|
The Gospels: Introduction: A Harmony of the Gospels The first four books of the New Testament are known as the gospels. The word gospel is from the Old English (before the Norman conquest of 1066) words god spel, meaning “good story” or “good telling.” Gospel (as in Mark 1: 14) is a translation of the Greek euaggelion, meaning “good message” or “good news.” The gospels have one purpose: to reveal Jesus to us. The authors of the gospels are Matthew (the apostle), Mark (cousin of Barnabas), Luke (the physician and companion of Paul), and John (cousin and friend of Jesus), and there is no good reason to doubt these traditional claims of authorship. There were, by the end of the second century perhaps as many as a hundred so-called gospels circulating through the brotherhood, but God and history has saved four of them and stamped them as divinely inspired. Many Bible scholars posit that there was once a fifth gospel or pre-gospel which was one of the source texts of the four we now have. They call that fictitious text “Q Manuscript.” Their speculation is based on a faulty premise: that men wrote the gospels based on their own initiative and individual memories. The scriptures plainly tell us that this is untrue, for as I Peter 1: 20, 21 clearly says, “First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, because NO PROPHECY EVER CAME BY THE IMPULSE OF MAN, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” In other words, all the other scriptures we have are not the works of men writing as they saw fit. The scriptures contain the message of God which the Holy Spirit caused men to write down. This fundamental principle of faith is called the “inspiration of scripture.” Consider what II Timothy 3: 16, 17 says: “ALL SCRIPTURE is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE #1: The gospels are divinely inspired by God and contain His words about His son, not the partial or faulty reminiscences of men. The first three gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – contain so many similarities that since the late 1800's they have been known as the Synoptic Gospels. Synoptic mens “same eye.” In other words, it was as if they were all written by men looking through the same pair of eyes. Since we accept the inspiration of scripture, the parallels are easily explained: the Holy Spirit inspired them all, hence they all ARE from the “same eye.” The fourth gospel, John, is written from a little different perspective. It is more of a spiritual explanation of the life of Christ, not just the recounting of the events of that remarkable life. However, no point in John contradicts any of the Synoptic gospels, and none of the scriptures of the Synoptic Gospels contradict John’s Gospel. FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE #2: The four gospels form a complete narrative of Jesus’ life and do not contradict each other. Why are there four gospels? The scripture says: “But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.” (Matt. 18: 16) God exceeded that requirement, and provided us with FOUR different witnesses that verify each other. Like a skillful prosecutor in a court case, by combining the pieces provided by the four witnesses, we are able to piece together the whole story of Jesus and what his life, death, and resurrection mean. Another reason that there are four gospels, each with a slightly different emphasis and style, is because there were (and still are) four different kinds of hearers to hear them. Matthew, with its emphasis on genealogy and Jewish life naturally appealed to the Jewish mind. Mark, with its spare narrative and emphasis on action appealed strongly to the ever-busy Roman mind. Luke, the letter of proofs and logic, appealed strongly to the analytical Greek mind. John, the most spiritual gospel appealed strongly to the mystical oriental mind. No one account appeals to each and every type of person, but they must all be considered together in order to make up the whole story of Jesus. How we will study the gospels. Tatian, a pupil of Justin Martyr (second century AD), working from the four gospels, compiled a chronological narrative of the life of Christ in about 150 AD, which was called the Diatessaron. The Diatessaron was the accepted standard “biography” of Jesus for 300 years in the Syrian Church. Using his work as an example (of which only a few fragments now remain) modern Bible scholars have compiled many “Gospel Harmonies” that seek to put the life of Christ in a chronological progression rather than breaking it up into four different narratives. This method seems the best way to understand the life of Jesus, taking each gospel witness in his turn until we have a unified look at his entire life in the order in which it actually happened. This chronological method is how we will study the gospels. This is, of course, a difficult assignment, for we will not have the luxury of blindly following the text of one single book. We will sometimes be called upon to consider all four gospel accounts in consideration of a single episode of Jesus’ life or death. Some basic backgrounds to the study of the gospels. Time: Jesus’ life covered a space of 33 years. According to our calendar, his story begins in 1 AD and ends in the springtime of 33 AD. However, that is not really the case, for there is an error in our calendars. In 46 BC, Julius Caesar, emperor of Rome, established a twelve-month calendar based on the calculations of the Greek astronomer Sosigenes. He moved the start of the year from March to January 1. Year 1 of their calendar was the year when Rome was founded (753 BC). Sometime in the sixth century (according to our calendar) a monk named Dionysius Exiguus began the custom of figuring years by counting from the time when Jesus was born. The months and days of the months were not changed, but remained the same as the calendar of Julius Caesar. His calculations of the years since Jesus' birth were slightly off, and, as a result, the years of our calendar are four or five years off. So, in reality, Jesus was not born at the beginning of year one, but in 4 (or 5) BC. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII changed the calendar to its present format. So, from a strictly chronological viewpoint, Christ’s earthly life lasted from 4 BC until 29 or 30 AD. We know that Jesus was actually born in 4 or 5 BC because Herod the Great, who died after Jesus was born, died in 4 BC (according to some very reliable records). Speaking of time literally, the ancient Egyptians were the first to divide each day into 24 hours. The custom of the Romans was to count each day beginning at midnight, just as we do. The Jewish custom was to 12 hours of night and then count 12 hours of daylight. Their day began at sunset and ended at the following sunset. However, verses like Matt. 20: 1 - 9 make it clear that they counted 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of night. Expressions like “the ninth hour” point not to 3 AM, but the ninth hour of daylight or 3 PM. The discrepancy between the Roman and Jewish methods of counting days makes the exact accounting of days in the Biblical narrative somewhat problematic.
Place: Jesus was born and lived all but a very small part of his life in the Roman province of Palestine. Palestine was further divided into the four “states” of Galilee, Samaria, Perea, and Judea. Herod the Great, with the help of Roman troops, became king of Palestine in 37 BC. After Herod’s death in 4 BC, his son Archelaus ruled until 6 AD and then Judea, Samaria, and Perea became the Roman province of Judea which was ruled by a series of Roman procurators (governors), the last of which was Pontius Pilate. When Pilate was removed from office in 36 AD another son of Herod, Herod Agrippa I became “king” of Judea and Galilee. At Jesus’ birth Augustus was Caesar of Rome. He ruled until 14 AD. Then Tiberius became Caesar and ruled until 37 AD. Luke 2: 1 - 3 and other verses place Jesus in a very specific historical context. Jesus’ life was lived in a province ordered by Roman law, but the social and spiritual life of the people were ruled by the High Priest and the council of 70 Jewish elders, the Sanhedrin. Rome had sway in all matters of death and taxes. The Jewish rulers controlled all else. The High Priests were Roman appointees and had forsaken most of their spiritual imperatives, becoming little more than mid-level functionaries who depended on Rome’s influence for the power and influence they enjoyed. Culture: Jesus lived most of his life in Nazareth, a Roman-built city about 50 miles north of Jerusalem. He was the son (as was supposed) of a carpenter (the carpenter?), a position of some influence and wealth in that society. During his young life he would have been witness to a continual stream of Romans, Greeks, and Jews, moving between Galilee and Jerusalem. He was Jewish, and part of a large and active Jewish community. Jesus lived in Nazareth from the age of one or two until his thirtieth year, so he is referred to as a Nazarene, a citizen of Nazareth. After the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in 586 BC, Jews began to build small community “temples” where they studied and prayed. Called synagogues, these assembly places had an altar and a raised platform from which the “Law” was read. The men sat on one side of the building and the women on the other. All readings, prayers, songs, and discourses were done by men. There were usually three meetings each day – dawn, noon, and sunset – and special services on the Sabbath. In Jesus’ time there were four primary sects of Judaism. 1) The Essenes were the stoics of Jewish life, living in “communes” in the desert and dedicated to lives of poverty, celibacy, and constant study. Many think that John the Baptist was an Essene. They were a small sect of little importance to the daily life of most Jews. While unimportant numerically, the Essenes are very important historically, for it was a group of Essenes living at Qumran who saved copies of the Hebrew writings in clay jars. These manuscripts, discovered in 1947, and dubbed the Dead Sea Scrolls, have proved invaluable in verifying the accuracy of our Biblical texts. 2) The Pharisees were the largest sect of Jews and represented the Jewish orthodoxy of Jesus’ day. They were particular about rituals and were often showy in their observance of everyday things like prayers and giving. We often deride the Pharisees for their legalism, but they were the most scripturally correct of all the Jewish sects. 3) The Sadducees represented the Hellenistic, liberal Jews of Jesus’ day. They did not believe in the afterlife, angels, or a literal Messiah. They controlled the priesthood and the Sanhedrin until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Their vision of the world was materialistic, compromising, and gloomy. Jesus condemned the Pharisees quite often, but it was the Sadducees who were the real apostates of the Jewish faith. The Sadducees were primarily the rulers and influential people of Jewish society who saw collaboration with Rome not as a sin but as a social and political necessity. 4) The Zealots were the nationalistic Jews who strove for an independent Israel free of Roman oppression. They were often violent and led several revolts against Rome. It was the zealots who eventually forced Rome into the war that resulted in the annihilation of Jerusalem in 70 AD. It was a group of Zealots who took Masada in 66 AD. The Masada Zealots all committed suicide in 73 AD rather than submit to Rome’s authority. At least one apostle, Simon, had been a member of this sect. Physical appearance of Jesus: The closest thing we have to a physical description of Jesus in scripture in is the prophecies of Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53: 2 says: “For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” That is consistent with what might have actually been seen among Jews of the first century. As archeology and anthropology have revealed, the Jews of the first century were small (usually less than 5 feet tall), rather dark-skinned (as Arabs are today), and very seldom what we might call beautiful. They also usually had rather close-cropped hair and always had full beards. So why then do makers of paintings and movies almost universally depict Jesus as tall, handsome, and well-proportioned? The first reason is that since Greek times people have usually associated beauty with goodness. All the Greek Gods were beautiful and tall (with the exception of Hephaestus, god of fire). Even in our time, the heroes and heroines of our fairy tales are uniformly well-proportioned and beautiful. This Greek ideal of goodness and beauty has surely influenced how men think Christ must have appeared. The second reason for how men depict Jesus’ physical appearance comes from a spurious letter supposedly by Publius Lentulus, a friend of Pontius Pilate, written to the Roman Senate in the first century. It has now been proven that the work actually dates to the fourth century, but it was very widely circulated and accepted as factual until recent times. It goes: “In this time appeared a man endowed with great powers. His name is Jesus. His disciples call him the Son of God. He is of noble and well-proportioned stature, with a face full of kindness, and yet firmness, so that beholders both love him and fear him. His hair is the color of wine, straight and without luster, but from the level of the ears curling and glossy. His forehead is even and smooth, his face without blemish, and enhanced by a tempered bloom, his countenance ingenuous and kind. Nose and mouth are in no way faulty. His beard is full, of the same color as his hair; his eyes blue and extremely brilliant. In reproof and rebuke he is formidable; in exhortation and teaching, gentle and amiable of tongue. None have seen him to laugh but many, on the contrary, to weep. His person is tall, his hands beautiful and straight. In speaking, deliberate, grave, little given to loquacity; in beauty surpassing most men.” Obviously the author was describing the Roman/European/Greek ideal man, not a Jew of first-century Palestine. Other references: The source for what we know about Jesus comes from the Bible, especially the gospels. There are some legitimate extra-biblical references to Jesus, but most are of dubious worth. The most important non-Christian references to Jesus are found in the following works: 1. Annals of the Roman historian Tacitus (XV, 44), written about AD 110. In his account of the persecution of Christians under the emperor Nero, which was occasioned by the burning of Rome (AD 64), the Emperor, in order to rid himself of suspicion, blamed the fire on the so-called Christians, who were already hated among the people. Tacitus writes in explanation: "The name is derived from Christ, whom the procurator Pontius Pilate had executed in the reign of Tiberius." 2. Pliny the Younger, in his letter to the emperor Trajan (c. AD 111) about how he should act in regard to the Christians (Epistle 10, 96ff.) described Christians as adherents of a crude superstition, who sang hymns to Christ "as to a god." 3. Suetonius, remarked in his life of the emperor Claudius (Vita Claudii 25:4; after AD 100): "He [Claudius] expelled the Jews, who had on the instigation of Chrestus continually been causing disturbances, from Rome." Chrestus is obviously a mistaken rendering of Christus, the Latin for Christ. 4. Josephus, the Jewish historian who depicted the history of his people and the events of the Jewish-Roman war (66-70), remarks in passing about the stoning in AD 62 of "James, the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ . . ." (Antiquities XX, 200). There is another passage in Josephus called the “Testimony of Flavius" (Antiquities XVIII, 63ff.) which talks of Jesus at some length, but its authenticity is now in serious doubt. 5. The Talmud, a compendium of Jewish law, lore, and commentary of the 1st and 2nd centuries reveals an acquaintance with the Christian tradition and includes several Jewish myths of Jesus. The picture of Jesus offered in these writings may be summarized as follows: born the son of a Roman soldier named Panther, Jesus worked magic, ridiculed the wise, seduced and stirred up the people, gathered five disciples about him, and was hanged (crucified) on the eve of the Passover. Interestingly, this is the picture of Jesus still taught by many Jews. While the extra-biblical references to Jesus reveal no useful details, they do demonstrate that Jesus really lived and died when and where the gospels say he did. Jesus was a historical figure and cannot be explained away as a myth, as was popular among skeptics of the 19th and early 20th centuries. FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE #3: Jesus was an actual historical person who lived in the first part of the first century AD. Of that there can be no doubt. |