These three Gospels have been called “Synoptic,” a word which means “seeing together,” because they share in common a large amount of material, follow the same basic order, and stand apart from John, whose Gospel is unique among the four.

Long ago people realized you could display the text of the three Synoptic Gospels side by side in columns to form a synopsis or parallel Gospel or a harmony. When you do this you find that a large percentage of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are parallel. They share a large amount of verbatim agreement, though each of the three has unique ways of diverging from each other in small and large matters. Much is the same and some is different.

For a long time, people who have studied the Gospels in synopsis (parallel columns) have referred to “the Synoptic Problem.” That problem is: how do we account for the agreements and differences in the parallel accounts and in the other material in the Gospels? Many of the observations I will share here come from a book that I think is the simplest and best-explained handbook on the topic, by Mark Goodacre, The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze.

In this article I am focusing only on the way comparing the Gospels in synopsis helps us see that Mark was the first to be written. Many other fascinating topics arise from a comparison of the Gospels in this manner.

Here is one of the things you find when you put the Gospels in parallel columns and study the agreements and differences: Mark is the middle term between Matthew and Luke. What I mean is this: again and again in material that occurs in all three Gospels (material called Triple Tradition) Matthew and Mark have agreements in common and Mark and Luke have agreements in common far outweighing the fewer agreements Matthew and Luke have against Mark. In the differences of detail, both Matthew and Luke agree with Mark more than they agree with each other.

Goodacre proposes a way for students to see this for themselves. You can take a synopsis (or harmony or parallel) of the Gospels and work it out for yourself. Find all the Triple Tradition material (it occurs in all three Synoptic Gospels) and use colored pencils to do a survey of agreements and differences. Here is a list of some, not all, of the Triple Tradition material (from Goodacre, pgs 35-36):

• Matt 8:1-4 … Mark 1:40-45 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . . Leper
• Matt 9:1-8 … Mark 2:1-12 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . . . Paralytic
• Matt 9:9-13 … Mark 2:13-17… Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . Call of Levi/Matthew
• Matt 9:14-17 … Mark 2:18-22 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . Fasting, New Wine, Patches
• Matt 12:1-8 … Mark 2:23-28 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . Grain on Sabbath
• Matt 12:9-14 … Mark 3:1-6 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . . Man with Withered Hand
• Matt 10:1-4 … Mark 3:13-19 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . The Twelve
• Matt 12:46-50 … Mark 3:31-35 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . Mother and brothers
• Matt 13:1-23 … Mark 4:1-20… Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . Sower Parable
• Matt 8:23-27 … Mark 4:35-41 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . Calming Storm
• Matt 8:28-34 … Mark 5:1-20 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . Gerasene Demoniac
• Matt 9:18-26 … Mark 5:21-43 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . Jairus, Bleeding Woman
• Matt 14:13-21 … Mark 6:30-44 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . Feeding Five Thousand
• Matt 16:13-20 … Mark 8:27-30… Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . Peter’s Confession
• Matt 17:1-8 … Mark 9:2-8 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . . . . . Transfiguration
• Matt 17:14-20 … Mark 9:14-29 … Luke 5:12-16 . . . . . . . Epilectic Boy
• Matt 19:13-15 … Mark 10:13-16 … Luke 18:15-17 . . . . . . . Little Children
• Matt 19:16-30 … Mark 10:17-31… Luke 18:18-30 . . . . . . Rich Young Ruler
• Matt 20:29-34 … Mark 10:46-52 … Luke 18:35-43 . . . .Blind Bartimaeus
• Matt 21:1-9 … Mark 11:1-10… Luke 19:28-38 . . . . . . . . . Triumphal Entry
• Matt chs. 21-28 … Mark chs. 11-16 … Luke chs. 20-24 Passion Narratives

So here is Goodacre’s coloring project and here are the results you will get. Color words found only in Matthew blue. Words found only in Mark color red. Words unique to Luke should be yellow. Words shared only by Matthew and Mark would be purple. Words shared only by Matthew and Luke would be green. Words shared only by Mark and Luke would be orange. Finally, words found in all three will be brown.

Here is what you will find. There will be a lot of brown, some purple, some orange, but very little green. In other words, agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark are rare. This shows that Mark is the middle term between the three. What does Goodacre mean by “middle term”? This can be illustrated as below:

TRIPLE TRADITION MATERIAL AGREEMENTS

. . . MATTHEW . . . MARK . . . LUKE . . .

. . . MATTHEW . . . MARK

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .MARK . . . LUKE

He means that Matthew used Mark as a source and also Luke used Mark as a source. If we propose that Mark was first and that both Matthew and Luke read Mark, it explains the fact that Matthew agrees more with Mark against Luke than with Luke against Mark. It explains how Luke agrees more with Mark against Matthew than with Matthew against Mark.

How we can tell that neither Matthew nor Luke was first: If Matthew was the first Gospel and if Mark and Luke both knew Matthew, then Matthew would be the middle term. If Luke was first, it would be the middle term. Mark is what Matthew and Luke have most in common. Therefore Mark was first.

More evidence: Another phenomenon in the Gospels is that there is a good body of material found in Matthew and Mark, but not Luke, and a good amount found in Mark and Luke, but not Matthew. And the Matthew-Mark material and Mark-Luke material follows the order of guess which Gospel? Mark. Again we see Mark as the middle term. Another line of evidence is the tendency of Mark to make statements in raw, unfiltered, almost scandalous terms. Whenever Mark describes Yeshua in a manner than might be controversial, we sometimes find that Matthew and Luke soften the description. If Mark makes the disciples look bad, we find that Matthew and Luke make them look less bad. Then there is the matter of material Mark does not include, things like the Lord’s Prayer and the various teachings that make up Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. Does it make sense, if Mark came later, that he would omit this material? In choosing what to include and what to leave out of a written Gospel (the community knew many more sayings and deeds of Yeshua than the Gospels record) why would Mark leave out the Lord’s Prayer once it was part of the Synoptic Gospel tradition? He would not be likely to. More likely, Mark was written before Matthew.

In short, the evidence stacks up that Mark is what Matthew and Luke have most in common and that Mark was the earliest to be written and circulated.

First, Larry Hurtado has made what is perhaps the best case that the worship of Yeshua (which itself implies divinity) was early, very early, during the predominantly-Jewish stage of the movement (see his book How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?). A huge piece of evidence? Philippians 2, which is a hymn Paul is quoting because he knows the Philippians give it credence. So this hymn has been around long enough to be considered authoritative. That means it could easily be from the 40′s or at latest the 50′s.

Second, and what this post is all about, in John 5, we see Yeshua making an argument related to his divinity, which is thoroughly Jewish in character and not something which would arise in a Greco-Roman type of thought. Raymond Brown, in his commentary on the Gospel of John, points out that Yeshua’s argument about why he does his work on the Sabbath (rather than waiting for the six working days) is a Jewish argument.

The controversy and Yeshua’s response are explained as follows:

THE CONTROVERSY: And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.

YESHUA’S RESPONSE, PART 1: But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”

REACTION: This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

YESHUA’S RESPONSE, PART 2: So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
(John 5:16-24 ESV)

What is the Jewish argument which Yeshua is making?

1. What we are to do on the Sabbath is to imitate God in his rest (Gen 2:2).
2. All life on earth is continually sustained by God, even on the Sabbath.
3. Therefore it is lawful to sustain life on the Sabbath as this is what God is doing (“my Father is working until now,” i.e., even on every Sabbath since creation).

God did not completely cease work on the Sabbath, men were born and died, and only God can give life. Yeshua has just healed a man so incapacitated he cannot even move on his own. In giving this man mobility, Yeshua is giving him fuller life. Thus, Yeshua fixes his redemptive work on the Sabbath in light of God’s work.

This style of argument is Jewish in nature. It is based on a text, an idea strongly rooted in Judaism. Yeshua does not cite Genesis 2:2, nor does he have to. The Sabbath principle is foundational. But it is not foundational in Greco-Roman thought. On the contrary, the Roman sources lampoon the Jewish people for laziness for needed a seventh day rest.

Brown alludes to other commentaries which list rabbinic arguments that God does not get tired or need to rest and that no child would be born and illness healed on the Sabbath if it was thought that God ceased all his labors on the Sabbath. It is not from life-giving but from creating that God rests on the Sabbath.

It is not the kind of argument that would suit later Christianity. This section in John 5 is profound, reflecting on Yeshua’s transcendent authority (vss. 20-24), at resurrection (vss. 25-29), the judgment according to works (vss. 22-23, 30, 45), the judgment given over to the Son (vs. 22), the Son as Life-Giver (vs. 21), the witnesses to Yeshua’s identity (vss. 30-44), and Yeshua as the ultimate subject Torah points to (vss.45-46). Yeshua’s teaching that he works as his Father works and does what his Father is doing is saying, in essence, “Life does not cease on the Sabbath and my Father works to sustain life as do I.” The implication is not that Yeshua, by virtue of his identity, is exempt from the Sabbath law. It is, rather, a halachic statement: doing whatever promotes life on the Sabbath is permitted and Sabbath restrictions should not promote death or suffering to continue.

John 5 is one more piece of evidence that the divinity of Yeshua is an early development, a Jewish one, and not a late, Greco-Roman-inspired doctrine.

Divinity1

One of the two weirdest (there is one that is even weirder) is Matthew 2:15. Is Matthew able to read and understand the Hebrew Bible? Is he guilty of a strange and arbitrary reading simply to justify his belief in Yeshua of Nazareth? Of course the author of Matthew knows what he is doing. It is the modern reader who must make the adjustment into the world of midrashic use of scripture. Midrash is a kind of teaching using the scriptures in a homiletic manner (a sermon, a talk on a religious or moral subject). Midrash is interested in going beyond the plain meaning — but it is not intended to replace the plain meaning. Midrash is looking for something hinted at. And Midrash always has a justification. It is never arbitrary. It is always based on some technical detail about the words, grammar, or interconnections between the verse in question and other verses on the same theme.

One aspect of the art of midrash is to say something that seems a tad outrageous. But on closer investigation the outrageous statement can be justified and also can be shown relevant. The sages and rabbis of old loved to discuss halakhah (detailed investigations of categories and practices for keeping the commandments of Torah). But the public preferred to hear from them midrashes — sermons and parables with moral, theological, and narrative interest.

So, let’s look at the great midrash of Matthew on Hosea 11:1 and learn as students.

Matthew’s citation of Hosea 11:1 is much closer to the Hebrew than the Greek translation (LXX, Septuagint). The Hebrew text of Hosea 11:1 rendered in as literal a form as possible looks something like this:
When a youth [was] Israel, I loved him; and out of Egypt I called my son.
The LXX has: out of Egypt have I called his children.
Matthew has: out of Egypt I called my son.

Although Matthew wrote in Greek, his midrash on Hosea depended on the Hebrew text (or if not, a Greek text that was based on the proto-Masoretic text).

It is quickly obvious if you look up Hosea 11:1 that the verse is not about Messiah, but about Israel. Vs.2 says, “As they [prophets] called to them they went away from them; to the Baals they would sacrifice and to images they would burn offerings.” (Note: Most modern translations deviate from the Masoretic text, but I am not persuaded of their reasons regarding this verse and so offer my own translation based on the Delitzsch commentary).

What facts of the situation did Matthew have in front of him that led to this connection between Yeshua the son and Israel the son?

First, Matthew had the gospel accounts from eyewitnesses that the heavenly voice twice called Yeshua “son,” once at the baptism and once at the transfiguration. Second, he had the unusual manner of Yeshua’s speaking, which was frequent, about his Father. The sonship of Yeshua was a major theme of Yeshua’s teaching and God was “Abba” to him. Third, he knew the deep theme of Israel’s sonship in the Hebrew Bible. In Deuteronomy 32 (a key chapter), Israel is the son who disappointed God who gave him birth. In the Exodus tradition, God said to Pharaoh, “Let my son go” (Exod 4:23). God promised to be a father the Davidic king (Messiah) who would be a son to him. In the Psalms about the Davidic king (Messiah) the king is called son and it is even said, “you are my son; today I have begotten you” (Psa 2:7).

Matthew is saying that Yeshua is the son like Israel is the son and like the Davidic-messianic king is the son. He is defining the meaning of Yeshua’s sonship. The specific event that brought this comparison to mind is Yeshua’s family coming back into Galilee out of Egypt, where they had been hiding from Herod.

Comparisons between contemporary events and ancient biblical events were a poetic Hebrew way of thinking. A similar famous text is also used in this section about Rachel weeping for her children. The event that inspired Jeremiah the prophet to speak of Rachel weeping was when exiles to Babylon, terribly treated Judeans being taken away from everything they held dear, passing nearby the place where Genesis had indicated Rachel was buried. It was not unusual for Jeremiah to relate geography — the place Rachel was buried — to events in his time — exiles being tragically marched away.

The problem a modern reader has is simple: we look for the plain meaning, the literal. We tend to be bothered by poetic, symbolic, homiletical connections. If Matthew doesn’t have a prophecy-fulfillment connection to Hosea 11:1, how dare he cite the verse!

But Matthew has done something much deeper. He has related Yeshua (not only here, but in dozens of places) firmly to the sonship of Israel and the sonship of the Davidic-messianic kings.

In Matthew’s day, the movement of Yeshua-followers was expanding. Certain elements already wanted to remove Yeshua in some ways from his Jewish context. Matthew famously represents the interest of keeping the image of Yeshua within a Jewish framework. Yeshua is Ideal Israel and Yeshua is the New Moses. The midrash on Hosea 11:1 is a masterful example of the art of teaching Yeshua’s life from within Jewish thought.

Q is an imagined document which scholars think they see in the background of Yeshua-sayings that are shared only by Matthew and Luke (they don’t occur in Mark).

The Q theory is that Matthew and Luke each independently used Mark and this lost source of sayings which scholars call Q. Let me break that down. The theory is that Matthew did not know Luke and Luke did not know Matthew. The sources they had included Mark and Q (and both had special sources either written or oral besides Mark and Q as well).

To better understand this, think of a harmony of the gospels, which puts the gospels in columns. Triple Tradition materials is stories and sayings that occur in all 3 (Mt-Mk-Lk). Double Tradition material usually occurs in Mt-Lk (though sometimes Mk-Lk and Mt-Mk).

Most of this Double Tradition material (the Mt-Lk stuff) consists of sayings. Why are these sayings in both Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark? The answer in Q theory is that they had a source of sayings called Q. The Q theory is a good theory. It has some support. It seems logical.

Note: I am avoiding a long post on details, including the 7 arguments used to support Q (four negative and three positive). For a thorough discussion, read Goodacre.

Now, here is Goodacre’s basic case:

#1, Another theory of gospel origins works better than the Q theory.

#2, The Farrer theory (supported by Goulder and Goodacre): Luke used Matthew and Mark plus other sources.

#3, In the Farrer-Goulder-Goodacre theory, the Double Tradition material is Luke using Matthew.

#4, Many have doubted this because Luke takes things Matthew gathers into long discourses (Sermon on the Mount) and spreads them out all over his gospel (many of the Sermon on the Mount sayings are in Luke, but spread all over). — Goodacre says this is Luke’s literary artistry at work. He simply has a different idea about how to use the sayings than Matthew and is creatively spreading them into more specific contexts instead of long sermons.

#5, Why doesn’t Luke use some things in Matthew (most famous: the Magi)? The answer, which can be backed up by the larger context: Luke doesn’t like certain things. Magi are one of them (see Acts 8:9 and following). Luke chooses the “Luke-pleasing elements” only.

#6, Sometimes Luke’s version of a saying appears more “primitive” (closer to what scholars imagine might be the original form of Yeshua’s words) than Matthew’s. Goodacre says this is because Luke (as did all the others) had a large body of oral tradition to work with and may have preferred a different version than Matthew.

#7, Some have argued for Q by noting that Luke sometimes lacks additions or “corrections” in language Matthew has made. Goodacre: sometimes Luke preferred Mark over Matthew.

NO WORRIES: If this sounds like Greek to you or boring, don’t sweat it. This is just extra fodder for the imagination and for understanding gospel origins.

BENEFIT: If the Q theory is wrong, and if we can say that Luke used Matthew and Mark as well as other sources, it changes the way we look at several things. We can read Matthew as an attempted improvement on Mark and Luke as an attempted improvement on both (see Luke 1:1-3). Also, the value of oral tradition (eyewitness testimony) is higher if we dispense with Q (which was supposedly a written source which constrained Mt and Lk). The creativity of Matthew and even more so Luke is better appreciated when Q is regarded as a myth.

And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and sought a way to destroy him; for they feared him, because all the multitude was astonished at his teaching.
–Mark 11:18

The gospel did not just happen. The events which marked the onset of a new stage in the world’s redemption happened in a time and place with three main cultural backdrops. Parts 1 and 2 introduced Greek and Roman influences on these events, both in Yeshua’s time and the later time the gospels were written. What about conditions and social structures in Israel itself? What are some basics readers need to know about conditions and groups in Israel? What about Jewish concerns in the times of the evangelists?

First, it cannot be over-emphasized, and it rather has been under-emphasized, that Yeshua was Galilean and his movement was primarily a Galilean one at the beginning. For more about this, see “Yeshua the Galilean” by clicking here. In Galilee itself, Yeshua was safe unless he ran afoul of Herod Antipas. It was primarily in Judea and Jerusalem that there was danger for Yeshua. Galilee was rural and had no aristocracy. Judea had powerful people with statuses to protect so that prophets and upstart messianic brigands were quickly eliminated.

Second, we must locate Yeshua among the common Jews and not see him as part of any of the parties. In an overreaction to centuries of neglecting the Jewish context of Jesus, some studies in recent decades have aligned Yeshua with the Pharisees. This is a misunderstanding of what the Pharisees represented. Yeshua did not belong to any of the parties. Of the parties, the Pharisees may have been closest to Yeshua’s way of thinking, but he himself was not a Pharisee.

As one of the people of the land, Yeshua’s common belief with his countrymen centered on monotheism, covenant, the election of Israel as God’s people, the Temple, and the way of life laid out in the Torah. Readings of Yeshua overturning laws of the Torah are without basis and should be rejected. A more sophisticated reading of Mark 7 and Matthew 15 is called for, a reading based more in Jewish discussions about how to keep the food and purity laws, not whether to keep them.

Second, we can and should accept the picture of the gospels that there was some degree of literacy in Galilee and synagogues with some education. It is not difficult to believe that Yeshua could read the Hebrew text. But we should not imagine him as a scribe with the kind of training found in Judea in the small movement of Pharisees and scribes. Yeshua would have been a literate, but by Judean standards, poorly educated layman.

Third, we should understand the times of Yeshua in Judaism as formative. The last decades before the First Jewish Revolt in 66-70 CE were a time when Israel was looking for an identity, for a way to be Israel. The powerful chief priests and Sadducees held nearly all the power in Jerusalem. Galileans paid tithes to the chief priests out of duty to Torah in spite of corruption and the fact that the Temple-state in Judea was abusive of wealth and power. The Pharisees were seeking to bring their own kind of renewal, but it too was a movement defined by power and status, not righteousness in the mode of the prophets of Israel.

Israel was seeking to be Israel, to recover some sense of what Torah had expressed as the ideal. The common people were powerless. From time to time, groups of the common people would follow an upstart messianic or prophetic leader. None of the small revolts inspired a wide following.

It is in this sense that we should understand Yeshua, who worked wonders in Galilee and attracted crowds. People were ready for change. They wanted to see something from God. Some of the people were ready for a revolution. Otherwise the various brigands who led small revolts would have found no followers. Yeshua seemed to be a person who could make things happen at long last.

Yet nearly all of Yeshua’s teaching and his actions were calculated to overthrowing popular messianic notions. Yeshua found a people so out of touch with the vision of the prophets for the world to come, the kingdom of God, that he set about overturning sacred cows. He dined with sinners. He healed impure people. He praised the faith of non-Jews. He warned that being the Chosen People would not bring inheritance by itself in the kingdom. He denied the idea of power and status as a way for Messiah or Messiah’s followers. He spoke of a long delay in the coming of the kingdom. He established a renewal movement, a group within Israel to be True Israel. He claimed to be of very high and exalted status which people would only understand when he was glorified. He gave many hints and signs of his identity. He left a group of disciples to lead a movement after his death and glorification when these things would become clear. He spoke of coming in the future as the Son of Man.

Yeshua’s vision of Messiahship and kingdom is a Jewish vision, but different in many details from other Jewish ways of imagining the kingdom.

In the days of the evangelists, division with synagogues throughout the empire heightened the distance between the Yeshua-movement and Jewish communities. The evangelists emphasized the origins of their movement as Jewish but with a view to spread to the nations. Yeshua had other sheep. Yeshua called for his name to be proclaimed to the gentiles. The Abrahamic promise was at last being realized.

“Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not? Should we pay them, or should we not?”

But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, “Why put me to the test? Bring me a coin, and let me look at it.” And they brought one. And he said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?”

They said to him, “Caesars.”

Yeshua said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars, and to God the things that are God’s.” And they were amazed at him.
–Mark 12:14-17

What has the gospel to do with Rome? As in the first installment about Greece and Hellenism, we’re considering Roman background in the life and message of Yeshua as well as in the time of the evangelists who wrote the gospels and their audience.

First, and very importantly, we should rid people of the notion that the Romans controlled daily life in Israel or even in Jerusalem. Many imagine Roman legions marching to and fro all the time as Israelites tried to live in peace. Rome ruled from afar and kept a small number of troops in Jerusalem and a few other places. Here is how E.P. Sanders summarizes it in The Historical Figure of Jesus:

The situation varied from time to time and from place to place . . . but Rome generally governed remotely, being content with the collection of tribute and the maintenance of stable borders; for the most part it left even these matters in the hands of loyal local rulers and leaders.

In Galilee, Rome ruled through Herod Antipas, who had his own guard. During the time of Yeshua, there was little civil unrest in Galilee. Antipas collected tribute for Rome and let the towns of Galilee exist as Jewish towns, with Jewish education and synagogues (house synagogues, perhaps).

There were three kinds of taxation: tribute to Rome, taxes to Herod Antipas, and tithes to Jerusalem. The tribute to Rome was one-fourth of the produce every second year (so 12.5%), according to Richard Horsley’s study in Archaeology, History, and Society in Galilee. Add taxes to Caesar and perhaps 20% or more in tithe (depending on how tithing was interpreted and there is uncertainty) and the farmers who struggled to produce enough to survive were strapped with taxes. (And since the Temple-state in Jerusalem kept the tithes and did not redistribute them as in Torah, this was a heavy burden making Judeans rich off of Galileans).

In Judea, Rome ruled through the High Priest and his entourage of chief priests and, to a lesser degree of power, the Sanhedrin. Most of the soldiers in Jerusalem were Temple guard, not Roman soldiers. Pilate maintained a small garrison and in event of a major incident, had to call troops down from Syria (with a considerable time delay in help arriving).

How much trouble was brewing against Roman rule in Yeshua’s time? Most historians agree that older ideas about a wildly revolutionary populace in Israel has been overblown. There were a number of small movements of revolt, but the people in the land were not anywhere near the point of revolution yet. There was resentment and certain messianic or prophetic hopes could arise in small resistance groups. But the so-called Zealot party was not about overthrowing Rome at the time (they are mentioned in the gospels and possibly their zeal was for Torah and not revolution).

In Mark 12, Yeshua’s opponents attempt to trap him into either being arrested for making public statements against Rome or losing followers by sounding too supportive of Rome and taxation. Yeshua turned this around and shamed his opponents. He asked them to produce a denarius. The Roman denarius had an image of Caesar, already thought by many to be an idolatrous image due to the Roman imperial cult, and said on it pontifex maximus (highest priest) and DIVI AUG[ustus] F[ili] AUGUSTUS (son of the deified Augustus, see Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth, pg. 423). The coin, like the one used for the Temple tax, was idolatrous. Pharisees would normally not carry such a coin and Galileans definitely not.

What about the influence of Rome on the gospels at the time they were written, in the lives of the evangelists and their readers? The influence of Rome on the gospels is felt much more here.

First, the gospels and other literature of the early Yeshua-movement could circulate between cities precisely because of Rome. Roman roads and imperial order made for what some have called the Roman internet. That is, people would send messages from city to city with travelers on the roads. Copies of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John would have started circulating, so that many people could read them. Richard Bauckham edited a collection of essays all about the nature of circulating documents and how this should affect our view of the gospels in The Gospels for All Christians.

The major point for us in this is that we should not assume each gospel was written for a narrow audience. Some have greatly exaggerated the idea of a Matthean school of Jewish-Christians and a Johannine school with its own ideas about who Yeshua was. Some wish to depict the early Yeshua communities as greatly divided in matters of faith. Yet the circulation patterns of letters and documents on the Roman “internet” suggests a much closer communication between believers in different cities.

Finally, the Imperial Cult, the worship of the Roman emperors (or of their genius, as it was termed then) is a subject worth greater study. The term “Son of God” in the gospels cannot be read without keeping in mind it was a term used for Augustus and other Caesars, usually after they died. The images of Yeshua in the gospels as a highly exalted figure have to be read as especially important for the evangelists writing in the late first century, as the movement spread outside of Israel. The Roman cry “Caesar is Lord” was met with the cry “Yeshua is Lord.”

As Yeshua himself said, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, but to God the things that are God’s.”

Read Part 3, “Greece, Rome, Israel #3.”

Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth. . . . He said to her, “Let the children first be fed, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
-Mark 7:26, 27.

Our reading of the gospels should take into account three streams of culture. In particular we can says that the times of Yeshua were affected by: (1) the reaction against Hellenism or Greek culture in Israel that had come to the fore in the days of the Maccabees from 165 BCE on, (2) the influence of Rome both for good and bad in the life of Israel, and (3) the struggles of Israelite groups and cultures to define themselves in a changing world.

The three cultural streams of the gospels should come even more into focus as we think, not of the times of Yeshua and his band of disciples, but of the time of the evangelists and their communities.

How do Greece, Rome, and Israel enter into the times of Yeshua and, even more so, the times of the evangelists and the gospel audiences? We’ll explore Greek influences in part 1 and then Roman and Israelite in parts 2 and 3.

Hellenism and the Gospels

Yeshua and his disciples would almost certainly have been able to converse in Greek. In Mark 7:26-27, Yeshua has a conversation with a Syro-Phoenician woman. A simple kind of Greek was commonly known throughout the empire. We might compare it to the way many people in the world today speak at least rudimentary English.

Alexander’s conquests in the 300′s BCE had spread Greek culture (Hellenism) and language all through the Middle East and beyond. The confrontation between Israelites and Greek culture came especially in 165 BCE and following with the Maccabees revolting against compromisers leading Israel to become Hellenistic or to syncretize Hellenism and Torah.

The parties of Judaism developed through this reaction. The Pharisees arose as a kind of reform movement, establishing new traditions to further separate Jews from Greek ways. The Sadducees arose as a priestly and aristocratic movement making the Temple service the key separation between Jews and Greeks. The Essenes were the most separatist of all, insisting on no interaction with gentiles. Common Jews and Israelites were influenced in various ways by these parties.

Yeshua was opposed overwhelmingly by the Sadducees and with some mixed reactions, though mostly opposition, from the Pharisees. In turn, he differed with the Pharisees on some key points:

• Their reaction to Hellenism involved new traditions to further separate Jews and Greeks; Yeshua criticized new traditions that were about anything other than heightening worship, justice, and love.
• Their reaction to Hellenism defined Jewishness with narrower circles of association; Yeshua associated more broadly with sinners and even gentiles.

Yeshua was a critic of gentiles, to be sure. He said:

If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? . . . when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do . . . the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all . . . the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant.
-Matthew 5:47; 6:7, 32; 20:25-26

Yeshua also reacted to Hellenism. We might say his reaction was to call Israel to be Israel in a certain way. The way Yeshua called Israel to be Israel was found in the Torah. What was the essence of Jewish identity, the thing that separated Israel from the nations, as Yeshua saw it in Torah?

It was to pursue greater righteousness, justice, and love than was naturally practiced by humanity. The Torah revelation given to Israel should make Israelites rise above human evil.

Hellenism affected the evangelists even more than Yeshua and his band of disciples:

• The evangelists wrote in Greek for a broad audience throughout the empire.
• The evangelists usually quoted the Jewish scriptures from the Septuagint (LXX) or Greek version instead of the Hebrew text.
• The evangelists wrote using Greek ideas about historiography, Greek forms such as the chreia (short episodes of narrative and sayings as we especially see in Mark), and in Luke’s case, specifically mentioning a Greek (Theophilus) as the primary recipient of the document.

Greek ideas and culture to some degree lie behind the gospels and Judaism in general. What started in Torah as a Middle Eastern movement became, in the time of Yeshua and those who followed him, a message with application to the entire Greco-Roman world and beyond.

Read Part 2, “Greece, Rome, Israel #2.”

Read Part 3, “Greece, Rome, Israel #3.”

Mark 4:21-34 is an important sequence of sayings whose meaning in the context of Mark is often obscured by readers who are more familiar with the sayings from Matthew. That is to say, the order in which we read the gospels sometimes affects our interpretation. How does this happen?

The different synoptic evangelists (Mark, Matthew, Luke) often include the same sayings in different contexts. The context of the saying often influences interpretation. The modern reader might wonder if: (a) the sayings are all given in arbitrary contexts with the evangelists rarely if ever knowing what context they may have been uttered in, (b) if the sayings were often repeated again and again so that they occurred in multiple contexts, (c) if each evangelist had his own literary reasons for including the sayings in the contexts where they show up. I choose (c), which does not mean there are no cases where the context and the saying are matched to “what actually happened.” It is quite possible that sometimes the evangelists give us a saying in the actual context of events in which Yeshua uttered the words. But the gospels as we have them are literary compositions and we can get far more out of them by regarding them as such without inserting historical questions into the details.

Remember that Mark’s gospel is the first to be written down and that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. Therefore, it is useful to view the lamp, measure, seed, and mustard weed sayings first as Mark used them. And it turns out the context and the sequence of these sayings in Mark is very meaningful.

How Matthew Influences a Reader’s View of These Sayings

The “lamp under a bushel” saying in Matthew is in the Sermon on the Mount (5:15) and its meaning there is about the disciples shining their “lamp” to reveal God’s glory to the world. As I will argue in Part 2, Mark puts this saying in a different context and the one shining his “lamp” is Yeshua, lifted up on the cross.

The “measure” saying in Matthew is in the Sermon on the Mount (7:2). There it refers to the measure or standard of judgment a person uses for another. God will judge us with the same measure we judge others. In Mark (as also in Luke), the measure saying is about giving (giving love, giving money, giving service).

The “to him who has more will be given” saying in Matthew 13:12 is about having the mystery of revelation of the kingdom. Those who learn the kingdom’s mysteries will be given more. In Mark, it seems that what the disciple has is reward, not revelation (God’s reward for the deeds of service).

The “scatter seed” saying from Mark 4:26 is unique, not found in Matthew or Luke. It is a rare case of material unique to Mark.

The “mustard seed” parable is used in Matthew in a very similar context to Mark’s use of it, but in a different sequence of sayings about the kingdom. Probably both Matthew’s use and Mark’s use of the saying is about the remarkable growth. Still, I will argue in Part 2 that Mark’s context for the “mustard seed,” and also Mark’s unique “scattered seed” parable, is about Yeshua sowing the seed more so than the disciples sowing it.

Readers who are used to the traditional order of the gospels (Matthew first) tend to give priority to Matthew’s setting for the sayings. Thus, when reading Mark 4, many readers have a pre-formed opinion about the “lamp” and the “measure” and the “seed.” It is easy to miss how Mark uses them.

Preview: Multi-Use Sayings

If a saying like the lamp and bushel could possibly, as I will try to demonstrate in Part 2, have two meanings as diverse as “disciples shine your light” and “Yeshua’s light will shine from the cross,” should we conclude that the evangelists had no understanding of the meaning of Yeshua’s words?

Not at all. First, it is more than likely that Yeshua himself used the same or similar sayings not only in different contexts, but with different meanings at times for the key terms. Second, many of Yeshua’s sayings are images with multiple layers of meaning. It is possible that multiple traditions of interpretation of a saying like the “lamp under a bushel” developed by the time the gospels were written. Is Matthew right and Mark wrong? They truly could both be right.

Next part: Interpreting Mark 4:21-34 in context.

I’ve had a number of “Beloved Disciple” articles here (see “The Beloved Disciple: Who is He?” and “The Beloved Disciple in Relation to Peter”).

Now, I’m summarizing Bauckham’s historical detective work following the trail leading to the identity of the Beloved Disciple. It’s a twisted trail sorting through evidence with a number of errors which require explanation. It’s fascinating to historically understand how simple the identification of the Beloved Disciple is and why the information has been obscured in ancient mistakes.

THE MIXED-UP STATEMENT OF POLYCRATES, c. 190 CE

THE WITNESS: Polycrates was the Bishop of Ephesus in Asia Minor writing to Victor of Rome around 190 CE about the Paschal Controversy (look up “Quartodecimanism” or “Easter Controversy” in wikipedia). Keep in mind the tradition that the fourth gospel was written by “John” (but which John) in Ephesus.

STATEMENT: “John too, who leant back on the Lord’s breast, who was a priest, wearing the sacerdotal plate, both martyr and teacher.”

LEANT BACK? The Beloved Disciple leaned on Yeshua’s breast at the Last Supper and Polycrates says the Beloved Disciple is none other than John, see John 13:25 and 21:20. But wait! Which John does he mean?

SACERDOTAL PLATE? In Greek, the πεταλον (petalon), which is the plate that has God’s name on it worn by the High Priest only. But wait! Was John, according to Polycrates, supposed to have been the High Priest? Major problem.

COULD POLYCRATES HAVE MEANT IT FIGURATIVELY? Not likely. There is a similar misnomer about James, the brother of Yeshua, who is said in Epiphanius, citing a passage in Eusebius quoting Hegesippus, to have been High Priest and to have worn the sacerdotal plate also. Bauckham explains how Epiphanius misunderstood Hegesippus and how this error possibly came to be. But it suggests that early Christians were susceptible to claims like High Priesthoods for apostolic figures.

COULD IT BE TRUE THAT JOHN WAS HIGH PRIEST? Several scholars have suggested it could actually be true and they use Acts 4:5-6 as a basis, “On the morrow their rulers and elders and scribes were gathered together in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family.”

HOW DO WE EXPLAIN POLYCRATES’ MISTAKE? Bauckham points to another mistake made by Polycrates in the same passage. Speaking of Philip who came to live in Hierapolis, “Philip, one of the twelve apostles, who has fallen asleep in Hierapolis.” Polycrates is actually speaking of Philip the evangelist (Acts 6:5, throughout ch. 8; 21:8), and not Philip, one of the Twelve (Mk 3:18 and many other references in all four gospels). Bauckham explains that there was a trend in the early Christian writers to assume that characters with the same names were identical, which explains Polycrates’ mistake regarding Philip. Likewise, then, he might have assumed that the John in Acts 4:5-6 was the John the Beloved Disciple of the fourth gospel (and equated him with John, son of Zebedee as well.

THE NAME YOCHANAN (JOHN): Is the 5th most popular Palestinian Jewish name on record from the period of the New Testament (Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 85).

ACTS 4:5-6 AS A FURTHER CLUE: The “John” in Acts 4:5-6 is not the son of Zebedee. We know this because John, son of Zebedee appears as a separate character there (vs. 13).

THE IDENTITY AT LAST!! Thus, the beloved disciple, as far as Polycrates is concerned, is not John, son of Zebedee, but another John. We know of another John, also a disciple, but not one of the Twelve, who, along with Aristion, resided in Ephesus and was an elder there. He is John the elder (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39.3-4) a.k.a. John of Ephesus.

Chapter 1.1 – ORDER AND RELATIONSHIPS IN THE GOSPELS

Before you get too far in reading and thinking about the gospels — their history, the way they present Yeshua, their literary themes, their theology, the practical aspects of discipleship, and so on — it is a good idea to consider where they came from and something about how they came to us. I’ll present a more detailed theory in “Part 4: Eyewitness Theory and the Gospels.”

First, there is some terminology that is important. The first three gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are known as the synoptic gospels. “Synoptic” means “seeing together” and these gospels are in many ways similar in outline. They present Yeshua from the time of John the Baptist or earlier, his career in Galilee, his final journey to Jerusalem, his trials, death, and empty tomb. The fourth gospel (John) has a different sort of outline in several ways, presenting Yeshua as going to Jerusalem multiple times at various festivals.

There are other terms that can be important to know. Infancy narratives: in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2, the story of Yeshua’s birth and childhood. Passion narratives: all four gospels relate the story of Yeshua’s presentation, trials, and death in Jerusalem. Resurrection narratives: all four gospels relate the empty tomb and three of the four relate appearances after the empty tomb.

For now, I will present two basic theories about the order and relationships of the gospels. The first we might call the standard scholarly paradigm and the second a modified paradigm:

Standard Scholarly Paradigm
MARK is written first (most agree on this point).
MARK is a source for MATTHEW and LUKE.
MATTHEW and LUKE are independent of one another.
MATTHEW and LUKE share material in common not found in MARK.
A non-existent document called Q is considered a possible source for the common material in MATTHEW and LUKE that is not in MARK.
Q is thought to be a document of sayings of Yeshua (no narratives).
JOHN is often thought to be independent or maybe even unaware of the others.
This is also called the TWO-SOURCE theory, which means the synoptic gospels are based on two sources: MARK and Q.

Modified Paradigm
MARK is written first.
MARK is a source for MATTHEW.
MARK and MATTHEW are sources for LUKE.
There is no such thing as Q.
JOHN may present a different approach, but does use MARK as a source (and perhaps all the synoptics).

The modified paradigm is my own preferred way of looking at the evidence and combines ideas from several scholars. To read more about why Q probably does not exist, consider the arguments of Mark Goodacre in The Case Against Q. To consider the case for John using Mark as a source, consider Richard Bauckham’s “John for Readers of Mark” in The Gospels for All Christians.

Recently an archaeology blogger, for whom I have nothing but respect although he is a skeptic when it comes to matters of faith, made a comment on his blog about the gospels being unreliable. He said that we find a pattern in human discourse about major events. Years after the event, people make up apocryphal stories. They often put the stories in the mouth of authority figures to give them more credibility and the stories pass down as if they really happened and were witnessed by important people.

This, he said, is what the gospels represent. Maybe there are some genuine stories in there, but most are apocryphal and put into the mouths of earlier authority figures. The blogger recommended that people read the book by Bart Ehrman called Forged for more details. Ehrman says that many biblical writings were forgeries perpetrated in the name of others to establish credibility for their religious structure.

I thought about these statements and compared them with the research I have been doing for several years now and found a complete disconnect. While my views on the Bible have changed and while I do see that some things are not as simple as I once thought them to be, I’m not finding the gospels to be documents capable of forged stories and invented tales. On the contrary, I’m seeing more clearly a deliberate pattern of eyewitness testimony and oral history as a source.

Oral history, by the way, is very different from oral tradition. Oral history is direct, related by eyewitnesses. Oral history is Simon of Cyrene speaking in the early congregations, telling his story. Oral history is Peter, teaching gathered groups and relating his direct experience of Yeshua. Oral tradition is when stories are passed from teller to teller. Variations get introduced. Words get attributed to people who may not have been the actual origin.

The gospels were written down at the time the eyewitnesses were dying out. It seems the stories were written when the time for direct oral history was disappearing.

I also think about the importance of this topic for another reason. I care very much about people knowing the stories of Yeshua and joining the community of his followers. I represent this story to many Jewish and intermarried families. I care how Jewish people in particular see the life and identity of Yeshua. I also encounter many non-Jewish thinkers in my writing and correspondence. I read many points of view. It is important to me to advocate the Jesus-is-the-Messiah-of-Israel-and-the-Nations point of view.

I’m not a disinterested scholar. No scholars are actually disinterested anyway. I’m a Messianic Jewish rabbi and I think Yeshua’s story is the crux of meaning for the world.

I see faith eroding all over the place. People have new access to a broader spectrum of ideas. Critical scholarship is widely accessible. This should be a good thing. Yet, it has mostly been harmful for one very simple reason.

That reason is this: the people who represent faith tend not to read critical scholarship and the people who represent critical scholarship generally do not advocate faith. There is a lack of communication between the two.

It is my desire, then, to study the gospels and the life of Yeshua in order to communicate with people who may or may not read critical scholarship. I’ve given reading and study enough time to feel confident that critical study and faith in Yeshua are perfectly compatible.

One step in putting away false doubts about the reliability of the gospels is to address some of the evidence that they represent early written forms with sources in oral history. To say that another way: the gospels are the written record combining literary freedom with the oral reports of people who were there. There is no need to deny either the literary freedom the writers exercised or the oral history on which they largely based their accounts.

And in this podcast, I simply want to address the idea that Peter’s oral testimony stands largely behind the earliest gospel, Mark. But before I do, I am not saying that there are no exceptions to the oral history principle. The most famous example of something in the gospels that is not likely to be from oral history are the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke. Neither am I saying that the evangelists were mere recorders or claiming that all parts of their writing are equally close to the oral histories behind them.

But if I can convince someone that the essential basis of the gospels is direct testimony by people who were there, it would go a long way toward putting to rest all this doubt about the life and identity of Jesus, of Yeshua.

Amid the numerous books about the historical Jesus and the gospels, one that has become a particular focus for me is Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. On June 5, here in Atlanta, I am leading a seminar called “Eyewitnesses in the Gospels.” It is a seminar I’d like to give more than once and bring to other places as well.

In the seminar, we’ll examine topics including: the statements of Papias about the sources of the gospels, trends in named and unnamed characters in the gospels, the footprints of Peter in Mark, the footprints of the Beloved Disciple in John, and the meaning of the Yeshua who is revealed by testimony. The overall point is simple: the accounts in the gospels in many cases reflect early stories told by people who were there. They represent stories told in a community containing number of eyewitnesses. The possibility of fabricated stories about Yeshua is far less than many theories of gospel origins admit.

Or, to say it another way, the gospels are more reliable and more firmly grounded in the experiences related directly by people who had those experiences than many modern day authorities acknowledge. The stories about Yeshua are far more worth listening to than many people have been led to believe.

Consider for example the case that Richard Bauckham makes for the old theory, well-known to many readers of Mark, that Peter is largely the voice behind the stories in Mark. I will give a very short and in many ways inadequate summary of that case here. In the seminar, we’ll spend an hour on this issue and in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses you can read the thoroughly developed case.

Where did people first get the idea that Mark’s gospel is, in some way, shape, or form, relating stories originally sourced in Peter? They get that idea from a statement made by Papias, probably around the year 110 C.E., based on what Papias claims to have heard from the disciples of John the Elder, probably in 70’s or early 80’s of the first century. The statement of Papias is recorded in the writing of Eusebius in the fourth century and there are some problems with the statement.

The reason many people reject Papias’ statement outright is that Mark is clearly a literary gospel. Mark is clearly not simply the written account of oral teaching. There is too much literary artistry to take Mark as some sort of transcript.

But that is not what Papias said exactly in the first place and the idea of a literary gospel sourced in Peter’s oral teaching is worth investigating. Is there any evidence internal to Mark to back it up?

I’ll simply give three examples of that sort of internal evidence. These examples have behind them precedents in ancient biographies and are not simply literary theories based on thin air. Mark has done some things in his gospel comparable to what other biographers have done and fitting with theories of how history should be written as well. Skipping over all that complexity, here are three examples.

First, Mark goes out of his way to mention Peter by name first and last in his gospel. The two basic reasons that could explain this are either that Peter was so important in the early movement, he deserved special attention or it could be an indication by Mark that Peter is his main source. Many people have simply assumed that the importance of Peter in Mark is simply about Peter’s position in the early community. But Bauckham shows that the literary device which is now referred to as inclusio was used by ancient biographers in some cases to indicate their direct source.

Thus, we read in Mark 1:16, “And passing along by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea; for they were fishermen.” Note that Simon, who is Peter, is mentioned by name first and that his name is oddly repeated when Andrew is named. Much more can be said about the oddity of naming Simon Peter first in light of John’s account in which Andrew knew Yeshua before Peter.

And we read in Mark 16:7, “ But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.” Note the odd naming of Peter even though telling the disciples would already include him. Mark has gone out of his way, in the next to last verse of the gospel, to name Peter.

Peter is named first and last among the disciples and major players in the gospels.

Now, let’s look at a second example and a different category of evidence. There is a curious feature that happens twenty-one times in Mark. It is a feature noted by many commentaries. Bauckham calls it the plural-to-singular literary device. Let me explain it by one example and suggest its possible origin.

In Mark 5:1-2, we read: “They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had come out of the boat, there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.” Note that they came across the sea and yet that the action resume with just he getting out of the boat. Who is the “they” and who is the “he”? The answer, obviously, is the group of disciples and Yeshua.

Why does Mark write the scenes this way? A theory worth considering is that Mark knew the stories as told by Peter who would describe them in a similar manner. Let me restate Mark 5:1-2 changing the they to a we to illustrate what I mean: “We came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when he had come out of the boat, there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.”

It makes sense that a person who was part of a group might relate a story in this way. And the plural-to-singular narrative pattern in Mark looks like a residual feature of stories originally told by one who was in the “we” of the story. In terms used in the study of narrative, this is a device for internal focalization, which I will explain more in depth at the seminar. It basically means a literary device that allows the reader to view the story from the viewpoint of a character or group of characters. The reader becomes part of Mark’s literary “they.”

Finally, and as our last specific example of literary footprints of Peter in Mark’s gospel, consider the stories in which Peter stands out as the main character. Again, this could be simply due to his importance in the later community. But it could also be because Mark and others knew the stories primarily from Peter’s point of view.

So, in Mark 9:5 we read one of many examples of Peter as the main actor among the disciples, “And Peter said to Yeshua, ‘Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.’” The compound result of these stories is that the reader thinks Peter is almost the only disciple who speaks. This fits well with the idea that the source of the stories is Peter.

In conclusion, there is internal evidence that Papias’ statement is basically true. Mark’s gospel does show signs of being heavily based on Peter’s telling.

Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 330) famously quotes Papias (c. 110) regarding some background to Mark and Matthew. Note that Papias is not correct simply because his comments are old, closer to the time the evangelists wrote. There are many ambiguities in what Papias says and Bauckham critically evaluates the statements rather than talking them as gospel. The main issues include:
(1) How can Mark’s gospel be from eyewitness testimony (Peter’s) and be so different from another eyewitness source (the fourth gospel, thought by Bauckham to be the work of John the elder)?
(2) In what way can we make sense of and find support for the idea that Peter is largely behind Mark’s gospel?
(3) How can we explain the refined literary features in Mark (which likely developed through writing and not orally) if it is simply a record of Peter’s oral teaching?
(4) What does the “Hebrew” compilation of sayings said by Papias to be recorded by Matthew have to do with our Greek gospel of Matthew?
(5) Is Papias saying something implicitly about John’s gospel?
(6) Do we see signs that Eusebius disagreed with Papias, used him only selectively, and further confused us by omitting content from Papias that would have made the saying far easier to understand?

It’s all a bit complicated to say the least. Bauckham’s evaluation is a workable theory. I will cite the words of Papias as they occur in Eusebius and as they appear in translation in Bauckham’s book:

The Elder used to say: Mark, in his capacity as Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately as many things as he [Peter?] recalled from memory — though not in an ordered form — of the things either said or done by the Lord. For he [Mark] neither heard the Lord not accompanied him, but later, as I said, [he heard and accompanied] Peter, who used to give his teachings in the form of chreia, but had no intention of providing an ordered arrangement of the logia of the Lord. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong when he wrote down some individual items just as he [Peter] related them from memory. For he made it his one concern not to omit anything he had heard or to falsify anything. . . .

. . . Therefore Matthew put the logia in an ordered arrangement in the Hebrew language, but each person interpreted them as best he could.

DEFINITIONS:
Chreia – Short units about a persons words and deeds. In Greek rhetoric, the chreia form was a basic unit of biographical or historical writing. A comparable term might be “literary anecdote.”
Logia – Sayings.

Bauckham’s theory about all of this is very workable (my summary may not accurately reflect Bauckham’s thoughts at every point, but I did try in the list below not to diverge much from what he actually says):

(1) Eusebius did not agree with Papias about Mark lacking order, but wanted only to quote Papias as evidence that Mark is based on Peter’s eyewitness accounts.

(2) Papias was substantially wrong about Mark lacking order and being nothing more than a written account of Peter’s oral teaching.

(3) Papias had second-hand contact with the teaching of John the Elder (as Papias claims in another citation).

(4) Papias regarded John the Elder, a disciple of Yeshua though not mentioned in the gospels, as the author of the fourth gospel, the Gospel of John (as does Bauckham).

(5) Papias preferred the way John is written (because of (6) below) and sought to explain how the order in John is so different than in Mark.

(6) John (the fourth gospel) more closely follows some features of refined style for biographies than Mark and gives his account a careful and seamless chronological framework.

(7) Papias was aware that the Greek Matthew used in his church was substantially different than some other “Matthews” floating around (The Gospel of the Nazarenes and The Gospel of the Ebionites) and seeks to explain the differences.

(8) It is unclear how Papias viewed the relationship of the alleged Hebrew Matthew (which we do not possess) to the Greek Matthew (theories are legion but we really know nothing about a Hebrew Matthew except that the Matthew we all know is not translated from a Hebrew original).

(9) The Greek Matthew is easily explained as a gospel by an unknown author who used Mark as a source and had other material at his disposal as well (if the author of Matthew were the apostle Matthew we would have to wonder why he follows Mark rather than giving his own account).

(10) Although Papias may have been wrong about Mark being simply a written version of Peter’s teaching, there is a basis with substantial evidence for a more general claim: that Peter’s teaching is a major source for Mark.

When the women showed up at the tomb on Sunday morning, the word Luke uses to describe their emotion is perplexity. When the angels, who seemed to be men, spoke to them, the theme of their communication was remembrance. When two disciples encountered Yeshua along the road, their experience was a mystery. When Yeshua spoke to the Eleven and other disciples gathered, his theme was continuation.

Perplexity. Remembrance. Mystery. Continuation.

Perplexity. None of the disciples, men or women, expected what they found. In the first place, they did not believe he would die. Now that he was dead, they did not believe he was the one they were hoping him to be. And they certainly did not know he would rise.

Luke 24:4 notes that they were perplexed when they found the stone rolled away and the body gone. Vs. 5 describes them as terrified, with faces bowed to the ground. When they went to report on things to the Eleven, we read in vs. 11 that all this seemed “as nonsense” to them.

In fact, we could say that the whole story of the empty tomb and the appearances of Yeshua is perplexing. N.T. Wright (The Resurrection of the Son of God, 600-611) notes that there are four very strange features in the resurrection accounts:
(1) The resurrection accounts lack references to the Hebrew Bible even though the crucifixion accounts had been full of them.
(2) The resurrection accounts do not mention personal hope, the idea that Yeshua’s resurrection holds promise for our own resurrection.
(3) The resurrection accounts include women as the primary witnesses of the empty tomb though women were thought of poorly as witnesses.
(4) The resurrection accounts describe Yeshua’s body in surprising ways: no radiant light, he has wounds, he walks through things, he eats.

Wright concludes that the gospel writers felt obliged to tell the story in ways the communities of their time were used to hearing them. Eyewitnesses related what they had seen to eager groups wanting access to the story of what had happened in and through Yeshua. Many people had heard the stories told in a similar manner. The early forms of resurrection stories were not like sermons on the afterlife. They were lifelike, unidealized accounts of how a few men and women encountered the strangest event in history.

Perplexed is how we would we would have felt. Perplexed is a good way to describe the surprise of a missing body of a beloved teacher by people who were already devastated and disappointed that he did not turn out to be the One they hoped for.

It may be difficult to go back now and imagine how stupefied and disconcerted we would be. Knowing the end of the story it is hard to put ourselves back closer to the beginning.

But we should. It should occur to us repeatedly that the risen body of our great Teacher, Yeshua, is an astounding reality.

Furthermore, it should occur to us that this did not happen in a painting or an illustration in a children’s Bible. Neither were there glorious sets and movie orchestras playing the score in the background. There was no formal public relations firm handling the early Yeshua movement’s documents.

What we read in the gospels, and in particular, Luke, is raw. It happened to a few people deemed insignificant in their world. And Luke, like the other gospel writers, did not feel it permissible to tell the story in a different way. Quite likely these kind of eyewitness-focused accounts were what people were used to hearing.

That’s not to say that good faith-based writing and theology on the resurrection was impossible. Paul had already, long before Luke wrote, given to the Yeshua movement a theological account. He had already said that without the resurrection event, our faith is vain. He’d said that without the resurrection, the cross could not erase sins and death would not ever be reversed. Without the resurrection, said Paul, the dead are gone forever, the guilty remain unforgiven, those dead in Adam remain under the sentence of death, and there is no future resurrection for any of us to look forward to. Paul said all that in 1 Corinthians 15 before Luke ever set pen to papyrus.

But there is more than one purpose in the perplexity theme in Luke’s telling of the story. The first purpose is to faithfully record the kinds of things eyewitnesses had said. And that is important to us now, because we need to know these accounts are not invented. They don’t read like propaganda for a movement. They read like the inexplicable experiences of people trying desperately to figure out what God is up to. And the second purpose is to remind us that the things that happened in and through Yeshua are larger than life. They change us if we deal with what we observe. They may leave us perplexed, but they do so because they are too wonderful to accept easily and without serious thought about our own situation, our own future, and our own response.

First, I accept the basic order of Mark, then Matthew, then Luke, and then John.

Second, I currently lean toward Mark Goodacre’s skepticism about the existence of Q (a sayings source thought to be used by both Matthew and Luke).

Third, I like much of Richard Bauckham’s eyewitness theory about Mark and Luke especially (and in a different way, John). I keep in mind the warning Scot McKnight gave me (in an email) to factor in much direct (verbatim) literary dependence from Mark to Matthew to Luke (which he would say undermines some aspects of Bauckham’s theory).

Fourth, I like so far what I know of Bauckham’s theory in Testimony of the Beloved Disciple, but I want to see how Paul Anderson’s work meshes with that (The Fourth Gospel and the Quest for Jesus).

Something like this seems to be going on (for the moment this outline makes sense to me):

Mark, not one of the Twelve or a disciple, writes his gospel first (the first written work on Yeshua’s life perhaps). There is some basis for the idea of Peter as the source through Mark’s overhearing him. Mark has other eyewitness background as well, as per Bauckham. This may be John Mark from Acts.

Matthew, not one of the Twelve (else why would he use Mark?) and perhaps not even named Matthew, adds much sayings material. Where did he get this sayings material? Is Papias’ statement about a (lost) Hebrew Matthew a clue here?

Luke, in the circle of Paul, uses Mark and Matthew and has a free hand in re-ordering sayings especially. Luke also seems to have his own eyewitness information gathered separately from Mark, as per Bauckham.

John, perhaps a disciple but not the John of the Twelve, perhaps the elder John from Papias’ statement, assumes knowledge of Mark and writes a different sort of gospel. I think the Beloved Disciple theory of his identity is believable. Where does John get these long discourses? I would not dismiss them as ahistorical entirely. I think at least there is a possibility that the beloved disciple has certain sayings in his memory that form the core of these long discourses. My reading of Paul Philip Levertoff’s Love and the Messianic Age has me thinking about some ways that a small saying here or there by Yeshua might have been developed into expanded discourses emphasizing the mystical side of Yeshua (Levertoff’s book is not about history or gospel origins, but his comparison of John and Chassidus is simply forming for me a small bit of a theory).

What are some of the kinds of observations and questions that lead Richard Bauckham to the eyewitness theory of the formation of the gospels? The first is foundational to the whole theory:

(1) Why are some characters named and some unnamed in the gospels?

That question and a few other considerations lead to a chain of questions, which are behind and in support of the eyewitness theory.

(2) Why are some characters named in some gospels but unnamed in one or more parallels?

(3) Were there conventions in comparable historiographical writings concerning witnesses and naming them in accounts? (Bauckham discusses at length the use of inclusio as a convention).

(4) What do the names, patronymics, variant forms of names, nicknames, and so on in the gospels tell us when compared with our knowledge of Palestinian Jewish names?

(5) What internal evidence is there in the apostolic writings for the importance of eyewitnesses? (Bauckham discusses, for example, the phrase “witnesses from the beginning”).

(6) A common theory of gospel formation has been one of long “oral tradition.” Does the use of names in the gospels support the common theory? (There is a difference between “oral tradition” and “oral history”).

(7) Is there external evidence for the importance of eyewitnesses in gospel formation? (Hint: Papias).

I’m already leaning against some ways of conceiving gospel transmission. Goodacre has me nearly convinced that Q is a too-convenient scholarly chimera. Bauckham has me convinced the form-critical view of a long process of oral tradition is off base. Anderson has me convinced the background relationships between streams in gospel transmission are not as simple as New Testament Introduction books make them out to be.

I will start this series in what may seem an unusual place. I think Richard Bauckham makes good sense beginning his Jesus and the Eyewitnesses here: in the lost writings of one bishop of Hierapolis, the good Papias, whose writings fortunately we at least have in the fragmentary form of quotations in later writers. What can the bishop of Hierapolis tell us about gospel transmission?

Papias was bishop in Hierapolis, not far from Colossae and Laodicea. Hierapolis was on the crossroads between the huge cities of Ephesus in the west and Antioch in Syria in the east as well as on a road between Smyrna and Attalia in Pamphylia. Many travelers would pass through Hierapolis.

Papias wrote a lost work called Exposition of the Logia of the Lord (logia means “sayings”). The work is lost except for quotations from it in later writers, especially in Eusebius of Caesarea (263-339 CE).

When was Papias’ book written? A standard date with evidence from an ancient source is 130 CE. But there is reason to believe this is wrong and that Papias’ work was during the time of Trajan (98-117 CE) and not Hadrian (117-138 CE). Bauckham prefers the date 110 CE. Here is what Papias said, some commentary to help understand it, and why it matters for theories about the formation of the gospels:

I shall not hesitate to put into properly ordered form for you everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down well, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people I did not enjoy those who have a great deal to say, but those who teach the truth. Nor did I enjoy those who recall someone else’s commandments, but those who remember the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders should come my way, I inquired about the words of the elders — that is, what Andrew or Peter said, or Philip, or Thomas, or James, or John, or Matthew, or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and the elder John, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.
–cited in Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39.3-4.

It is very important, as Bauckham reminds us, that Papias is not talking about something that happened at the time he wrote his account in 110 CE, but some that happened in the past. Bauckham suggests a reasonable date of 80 CE as the rough time period Papias “inquired about” the words of the elders. This makes sense as approximately the same era in which the gospels were written down (except Mark, being earlier).

The point is, Papias has no reason to exaggerate these “modest claims,” as Bauckham calls them. He could easily have been alive at the time of eyewitnesses and made notes about his inquiries into exact words and stories.

Bauckham notes that Papias describes four categories of people he talked to:
(1) Those who had been in attendance on the elders.
(2) The elders themselves, meaning leaders of regions of disciples in Asia Minor.
(3) The Lord’s disciples to whom Papias did not speak.
and (4) the Lord’s disciples John the Elder and Aristion to whom Papias did speak.

In case there is confusion, the difference between (3) and (4) is in the verb. Papias speaks of what those in (3) “said” and what those in (4) “were saying.” This explains why he separated out John the Elder and Aristion from the others.

The identity of John the Elder and the John from the first list of the Lord’s disciples seems apparent: John the Elder is not John the son of Zebedee, one of the Twelve. John the Elder is a different John. Bauckham thinks John the Elder is the same as the Beloved Disciple and author of the Gospel of John.

Whether that is correct or not is irrelevant for the purpose of this discussion.

What Bauckham is trying to show here is that Papias had a certain sense of historiographical integrity. It was about the importance of “the living and surviving voice.”

Bauckham will go on to show that the same principles of historiographical integrity are evident in the gospels, not only in Luke’s prologue, but in the use of named eyewitnesses. Bauckham has more than circumstantial evidence to back up his claim. He has clear and discernible patterns regarding named characters in the gospels.

For the purpose of this first installment, let me simply say that Papias wrote a book we wish we had in our possession. In this book he recorded the reminiscences and sayings of Yeshua that he gathered from two different chains of transmission:

THE DIRECT CHAIN: From (1) the Lord’s Disciples Aristion and John the Elder to (2) the disciples of the elders to (3) Papias.

THE INDIRECT CHAIN: From (1) the Lord’s Disciples (Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John, Matthew) to (2) a possible intervening stage to (3) the elders (still living) to (4) the disciples of the elders to (5) Papias.

In Part 2, we’ll consider ideas of historiography from the time of Papias and the evangelists. We’ll consider the red herring of Form Criticism and its assumption of a long chain of oral tradition. We’ll discuss Oral Tradition versus Eyewitness Testimony. We’ll look at some evidence that the evangelists shared Papias’ concerns about historiography. Most importantly, we’ll consider the evidence that the gospels were written in the time of living memory and not from some abstract chain of oral tradition which took on a life of its own.