Christianity
The Gospels Matthew, Luke and John, and the Synoptic Problem
Abstract
No single translation of the New Testament can be recommended as a completely clear and accurate reading.Bruce Chilton
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Tuesday, December 01, 1998
The Gospel of John
Christians might believe that in the gospels they have independent accounts of the ministry of Jesus. One observer, they might argue, could have been mistaken but could four? Regrettably examination of the texts tends to explode this argument. One expects different accounts of the same events to tell broadly the same story, but when the common material extends to the same word order, vocabulary and grammatical peculiarities one begins to suspect copying. The four gospel writers are not independent witnesses.
The one which does seem to be independent of the others in large measure is the last in the New Testament and the last one completed. The first three gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke are called the synoptic gospels because they tell essentially the same story—they have the same viewpoint. John is quite different from the other three, omitting—apparently deliberately—much of their content. The author seemed to feel another full account could serve no purpose but that there was scope for refinements—doctrinal clarifications and additional material to answer criticisms. The author of John was writing a work to complement the synoptics.
The high prestige of John for Christians partly comes from Paul’s description of John in Galatians 2:9 as one of the pillar apostles, the others being Peter and James, but it is unlikely that John the apostle wrote it. Very little, if any, of the New Testament is written by people who knew the Son of God in person. Despite its own claims, the signs are that it was written late, so long after the events it records that the apostle John must certainly have been dead. John could have been written as early as 100 AD or some say, certainly mistakenly, as late as 160 AD. It is not mentioned by Papias or Marcion writing about 140 AD and Justin Martyr only quotes from it tentatively in 163-167 AD as if he knew his readers would not regard it as authoritative. Not until the third century did it become generally accepted.
John propagates a well developed theological outlook, its parts being linked together as a uniform whole to a much greater extent than the other gospels. It is more than the set of pericopes—units of oral tradition—that can be seen in the synoptic gospels. John is more didactic, philosophical and theological than the synoptics. It is mainly discourse rather than narrative, and depicts Jesus as giving lengthy disquisitions rather than the homely sayings and parables of the other gospels. These long connected discourses suggest the source was a programme of sermons, possibly derived from originals by the evangelist, which were worked up by authorities in one of the regional churches.
The history of the church is of doctrine becoming more and more elaborate not of it being simplified. Furthermore, the evolution of Jesus from man to messiah to divinity to equality with the Almighty places John late in the timescale—advanced elements would not be lost once established so it could not have preceded the synoptics. As it adds, at a late date, much that is not in the other gospels and is overlaid with later theology, it can only be used as a secondary source.
The material peculiar to John is the miracle at Cana, Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, healing a cripple and a blind man in Jerusalem, raising Lazarus, washing the feet of the disciples, the farewell discourses, parts of the passion and the prologue. We must treat these additions with skepticism not least because Matthew and particularly Luke obviously made determined attempts to pull together every particular of tradition they could find, and yet never heard of such an astonishing event as the raising of Lazarus. In John this was so amazing a miracle it was the reason for Jesus being crucified, so it could hardly have been forgotten by those interviewed by Matthew and Luke.
Unlike the synoptics, Jesus’s messiahdom is recognized very early (Jn 1:14). Yet, in John 6:15, when the multitude want to make Jesus king, he refuses to accept, taking measures to evade the crowd. The cleansing of the temple and the anointing are in a different setting and order from the other gospels and there is little verbal agreement with them. But John is very free with the rendering of his Old Testament quotations and it is possible that he was equally free with his rendering of the bits of the synoptic gospels he chose to use. The title Son of man is less used than in the synoptics—Son of God is favoured.
Besides these, John’s chronology has been mixed up, either by him for doctrinal reasons or by editors, or perhaps by accident—some pages look as though they have been interchanged for no clear reason. In several places in John, transpositions would improve the flow of the text. The raising of Lazarus from the dead is the immediate cause of Jesus’s arrest not the cleansing of the temple, which occurs near the start of the gospel, but some scholars think John 2.13b-25 has been misplaced and should really be after the raising of Lazarus thus restoring the cleansing of the temple to its proper place. Possibly an editor attempted to answer the criticism that Jesus’s behaviour in the temple was an act of banditry and redolent of rebellion by deliberately moving it earlier in the story.
The date of the last supper in the synoptics and John differ. In the synoptics, it is a Passover meal but in John it is one day before. This difference might be due to the Nazarenes’ use of a different calendar, the solar calendar of the Essenes prescribed in Jubilees not the lunar one of Jerusalem. Or perhaps the synoptics used the reckoning of Jews in the diaspora in which the Passover was fixed not varying according to the phase of the moon. But even this puzzle, which John creates, looks less like calendrical confusion than that John thought it suited God’s purpose to depict Jesus as the paschal lamb—simply altering the chronology to have him crucified on the day when the lambs were being sacrificed in readiness for the Passover. Some scholars take all John’s references to time to be symbolic.
John is the most hostile of the three to the Jews, but it has more in common with Jewish mysticism than with Rabbinism. The author of John also allegedly wrote the Revelation of St John the Divine between 69 and 93 AD, which, being an apocalypse, is in the style of the Essenes. It was always controversial, Marcion rejected it, Jerome as late as 420 AD rejected it, but Justin Martyr accepted it and gradually it became accepted universally. It is difficult for the modern mind to understand how such mumbo-jumbo continues to be included in the Christian canon but, since no one now has the authority to change God’s bible, it is easier to ignore it, or leave it to fundamentalists, who love it! Historically it is valuable, being largely Essene.
Since the discovery of the Qumran scrolls—dubbed the Dead Sea Scrolls from the proximity of the site to the Dead Sea—about fifty years ago in the Judaean wilderness, we now realize the gospel of John also has Essene features and vocabulary. Concepts like light and truth, previously thought to be Hellenistic, are found in the scrolls as is the contrast of light against darkness. There are parallels with the Hermetica of Hermes Trimegistus in Egypt in the second and third centuries AD and some common imagery in the work of Philo of Alexandria such as the metaphors for God of light, fountain and shepherd. Philo also uses the concept of the Logos.
John might contain therefore some elements of genuine Nazarene tradition, treated from a different perspective from the other three gospels—but, being the last and the most highly developed in its thinking, John remains historically the least reliable of the gospels. John still has to be treated with the most caution, and especially where it reports remarkable incidents that no one else ever heard of.
The Synoptic Problem
Matthew, Mark and Luke are earlier than John but are not at all independent. Indeed, in some respects they are so similar they create a problem of their own, called by scholars, the synoptic problem. The problem is to explain the following facts.
- These three gospels have much common material. Matthew covers 90% of Mark! These two have 250 verses in common, many containing the same words and phrases. Only seven short passages of Mark fail to appear in Matthew. Luke contains almost 50% of Mark but misses out the whole chunk of Mark 6:45 to 8:26. Only four passages of Mark, about 30 verses, are not covered in either Matthew or Luke.
- In about half of the material common to all three, the grammar and phraseology and even unusual vocabulary are often the same. Compare for example the following three passages from the synoptic gospels.
…and as he was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders, and they said unto him, By what authority doest thou these things? or who gave thee this authority to do these things? And Jesus said unto them, I will ask of you one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or from men? answer me. And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why then did ye not believe him? But if we should say, Of men; they feared the people: for all verily held John to be a prophet. And they answered Jesus and say, We know not. And Jesus saith unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.
Mark 11:27-33And when he was come into the temple, the chief Priests and the elders of the people came unto him as he was teaching, and said, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority? And Jesus answered and said unto them, I also will ask you one question, which if ye tell me, I likewise will tell you by what authority I do these things. The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him? But if we shall say, Of men; we fear the multitude; for all hold John as a prophet. And they answered Jesus, and said, We know not. And he also said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.
Matthew 21:23-27…as he was teaching the people in the temple, and preaching the gospel, there came upon him the Chief Priests and the scribes with the elders, and they spake, saying unto him, Tell us: By what authority doest thou these things? or who is he that gave thee this authority? And he answered and said unto them, I will also ask you one question; and tell me: The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why did ye not believe him? But if we shall say, Of men; all the people will stone us: for they be persuaded that John was a prophet. And they answered, that they knew not whence it was. And Jesus said unto them, Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.
Luke 20:1-8 - These passages are effectively identical. Not only are they from the same source they are copied almost unaltered.
- Matthew and Mark often agree when Luke differs and Luke and Mark sometimes agree when Matthew differs but in each case the order of the common material is nearly always the same. There is also a body of material in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark, mostly the teachings of Jesus with little narrative and no passion. Again the similarity often extends to wording but Matthew and Luke rarely agree when Mark differs.
- On the other hand, there are parts where the same events in Matthew and Luke are given very different settings and quite different vocabulary is used, as in the healing of the centurion’s servant (Mt 8:5ff; Lk 7:1ff).
- Matthew and Luke often include doublets, accounts of apparently the same event with slight differences. Each of these two gospels also have aspects peculiar to themselves: Luke’s travel narrative is largely his own (Lk 9:51-18:14) whereas Matthew groups his material into five themes.
As long ago as 1778, G E Lessing attempted to solve the synoptic problem by proposing that the gospels were different translations of an original Aramaic gospel—the story of Jesus told by his companions and early Jewish followers. But the best explanation is that two of the gospel writers used the work of the other, and, where they used it, they copied it virtually word for word. Since Matthew and Luke between them contain almost the whole of Mark, we can deduce that Mark was the original gospel and the other gospel writers had sight of it before they completed their own versions. The reasons are as follows.
- We have seen that, in the sections common to all three synoptic gospels, passages are constructed too similarly to be independent.
- Mark’s order is followed in both Matthew and Luke. The differences in Matthew are because Matthew has consciously grouped his material into five themes yet this order is not reflected in Luke or Mark. Since only seven short passages of Mark do not appear in Matthew, evidently Matthew had Mark to work from and incorporated nearly all of it into his own account. We saw that Luke covers almost half of Mark, usually retaining the same order.
- Matthew and Luke are more concise than Mark. Mark has six verses to describe how Jesus healed in crowds by driving out the unclean spirits (Mk 3:7-12). In Matthew, only two verses are required and in Luke only three (Mt 12:15-16 and Lk 6:17-19). They also usually improve Mark’s style by omitting unusual words and unwieldy grammatical constructions. These are signs that Mark has been edited in Matthew and Luke.
- Though Mark is more verbose he is often less precise, as when he calls Herod a king in Mk 6:14 although, as Matthew and Luke correctly state, he was only a tetrarch (Mt 14:1; Lk 9:7). Mark has been corrected in Matthew and Luke so must have come first.
- As the gospels became aimed at an increasingly gentile audience editors would be expected to eliminate Aramaic words. Mark has more Aramaic words in the sayings of Jesus than Matthew and Luke. Also Mark was not writing for Jews because he explains Jewish customs like handwashing (Mk 7:3-4) and defines the Aramaic words and phrases he uses—unless it is expedient not to.
- Mark is more honest in his accounts, showing Jesus with a full range of human emotions and even some foibles. Mark says Jesus could do no mighty work in Nazareth (Mk 6:5), Matthew says not many (Mt 13:58) and Luke omits it. In the stilling of the storm, Mark is definite in his wording, “Do you still have no faith?”, compared with Luke’s, “Where is your faith?”, and Matthew’s, “You of little faith” (“Mk” 4:40; “Mt” 8:26; “Lk” 8:25). Humanity fades in later editions as the man receded and the god advanced.
Modern biblical analysts do not doubt that the similarities between the synoptic gospels must imply common sources, but was it a single one? Many scholars postulate two written sources for “Matthew” and “Luke”—“Mark” and a source labelled by scholars “Q”. Thus, the doublets mentioned above can be explained as accounts from both “Q” and “Mark” that differed sufficiently for Matthew or Luke to want to include both.
Luke and Matthew were not named as the authors of their gospels until Irenaeus did so in 180 AD. Such late assignments cast doubt on their validity.
The Gospel of Matthew
Though sophisticated Christians today prefer John, Matthew was considered the most important of the gospels for almost the whole history of the church. It was placed first in the canon because of the regard in which it was held.
Matthew is the most Jewish of the gospels and probably reflects most strongly the ambience of the Jerusalem Church. Jewish customs and words are not explained as they are in Mark and, in that sense it seems to anticipate a Jewish readership. Some see this strong Jewish flavour as proof of its authenticity. Others dislike it as signs of the work of Judaizers, a mythical breed of early Jewish Christians who tried to deny the innovations introduce by the Son and revert to good old Mosaic Jewishness. Despite Judaizers and its Jewish tone, it propagates the Hellenized view of the Christ—that conditioned by Greek culture—rather than the Jewish view of the messiah. It does not use as many Aramaisms as does Mark and most of his quotations are from the Septuagint, the Greek version of the scriptures, both of which could point to the source of Matthew being a city like Alexandria or Antioch where Jewish communities had long been Hellenized. Jewish Christians were reverting to orthodox Judaism as time went by with no sign of the kingdom appearing. Attempts were made to stem the ebbing of the tide in vain. Even in these largely Jewish cities, the gentile theology of Paul began to dominate, and Jesus had to become divine—but in Matthew it was Jews who recognized it—the disciples not the Roman.
There are thematic indications that Matthew is Essenic in nature, and so it is not unreasonable to believe that Matthew did have its origin in one of these cities. Nazarenes, escaping the troubles in Palestine after the crucifixion, dispersed to various centres where their brothers the Essenes had strong communities. The author seems not to be defying or negating the Jewish religion but rather is showing here is a thoroughly Jewish faith of a firmly established church. Matthew is a polemic with the rabbis of the synagogues—a polemic which continues the polemic of the Essenes with the Pharisees. His purpose is exactly that of the sectarians of Qumran—he is stating categorically that only the elect, formerly the Essenes but now the Christians, will enter the kingdom of God.
Matthew is more carefully constructed than the other gospels. It has many similarities with the Damascus Rule of the scrolls. Though not being quite so obviously a manual of rules, there are rules in it—most notably in the sermon on the mount. And, like the Damascus Rule, it gives some history of the foundation of the movement and some exhortations or discourses—in Matthew they end with the formula, “…and it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings”, each being devoted to a topic—the sermon on the mount, a missionary discourse, a parable discourse, a church discourse, and an eschatological discourse, thus serving as a vade mecum for members, as the Damascus Rule did.
Matthew is keen to show Jesus—who is a parallel figure to Moses—as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy. His approach is akin to the pesher method of commentating on scripture favoured by the Qumran community whereby current events are interpreted as prophesied by the scriptures. Matthew has five scriptural references in the birth narrative to show that prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus. Matthew’s use of these quotations is rarely precise. He does just what the sectarians of Qumran did—change the quotation subtly to suit his purpose.
The original draft of Matthew might have been written in Alexandria where many of the survivors of the fall of Jerusalem settled because of its proximity and its large Jewish population—a third of its population of three million—or Antioch where an early church was established possibly based on an existing Essene community. Its strong emphasis on the leadership of Peter in the years immediately after the crucifixion (in Matthew, Peter is granted special authority) suggests it arose in a Jewish milieu where Peter was revered, Antioch being the place of choice. Matthew is the only gospel to mention a church (Mt 16:18; 18:17), certainly a late interpolation, though it might be based on the word used by the Essenes, often translated “congregation”. Matthew also shows late influences in the concluding passages (Mt 28:18-20).
It seems odd that Matthew, a Jewish composition, should lean so heavily upon Mark, a gentile composition, as it obviously does. The explanation can only be that Mark carried great authority, and that authority traditionally is that Mark is really the Gospel of Peter, Peter having dictated it to Mark. Matthew could forgive Mark his clumsy style, Latinisms and other foibles because he was passing on the words of the man who had been Jesus’s minder.
An aim of Matthew seems to have been to answer criticisms and to do so he concocts unlikely explanations. The reluctance of John the Baptist to baptize Jesus and the guards at the tomb serve to explain respectively that John the Baptist recognized Jesus as superior and that the disciples could not have stolen the body. Similarly, narratives of Peter walking on water, Judas bargaining for silver and Pilate washing his hands serve respectively to boost Peter, damn the Jews as money-grabbing traitors and absolve Romans of any responsibility for torturing a god.
The infancy narrative seems to answer charges of Jesus’s illegitimacy. The flight to Egypt and subsequent return parallels Moses and the children of Israel’s sojourn there in the scriptures, but Jesus’s family return to Nazareth, instead of Bethlehem, providing an explanation for Jesus’s title—the Nazarene. Some wiseacres in the empire might have remembered that the Nazarenes were a group of Jewish revolutionaries so an innocent explanation of the title was needed. In like fashion, modern apologists, embarrassed by Jesus so plainly stating that to be rich is to be a sinner, have invented a narrow gate in the walls of Jerusalem called the Needle’s Eye. There is no historical evidence for any such gate. Jesus’s metaphor is paralleled several times in the Jewish Talmud which also has large animals attempting to do incredible things serving as visual images of the impossible.
Scholars have long recognized that Matthew had at hand a collection of citations written in Aramaic because he punctuates his narrative at various points with the formula, “…this happened in order to fulfil what was said by the prophet”. This collection they called the Logia. Such collections existed in the Jewish world, for example in one of the Qumran testimonia documents in which three sections consist of quotations of messianic prophecies and the fourth is from the apocryphal Psalms of Jonah. Their use suggests the author was a member of a sect like the Essenes. According to the biblical scholar, Donald Guthrie, if Matthew belonged to a group which, like the men of Qumran were devoted to such exegesis, it is easy to see how many of the texts would spring naturally to his mind when he was writing the narrative. In Matthew, the Logia is combined with Mark’s account to create a richer synthesis than Mark alone. But since it was not completed until around 100 AD, the apostle Matthew cannot have had any part in the final editing. Additions continued to be made for another 100 years.
A church Father, Papias allegedly affirmed that Matthew collected oracles or sayings—the Logia—which were translated by others as best they could. He says the Logia was a collection of Jesus’s sayings compiled by Matthew for the use of Christian teachers—it was indeed a manual. The version used by the gospel writers was probably a good Greek translation of the original Aramaic. Scholars consider it was assembled 25-30 years before the gospels and some clergymen believe it might actually have been collected in Jesus’s lifetime. Much of it seems to have been in practical form, and, because its allusions are often rural, believers consider they give an insight into Jesus’s character.
Now we can see that the Logia preceded Jesus, deriving from a collection of Essene liturgy, prayers, testimonia, maxims and orders, probably arranged in five parts to reflect the five books of the Pentateuch, inspiring Matthew’s fivefold arrangement, and apparently an early catechism or manual of discipleship. Its rural character arose because the Essenes were farmers and herdsmen. The source called Q is essentially the Logia but Luke evidently left out much of it as being too Jewish—emphasis on the fulfilment of the law, remarks about the lost sheep of the house of Israel, some sayings and testimonia, and perhaps some anti-Pharisaic material. Matthew’s apocalypse is much longer than Mark’s and eschatology also shows in the parables of the tares and the talents suggesting a pronounced Essene influence.
There is much in Matthew to value though it is not a Greek translation of the Aramaic Gospel of the Nazarenes. If Matthew belonged to a community of Nazarenes then even his collection of oracles will be of interest in understanding them although they might not help us greatly in settling the narrative sequence.
The Gospel of Luke
The gospel of Luke also is not independent. Luke is thought to have been a doctor, the companion of Paul on his travels. So, he was neither an eyewitness of the events he describes nor the secretary of one, as was Mark—Paul only met Jesus in his imagination. If Luke was the companion of Paul, the two did not communicate a great deal because Luke does not seem to use Paul’s epistles or understand Jesus in quite the Pauline way.
Luke evidently was an educated man whose Greek was good, though not classical (writers of literary Greek always copied the classical style) and who, by his own account, did some research before writing. The prologue to Luke’s gospel says he used the works of a number of writers who had recorded the memories of the original disciples of Jesus. By the time he put it all together, Christians had long abandoned the idea of an early parousia. Luke was well versed in the Septuagint. He also wrote Acts, both his books being written for gentiles.
Luke arguably had knowledge of Antiquities of the Jews written in 93 AD by the Jewish historian, Josephus, and Acts is usually dated at about 100 AD, but some consider it could have been much earlier. Acts ends tantalizingly with Paul awaiting trial in Rome in around 64 AD suggesting to some theologians that the work was written about then. But Paul’s fate might not have been what the early church wanted to record, and the narrative in Acts might have been left deliberately unfinished. Though the events of Acts follow those of Luke, Acts—or parts of it—was probably drafted first. Luke would have written down first what he was familiar with—the history of his companion, Paul, so parts of Acts might be quite early but the gospel much later. The Acts of the Apostles was probably written by Luke in part as early as 64 AD. Luke himself or editors then tampered with it considerably.
Luke has much to say about the conversion of gentiles and gentiles are often painted in a good light. He is evidently a gentile writing for gentiles, but he is one who seems quite well versed in Essene ways of thinking. He shows every indication of being either an Essene proselyte of Stephen’s Hellenistic wing of the Nazarenes, or a godfearer who had stood for a long time at the edge of the Essene movement, longing to join but not having the courage to be circumcised and grateful for Stephen’s revisions of the law allowing gentiles to be admitted into a form of Judaism. He shows his Nazarene influence in his desire that people should repent, repentance being a central theme of Luke, but—like Stephen—he extends repentance beyond the Jews to everyone, and thus helps to universalize the narrow sectarianism of the Essenes. So there are dangers in accepting Luke as a primary source but indications that he was familiar with pre-crucifixion Essenism. Providing that care is taken to resist Luke’s universalistic desire, evidence about the Nazarene mission can be gleaned from his gospel.
Luke uses Mark, that is plain, but is much less deferential towards it than Matthew. He renders some of the passages in Mark much more freely, as indeed he seems to with all his material, and omits quite a lot. Other curiosities of Luke are that the travel narrative gives little indication of an itinerary and that it gives unusual prominence to the role of women. Luke refers to Jesus as “the Lord” on 14 occasions—Mark and Matthew never do (except in the fictional dialogue of demons or angels) indicating that in Luke the split from Nazarene teaching was essentially complete.
Luke was often much freer with his material than one would expect of an editor—he was more a re-writer. Parts of Luke seem to be taken from both Mark and Matthew. Some scholars think that Luke used Mark and Matthew but regarded Matthew as only a secondary source much of which he rewrote. However, most scholars believe that the material common to Matthew and Luke but absent in Mark came from the source Q which Luke as well as Matthew had before him as he wrote.
Comparison of the three synoptic gospels allows the missing source Q to be crudely reconstructed. If it were a collection of sayings, it ought to contain no narrative yet it seems to include the healing of the centurion’s servant which Guthrie considers mystifying. The two accounts of the centurion’s servant differ considerably, which might be explained if there were yet more sources besides Mark and Q. Other parts of Luke are similar to accounts in other gospels but are also different enough to suggest another source (Lk 24:1-12). These additional sources are called M and L. The narrative material independent of Mark could have been common to M and L leaving Q a collection of pure sayings. The additional source for Luke, L, comprises parables, isolated sayings and narrative material.
It must be remembered that some of the Logia might not have been used in either Matthew or Luke and is lost altogether, and some might have been used by one gospel writer but not the other so that M and L both are partly Logia—like the strongly Jewish material of Matthew omitted by Luke. The few sayings of Jesus in Paul’s epistles, which we have seen pre-date the gospels, stem from Q—roughly the version of Matthew—suggesting it was the earliest Christian text. There is evidence for Q also in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas.
Naturally, the problem is enormously complicated by later editing when copyists tried to harmonize the gospels or improve them for the sake of doctrine, and indeed by the possibility of there having been earlier editions, now lost, but in circulation before the ultimately accepted versions. Vincent Taylor, a professor of New Testament language and literature, convinces us that Luke combined Q and L to give a proto-Luke which he later combined with Mark when he came across that gospel. He reasons thus.
- Luke omits half of Mark suggesting he had other material he preferred.
- Luke’s passion narrative contains only 20% of Mark also suggesting Luke had another source. When Mark’s material is subtracted a continuous narrative remains. Luke changes Mark’s order unusually often (12 instances between 22:14 and 24:11).
- The same seems to apply to Luke 21 (the eschatological discourse) where verses 20-34 at least are non-Marcan but with insertions from Mark.
- Q material is often combined with L material but never with material from Mark which appears in distinct blocks suggesting it was added afterwards.
- In the main narrative of the ministry, there are blocks of material from Mark alternating with other material. When the material from Mark is extracted a reasonably continuous story remains.
- The proto-Luke text lacked Galilaean material, miracles and kingdom parables. These were inserted from Mark.
- Different words are used in the Greek for those rigidly adhering to the law—“grammateus” in the parts from Mark but “nomikos” in the other parts.
The dating in Luke 3:1 was the start of proto-Luke. The birth narrative was added later. Possibly Luke originally wrote proto-Luke-Acts together as one book with no knowledge of Mark’s gospel. Later he came across it and added into proto-Luke what he thought was useful. An editor at some stage split off Acts as a different book and subsequently it was blown hither and thither by the zephyrs and whirlwinds of early church politics.
It seems then that there were two primary gospel sources, but the authors of Matthew and Luke had additional material. The source of the gospel narrative was Mark. The second source was an unknown book of gospel sayings, labelled Q, which was known as the Logia.
The Jerusalem Church must have had a gospel and written it down in Aramaic as the Gospel of the Nazarenes. We know from Jerome this was still used by the Nazarene sect of Arabia in the fourth century. The Quran speaks of the Gospel, in the singular, which must have been the Gospel of the Nazarenes evidently still existing in Arabia at the time of Muhammed in the seventh century and revered by local Christians. It was written in Aramaic. Ibn Ishaq, the first biographer of Muhammed, tells us in the eighth century that the Abyssinians, who were Christians, followed the same gospel as the Christians of Arabia but were circumcised, revered what was claimed to be the Ark of the Covenant and kept the laws of the Torah including the food taboos.
Some critics believe that a Nazarene Gospel existed even before Jesus and that his followers applied it to him after Jesus’s crucifixion—a distinct possibility if the Nazarenes were inspired by Essenes. Ancient scholars identified the Nazarene Gospel with a version of Matthew and, if this is true, it probably contained little narrative. Essentially it would have been Q, the collection of sayings and testimonia of the type found at Qumran. Paul, who probably had this among the books he carried with him, would have been content with it since he ignored any stories about Jesus’s life as irrelevant to the spiritual person wearing the body.
In the post-War years, Robert Graves and Joshua Podro tried, by combining classical and Jewish scholarship, to restore this Nazarene Gospel rather fancifully. They rashly accepted all of the gospels as equally true, each relating genuine Nazarene tradition, and, together with bits of other books whether canonical like Acts or non-canonical like the Recognitions of Clementine, tried to restore the original as a rearranged and reinterpreted combination of them all!
My objective also is to try to retrieve the true events of the gospel but I shall be less rash. I do not accept the gospels as equally valid. The fourth gospel, John, seems to stem from a different tradition from the other three especially in its account of the last week in Jerusalem but is too late to be of primary interest. Matthew, Mark and Luke are not independent. Matthew and Luke are mostly based on Mark and Q, but Q, though earlier, seems to be a collection of wise sayings with little or no narrative so can add relatively little to the story I seek to uncover which is largely narrative.
What is left is Mark’s gospel.
