jewish bible which is also known as the tanakh the protestant old testament is identical to the jewish bible except that the order of the books is a bit different we also looked at the apocrypha or deuterocanonicals which are the extra books that the catholic and orthodox christians include in their old testament in the next several episodes we are therefore going to be turning our attention to the new testament virtually all christians use the exact same new testament and it has 27 books there are four gospels the book of acts 21 epistles meaning letters and the book of revelation in this episode we are going to start by covering the gospels and the book of acts this episode is also a special collaboration with the youtube channel religion for breakfast andrew the host of that channel has also prepared a video about the gospels so when you're finished watching this one be sure to follow the link on screen or in the description to check out his video [Music] [Music] so the new testament doesn't tell the story of jesus only once it tells it four times basically that's what the gospels are they are four slightly different versions of the same story a story about a guy named jesus who among other things was a teacher a healer and according to christians god in the flesh so the four gospels are matthew mark luke and john they are placed in this order because originally that was the order in which they were thought to have been written however as we'll soon see we now know that this probably was not the order in which they were written one thing that is clear about the gospels is that one of them is very different from the others that's the gospel of john the other three matthew mark and luke are known as the synoptic gospels synoptic meaning seen together although they have some differences they also share a lot in common if you think of each gospel as being like four essays written by four different students any teacher would immediately come to the conclusion that three out of the four students cheated either somebody copied from somebody or they all worked together or they all downloaded the same essay off the internet and made a few changes hoping the teacher wouldn't notice the puzzle over who copied who has intrigued scholars ever since the gospels were written in academic circles it is known as the synoptic problem and there have been a lot of different theories put forward about how to solve the mystery i'm going to look at three of them however before i do that let me quickly talk about the authors themselves contrary to popular belief there are actually no author names attached to any of the four gospels the attributions to matthew mark luke and john are simply based on tradition two of the names matthew and john are names belonging to the list of jesus's twelve disciples mark is thought to have been an assistant to peter the leader of the 12 disciples and luke is thought to have been an assistant to paul arguably the most important figure in the development of early christianity so in other words all four gospels have strong associations with very important early christian figures but did matthew mark luke and john actually write the gospels that are attributed to them well according to most conservative christian scholars the answer is yes however according to most critical scholars the answer is probably not either way i think it's useful to think of each author as representing more of a community or tradition rather than a single author we saw something similar when we looked at the old testament prophets for example the book of ezekiel was probably not actually written by ezekiel however it was probably written by a member of a school of thought that originated with a man named ezekiel in a similar manner even if the gospel of matthew wasn't actually written by matthew the disciple of jesus it was likely written by an author who belonged to some sort of community that had a connection to matthew so with that said let's now look at three possible solutions to the synoptic problem i'll start with the one that is by far the most accepted solution these days it is called the two source hypothesis this hypothesis is based on the idea that mark was written first and that both matthew and luke used mark as a source however it also introduces the idea of a second source which was available to both matthew and luke but not to mark this second source is called q but unfortunately it no longer exists the idea is that q was simply a collection of short sayings attributed to jesus some of the reasons why most scholars believe that mark was written first include the fact that it is the shortest of the three synoptics with very little material that is not found in the other two as well as the fact that it uses grammar that is less refined and a theology that is more primitive so the basic idea is that both matthew and luke took what they found in mark and attempted to improve on it both by adding more content and by tidying up the language the second most popular solution is generally known as the griezbach hypothesis named after a german scholar who wrote about it almost 250 years ago however although this hypothesis is an older one it's actually seeing kind of a rebirth these days it argues that matthew was written first and that luke was written second using matthew as a source meaning that mark was actually written last the idea is that matthew wrote his gospel at a time when the christian church was primarily still comprised of jews that luke wrote his gospel after paul started to spread christianity to the gentiles meaning non-jews and that mark wrote his gospel as a way to summarize the previous two and to put peter's stamp of approval on both of them now it is in fact true that matthew is the most jewishy gospel of the three and that luke is the most gentile focused in fact if we go by tradition luke is the only author in the entire bible both old and new that was not jewish tradition holds that he was greek and that he was a medical doctor by profession however according to critical scholarship luke may have simply been a hellenized jew but the main problem with the griezbach hypothesis concerns mark if mark wrote last and had matthew and luke as references why did he leave out key events such as the birth story and the post-resurrection appearances note that the oldest manuscripts of mark end with chapter 16 verse 8 in which three women discover the empty tomb and simply run away afraid almost all scholars agree that verses 9 to 19 were added much later the last solution we're going to look at is a bit of a wild card it's the most cutting edge solution and therefore does not currently have widespread acceptance it's called the q plus papias hypothesis and was put forward by a professor named dennis mcdonald mcdonald is also known for putting forward the idea that the gospel of mark was modeled on the works of homer like the two-source solution this hypothesis holds that q and mark were written first however it differs in that it posits that q was written before mark and that mark had access to it this is why we get the term q plus mcdonald adds more material to the hypothetical cue document material which otherwise is usually assigned to mark next comes matthew who had access to both q plus and mark and then he adds a document called papias papias was an early bishop who lived from around 60 to 130 ce we know from later authors that he wrote a text called the exposition of the sayings of the lord this source is now lost however we have quotations from it found in the works of later authors from these quotations we know that papias had access to three earlier sources mcdonald suggests that these were q plus mark and matthew finally the last synoptic author to write was luke luke presumably would have had access to all four previous works okay so that covers the three synoptic gospels matthew mark and luke i'll place them on a timeline in a bit but first let's talk about john and axe john of course is the fourth gospel but like i said earlier it has very little in common with the other three it's almost as if john is telling a completely different story he adds lots of events that aren't mentioned in the other three and leaves out lots of events that are and whereas the synoptic gospels have jesus giving a lot of short sayings john more often has him giving longer more complex speeches one thing that most scholars agree on is that john's gospel is more theological whereas the other three are more straightforward narratives what do i mean when i say theological i should probably elaborate because i've used the word several times in my various bible videos but have never really explained to myself for example i keep repeating that we have to remember that the bible was written in order to make theological points not to simply record history you see nowadays we tend to divide all writing into two categories it's either fiction or non-fiction but ancient people didn't do this instead they mixed the two especially when talking about topics that are difficult to explain like you know anything to do with god or theology the word theology simply means the study of god for example the authors of the jewish bible held certain beliefs about god that they wanted to express such as the idea that there is only one god and that god exists outside of the natural world when they wrote they weren't simply saying this happened and then this happened and then this and so forth instead they took people that they thought had existed in the past and made them into literary characters they embellished the stories that they had heard about them and sometimes even placed words into their mouths words that expressed the ideas that they wanted to communicate in the present in the jewish bible even god is a literary character this is why god often seems quite different depending on which particular book you're reading does this mean that god doesn't really exist well not necessarily personally i believe in god maybe you do too maybe you don't but either way i think it's important to understand that the god of the bible isn't necessarily the god of reality rather the god of the bible is simply various authors portrayal of god whether you believe that portrayal is accurate inaccurate or somewhere in between that's up to you and i think the same goes for the character of jesus especially in the case of john's gospel obviously many christians believe that jesus said every single word that the gospels say he said but it's also possible that the gospel writers took some artistic liberties that they crafted their stories in a way so that they could make a point about who they thought jesus was rather than simply record he did this and then he did that and so forth for example mark has jesus hanging on the cross in pain shouting as he dies whereas john has him calmly making deep statements and then dying in a very serene way okay one more thing about the gospel of john according to some scholars john has at least two layers instead of using the q source which was simply a list of jesus's short sayings it seems that john instead may have used a now lost source known as the signs gospel a text that listed the various miracles that jesus was said to have performed it's possible that john or more likely a follower of john used the science gospel as a starting point and then worked the rest of the material around it next up is the book of acts also known as the acts of the apostles whereas the gospels tell the story of jesus up until his death and resurrection acts tells us the story of what his disciples aka the apostles did after he was gone in other words it tells the story of how the christian church came to exist and we happen to know who wrote it well kind of the person who wrote the book of acts is the same person who wrote the gospel of luke so traditionally that would be luke the physician in other words luke acts is actually a two-part work that has been unfortunately split up a better way to arrange the first five books of the new testament might be to order them like this first mark then matthew then luke axe then john let's now bring up a timeline every line on this chart represents a block of 10 years let's first add the lifetime of jesus there are various theories out there about when exactly jesus was born when exactly he died and even whether or not he existed in the first place the mainstream position is that he did in fact exist and the most commonly used dates for his lifespan are 4 bce to 30 ce this means that in the year 100 ce there were still people alive who would have known jesus now other than jesus himself the most important person when it comes to the development of early christianity is paul paul was not one of jesus's disciples when jesus was still alive instead he became a follower a few years after jesus died somewhere between 34 and 37 ce although paul himself was a jew he was the person primarily responsible for taking christianity from being a minor sect of judaism and making it into a brand new religion that consisted mostly of non-jews traditionally paul is said to have lived up until the reign of emperor nero and was killed sometime between 64 and 68 ce we'll be talking about paul more in the next episode when we delve into the epistles but for now i thought it would be useful to put him on the chart for reference now the most important date for understanding the development of both judaism and christianity is the year 70 ce i mentioned that date in last week's video as the date for when the second temple was destroyed prior to this pivotal event judaism was a diverse religion with many different branches one of which was early christianity but the destruction of the temple forced judaism to evolve personally i like to think of 70 ce as the date for which both christianity and rabbinical judaism were truly born both religions developed as a way to deal with the loss of the temple on one hand the rabbis shifted the focus onto studying the torah and meeting in synagogues for prayer whereas on the other hand the christians shifted the focus onto the person of jesus and on seeing his death as the replacement for the earlier temple sacrifices all three of the synoptic gospels reference the destruction of the temple unless one interprets these as being real prophecies which many christians do this means that the earliest date for any of the synoptic gospels is 70 ce most scholars do place mark somewhere just shortly after 70 ce and then matthew and luke axe somewhere around 10 years later q if it did exist would be placed before 70 ce perhaps as early as the year 40. john on the other hand is usually placed last around the year 100 ce so even though the gospels may not have been written by the individuals they are now named after they were all likely written during a time when people who had known jesus were still alive which means even if you're like me and don't believe that jesus was the son of god the gospels are still fairly good sources for gathering some basic information about his life now before i go i want to address one more topic since i won't be doing a separate episode on the new testament apocrypha i thought i'd bring up the most famous gospel that didn't make the final cut the gospel of thomas the gospel of thomas is one of many other non-canonical gospels that still exist that's right we have dozens of other gospels beyond just the four that made it into the new testament most of these are thought to have been written much later however the gospel of thomas is the exception to this rule according to some scholars it may have been written around the same time as the main four the other interesting thing about the gospel of thomas is that it was lost to time until a manuscript of it was found in 1945. you can imagine how excited biblical scholars were when this happened at first many thought it might be the q source that had supposedly gone missing this is because thomas is primarily a collection of short sayings attributed to jesus however when it was compared to the synoptics it became clear that thomas was not q it's similar but it's obvious from the text that matthew mark and luke did not use the gospel of thomas when writing their own gospels so who wrote this quote-unquote fifth gospel and how does it relate to the other four well like i mentioned earlier it is best to think of the gospels as being the products of certain camps or communities rather than the works of single authors so for example some scholars posit the existence of a thomasine community and a johannan community within early christianity the followers of thomas saw the resurrection as being more of an act of spiritual enlightenment whereas the followers of john saw it as being more of a factual bodily resurrection this would explain why john's gospel paints the thomas character as being the infamous doubting thomas which just goes to show there was much disagreement among early christians on how to understand jesus in fact even the most conservative christian scholars will admit that it took hundreds of years before all the various so-called heresies were stamped out and the more standard form of christianity that we know today took hold the fact that early on there was not a single christianity but rather many christianities is an important point that we will return to when we take a look at the quran okay so that concludes our look at the gospels and acts in our next episode we will look at the epistles for the full list of episodes check out the links in the description and while you're there don't forget to check out the video by religion for breakfast or you can simply click on the thumbnail which is on screen right now thanks for watching [Music] [Music] you

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Length: 23min 47sec (1427 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021