Beth Trewstar from Bernardsville, New Jersey, writes:
Question:
It was fun to read the questions from the man from Saudi Arabia. Here is a question it raises for me. Why do you think there are four gospels which overlap and conflict? If people (men) at the 4th century Council of Nicea were writing the creeds and doctrines based on documents from the 1st century, why didn’t they clean up the whole mess? Why leave so many questions unanswered?
Answer:
Dear Beth,
To answer your question would involve much more background knowledge about how the gospels came into being and how the authorities of the church decided to treat them prior to the 4th century than this format of a question and answer can possibly cover. I treated this subject in much more detail in my book, Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World, which took over 300 pages! Let me, however, seek to address your concern even if I must do it with brevity.
The gospel-writing tradition did not enter Christianity until the 8th decade of the Christian era. It went on for about a hundred years and many more gospels than those that appear in the Bible were completed. The first three that appear in the New Testament, Mark, Matthew and Luke, are clearly related in many ways. That relationship is explained almost universally by New Testament scholars today on the basis of what is called the “Primacy of Mark.” Mark is clearly the earliest of the three gospels. It is also the shortest. The reason for this emerges out of an internal study of Mark. This author appears to open his gospel with the baptism of Jesus at the hands of one called John the Baptist. That story clearly reflects the synagogue liturgy created around the theme of the Jewish New Year, which is called Rosh Hashanah. At Rosh Hashanah, the trumpet or the ram’s horn was sounded, the people gathered and the proclamation was heard that the Kingdom of God was at hand. The admonition was then given for the people to prepare for that Kingdom’s arrival with acts of penitence. When at Rosh Hashanah’s end, the Kingdom of God had still not arrived, the celebration closed with the words: “Next year in Jerusalem.” This Rosh Hashanah liturgy was designed to keep alive the anticipation that the promised Kingdom would someday arrive.
In Mark’s opening narrative, what he has done is to turn John the Baptist into the human trumpet that serves to gather the people together. He then has John the Baptist speak the Rosh Hashanah words and then he suggests that Jesus is the Messiah, who ultimately will inaugurate the Kingdom. Thus Mark opens his gospel with a Rosh Hashanah story. When we get to the end of Mark, we discover that he has set the story of the crucifixion against the background of the synagogue’s observance of the Passover. The Last Supper becomes in Mark the Passover meal. Jesus is portrayed as the new paschal lamb whose blood has been placed on the cross, which is seen as the “doorpost” of the world. In the original Passover story the blood of the Lamb of God was placed on the doorposts of every Jewish home so that God’s angel of death would “pass over” (and hence the name) that home. The blood of the lamb was believed to have had the power to repel death. The blood of Jesus, the new paschal lamb, on the doorposts to the world was also thought to have had the power to repel death at least for those who came to God through him. The Jewish symbol was still operative.
When these two Jewish liturgical events are put together, it becomes apparent that Mark’s gospel was written to be a series of Jesus stories designed to lead the worship life of the followers of Jesus from the Jewish New year in the fall to the Passover in the early spring, or from late September or early October to late March or early April. That means that Mark has given his readers Jesus stories for about six and a half months of the 12-month year. Once the pattern of having Jesus stories available at synagogue worship even for six and a half months was established, the pressure began to grow to provide Jesus stories to cover the other five and a half months of the calendar year.
Matthew, writing in the mid-eighties was the first to undertake this task. Using Mark as his guide and, in the process, incorporating about 90% of Mark directly into his gospel, Matthew began his story after Passover and he filled it with mostly new material until he reached Rosh Hashanah where he could pick up Mark’s story line and, though expanding it, he basically followed that story line until he reached his conclusion. From an analysis of Matthew’s unique material, that is the material that was not taken over from Mark, we can determine that he wrote his gospel for use in a fairly traditional worshiping community made up of those Jews who had become followers of Jesus. His gospel, with its year round cycle of Jesus stories, became the most popular one in Jewish-Christian circles.
Luke, writing maybe a decade after Matthew had completed his gospel (some would argue for an even later date), also expanded Mark. Not only was the community for which Luke wrote far less traditionally Jewish than Matthew’s, but it was also probably far removed from Jerusalem and included a growing number of Gentile proselytes. So his gospel reflected a more universal tone. While he used Mark, it was to a lesser degree than Matthew; perhaps only about 50% of Mark was incorporated into Luke. There is debate on whether or not Luke also had Matthew before him when he wrote or whether both Matthew and Luke had another independent, but now lost document that we call Q. I think he did have Matthew, but that is a debate that it would take hundreds of pages to defend and this is neither the time nor the place to do so. Luke’s gospel became very popular in the more cosmopolitan parts of the empire where the various Christian churches were evolving into being less Jewish and more Gentile communities.
John, the fourth gospel to be completed, was finished near the end of the first century, 95-100, and appears not to be dependent on any of the others, but John still may well have been aware of them. I believe he was, though there is still debate about that among New Testament scholars.
When the church leaders first began the process of defining the Canon of Scripture around the year 150 CE, these four gospels, which clearly were the consensus favorites, became the core of the developing New Testament. Each of the four had a strong following. Each met different needs. Each came to be regarded as so sacred that merging the gospels into one consistent narrative was never considered. That was not much of a problem until later when the scriptures were elevated into being thought of quite literally as “The Word of God.” That was when contradictions among the various gospel texts, of which there are many, began to embarrass the literalistic claims being made for the Bible by those who came to be called fundamentalists. These fundamentalists then began to develop very convoluted and elaborate defenses of literalism with which they tried to explain away the inconsistencies of the texts. The status achieved by these four gospels had by that time become so high that any scribe who might dare to alter them to rid them of the inconsistencies began to be frowned on significantly. No one could change the “Word of God!”
The other gospels, the ones we now call the Apocryphal Gospels, never achieved the status of the four though they might well have become the favorites of one community or another. By the fourth century, the four gospels now in the New Testament had universally come to be regarded as authoritative.
The problem people have today and which your question reflects, is that almost all of us have been raised inside some literalistic view of the Bible. The claim that people can hear God speak through the scriptures has been distorted to suggest that the literal words of scripture are themselves the “words of God.” The fact that the words of the Bible might point to the God that people worship has been lost in the assumption that the Bible itself is worthy of worship. To this day, ecclesiastical practices continue to reflect that distortion. That is why the gospel book is elevated and processed into the congregation to be read and perhaps even worshipped. That is why the one reading it goes through all sorts of elaborate magical signs crossing themselves and the Gospel-book before proceeding to read the gospel. That is why lessons from scripture are concluded with the assertion: “This is the Word of the Lord.” That is why most Bibles are printed in two columns on each page instead of like other books. Two columns per page is a style reserved for encyclopedias, dictionaries and telephone directories. They are not for reading, they are places to go to find authoritative answers.
When we break the idolatry with which we have surrounded the Bible in general and the gospels in particular, questions like yours will no longer arise.
Thanks for your letter.
John Shelby Spong
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