The gospels aren’t what they have historically been portrayed as – four individual eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ life. For centuries, the gospels of Matthew and John were believed to have been written by Jesus’ disciples, the Gospel of Mark by Peter’s interpretor, and the Gospel of Luke by Paul’s scribe. Tertullian (160 – 220 CE) wrote that, ‘The evangelical Testament has apostles for its authors’ (Against Marcion 4.2).
The reality is that the gospels were all written anonymously, we don’t know by whom or even where they were first written. We first find the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John attached to the four stories in around 180 CE, by Irenaeus.
The gospels were all written well after the supposed lifetime of Jesus, the standard academic view is that they were most probably composed between around 70 and 110 CE. They were written at a time when it was likely any eyewitnesses of the events they claim to describe would have been dead. All of the earliest Christians like Paul would probably also have been dead, particularly if there had been a purge of them after the Great Fire of Rome in 64 CE. Plus any in Judea may have been killed in the first Jewish-Roman war of 66 – 73 CE and the siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE.
None of the gospels were written in Judea either, Mark was most probably written in Rome, Matthew and Luke in Antioch, and John in Ephesus. The gospels were also all written in Greek. We know of no earlier versions in Hebrew or Aramaic, which would probably have been the language of Jesus and his disciples if they had existed. It seems logical to assume that the earliest gospel most probably post-dates the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, because it has Jesus ‘predict’ it (Mark 13.1-2).
The author of Mark also quotes the book of Daniel talking about an abomination being set up in the temple, which probably refers to the standards of the Roman army after taking Jerusalem (Mark 13.14 quoting Daniel 9.27, 11.31, 12.11). The later Gospel of Luke likewise has Jesus say, ‘When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near’ (Luke 21.20).
There’s also the bizarre miracle of Jesus casting an impure spirit calling itself ‘Legion’ out of a madman and into a herd of pigs, which then kill themselves by running into a lake (Mark 5.1-13). One of the Roman legions involved in the Roman-Jewish wars and the sack of Jerusalem was the Legio X Fretentis (10th legion). This legion was also involved in the siege of Masada, the Bar Kokhba revolt and was stationed in Palestine until the fourth century. One of the legion’s symbols was the boar, and this may be the origin of this miracle.
Mark is believed to be the original and oldest gospel, which is interesting as his is also the shortest. Whoever wrote Mark, he wasn’t an eyewitness to any event described, and he wasn’t a Palestinian Jew. He’s ignorant of the geography of the region and also of Jewish customs and laws. Mark 5 states that the Sea of Galilee’s eastern shore is the country of the Gerasenes, yet Gerasa is more than thirty miles to the south east. Mark 7 says that Jesus passed through Sidon while travelling from Tyre to the Sea of Galilee. Sidon is in the opposite direction and there was no road between Sidon and the Sea of Galilee in the first century CE.
The Gospel of Mark originally ended at 16.8 with the discovery of the empty tomb, there were no post-resurrection sightings of Jesus. The authors of Matthew and Luke added post-resurrection appearances of Jesus to the story. These three gospels are referred to as the synoptic (syn-optic literally ‘look the same’) gospels because they contain many of the same stories in the same order, sometimes using near identical wording. Matthew reproduces 80% of Mark in his gospel, and Luke copies 60%. The authors of Matthew and Luke also improved the grammar and style of Mark’s Greek.
The author of Matthew massively increased the teachings of Jesus – Mark contains 240 verses of teachings, Matthew 620. He also added the Sermon on the Mount – Jesus’ most famous teachings don’t appear in the original gospel of Mark. The gospels of Luke and Matthew clearly weren’t ever eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ life, as eyewitnesses don’t need to copy earlier written sources!
Whichever group or person created the gospel of Mark probably invented the basic story of Jesus that became engrained in the minds of so many for the next 2000 years. The author of Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles as a direct follow on from his gospel, so was clearly writing many years after the events described.
Some scholars believe Matthew and Luke may have used a now lost collection of sayings and aphorisms attributed to Jesus and added it to the narrative of Mark’s gospel. They call this source ‘Q’, from ‘Quelle’, the German word for ‘source’. This hypothetical text would have been written in Greek, and contained no mention of Jesus’ birth, Peter, Judas or any other of the twelve disciples, trial, crucifixion or resurrection.
Other scholars don’t believe that Q ever existed, and that the author of Luke simply copied his story from both Mark and Matthew. If Q did exist, it seems strange that no early Christian source mentions it and that such an important document didn’t survive. John was the last of the gospels written sometime around the early second century, and embellished things even further. It added the famous miracles of Jesus turning water into wine and raising Lazarus from the dead.
The gospels don’t represent historical fact. They are an attempt to write a passion story and put flesh on the figure of Jesus. They probably started using some basic beliefs of the early Christ cult like those expressed in the letters of Paul and elaborated on them, using lines from the Old Testament that could be claimed as ‘prophecy’ of Jesus.
Paul’s basic teaching is summed up in 1 Corinthians, ‘Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised to life on the third day, according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and afterwards to the Twelve’ (1 Corinthians 15.3-5).
The letters of Paul display other elements in the early Christ cult that later entered the gospel narrative, namely the teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, the Last Supper, the crucifixion and the resurrection. We find the basis for the Sermon on the Mount numerous times in Paul’s letters.
In Galatians 5.14, Paul says, ‘For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”‘ In Romans we read, ‘Never pay back evil with evil, try to do what everyone regards as good. If possible, as far as you can, live at peace with everyone’ (Romans 12.17-18). In 1 Corinthians Paul wrote of receiving a revelatory instruction from Jesus about sharing bread and drink, that may have been the inspiration for the Last Supper narrative in the Gospel of Mark (1 Corinthians 11.23-26).
The author of the gospel of Mark created the basic story of Jesus known to millions today out of these basic building blocks. He set his story in Judea and the culminating passion story in Jerusalem, something we don’t find in the earlier letters of Paul. Paul’s mention of Jesus’ post resurrection appearance to ‘the twelve’ was probably also the reason Mark gave Jesus twelve disciples. Each of these disciples also mirrored the twelve tribes of Israel that themselves mirrored the twelve signs of the zodiac.
Even the names of the most famous disciples probably derives from Paul’s letters. Paul mentioned a Peter, James and John, describing them as ‘those esteemed as pillars’ (Galatians 2.9). Peter is described as an apostle like Paul, which suggests he also may only have ‘known’ Jesus through mystical revelation (Galatians 2.8). He also only describes Jesus as appearing to them after his crucifixion and resurrection, which fits with this interpretation.
It’s important to remember that Paul never gave his Jesus any disciples, ‘the twelve’ and ‘the pillars’ mentioned by him are never described as such. The author of Mark turned them into disciples. The author of Mark also equated Jesus to the apocalyptic figure of the Son Of Man from the book of Daniel. The title is referred to 81 times in the four gospels, but the earlier letters of Paul never refer to Jesus by this title.
The author of Matthew added to Mark’s gospel and elaborated the story. One of his main additions was the birth story. Bizarrely he wrote a genealogy at the start of his gospel that linked Jesus back to David and Abraham through Joseph. This is rather paradoxical given that Joseph wasn’t Jesus’ actual birth father in the gospel. He also added the famous stories of Herod’s ‘massacre of the innocents’ and the three magi. He also padded the story out with plenty more parables and miracles as he gilded the lily.
The author of Matthew made Peter the chief of Jesus’ disciples. The gospel of Matthew is also fiercely anti-Semitic, portraying both the Pharisees and Sadducees as comic book buffoons. It squarely blames the Jews for Jesus’ death, despite the paradox that his death was supposed to be preordained as a sacrifice to abrogate the original sin of Adam. It contains the awful lines, ‘let his blood be on us, and all our children’ (Matthew 27.25), that was used as a reason for Christians to persecute Jews for centuries.
The author of Luke imbued his gospel with the concept of the Holy Spirit, as he also did with the Book of Acts. The author of John dispensed with the birth myth and had Jesus existing from the beginning of time as the logos.
The Bible and Mythology 