The Four Gospels. Sources and History.

In the writings that come from the early stages ofChristianity, the Gospels are not mentioned until long after the worksof Paul. It was not until the middle of the Second century A.D., after140 A.D. to be precise, that accounts began to appear concerning acollection of Evangelic writings, In spite of this, “from the beginningof the Second century A.D., many Christian authors clearly intimatethat they knew a. great many of Paul’s letters.” These observations areset out in the Introduction to the Ecumenical Translation of theBible, New Testament (Introduction à la Traductionoecuménique de la Bible, Nouveau Testament) edited 1972 [ Pub. Editions du Cerf et Les Bergers et lesMages, Paris.]. They are worth mentioning from the outset, andit is useful to point out here that the work referred to is the resultof a collective effort which brought together more than one hundredCatholic and Protestant specialists.

The Gospels, later to become official, i.e. canonic,did not become known until fairly late, even though they were completedat the beginning of the Second century A.D. According to the EcumenicalTranslation, stories belonging to them began to be quoted around themiddle of the Second century A.D. Nevertheless, “it is nearly alwaysdifficult to decide whether the quotations come from written texts thatthe authors had next to them or if the latter were content to evoke thememory of fragments of the oral tradition.”

“Before 140 A.D.” we read in the commentaries thistranslation of the Bible contains, “there was, in any case, no accountby which one might have recognised a collection of evangelic writings”.This statement is the opposite of what A. Tricot writes (1960) in thecommentary to his translation of the New Testament: “Very early on,from the beginning of the Second century A.D., it became a habit to say”Gospel’ meaning the books that Saint Justin around 150 A.D. had alsocalled “The Memoirs of the Apostles’.” Unfortunately, assertions ofthis kind are sufficiently common for the public to have ideas on thedate of the Gospels which are mistaken.

The Gospels did not form a complete whole ‘veryearly on’; it did not happen until more than a century after the end ofJesus’s mission. The Ecumenical Translation of the Bibleestimates the date the four Gospels acquired the status of canonicliterature at around 170 A.D.

Justin’s statement which calls the authors’Apostles’ is not acceptable either, as we shall see.

As far as the date the Gospels were written isconcerned, A. Tricot states that Matthew’s, Mark’s and Luke’s Gospelswere written before 70 A.D.: but this is not acceptable, except perhapsfor Mark. Following many others, this commentator goes out of his wayto present the authors of the Gospels as the apostles or the companionsof Jesus. For this reason he suggests dates of writing that place themvery near to the time Jesus lived. As for John, whom A. Tricot has usbelieve lived until roughly 100 A.D., Christians have always been usedto seeing him depicted as being very near to Jesus on ceremonialoccasions. It is very difficult however to assert that he is the authorof the Gospel that bears his name. For A. Tricot, as for othercommentators, the Apostle John (like Matthew) was the officiallyqualified witness of the facts he recounts, although the majority ofcritics do not support the hypothesis which says he wrote the fourthGospel.

If however the four Gospels in question cannotreasonably be regarded as the ‘Memoirs’ of the apostles or companionsof Jesus, where do they come from?

Culmann, in his book The New Testament (LeNouveau Testament) [ Pub. PressesUniversitaires de France, Paris, 1967], says of this that theevangelists were only the “spokesmen of the early Christian communitywhich wrote down the oral tradition. For thirty or forty years, theGospel had existed as an almost exclusively oral tradition: the latteronly transmitted sayings and isolated narratives. The evangelistsstrung them together, each in his own way according to his owncharacter and theological preoccupations. They linked up the narrationsand sayings handed down by the prevailing tradition. The grouping ofJesus’s sayings and likewise the sequence of narratives is made by theuse of fairly vague linking phrases such as ‘after this’, ‘when he had’etc. In other words, the ‘framework’ of the Synoptic Gospels [ The three Gospels of Mark, Matthew andLuke.] is of a purely literary order and is not based onhistory.”

The same author continues as follows:
“It must be noted that the needs of preaching,worship and teaching, more than biographical considerations, were whatguided the early community when it wrote down the tradition of the lifeof Jesus. The apostles illustrated the truth of the faith they werepreaching by describing the events in the life of Jesus. Their sermonsare what caused the descriptions to be written down. The sayings ofJesus were transmitted, in particular, in the teaching of the catechismof the early Church.”
This is exactly how the commentators of the EcumenicalTranslation of the Bible (Traduction oecuménique de laBible) describe the writing of the Gospels: the formation of an oraltradition influenced by the preachings of Jesus’s disciples and otherpreachers; the preservation by preaching of this material, which is inactual fact found in the Gospels, by preaching, liturgy, and teachingof the faithful; the slender possibility of a concrete form given bywritings to certain confessions of faith, sayings of Jesus,descriptions of the Passion for example; the fact that the evangelistsresort to various written forms as well as data contained in the oraltradition. They resort to these to produce texts which “are suitablefor various circles, which meet the needs of the Church, explainobservations on the Scriptures, correct errors and even, on occasion,answer adversaries’ objections. Thus the evangelists, each according tohis own outlook, have collected and recorded in writing the materialgiven to them by the oral tradition”.

This position has been collectively adopted by morethan one hundred experts in the exegesis of the New Testament, bothCatholic and Protestant. It diverges widely from the line establishedby the Second Vatican Council in its dogmatic constitution on theRevelation drawn up between 1962 and 1965. This conciliar document hasalready been referred to once above, when talking of the Old Testament.The Council was able to declare of the latter that the books whichcompose it “contain material which is imperfect and obsolete”, but ithas not expressed the same reservations about the Gospels. On thecontrary, as we read in the following.

“Nobody can overlook the fact that, among all theScriptures, even those of the New Testament, the Gospels have awell-deserved position of superiority. This is by virtue of the factthat they represent the most pre-eminent witness to the life andteachings of the Incarnate Word, Our Saviour. At all times and in allplaces the Church has maintained and still maintains the apostolicorigin of the four Gospels. What the apostles actually preached onChrist’s orders, both they and the men in their following subsequentlytransmitted, with the divine inspiration of the Spirit, in writingswhich are the foundation of the faith, i.e. the fourfold Gospelaccording to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.”

“Our Holy Mother, the Church, has firmly maintainedand still maintains with the greatest constancy, that these fourGospels, which it unhesitatingly confirms are historically authentic,faithfully transmit what Jesus, Son Of God, actually did and taughtduring his life among men for their eternal salvation until the daywhen He was taken up into the heavens. . . . The sacred authorstherefore composed the four Gospels in such a way as to always give ustrue and frank information on the life of Jesus”.

This is an unambiguous affirmation of the fidelitywith which the Gospels transmit the acts and sayings of Jesus.

There is hardly any compatibility between theCouncil’s affirmation and what the authors quoted above claim. Inparticular the following:

The Gospels “are not to be taken literally”they are “writings suited to an occasion” or “combatwritings”. Their authors “are writing down the traditions oftheir own community concerning Jesus”. (Father Kannengiesser).

The Gospels are texts which “are suitable forvarious circles, meet the needs of the Church, explain observations onthe Scriptures, correct errors and even, on occasion, answeradversaries’ objections. Thus, the evangelists, each according to hisown outlook, have collected and recorded in writing the material givento them by the oral tradition”. (Ecumenical Translation of the Bible).

It is quite clear that we are here faced withcontradictory statements: the declaration of the Council on the onehand, and more recently adopted attitudes on the other. According tothe declaration of the Second Vatican Council, a faithful account ofthe actions and words of Jesus is to be found in the Gospels; but it isimpossible to reconcile this with the existence in the text ofcontradictions, improbabilities, things which are materially impossibleor statements which run contrary to firmly established reality.

If, on the other hand, one chooses to regard theGospels as expressing the personal point of view of those who collectedthe oral traditions that belonged to various communities, or aswritings suited to an occasion or combat-writings, it does not come asa surprise to find faults in the Gospels. All these faults are the signthat they were written by men in circumstances such as these. Thewriters may have been quite sincere, even though they relate factswithout doubting their inaccuracy. They provide us with descriptionswhich contradict other authors’ narrations, or are influenced byreasons of religious rivalry between communities. They thereforepresent stories about the life of Jesus from a completely differentangle than their adversaries.

It has already been shown how the historical context is in harmony withthe second approach to the Gospels. The data we have on the textsthemselves definitively confirms it.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW

Matthew’s is the first of the four Gospels as theyappear in the New Testament. This position is perfectly justified bythe fact that it is a prolongation, as it were, of the Old Testament.It was written to show that “Jesus fulfilled the history of Israel”, asthe commentators of the Ecumenical Translation of the Biblenote and on which we shall be drawing heavily. To do BO, Matthewconstantly refers to quotations from the Old Testament which show howJesus acted as if he were the Messiah the Jews were awaiting.

This Gospel begins with a genealogy of Jesus [ The fact that it is in contradiction withLuke’s Gospel will be dealt with in a separate chapter.].Matthew traces it back to Abraham via David. We shall presently see thefault in the text that most commentators silently ignore. Matthew’sobvious intention was nevertheless to indicate the general tenor of hiswork straight away by establishing this line of descendants. The authorcontinues the same line of thought by constantly bringing to theforefront Jesus’s attitude toward Jewish law, the main principles ofwhich (praying, fasting, and dispensing charity) are summarized here.

Jesus addresses His teachings first and foremost toHis own people. This is how He speaks to the twelve Apostles “gonowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans [ The Samaritans’ religious code was theTorah or Pentateuch; they lived in the expectation of the Messiah andwere faithful to most Jewish observances, but they had built a rivalTemple to the one at Jerusalem.] but go rather to the lost sheepof the house of Israel.” (Matthew 10, 5-6). “I was sent only to thelost sheep of the house of Israel”. (Matthew 15, 24). At the end of hisGospel, in second place, Matthew extends the apostolic mission ofJesus’s first disciples to all nations. He makes Jesus give thefollowing order. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”(Matthew 28, 19), but the primary destination must be the ‘house ofIsrael’.

Tricot says of this Gospel, “Beneath its Greek garb,the flesh and bones of this book are Jewish, and so is its spirit; ithas a Jewish feel and bears its distinctive signs”.

On the basis of these observations alone, theorigins of Matthew’s Gospel may be placed in the tradition of aJudeo-Christian community. According to O. Culmann, this community “wastrying to break away from Judaism while at the same time preserving thecontinuity of the Old Testament. The main preoccupations and thegeneral tenor of this Gospel point towards a strained situation.”

There are also political factors to be found in thetext. The Roman occupation of Palestine naturally heightened the desireof this country to see itself liberated. They prayed for God tointervene in favour of the people He had chosen among all others, andas their omnipotent sovereign who could give direct support to theaffairs of men, as He had already done many times in the course ofhistory.

What sort of person was Matthew? Let us say straightaway that he is no longer acknowledged to be one of Jesus’s companions.A. Tricot nevertheless presents him as such in his commentary to thetranslation of the New Testament, 1960: “Matthew alias, Levi, was acustoms officer employed at the tollgate or customs house at Capharnaumwhen Jesus called him to be one of His disciples.” This is the opinionof the Fathers of the Church, Origen, Jerome and Epiphanes. Thisopinion is no longer held today. One point which is uncontested is thatthe author is writing “for people who speak Greek, but neverthelessknow Jewish customs and the Aramaic language.”

It would seem that for the commentators of theEcumenical Translation, the origins of this Gospel are as follows:

“It is normally considered to have been written inSyria, perhaps at Antioch (. . .), or in Phoenicia, because a greatmany Jews lived in these countries. [It has been thought that the Judeo-Christian community that Matthewbelonged to might just as easily have been situated at Alexandria. O.Culmann refers to this hypothesis along with many others.] (. ..) we have indications of a polemic against the orthodox Judaism of theSynagogue and the Pharasees such as was manifested at the synagogalassembly at Jamina circa 80 A.D.” In such conditions, there are manyauthors who date the first of the Gospels at about 80-90 A.D., perhapsalso a little earlier. it is not possible to be absolutely definiteabout this . . . since we do not know the author’s exact name, we mustbe satisfied with a few outlines traced in the Gospel itself. theauthor can be recognized by his profession. He is well-versed in Jewishwritings and traditions. He knows, respects, but vigorously challengesthe religious leaders of his people. He is a past master in the art ofteaching and making Jesus understandable to his listeners. He alwaysinsists on the practical consequences of his teachings. He would fitfairly well the description of an educated Jew turned Christian; ahouseholder “who brings out of his treasure what is new and what isold” as Matthew says (13,52). This is a long way from the civil servantat Capharnaum, whom Mark and Luke call Levi, and who had become one ofthe twelve Apostles . . .

Everyone agrees in thinking that Matthew wrote hisGospel using the same sources as Mark and Luke. His narration is, as weshall see, different on several essential points. In spite of this,Matthew borrowed heavily from Mark’s Gospel although the latter was notone of Jesus’s disciples (O. Culmann).

Matthew takes very serious liberties with the text.We shall see this when we discuss the Old Testament in relation to thegenealogy of Jesus which is placed at the beginning of his Gospel.

He inserts into his book descriptions which arequite literally incredible. This is the adjective used in the workmentioned above by Father Kannengiesser referring to an episode in theResurrection. the episode of the guard. He points out the improbabilityof the story referring to military guards at the tomb, “these Gentilesoldiers” who “report, not to their hierarchical superiors, but to thehigh priests who pay them to tell lies”. He adds however: “One must notlaugh at him because Matthew’s intention was extremely serious. In hisown way he incorporates ancient data from the oral tradition into hiswritten work. The scenario is nevertheless worthy of Jesus ChristSuperstar. [ An American film whichparodies the life of Jesus.]”

Let us not forget that this opinion on Matthew comesfrom an eminent theologian teaching at the Catholic Institute of Paris(Institut Catholique de Paris).

Matthew relates in his narration the eventsaccompanying the death of Jesus. They are another example of hisimagination.

“And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn intwo, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split;the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who hadfallen asleep were raised, and coming out of tombs after hisresurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.”

This passage from Matthew (27, 51-53) has nocorresponding passage in the other Gospels. It is difficult to see howthe bodies of the saints in question could have raised from the dead atthe time of Jesus’s death (according to the Gospels it was on theeve of the Sabbath) and only emerge from their tombs after hisresurrection (according to the same sources on the day after theSabbath).

The most notable improbability is perhaps to befound in Matthew. It is the most difficult to rationalize of all thatthe Gospel authors claim Jesus said. He relates in chapter 12, 38-40the episode concerning Jonah’s sign:

Jesus was among the scribes and pharisees whoaddressed him in the following terms:

“Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you. But heanswered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; butno sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. Foras Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, sowill the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of theearth.”

Jesus therefore proclaims that he will stay in theearth three days and three nights. So Matthew, along with Luke andMark, place the death and burial of Jesus on the eve of the Sabbath.This, of course, makes the time spent in the earth three days (treisêmeras in the Greek text), but this period can only includetwo and not three nights (treis nuktas in the Greek text [ In another part of his Gospel Matthew againrefers to this episode but without being precise about the time (16,1-4). The same is true for Luke (11, 29-32). We shall see later on howin Mark, Jesus is said to have declared that no sign would be given tothat generation (Mark 8, 11-12).]).

Gospel commentators frequently ignore this episode.Father Roguet nevertheless points out this improbability when he notesthat Jesus “only stayed in the tomb” three days (one of them complete)and two nights. He adds however that “it is a set expression and reallymeans three days”. It is disturbing to see commentators reduced tousing arguments that do not contain any positive meaning. It would bemuch more satisfying intellectually to say that a gross error such asthis was the result of a scribe’s mistake!

Apart from these improbabilities, what mostlydistinguishes Matthew’s Gospel is that it is the work of aJudeo-Christian community in the process of breaking away from Judaismwhile remaining in line with the Old Testament. From the point of viewof Judeo-Christian history it is very important.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MARK

This is the shortest of the four Gospels. It is alsothe oldest, but in spite of this it is not a book written by anapostle. At best it was written by an apostle’s disciple.

O. Culmann has written that he does not considerMark to be a disciple of Jesus. The author nevertheless points out, tothose who have misgivings about the ascription of this Gospel to theApostle Mark, that “Matthew and Luke would not have used this Gospel inthe way they did had they not known that it was indeed based on theteachings of an apostle”. This argument is in no way decisive. O.Culmann backs up the reservations he expresses by saying that hefrequently quotes from the New Testament the sayings of a certain ‘Johnnicknamed Mark’. These quotations. do not however mention the name of aGospel author, and the text of Mark itself does not name any author.

The paucity of information on this point has ledcommentators to dwell on details that seem rather extravagant: usingthe pretext, for example, that Mark was the only evangelist to relatein his description of the Passion the story of the young man who hadnothing but a linen cloth about his body and, when seized, left thelinen cloth and ran away naked (Mark 14, 51-52), they conclude that theyoung man must have been Mark, “the faithful disciple who tried tofollow the teacher” (Ecumenical Translation). Other commentators see inthis “personal memory a sign of authenticity, an anonymous signature”,which “proves that he was an eyewitness” (O. Culmann).

O. Culmann considers that “many turns of phrasecorroborate the hypothesis that the author was of Jewish origin,” butthe presence of Latin expressions might suggest that he had written hisGospel in Rome. “He addresses himself moreover to Christians not livingin Palestine and is careful to explain the Aramic expressions he uses.”

Tradition has indeed tended to see Mark as Peter’scompanion in Rome. It is founded on the final section of Peter’s firstletter (always supposing that he was indeed the author) . Peter wrotein his letter. “The community which is at Babylon, which is likewisechosen, sends you greetings; and so does my son Mark.” “By Babylon,what is probably meant is Rome” we read in the commentary to theEcumenical Translation. From this, the commentators then imaginethemselves authorized to conclude that Mark, who was supposed to havebeen with Peter in Rome, was the Evangelist . . .One wonders whether itwas not the same line of reasoning that led Papias, Bishop ofHierapolis in circa 150 A.D., to ascribe this Gospel to Mark as’Peter’s interpreter’ and the possible collaborator of Paul.

Seen from this point of view, the composition ofMark’s Gospel could be placed after Peter’s death, i.e. at between 65and 70 A.D. for the Ecumenical Translation and circa 70 A.D. for O.Culmann.

The text itself unquestionably reveals a major flaw.it is written with a total disregard to chronology. Mark thereforeplaces, at the beginning of his narration (1, 16-20), the episode ofthe four fishermen whom Jesus leads to follow him by simply saying “Iwill make you become fishers of men”, though they do not even know Him.The evangelist shows, among other things, a complete lack ofplausibility.

As Father Roguet has said, Mark is ‘a clumsywriter’, ‘the weakest of all the evangelists’; he hardly knows how towrite a narrative. The commentator reinforces his observation byquoting a passage about how the twelve Apostles were selected.

Here is the literal translation:

“And he went up into the hills, and called to himthose whom he desired; and they came to him. And he made that thetwelve were to be with him, and to be sent out to preach and haveauthority to cast out demons; and he made the twelve and imposed thename Simon on Peter” (Mark, 3, 13-16).

He contradicts Matthew and Luke, as has already beennoted above, with regard to the sign of Jonah. On the subject of signsgiven by Jesus to men in the course of His mission Mark (8, 11-13)describes an episode that is hardly credible:

“The Pharisees came and began to argue with him,seeking from him a sign from heaven, to test him. And he sighed deeplyin his spirit, and said, ‘Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly,I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation.’ And he leftthem, and getting into the boat again he departed to the other side.”

There can be no doubt that this is an affirmationcoming from Jesus Himself about his intention not to commit any actwhich might appear supernatural. Therefore the commentators of theEcumenical Translation, who are surprised that Luke says Jesus willonly give one sign (the sign of Jonah; see Matthew’s Gospel) , considerit ‘paradoxical’ that Mark should say “no sign shall be given to thisgeneration” seeing, as they note, the “miracles that Jesus himselfgives as a sign” (Luke 7,22 and 11,20).

Mark’s Gospel as a whole is officially recognised asbeing canonic. All the same, the final section of Mark’s Gospel(16,1920) is considered by modem authors to have been tacked on to thebasic work: the Ecumenical Translation is quite explicit about this.

This final section is not contained in the twooldest complete manuscripts of the Gospels, the Codex Vaticanusand the Codex Sinaiticus that date from the Fourth century A.D.O. Culmann notes on this subject that: “More recent Greek manuscriptsand certain versions at this point added a conclusion on appearanceswhich is not drawn from Mark but from the other Gospels.” In fact, theversions of this added ending are very numerous. In the texts there arelong and short versions (both are reproduced in the Bible, RevisedStandard Version, 1952). Sometimes the long version has some additionalmaterial.

Father Kannengiesser makes the following comments onthe ending. “The last verses must have been surpressed when his workwas officially received (or the popular version of it) in the communitythat guaranteed its validity. Neither Matthew, Luke or a fortiori Johnsaw the missing section. Nevertheless, the gap was unacceptable. A longtime afterwards, when the writings of Matthew, Luke and John, all ofthem similar, had been in circulation, a worthy ending to Mark wascomposed. Its elements were taken from sources throughout the otherGospels. It would be easy to recognise the pieces of the puzzle byenumerating Mark (16,9-20). One would gain a more concrete idea of thefree way in which the literary genre of the evangelic narration washandled until the beginnings of the Second century A.D.”

What a blunt admission is provided for us here, inthe thoughts of a great theologian, that human manipulation exists inthe texts of the Scriptures!

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE

For O. Culmann, Luke is a ‘chronicler’, and forFather Kannengiesser he is a ‘true novelist’. In his prologue toTheophilus, Luke warns us that he, in his turn, following on fromothers who have written accounts concerning Jesus, is going to write anarrative of the same facts using the accounts and information ofeyewitnesses-implying that he himself is not one-including informationfrom the apostles’ preachings. It is therefore to be a methodical pieceof work which he introduces in the following terms:

“Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile anarrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just asthey were delivered to us by those who from the beginning wereeyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also,having informed myself about all things from their beginnings, to writean orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you mayknow the truth concerning things of which you have been informed.”

From the very first line one can see all thatseparates Luke from the ‘scribbler’ Mark to whose work we have justreferred. Luke’s Gospel is incontestably a literary work written inclassical Greek free from any barbarisms.

Luke was a cultivated Gentile convert toChristianity. His attitude towards the Jews is immediately apparent. AsO. Culmann points out, Luke leaves out Mark’s most Judaic verses andhighlights the Jews’ incredulity at Jesus’s words, throwing into reliefhis good relations with the Samaritans, whom the Jews detested.Matthew, on the other hand, has Jesus ask the apostles to flee fromthem. This is just one of many striking examples of the fact that theevangelists make Jesus say whatever suits their own personal outlook.They probably do so with sincere conviction. They give us the versionof Jesus’s words that is adapted to the point of view of their owncommunity. How can one deny in the face of such evidence that theGospels are ‘combat writings’ or ‘writings suited to an occasion’, ashas been mentioned already? The comparison between the general tone ofLuke’s Gospel and Matthew’s is in this respect a good demonstration.

Who was Luke? An attempt has been made to identifyhim with the physician of the same name referred to by Paul in severalof his letters. The Ecumenical Translation notes that “severalcommentators have found the medical occupation of the author of thisGospel confirmed by the precision with which he describes the sick”.This assessment is in fact exaggerated out of all proportion. Luke doesnot properly speaking ‘describe’ things of this kind; “the vocabularyhe uses is that of a cultivated man of his time”. There was a Luke whowas Paul’s travelling companion, but was he the same person? O. Culmannthinks he was.

The date of Luke’s Gospel can be estimated accordingto several factors: Luke used Mark’s and Matthew’s Gospels. From whatwe read in the Ecumenical Translation, it seems that he witnessed thesiege and destruction of Jerusalem by Titus’s armies in 70 A.D. TheGospel probably dates from after this time. Present-day critics situatethe time it was written at .circa 80-90 A.D., but several place it atan even earlier date.

The various narrations in Luke show importantdifferences when compared to his predecessors. An outline of this hasalready been given. The Ecumenical Translation indicates them on pages181 et sec. O. Culmann, in his book, The New Testament (LeNouveau Testament) page 18, cites descriptions in Luke’s Gospel thatare not to be found anywhere else. And they are not about minor pointsof detail.

The descriptions of Jesus’s childhood are unique toLuke’s Gospel. Matthew describes Jesus’s childhood differently fromLuke, and Mark does not mention it at all.

Matthew and Luke both provide different genealogiesof Jesus: the contradictions are so large and the improbabilities sogreat, from a scientific point of view, that a special chapter of thisbook has been devoted to the subject. It is possible to explain whyMatthew, who was addressing himself to Jews, should begin the genealogyat Abraham, and include David in it, and that Luke, as a convertedGentile, should want to go back even farther. We shall see however thatthe two genealogies contradict each other from David onwards.

Jesus’s mission is described differently on manypoints by Luke, Matthew and Mark.

An event of such great importance to Christians asthe institution of the Eucharist gives rise to variations between Lukeand the other two evangelists. [ It isnot possible to establish a comparison with John because he does notrefer to the institution of the Eucharist during the Last Supper priorto the Passion.] Father Roguet notes in his book Initiationto the Gospel (Initiation à l’Evangile) page 75, that thewords used to institute the Eucharist are reported by Luke (22,19-24)in a form very different from the wording in Matthew (26,26-29) and inMark (14,22-24) which is almost identical.

“On the contrary” he writes, “the wordingtransmitted by Luke is very similar to that evoked by Saint Paul”(First Letter to the Corinthians, 11,23-25) .

As we have seen, in his Gospel, Luke expresses ideason the subject of Jesus’s Ascension which contradict what he says inthe Acts of the Apostles. He is recognized as their author and theyform an integral part of the New Testament. In his Gospel he situatesthe Ascension on Easter Day, and in the Acts forty days later. Wealready know to what strange commentaries this contradiction has ledChristian experts in exegesis.

Commentators wishing to be objective, such as thoseof the Ecumenical Translation of the Bible, have been obliged torecognise as a general rule the fact that for Luke “the mainpreoccupation was not to write facts corresponding to materialaccuracy”. When Father Kannengiesser compares the descriptions in theActs of the Apostles written by Luke himself with the description ofsimilar facts on Jesus raised from the dead by Paul, he pronounces thefollowing opinion on Luke: “Luke is the most sensitive and literary ofthe four evangelists, he has all the qualities of a true novelist”.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN

John’s Gospel is radically different from the threeothers; to such an extent indeed that Father Roguet in his book Initiationto the Gospel (Initiation à l’Evangile), having commentedon the other three, immediately evokes a startling image for thefourth. He calls it , different world’. It is indeed a unique book;different in the arrangement and choice of subject, description andspeech; different in its style, geography, chronology; there are evendifferences in theological outlook (O. Culmann). Jesus’s words aretherefore differently recorded by John from the other evangelists:Father Roguet notes on this that whereas the synoptics record Jesus’swords in a style that is “striking, much nearer to the oral style”, inJohn all is meditation; to such an extent indeed that “one sometimeswonders if Jesus is still speaking or whether His ideas have notimperceptibly been extended by the Evangelist’s own thoughts”.

Who was the author? This is a highly debatedquestion and extremely varying opinions have been expressed on thissubject.

A. Tricot and Father Roguet belong to a camp thatdoes not have the slightest misgivings: John’s Gospel is the work of aneyewitness, its author is John, son of Zebedee and brother of James.Many details are known about this apostle and are set out in works formass publication. Popular iconography puts him near Jesus, as in theLast Supper prior to the Passion. Who could imagine that John’s Gospelwas not the work of John the Apostle whose figure is so familiar?

The fact that the fourth Gospel was written so lateis not a serious argument against this opinion. The definitive versionwas probably written around the end of the First century A.D. Tosituate the time it was written at sixty years after Jesus would be inkeeping with an apostle who was very young at the time of Jesus and wholived to be almost a hundred.

Father Kannengiesser, in his study on theResurrection, arrives at the conclusion that none of the New Testamentauthors, save Paul, can claim to have been eyewitnesses to Jesus’sResurrection. John nevertheless related the appearance to a number ofthe assembled apostles, of which he was probably a member, in theabsence of Thomas (20,19-24), then eight days later to the full groupof apostles (20,25-29).

O. Culmann in his work The New Testamentdoes not subscribe to this view.

The Ecumenical Translation of the Biblestates that the majority of critics do not accept the hypothesis thatthe Gospel was written by John, although this possibility cannot beentirely ruled out. Everything points however towards the fact that thetext we know today had several authors: “It is probable that the Gospelas it stands today was put into circulation by the author’s discipleswho added chapter 21 and very likely several annotations (i.e. 4,2 andperhaps 4,1; 4,44; 7,37b; 11,2; 19,35). With regard to the story of theadulterous woman (7,53-8,11), everyone agrees that it is a fragment ofunknown origin inserted later (but nevertheless belonging to canonicScripture)”. Passage 19,35 appears as a ‘signature’ of an ‘eyewitness'(O. Culmann), the only explicit signature in the whole of John’sGospel; but commentators believe that it was probably added later.

O. Culmann thinks that latter additions are obviousin this Gospel; such as chapter 21 which is probably the work of a”disciple who may well have made slight alterations to the main body ofthe Gospel”.

It is not necessary to mention all the hypothesessuggested by experts in exegesis. The remarks recorded here made by themost eminent Christian writers on the questions of the authorship ofthe fourth Gospel are sufficient to show the extent of the confusionreigning on the subject of its authorship.

The historical value of John’s stories has beencontested to a great extent. The discrepancy between them and the otherthree Gospels is quite blatant. O. Culman offers an explanation forthis; he sees in John a different theological point of view from theother evangelists. This aim “directs the choice of stories from theLogia [ Words.] recorded, aswell as the way in which they are reproduced . . . Thus the authoroften prolongs the lines and makes the historical Jesus say what theHoly Spirit Itself revealed to Him”. This, for the exegete in question,is the reason for the discrepancies.

It is of course quite conceivable that John, who waswriting after the other evangelists, should have chosen certain storiessuitable for illustrating his own theories. One should not be surprisedby the fact that certain descriptions contained in the other Gospelsare missing in John. The Ecumenical Translation picks out acertain number of such instances (page 282). Certain gaps hardly seemcredible however, like the fact that the Institution of the Eucharistis not described. It is unthinkable that an episode so basic toChristianity, one indeed that was to be the mainstay of its liturgy,i.e. the mass, should not be mentioned by John, the most pre-eminentlymeditative evangelist. The fact is, he limits himself, in the narrativeof the supper prior to the Passion, to simply describing the washing ofthe disciples’ feet, the prediction of Judas’s betrayal and Peter’sdenial.

In contrast to this, there are stories which areunique to John and not present in the other three. The EcumenicalTranslation mentions these (page 283). Here again, one could infer thatthe three authors did not see the importance in these episodes thatJohn saw in them. It is difficult however not to be taken aback whenone finds in John a description of the appearance of Jesus raisedfrom the dead to his disciples beside the Sea of Tiberias (John21,1-14). The description is nothing less than the reproduction (withnumerous added details) of the miracle catch of fish which Luke(5,1-11) presents as an episode that occurred during Jesus’s life.In his description Luke alludes to the presence of the Apostle Johnwho, as tradition has it, was the evangelist, Since this description inJohn’s Gospel forms part of chapter 21, agreed to be a later addition,one can easily imagine that the reference to John’s name in Luke couldhave led to its artificial inclusion in the fourth Gospel. Thenecessity of transforming a description from Jesus’s life to aposthumous description in no way prevented the evangelical text frombeing manipulated.

Another important point on which John’s Gospeldiffers from the other three is in the duration of Jesus’s mission.Mark, Matthew and Luke place it over a period of one year. John spreadsit over two years. O. Culmann notes this fact. On this subject theEcumenical Translation expresses the following .

“The synoptics describe a long period in Galileefollowed by a march that was more or less prolonged towards Judea, andfinally a brief stay in Jerusalem. John, on the other hand, describesfrequent journeys from one area to another and mentions a long stay inJudea, especially in Jerusalem (1,19-51; 2,13-3,36; 5,1-47; 14,20-31).He mentions several Passover celebrations (2,13; 5,1; 6,4; 11,55) andthus suggests a ministry that lasted more than two years”.

Which one of them should one believe-Mark, Matthew,Luke or John?

SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS

The general outline that has been given here of theGospels and which emerges from a critical examination of the textstends to make one think of a literature which is “disjointed, with aplan that lacks continuity” and “seemingly insuperable contradictions”.These are the terms used in the judgement passed on them by thecommentators of the Ecumenical Translation of the Bible. It isimportant to refer to their authority because the consequences of anappraisal of this subject are extremely serious. It has already beenseen how a few notions concerning the religious history of the timewhen the Gospels were written helped to explain certain disconcertingaspects of this literature apparent to the thoughtful reader. It isnecessary to continue, however, and ascertain what present-day workscan tell us about the sources the Evangelists drew on when writingtheir texts. It is also interesting to see whether the history of thetexts once they were established can help to explain certain aspectsthey present today.

The problem of sources was approached in a verysimplistic fashion at the time of the Fathers of the Church. In theearly centuries of Christianity, the only source available was theGospel that the complete manuscripts provided first, i.e. Matthew’sGospel. The problem of sources only concerned Mark and Luke becauseJohn constituted a quite separate case. Saint Augustine held that Mark,who appears second in the traditional order of presentation, had beeninspired by Matthew and had summarized his work. He further consideredthat Luke, who comes third in the manuscripts, had used data from both;his prologue suggests this, and has already been discussed.

The experts in exegesis at this period were as ableas we are to estimate the degree of corroboration between the texts andfind a large number of verses common to two or three synoptics. Today,the commentators of the Ecumenical Translation of the Bibleprovide the following figures:
verses common to all three synoptics————– 330verses common to Mark and Matthew ———— 178verses common to Mark and Luke —————-100verses common to Matthew and Luke ———— 230
The verses unique to each of the first three Gospelsare as follows: Matthew 330, Mark 53, and Luke 500.

From the Fathers of the Church until the end of theEighteenth century A.D., one and a half millenia passed without any newproblems being raised on the sources of the evangelists: peoplecontinued to follow tradition. It was not until modem times that it wasrealized, on the basis of these data, how each evangelist had takenmaterial found in the others and compiled his own specific narrationguided by his own personal views. Great weight was attached to actualcollection of material for the narration. It came from the oraltraditions of the communities from which it originated on the one hand,and from a common written Aramaic source that has not been rediscoveredon the other. This written source could have formed a compact mass orhave been composed of many fragments of different narrations used byeach evangelist to construct his own original work.

More intensive studies in circa the last hundredyears have led to theories which are more detailed and in time willbecome even more complicated. The first of the modem theories is theso-called ‘Holtzmann Two Sources Theory’, (1863). O. Culmann and theEcumenical Translation explain that, according to this theory, Matthewand Luke may have been inspired by Mark on the one hand and on theother by a common document which has since been lost. The first twomoreover each had his own sources. This leads to the following diagram:Mark

CommonDocument

M. E. BOISMARDSYNOPSIS OF THE FOUR GOSPELS [1]GENERAL DIAGRAM(1) Synopse des quatre Evangiles

Culmann criticises the above on the following points:

1. Mark’s work, used by both Luke and Matthew, wasprobably not the author’s Gospel but an earlier version.

2. The diagram does not lay enough emphasis on theoral tradition. This appears to be of paramount importance because italone preserved Jesus’s words and the descriptions of his missionduring a period of thirty or forty years, as each of the Evangelistswas only the spokesman for the Christian community which wrote down theoral tradition.

This is how it is possible to conclude that theGospels we possess today are a reflection of what the early Christiancommunities knew of Jesus’s life and ministry. They also mirror theirbeliefs and theological ideas, of which the evangelists were thespokesmen.

The latest studies in textual criticism on thesources of the Gospels have clearly shown an even more complicatedformation process of the texts. A book by Fathers Benoit and Boismard,both professors at the Biblical School of Jerusalem (1972-1973), calledthe Synopsis of the Four Gospels (Synopse des quatresEvangiles) stresses the evolution of the text in stages parallel to theevolution of the tradition. This implies the conquences set out byFather Benoit in his introduction to Father Boismard’s part of thework. He presents them in the following terms:
“(. . .) the wording and form of description thatresult from a long evolution of tradition are not as authentic as inthe original. some readers of this work will perhaps be surprised orembarrassed to learn that certain of Jesus’s sayings, parables, orpredictions of His destiny were not expressed in the way we read themtoday, but were altered and adapted by those who transmitted them tous. This may come as a source of amazement and even scandal to thosenot used to this kind of historical investigation.”
The alterations and adaptations to the texts made bythose transmitting them to us were done in a way that Father Boismardexplains by means of a highly complex diagram. It is a development ofthe so-called ‘Two Sources Theory’, and is the product of examinationand comparison of the texts which it is not possible to summarize here.Those readers who are interested in obtaining further details shouldconsult the original work published by Les Editions du Cerf, Paris.

Four basic documents-A, B, C and Q-represent theoriginal sources of the Gospels (see general diagram). Page 76.
Document A comes from a Judeo-Christian source.Matthew and Mark were inspired by it.Document B is a reinterpretation of document A, for use inPagan-cum-Christian churches: all the evangelists were inspired by itexcept Matthew.Document C inspired Mark, Luke and John.Document Q constitutes the majority of sources common to Matthew andLuke; it is the , Common Document’ in the ‘Two Sources’ theory referredto earlier.
None of these basic documents led to the productionof the definitive texts we know today. Between them and the finalversion lay the intermediate versions: Intermediate Matthew,Intermediate Mark, Intermediate Luke and Intermediate John. These fourintermediate documents were to lead to the final versions of the fourGospels, as well as to inspire the final corresponding versions ofother Gospels. One only has to consult the diagram to see the intricaterelationships the author has revealed.

The results of this scriptural research are of greatimportance. They show how the Gospel texts not only have a history (tobe discussed later) but also a ‘pre-history’, to use Father Boismard’sexpression. What is meant is that before the final versions appeared,they underwent alterations at the Intermediate Document stage. Thus itis possible to explain, for example, how a well-known story fromJesus’s life, such as the miracle catch of fish, is shown in Luke to bean event that happened during His life, and in John to be one of Hisappearances after His Resurrection.

The conclusion to be drawn from the above is thatwhen we read the Gospel, we can no longer be at all sure that we arereading Jesus’s word. Father Benoit addresses himself to the readers ofthe Gospel by warning them and giving them the following compensation:”If the reader is obliged in more than one case to give up the notionof hearing Jesus’s voice directly, he still hears the voice of theChurch and he relies upon it as the divinely appointed interpreter ofthe Master who long ago spoke to us on earth and who now speaks to usin His glory”.

How can one reconcile this formal statement of theinauthenticity of certain texts with the phrase used in the dogmaticconstitution on Divine Revelation by the Second Vatican Councilassuring us to the contrary, i.e. the faithful transmission of Jesus’swords: “These four Gospels, which it (the Church) unhesitatinglyconfirms are historically authentic, faithfully transmit what Jesus,Son of God, actually did and taught during his life among men for theireternal salvation, until the day when he was taken up into the heavens”?

It is quite clear that the work of the BiblicalSchool of Jerusalem flatly contradicts the Council’s declaration.

HISTORY OF THE TEXTS

One would be mistaken in thinking that once theGospels were written they constituted the basic Scriptures of the newlyborn Christianity and that people referred to them the same way theyreferred to the Old Testament. At that time, the foremost authority wasthe oral tradition as a vehicle for Jesus’s words and the teachings ofthe apostles. The first writings to circulate were Paul’s letters andthey occupied a prevalent position long before the Gospels. They were,after all, written several decades earlier.

It has already been shown, that contrary to whatcertain commentators are still writing today, before 140 A.D. there wasno witness to the knowledge that a collection of Gospel writingsexisted. It was not until circa 170 A.D. that the four Gospels acquiredthe status of canonic literature.

In the early days of Christianity, many writings onJesus were in circulation. They were not subsequently retained as beingworthy of authenticity and the Church ordered them to be hidden, hencetheir name ‘Apocrypha’. Some of the texts of these works have been wellpreserved because they “benefitted from the fact that they weregenerally valued”, to quote the Ecumenical Translation. The same wastrue for the Letter of Barnabas, but unfortunately others were “morebrutally thrust aside” and only fragments of them remain. They wereconsidered to be the messengers of error and were removed from thesight of the faithful. Works such as the Gospels of the Nazarenes, theGospels of the Hebrews and the Gospels of the Egyptians, known throughquotations taken from the Fathers of the Church, were neverthelessfairly closely related to the canonic Gospels. The same holds good forThomas’s Gospel and Barnabas’s Gospel.

Some of these apocryphal writings contain imaginarydetails, the product of popular fantasy. Authors of works on theApocrypha also quote with obvious satisfaction passages which areliterally ridiculous. Passages such as these are however to be found inall the Gospels. One has only to think of the imaginarydescription of events that Matthew claims took place at Jesus’s death.It is possible to find passages lacking seriousness in all the earlywritings of Christianity: One must be honest enough to admit this.

The abundance of literature concerning Jesus led theChurch to make certain excisions while the latter was in the process ofbecoming organized. Perhaps a hundred Gospels were suppressed. Onlyfour were retained and put on the official list of neo-Testamentwritings making up what is called the ‘Canon’.

In the middle of the Second century A.D., Marcion ofSinope put heavy pressure on the ecclesiastic authorities to take astand on this. He was an ardent enemy of the Jews and at that timerejected the whole of the Old Testament and everything in writingsproduced after Jesus that seemed to him too close to the Old Testamentor to come from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Marcion onlyacknowledged the value of Luke’s Gospel because, he believed Luke to bethe spokesman of Paul and his writings.

The Church declared Marcion a heretic and put intoits canon all the Letters of Paul, but included the other Gospels ofMatthew, Mark, Luke and John. They also added several other works suchas the Acts of the Apostles. The official list nevertheless varies withtime during the first centuries of Christianity. For a while, worksthat were later considered not to be valid (i.e. Apocrypha) figured init, while other works contained in today’s New Testament Canon wereexcluded from it at this time. These hesitations lasted until theCouncils of Hippo Regius in 393 and Carthage in 397. The four Gospelsalways figured in it however.

One may join Father Boismard in regretting thedisappearance of a vast quantity of literature declared apocryphal bythe Church although it was of historical interest. The above authorindeed gives it a place in his Synopsis of the Four Gospelsalongside that of the official Gospels. He notes that these books stillexisted in libraries near the end of the Fourth century A.D.

This was the century that saw things put intoserious order. The oldest manuscripts of the Gospels date from thisperiod. Documents prior to this, i.e. papyri from the Third centuryA.D. and one possibly dating from the Second, only transmit fragmentsto us. The two oldest parchment manuscripts are Greek, Fourth centuryA.D. They are the Codex Vaticanus, preserved in the VaticanLibrary and whose place of discovery is unknown, and the CodexSinaiticus, which was discovered on Mount Sinai and is now preserved inthe British Museum, London. The second contains two apocryphal works.

According to the Ecumenical Translation, two hundredand fifty other known parchments exist throughout the world, the lastof these being from the Eleventh century A.D. “Not all the copies ofthe New Testament that have come down to us are identical” however. “Onthe contrary, it is possible to distinguish differences of varyingdegrees of importance between them, but however important they may be,there is always a large number of them. Some of these only concerndifferences of grammatical detail, vocabulary or word order. Elsewherehowever, differences between manuscripts can be seen which affect themeaning of whole passages”. If one wishes to see the extent of textualdifferences, one only has to glance through the Novum TestamentumGraece.[Nestlé-Aland Pub.United Bible Societies, London, 1971] This work contains aso-called ‘middle-of-the-road’ Greek text. It is a text of synthesiswith notes containing all the variations found in the differentversions.

The authenticity of a text, and of even the mostvenerable manuscript, is always open to debate. The Codex Vaticanusis a good example of this. The facsimile reproductions edited by theVatican City, 1965, contains an accompanying note from its editorsinforming us that “several centuries after it was copied (believed tohave been in circa the Tenth or Eleventh century), a scribe inked overall the letters except those he thought were a mistake”. There arepassages in the text where the original letters in light brown stillshow through, contrasting visibly with the rest of the text which is indark brown. There is no indication that it was a faithful restoration.The note states moreover that “the different hands that corrected andannotated the manuscript over the centuries have not yet beendefinitively discerned; a certain number of corrections wereundoubtedly made when the text was inked over.” In all the religiousmanuals the text is presented as a Fourth century copy. One has to goto sources at the Vatican to discover that various hands may havealtered the text centuries later.

One might reply that other texts may be used forcomparison, but how does one choose between variations that change themeaning? It is a well known fact that a very old scribe’s correctioncan lead to the definitive reproduction of the corrected text. We shallsee further on how a single word in a passage from John concerning theParaclete radically alters its meaning and completely changes its sensewhen viewed from a theological point of view.

O. Culmann, in his book, The New Testament,writes the following on the subject of variations:

“Sometimes the latter are the result of inadvertantflaws: the copier misses a word out, or conversely writes it twice, ora whole section of a sentence is carelessly omitted because in themanuscript to be copied it appeared between two identical words.Sometimes it is a matter of deliberate corrections, either the copierhas taken the liberty of correcting the text according to his own ideasor he has tried to bring it into line with a parallel text in a more orless skilful attempt to reduce the number of discrepancies. As, littleby little, the New Testament writings broke away from the rest of earlyChristian literature, and came to be regarded as Holy Scripture, so thecopiers became more and more hesitant about taking the same libertiesas their predecessors: they thought they were copying the authentictext, but in fact wrote down the variations. Finally, a copiersometimes wrote annotations in the margin to explain an obscurepassage. The following copier, thinking that the sentence he found inthe margin had been left out of the passage by his predecessor, thoughtit necessary to include the margin notes in the text. This processoften made the new text even more obscure.”

The scribes of some manuscripts sometimes tookexceedingly great liberties with the texts. This is the case of one ofthe most venerable manuscripts after the two referred to above, theSixth century Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis. The scribe probablynoticed the difference between Luke’s and Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus,so he put Matthew’s genealogy into his copy of Luke, but as the secondcontained fewer names than the first, he padded it out with extra names(without balancing them up).

Is it possible to say that the Latin translations,such as Saint Jerome’s Sixth century Vulgate, or older translations (VetusItala), or Syriac and Coptic translations are any more faithfulthan the basic Greek manuscripts? They might have been made frommanuscripts older than the ones referred to above and subsequently lostto the present day. We just do not know.

It has been possible to group the bulk of theseversions into families all bearing a certain number of common traits.According to O. Culmann, one can define:

• a so-called Syrian text, whose constitutioncould have led to the majority of the oldest Greek manuscripts; thistext was widely disseminated throughout Europe from the Sixteenthcentury A.D. onwards thanks to printing. the specialists say that it isprobably the worst text.
• a so-called Western text, with old Latinversions and the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis which is in bothGreek and Latin; according to the Ecumenical Translation, one of itscharacteristics is a definite tendency to provide explanations,paraphrases, inaccurate data and ‘harmonizations’.
• the so-called Neutral text, containing the CodexVaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, is said to have afairly high level of purity; modern editions of the New Testamentreadily follow it, although it too has its flaws (EcumenicalTranslation).

All that modern textual criticism can do in thisrespect is to try and reconstitute “a text which has the mostlikelihood of coming near to the original. In any case, there can be nohope of going back to the original text itself.” (EcumenicalTranslation)