Too many gospels?

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Too many gospels?

November 18, 2007

According to the gospel writers when Jesus fed the 5000 they had twelve baskets of left-overs left over. It seems that he produced too much bread, more than was needed. The same thing seems to have happened with the gospels themselves. Why do we need four – why not just one?

After all they each tell more or less the same story. Maybe if they had put their heads together the gospel writers could have produced a definitive gospel with all the stories in it (and in the same order). That is if they had all been in the same town, at the same time, working for the same publishing company.

But the gospels didn’t suddenly spring up as new works from scratch. Although they were probably produced in the form we have them in the 60’s (or a bit later for John – the debate continues about when he wrote), their final form depended on earlier versions.

Probably the origin of the gospels was the oral teaching of the apostles who told and retold the stories about Jesus as the church grew. However as the church grew the oral retelling was probably supplemented by written collections of stories and teaching.

These different collections may have been passed around in a haphazard way so that some felt the need to write an orderly account of what had happened. In fact this is exactly what Luke says he did (Luke 1.1-4). But each gospel writer selected and edited the material for the audience he was writing for.

We can see this from the way they used each other’s work. At least the way in which Matthew and Luke used Mark. It seems Mark was the first gospel to be published in the form we have it. It is also clear that Matthew and Luke used a lot of Mark’s text. But they changed it. Luke turned Mark’s simple Greek into a more polished, educated form. Mathew also modified it. Both Mathew and Luke added bits to their gospels which are not found in Mark. Some of this extra material they seem to have taken from a source that was common to them both. Other bits are unique to their respective gospels.

But why all the effort to improve Mark? In part because they were writing for different audiences with different backgrounds. In part because they thought that some things needed to be recorded which Mark had not thought necessary to his purpose (the birth stories for example). In part because they each had a different theological perspective.

When we read the gospels we read the same big story but we see it from different angles and in different lights - like a diamond – and so we are able to see much more of its depth and riches.
Dale

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