Gospel

The four Christian Gospels are accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As Jesus is the central figure of Christianity, regarded by believers as the son of God, the Gospels—attributed to the individuals Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—form a central, integral part of Christian scriptures. The Gospels are regarded not as accurate historical documents but as records of the predominating theological views of Jesus.

History of the Gospels

The compositions of the four Gospels as they are now commonly known occurred in two complex, overlapping phases: that of oral tradition and, later, written tradition. Each played a major role in shaping the contemporary Christian world's image of Jesus.

Oral Tradition

Despite the Gospels' endeavors to provide comprehensive biographies of the man Jesus of Nazareth, academics today consider it unlikely that any of the four Gospel authors witnessed the events of their narratives or ever even met Jesus themselves. Rather, the origin of the Gospels can be traced first to oral tradition, spoken stories that first-century Jewish people considered common sources of historical fact.

Society in Palestine in the late 20s CE, about the time Jesus was preaching the word of God throughout the region, was highly stratified, and the poor laborers who could not afford educations were illiterate. Therefore, information that was considered important was simply remembered and relayed to others, often through many generations.

Because Jesus deliberately sought out the poor and marginalized as audiences for his teachings, his words and actions survived his death, in about 30 CE, initially only in the form of oral tradition. The nature of this practice at the time, however, was such that, in the verbal transmission of stories of Jesus's actions and sayings, some information was forgotten or intentionally changed to fulfill some personal purpose of the speaker. Thus, after enough time, relatively accurate firsthand accounts of Jesus's activities had likely been altered numerous times before the four Gospel authors began physically recording them.

Written Tradition

The transition from spoken to written records occurred in the early days of the Christian church, when evangelists—preachers who sought to convert nonbelievers to Christianity—realized that permanent documents would be more conducive than spoken word in educating the world's masses in the life and teachings of Jesus. These writings would also help to keep the generally agreed-upon beliefs about Jesus from becoming diluted or lost among the various competing interpretations of his message.

In this context, each of the four Gospel writers—today credited as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but whose identities are not truly known—composed their own accounts of Jesus's life and ministry throughout the latter half of the first century. Using textual evidence from the records themselves, such as the authors' references to traceable historical events, biblical scholars have been able to date the Gospels and place them in the order in which they were written.

Mark's Gospel is believed to have been the first, written in approximately 60 C.E. Matthew's and Luke's followed between 60 and 70 C.E., while John's Gospel was composed in the 90s C.E. The Gospels were not immediately accorded the authoritative places of honor they hold among Christians today, nor did they even abolish the numerous oral traditions surrounding Jesus's life. Many early church leaders distrusted the static nature of the written word, preferring the more dynamic stories told through human speech.

Additionally, with time, thousands of written documents about Jesus's words and deeds emerged throughout the Mediterranean region. About five thousand Greek copies were made of the early church writings that today compose the New Testament, and a total of about twenty-four thousand other texts—written in Latin and various African languages—were ultimately produced in the ancient world. The four Gospels that live on today in the Christian Bible are copies of copies, as the original manuscripts have long been lost.

Content of the Gospels

Each of the Gospels weaves the same basic narrative about the life of Jesus: that from the late 20s to about 30 C.E., a Jewish man from Nazareth, a city in ancient Israel's Galilee region, led a religious ministry throughout the cities and countryside, preaching the word of God and promising the coming of God's kingdom. Each individual Gospel, however, drew from slightly different oral traditions and earlier written records; this varied the stories, as their authors attempted to shape their own versions of Jesus for specific audiences.

The Gospels of Mark and John open with Jesus's baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. Like the other two Gospels, these stories then follow Jesus as he teaches the crowds about God and performs miracles. Matthew's and Luke's Gospels, conversely, begin with what are known today as the Infancy Narratives, the stories of Jesus's birth in Bethlehem, where magi were said to have visited him and presented him with gifts.

Later, however, these two Gospels diverge as their authors take on different purposes. Matthew, for example, wrote his Gospel for a Jewish audience, and as such, emphasized Jesus's relation to the Hebrew scriptures and wisdom as a teacher like Moses. Luke wrote mainly for gentiles, or non-Jews, and so downplayed associations of Jesus with the older Jewish texts. Mark, the first Gospel, stresses Jesus's struggles in performing his duties as the savior of humanity while revealing his identity only to those closest to him, his disciples.

While the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels for their great similarities, John's Gospel stands alone as the one that portrays Jesus in a profoundly spiritual way. In John, Jesus explicitly states his divine nature, claiming he is one with God and is the only pathway to God's kingdom.

Early Christian readers would not have cared about the biases of the Gospel authors, however, for the four Gospels together provided a full image of the life and works of Jesus, their savior. This is how the four Gospels continue to be viewed by Christians today.

Bibliography

"Birth Announcements: Examining the Infancy Narratives." U.S. Catholic. U.S. Catholic. Dec. 2008. Web. 9 July 2015. http://www.uscatholic.org/church/2008/11/birth-announcements

Mellowes, Marilyn. "An Overview of the Four Gospels of the New Testament." Frontline. WGBH Educational Foundation. Apr. 1998. Web. 9 July 2015. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/mmindex.html

Reddish, Mitchell G. "The Formation of the Four Gospels." An Introduction to the Gospels. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997. 13–18. Print.

Zukeran, Patrick. "The Historical Reliability of the Gospels." Bible.org. Bible.org. 17 Aug. 2009. Web. 9 July 2015. https://bible.org/article/historical-reliability-gospels