THE Four Gospels on which we must largely depend for information about Jesus were the products of historical circumstances which to an appreciable extent are ascertainable. On the showing of many Christian scholars who have devoted themselves to the study of these documents there was no special inspiration either in their origin or composition. They are dramatisations with policy features; and what inspired them was the needs and conditions of particular communities of Christians in different lands.
The Gospels belong to the period following the Jewish war with Rome, and can approximately be dated between A.D. 75 and 115. Each Gospel bears the stamp of an individual author, who treats the material at his command in his own way; but all the authors are writing outside Palestine in a substantially Gentile-Christian environment.
None of the Gospels is original in the sense that it is a first-hand authority; though we have to take account of the use of first-hand recollections and of primary documents no longer extant. The measure of faithfulness to such sources is important, and what we can glean of their character and worth. But also we cannot ignore that in the interests of theological doctrine, contemporary circumstances, and effective story-telling, nothing wrong was seen in creating views for Jesus to express, altering the sense of traditional sayings of his, supplying and colouring episodes with the help of non-Christian literature.
The character of the Gospels is biographical, making allowance for the fact that they are controlled by an established design to represent the experience of Jesus in terms of a faith, originally a purely messianic faith. The authors are endeavouring to tell a connected story of Jesus. They are not very successful, because their resources were slender and offered few indications of time and sequence. They were not in the position of a Plutarch, whose Lives of Great Men was composed early in the second century, or of a Suetonius, whose Lives of the Caesars was written a few years later. But in making the attempt at all, they have conveyed to us that they were catering for circles influenced by Greek and Roman literary art rather than Jewish, and also that confidence in the imminent return of Jesus was beginning to wane. As regards the latter, the sense of postponement is least present in Mark, one of the pointers to its relatively early date.
While all the Evangelists are aware how the public activities of Jesus began, and how they ended, they are not at all sure how long they continued, what teaching of Jesus was related to what events, and what was the order of these events. In the synoptic Gospels most of the teaching of Jesus is found in Matthew and Luke. A good deal of it comes from some written source used by them both, and that source must have concerned itself little with time and place, since Matthew and Luke felt free to make their own decisions as to where to fit the material into the structure of Mark. But building on Mark they were trying to achieve a biographical result, finding themselves in the dilemma that while the career of Jesus had a definite beginning and end it had no organised middle.
We shall have more to say later about the lost Teaching Document. The determination of its existence has been one of the most important results of the literary examination of the Gospels. We may observe, however, that this document appears to have been unknown to the author of Mark, and equally the source material for the nativity stories. This suggests that exciting fresh information became available after Mark was written, or was in circulation in other areas than where this Gospel was composed.
When Mark was published, perhaps between A.D. 75 and 80, it was unique in Christian literature; for Matthew and Luke had no alternative but to use Mark as a guide. It is evident that they could not turn for assistance to any similar composition. When Luke speaks of ‘many’ in his foreword it has been held to mean that a number of others had written gospels before he decided to undertake his. But in that case it is likely that there would be evidence in his work that he was familiar with some of them and borrowed from them, and there is no indication of this. Luke's reference has a certain rhetorical quality, but he could be alluding to various collections of gospel stuff applying Old Testament prophecies to circumstances in the life of Jesus, conforming to the more or less stereotyped pattern or outline of early Nazorean testimony. Long before the canonical Gospels Paul shows his acquaintance with such testimony, especially in connection with the final events in the life of Jesus.1 Though he was concerned with the Messiah in heaven rather than with his earthly career, except as its climax reinforced his message, he did know something about it, including that Jesus was of the line of David.2 He also felt it needful to check with the Nazorean leaders, ‘lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain’.3
We have pointed out above (p. 201 f.) that the very word ‘gospel’ in Christian usage had a messianic significance, and prophetic testimonies applied to Jesus, when written down, would be just as much the Gospel as the oral message, combining the Old Testament texts with their fulfilment. Multiplying such collections, with certain differences of detail from oral tradition, would create what could be called ‘gospels’. We know what store was set by the prophetic gnosis in the early Church, and how much it was relied upon as the certification of ‘our common salvation . . . the faith once and for all delivered to the Saints’.4
While Mark broke fresh ground in giving the proclamation of Jesus a more biographical treatment, he framed it on the Testimony tradition. In his record of events he does not bring out the fulfilments of the Old Testament as Matthew and John do; but the language he employs shows that he is well aware of them.5 He does not hesitate to begin his book with such prophetic testimony, and to say that Jesus regarded the experiences of John the Baptist and himself as being demanded by the Scriptures.6 That Mark's Gospel owes much to the Nazorean prophetic gnosis is further indicated by the amount of space devoted to the narrative of Passion Week, rather more than a third of the whole book. It was the fate of Jesus, if he was the Messiah, which chiefly called for evidence that it had been foretold. The circumstances had therefore to be set out in much greater detail backed by an impressive array of testimonies.
Once Mark became well known, and after a decent interval as the unchallenged authority, it was to be expected that other Gospels of this type would come into existence, at first based on Mark but subsequently becoming more venturesome. Such a medium lent itself admirably to investing various doctrines with the highest endorsement, and from about the middle of the second century onward a number of these uncanonical Gospels appeared under the names of different apostles. In the earlier essays the meat of the Testimony Gospel was in them; but the more vivid narrative presentation of these Memoir Gospels made them much more acceptable to the Gentile Church. It is interesting to note that when Justin Martyr in the middle of the second century speaks of the records of the life of Jesus read in the churches he refers to them as Memoirs, or Recollections, of the Apostles and those who followed them.7 The essentially Testimony documents ceased to appeal for internal use by churches for whom the messiahship of Jesus was no longer paramount, and they would tend very quickly to disappear. Yet what they had represented could still be employed externally for controversial and missionary purposes in the form of Testimonies Against the Jews.8
To learn more of how the message about Jesus as Messiah came to be put into writing we have to turn to early Nazorean history in Palestine.
The period from A.D. 40 to 50 was one of dramatic events and intense religious and political excitement for the Jewish people. First there was the attempt of the Emperor Gaius Caligula to have his statue set up in the Temple as an object of worship. Such a blasphemous design had had no equal since the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes in the second century B.C. had converted the Temple into a shrine of Zeus Olympius, which united the nation in arms under the leadership of the Maccabees. The intention of Gaius similarly roused the Jews to resistance, and some took up arms. Most, however, awaited the outcome of massive protests to Petronius the Roman legate of Syria. A full-scale revolt was averted only by the concern and delaying tactics of this official, who at personal risk made clear to the emperor what the consequences would be. Gaius grudgingly gave way, yielding to the persuasions of his friend the Jewish prince Agrippa. But he ordered Petronius to commit suicide for disobedience, a fate which the legate escaped only because news reached him first that Gaius had been assassinated.
Jewish nationalists and fanatics seized upon the situation and exploited it. All who were messianically minded saw in what had happened a great Sign of the Times, including the Nazoreans, to whom it must have seemed to portend the near return of Jesus. Partial calm was restored when the new emperor Claudius made Agrippa king of Judea; but it was necessary for the king to try to curb the hotheads. He executed one of the ‘tempestuous’ brothers, James son of Zebedee. Peter was arrested and placed under close guard; but his escape was contrived, and he went into hiding, the wretched guards being put to death on the king's orders. The state of affairs was evidently more explosive than is represented in the Acts.
Agrippa's sudden death in A.D. 44 brought Judea again under direct Roman rule and stimulated the spirit of revolt. Cuspius Fadus, sent as governor, had to take military action against the disaffected and the religious enthusiasts, lumped together as rebels. On the orders of the emperor he commanded that the robes in which the high priest officiated in the Temple should be returned to the custody of the Roman garrison in Fort Antonia, and handed out on each festal occasion. This measure, as Josephus reports, was thought so likely to provoke a hostile outbreak that Cassius Longinus, then legate of Syria, arrived at Jerusalem, ‘and had brought a great army with him, out of fear that the injunctions of Fadus would force the Jews to rebel’.
Later, Claudius dispatched a pro-Roman Jew, Tiberius Alexander, to assist in the pacification of the country. Among those killed at this time was the prophet Theudas, and James and Simon, sons of the former resistance leader Judas of Galilee, were crucified.
In the story of this period the Old Russian text of Josephus adds a passage, which if it is not genuine is not far off the mark.
‘And since in the time of those [governors] many followers of the wonder-worker [i.e. Jesus] aforementioned had appeared and spoken to the people of their master, that he was alive, although he had been dead, and “he will free you from your bondage”, many of the multitude hearkened to their preaching and took heed to their injunctions. . . . But when these noble governors saw the falling away of the people, they determined, together with the Scribes, to seize them ... for fear lest the little might not be little, if it ended in the great. . . . They sent them away, some to Caesar, others to Antioch to be tried, others they banished to distant lands.’9
With this we may compare the words of Tacitus, that by the execution of Christ ‘the sect of which he was the founder received a blow, which for a time checked the growth of a dangerous superstition; but it broke out again, and spread with increased vigour, not only in Judea, the soil that gave it birth, but even in the city of Rome, the common sewer into which everything infamous and abominable flows like a torrent from all quarters of the world’.10
Historically, we are required to look at Christian beginnings without the rose-tinted spectacles of piety. The movement was largely composed of Zealots for the Law, and was involved in the Jewish struggle for freedom. We have previously taken some note of this, and of measures of the Emperor Claudius to counter messianic propaganda in Rome and Alexandria (above p. 197 f.). The ‘pacification’ of Judea at this time must be seen as a prime cause of spreading this propaganda in the Provinces and in Rome itself, partly by prominent individuals being forced to leave the country, and partly by the deliberate sending out of agents and apostles.
There is an early Christian tradition referred to by Apollonius and in the Preaching of Peter that Jesus told his disciples not to leave Jerusalem for twelve years, and then to go out into the world.11 Twelve years after the latest possible date for the Crucifixion would coincide with the repressive measures of Fadus and Alexander. It is pertinent that the Acts assigns to this period, after the death of King Agrippa, the first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas, and laconically states that ‘the word of God grew and multiplied’.12 But Eusebius, following ancient tradition, says that ‘the rest of the apostles, who were harassed in innumerable ways with a view to destroy them, and driven from the land of Judea, had gone forth to proclaim the gospel to all nations’.13
We are now better able to comprehend the circumstances which brought about the putting into operation of what has been called the Great Commission. It was this step which required the setting down of the prophetic testimonies to Jesus as the Messiah for the service of the evangelists. Since only the Hebrew text of the Bible was regarded as authoritative by the Zealots, we must hold that the document in the first instance was written in the sacred tongue, not in Aramaic, the spoken language, or in Greek, and we cannot be far wrong in assigning the date of the Testimony Book to about A.D. 50. It would have been a short scroll inexpensive to copy and easy to carry.
There is strong evidence that the compiler of this little work was the apostle Matthew. The Church Fathers all agree that he published his Gospel in Hebrew. But canonical Matthew was certainly composed in Greek, and the mistake could have arisen from not understanding that Matthew's ‘Gospel’ was in fact the Testimony Book, which in the original sense was the Gospel. The earliest reference which offers some confirmation, and may have misled later writers, is that of Papias (c. A.D. 144), who stated in a work of his now lost that ‘Matthew compiled the Oracles in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as he was able'.14 The ‘Oracles’ (logia) means passages of the Old Testament employed prophetically as in the Dead Sea Scrolls, in this case in relation to Jesus as Messiah (logia kyriaka). Just as in the synagogues texts from the readings of the Law and the Prophets were translated by preachers and their application expounded, so was it the function of the evangelists to interpret and explain the Oracles fulfilled in Jesus. Later, in all probability, Testimony Gospels would come into existence in Aramaic and Greek, the ‘many’ of Luke's foreword, in which the texts and the applications were set down together, with variations according to the information available to each evangelist. We may take an illustration from Justin, who brings forward Genesis xlix, II, ‘binding his foal to the vine, and his ass's colt to the choice vine’. He then tells us that this signified what was to happen to Christ, ‘for the foal of an ass stood tethered to a vine at the entrance of a village, and he ordered his acquaintances to bring it to him . . . and he mounted and sat on it, and entered Jerusalem’.15 Our present Gospels say nothing about a vine at Bethany.
Further evidence that the apostles who went forth from Judea in the reign of Claudius were equipped with a Testimony Book prepared by Matthew comes to us from other sources. The Acts of Barnabas, though late and rather legendary, tells how Barnabas, when going to Cyprus,16 took with him documents he had received from Matthew, ‘a book of the Word of God, and a narrative of miracles and doctrines’. In the synagogue at Salamis, ‘Barnabas, having unrolled the Gospel which he had received from Matthew, his fellow-labourer, began to teach the Jews.’ The sequel tells how, on the martyrdom of Barnabas, the manuscripts were put away secretly in a cave with his remains. The reference to the second document, ‘a narrative of miracles and doctrines’, may relate to the Teaching Document, the second source used by Matthew and Luke, known to modern scholars as Q, of which Kirsopp Lake has written, ‘It is probably not too much to say that every year after A.D. 50 is increasingly improbable for the production of Q.’17
We also have the report of Eusebius that Pantaenus, an eminent Christian of Egypt in the late second century, visiting the East, ‘found the Gospel of Matthew, which had been delivered before his coming to some who had knowledge of Christ, to whom Bartholomew, one of the apostles, as it is said, had preached and left them that writing of Matthew in Hebrew characters’.18 This copy, according to Jerome, Pantaenus took back with him to Alexandria.
There is reason to believe, then, that the situation in Palestine between A.D. 45 and 50 was a major cause of the widespread missionary journeys of the Nazorean apostles and created the need for setting down the prophecies believed to have been fulfilled by Jesus with some account of his teaching and activities. These records were in Hebrew, and had been compiled by Matthew. Paul probably had a copy of the Testimony Book, to which he is referring when he writes to the Corinthians that he had delivered to them what he had himself received, ‘that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures’.19
On the showing of such evidence as we possess there were written accounts of Jesus within about fifteen years of his death. Except as they are reflected in the Gospels, however, these Hebrew sources are lost and the early translations made of them. It is possible, nevertheless, to learn something of the contents and structure of the Testimony Gospel.
Evidently in presenting the material a sentence from one prophet was sometimes tacked on to or combined with the words of another prophet. Classic examples are Mal. iii. 1 running on into Isa. xl. 3, ascribed to Isaiah in Mk. i. 2–3, and a passage from Zech. xi. 12–13 mixed with some allusion to Jer. xxxii. 6, 9, ascribed to Jeremiah in Mt. xxvii. 9. It is not only that the secondary authority is substituted for the primary, but that excerpts from different works are combined to make a continuous quotation. We find the same thing in Justin's use of the testimonies, for instance, ‘A Star shall arise from Jacob, and a Flower shall come up from the root of Jesse.’20 The first part is from Nu. xxiv. 17 and the second from Isa. xi. I; but the sentence reads as a single quotation and is attributed to Isaiah. We may assume, therefore, that this kind of combination appeared in the Testimony Book.
We know now from the recovered Dead Sea Scrolls that the composition of such a book was no Nazorean novelty: it was quite typical of what was being done by the Jewish eclectic groups, who prepared a number of Biblical anthologies, some of them messianic, with and without interpretation, as well as providing more extended explanatory commentaries on books of the Bible. Their oracular employment of the Scriptures was of the same order as that of the Nazoreans.
At an early date the Christian testimony material seems to have been arranged under headings in accordance with an outline of developments. We have a hint of this in Paul's speech before Agrippa in the Acts. ‘I continue unto this day . . . saying none other things than those which the Prophets and Moses did say should come; that the Messiah should suffer, that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and shew light unto the [Jewish] people, and to the Gentiles.’ Justin, some fifty years later than the authorship of the Acts, is even more explicit: ‘In these books, then, of the Prophets we found Jesus our Messiah foretold as coming, born of a virgin, growing up to man's estate, and healing every disease and every sickness, and raising the dead, and being hated, and unrecognised, and crucified, and dying, and rising again, and ascending into heaven, and being, and being called the Son of God. We find it also predicted that certain persons should be sent by him into every nation to publish these things, and that among the Gentiles (rather than among the Jews) men should believe in him.’21 Justin was obviously familiar with an expanded Greek version of the testimonies, taking in much more of what became the Christian story of Jesus.
Elsewhere, Justin urges that Christians have not accepted Jesus without being able to produce proof, and asks: ‘With what reason should we believe of a crucified man that he is the first-born of the Unbegotten God, and himself shall pass judgement on the whole human race, unless we had found testimonies con-concerning him published before he came?’ He claims that the predictions were made at five intervals of time, and this raises the question whether the Testimony Book had originally or assumed a five-book structure, which in fact is the literary structure of canonical Matthew.
A Jewish tradition has it that Jesus had five disciples, whose names are given as Matthai, Naki, Netser, Buni and Todah.22 The first name evidently has Matthew in mind; but the discussion of the passage shows that otherwise individuals are not the subject but proof-texts from the Bible in favour of Jesus, which are met by counter-texts. The tradition thus witnesses to a five-divisioned collection of testimonies associated with Matthew, which Rendel Harris argued convincingly was the form of the Testimony Book.
In further support it is on record that the work of Papias, who stated that Matthew had compiled the Oracles in Hebrew, was also in five books and entitled, Exposition of the Oracles relating to the Lord. It may well be the case that the author of canonical Matthew is being more faithful to the spirit and design of the Testimony Book than any of the other Evangelists, and he may be believed to have been greatly influenced by a Greek version of it. This would account for the Gospel being attributed to Matthew.
While we are on the earliest sources of information about Jesus we must revert to the Gospel of Mark. Concerning its origin Papias had obtained secondhand some particulars on the authority of John the Elder of Ephesus which are of considerable interest. We quote his statement in full.
‘Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, set down accurately as much as he remembered, though not in order, of the things said and done by Christ. For neither did he hear the Lord, nor did he follow him; but afterwards, as I said, followed Peter, who adapted his instructions to the needs (of his hearers), but had no design to provide a connected account of the things relating to the Lord. So then Mark made no mistake in setting down some things as he remembered them; for he took care not to omit anything he heard or to include anything false.’
What Papias is telling us may be slightly elaborated to make it clear. Mark had followed Peter, and acted as his interpreter for the reason no doubt that Peter could only express himself in Aramaic. Subsequently—and this could be much later—Mark wrote down what he could recall of what Peter had related in his addresses about various things which Jesus had said and done. Such recollections of sayings and incidents could not be arranged in consecutive order, since Peter had introduced them to suit the occasion, and had not specified the sequence in which they occurred.
How apt is this tradition as applying to canonical Mark? It cannot be denied that to a considerable extent it fits. This Gospel is episodal, with little real connection between many of the episodes. It reproduces certain words of Jesus in Aramaic, as Peter may well have quoted them. The style is not literary, and conveys the sense of a spoken rather than a written story told unaffectedly with great economy of words, yet with a rugged charm and convincing Palestinean colouring. In creating this biographical presentation the author must have depended on some personal source, and the evidence points to this source being Peter.
Canonical Mark does not allow us to agree entirely with Papias, because this Gospel betrays purposes and tendencies which reflect a situation which arose some years after Peter's death, and attitudes for which Peter could not have been responsible. We shall have more to say about this in the next chapter. But we may point out here that Brandon and others have seen in Mark the re-emergence of Pauline Christianity, which for a decade or more before the fall of Jerusalem had lost ground heavily to the Nazoreans. After Paul's arrest about A.D. 58 church after church of his founding had defected to the doctrine of the supreme Jerusalem authority,23 and in Italy, where it is most probable that Mark was written, and where there were many Jewish-Christians, Paul's teaching was strongly opposed.24 It would seem, however, that Mark was with Paul at the end,25 and could have been influenced by him. The fall of Jerusalem wrought a great change, and under the new conditions much of what Paul had stood for could be reasserted and help to formulate a revised Christianity in much the same way as the rabbis after the war formulated a revised Judaism.
It could have happened that Mark's Gospel, written between A.D. 75 and 80, was an instrument in bringing about a combination of the Palestinean Petrine doctrine with the more Hellenistic Pauline teaching and Christology. At any rate the New Testament associates Mark with Peter as well as Paul, and suggests a reconciliation between the Petrine and Pauline positions.26
We must not, then, be carried away by favourable first impressions of Mark's Gospel, since it was performing a function which became essential if Christianity was to survive the defeat of the Jews and the cutting off of communication with the remnant of Nazorean orthodoxy in the East. But it adds greatly to its standing as an authority if it does to an appreciable extent embody remembrances of what had been told by one who had been so close to Jesus as Peter.27 It is not surprising in these circumstances that the Gospel of Mark should have been hailed by the Gentile Church as a singularly precious possession. Incidentally, there is a link between Peter and the publication of the Testimony Book, for tradition has it that it was in the reign of Claudius that Peter came to Rome.
When we come to assess the character and worth of the Gospels it is important to know that behind them is a considerable amount of material about Jesus, which fortunately, because of Roman oppression in Palestine between A.D. 45 and 55, had been conveyed to other lands before the outbreak of the fatal Jewish revolt against Rome. This material so far as it was in documentary form is not available, though there is always the chance that some of it may be recovered. Consequently, while we can be convinced that Jesus really lived and that a good deal reported about him is worthy of credence, we must accept that we are without direct access to the oldest and most reliable sources of information.
1. I. Cor. xi. 23–5, xv. 1–7.
2. Rom. i. 3.
3. Gal. ii. 2.
4. Jude 3.
5. Cf. Mk. xv. 24 with Ps. xxii. 18, and Mk. xv. 29 with Ps. xxii. 7. See especially Hoskyns and Davey, The Riddle of the New Testament, ch. iv.
6. Mk. ix. 12 and cf. Mk. xiv. 49.
7. Justin Martyr, I. Apol. lxvi and lxvii; Dial. lxxxviii, etc.
8. J. Rendel Harris, Testimonies, Vols. I and II; A. Lukyn Williams, Adversos Judaeos.
9. The passage is introduced at Wars II. xi. 6. All the Slavonic additions are given in the Appendix to Vol. III of Josephus in the Loeb Classical Library.
10. Tacitus, Annals, XV. 44.
11. Euseb. Eccl. Hist. Bk. V. xviii. Cf. Mk. xvi. 15; Mt. xxviii. 19.
12. Acts xii. 24–xiii. 3.
13. Euseb. Eccl. Hist. Bk. III. v.
14. Euseb. Eccl. Hist. Bk. III. xxxix.
15. Justin, I. Apol. xxxii.
16. See Acts xv. 39.
17. Expositor, VII, vii, p. 507.
18. Euseb. Eccl. Hist. Bk. V. x.
19. I. Cor. xv. 3–4, cf. Isa. liii. 8.
20. Justin, I. Apol. xxxii.
21. Justin, I. Apol. xxxi.
22. Sanhed. xliiia. See Schonfield, According to the Hebrews, p. 52 ff.
23. II. Tim. i. 15, and see S. G. F. Brandon, The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Chruch, ch. x.
24. Phil. i. 14–17, iii. 1–8. The Gospel had been carried by the Nazoreans to Rome long before Paul was brought as a prisoner to the city as his Epistle to the Romans shows.
25. Philemon 24; II. Tim. iv. II.
26. I. Pet. v. 13; II. Pet. iii. 15–16.
27. Justin Martyr furnishes from ‘the memoirs’ information given in Mk. iii. 16–17, and the passage can be read to imply he knew Mark as the Memoirs of Peter (Dial. cvi). There is some doubt, however, whether the ‘him’ in the text refers back to Peter or Jesus, and Justin may only be speaking of the memoirs concerning Jesus and not those of Peter.