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people of the book
[ 45 ]
Gospels do not primarily represent historical accounts of Jesus, in the modern
sense, but rather after-the-fact interpretations of the significance of his life and
death by authors who never knew him personally.
All secular (and even most religious) scholars agree that the four New Testa-
ment
Gospels were not written independently of one another. In their view,
when at least two of the four Gospel authors, Matthew and Luke, wrote their
accounts, they had before them one or more of the previously written Gospels.
That, of course, poses an interesting difficulty, which is known as the Synoptic
Problem . The difficulty is to figure out the relations of literary dependency
among the Gospel of Mark, which is usually regarded as the earliest New Testa-
ment Gospel, and the Gospels of Matthew and
Luke. According to the solution
to this problem that is most widely accepted, Mark was written first, Matthew
and Luke were written next and based in part on Mark, and John was written
last, perhaps as late as 120 c.e.
The Gospel of John, which is radically different in style and content from the other
three Gospels, is all but universally regarded by scholars as the most historically
unreliable of the four canonical Gospels. In the other three Gospels, Jesus often
teaches in short epigrams (or proverbs), such as, “For to him who has, will more be
given; and from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away” (Mark
4:25), and in parables, such as the stories of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son,
and the Sower and his Seed. In John, on the other hand, Jesus’ teaching style is
different. Gone are most of the short, pithy epigrams and parables and in their place
are long, abstract discourses:
Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your
fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes
down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which
came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the
bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.
(John 6:47-51)
And again:
I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no
fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear
more fruit. You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in
me, and I in you.
(John 15:1-4)
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