Written over the course of almost a century after Jesus' death, the four gospels of the New Testament, though they tell the same story, reflect very different ideas and concerns. by Marilyn Mellowes
A period of forty years separates the death of Jesus from the writing of thefirst gospel. History offers us little direct evidence about the events ofthis period, but it does suggest that the early Christians were engaged in oneof the most basic of human activities: story-telling. In the words of MikeWhite, "It appears that between the death of Jesus and the writing of the firstgospel, Mark, that they clearly are telling stories. They're passing on thetradition of what happened to Jesus, what he stood for and what he did, orally,by telling it and retelling it. And in the process they are defining Jesus forthemselves."
These shared memories, passed along by word of mouth, are known as "oraltradition." They included stories of Jesus' miracles and healings, his parablesand teachings, and his death. Eventually some stories were written down. Thefirst written documents probably included an account of the death of Jesus anda collection of sayings attributed to him.
Then, in about the year 70, the evangelist known as Mark wrote the first"gospel" -- the words mean "good news" about Jesus. We will never know thewriter's real identity, or even if his name was Mark, since it was commonpractice in the ancient world to attribute written works to famous people. Butwe do know that it was Mark's genius to first to commit the story of Jesus towriting, and thereby inaugurated the gospel tradition.
"The gospels are very peculiar types of literature. They're not biographies,"says Prof. Paula Fredriksen, "they are a kind of religious advertisem*nt. Whatthey do is proclaim their individual author's interpretation of the Christianmessage through the device of using Jesus of Nazareth as a spokesperson for theevangelists' position."
About 15 years after Mark, in about the year 85 CE, the author known as Matthewcomposed his work, drawing on a variety of sources, including Mark and from acollection of sayings that scholars later called "Q", for Quelle, meaningsource. The Gospel of Luke was written about fifteen years later,between 85 and 95. Scholars refer to these three gospels as the "synopticgospels", because they "see" things in the same way. The Gospel of John,sometimes called "the spiritual gospel," was probably composed between 90 and100 CE. Its style and presentation clearly set it apart from the other three.
Each of the four gospels depicts Jesus in a different way. Thesecharacterizations reflect the past experiences and the particular circ*mstancesof their authors' communities. The historical evidence suggests that Markwrote for a community deeply affected by the failure of the First Jewish Revoltagainst Rome. Matthew wrote for a Jewish community in conflict with thePharisaic Judaism that dominated Jewish life in the postwar period. Luke wrotefor a predominately Gentile audience eager to demonstrate that Christianbeliefs in no way conflicted with their ability to serve as a good citizen ofthe Empire.
Despite these differences, all four gospels contain the "passion narrative,"the central story of Jesus' suffering and death. That story is directlyconnected to the Christian ritual of the Eucharist. As Helmut Koester hasobserved, the ritual cannot "live" without the story.
While the gospels tell a story about Jesus, they also reflect the growingtensions between Christians and Jews. By the time Luke composed his work,tension was breaking into open hostility. By the time John was written, theconflict had become an open rift, reflected in the vituperative invective ofthe evangelist's language. In the words of Prof. Eric Meyers, "Most of thegospels reflect a period of disagreement, of theological disagreement. And theNew Testament tells a story of a broken relationship, and that's part of thesad story that evolves between Jews and Christians, because it is a story thathas such awful repercussions in later times."
