The Gospels
The New Testament contains four gospels attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The four gospels are not biographies of Jesus, nor are they history as we define it. What each gospel attempted to do was write a theological explanation for the events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. By narrating his life, his ministry, and his death, The Gospels argued that these events should be interpreted in relation to the history of Israel.
The word 'gospel' derives from the Anglo-Saxon for 'good news', and the writers are deemed 'evangelists' from the Greek euangelistes (bringer of good news). In this context, the 'good news' is the message of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth that the kingdom of God foretold by the prophets of Israel was imminent.
The gospels were produced from c. 70 CE to perhaps 100 CE. Their portraits of Jesus, who he was, and why he was here, differ in relation to both later reflections and changes in the demographics of the earliest Christian communities over time. The four gospels vary in some of the details of Jesus. The two nativity stories of Matthew and Luke are thrown together under the Christmas tree, although they differ in many ways. (Matthew has the star and the Magi; Luke has the stable and the shepherds.) However, when the gospels agree on details, this does not indicate four different sources. Mark, being first, was used and edited by the other three.
Authorship
The original texts of the gospels had existed for about a hundred years with no names. The Church Fathers in the 2nd century CE assigned the names; none of the writers signed their work. The gospels are not eyewitness accounts; none of the gospel writers ever directly claimed to be an eyewitness. One exception is Luke, who says he interviewed witnesses but gives no further details. In their attempt to provide backgrounds for the writers the Church Fathers tried to align them as close to the original circle of Jesus as possible. They were also aware of a fundamental problem; the first disciples of Jesus were fishermen from Galilee who could not read and write the level of Greek in these documents.
In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke wrote that Peter had a disciple named John Mark who accompanied Peter in his travels. By the 2nd century CE, the legend that Peter had died in Rome under Roman emperor Nero (r. 54-68 CE) emerged and so the Church Fathers claimed Peter dictated this gospel to Mark in Rome. In Mark and Luke, when Jesus called the tax-collector to follow him, that individual is named Levi. In Matthew’s gospel, he is named Matthew. The Church Fathers identified this writer by this clue, thus the name. It was believed that there had been an earlier form of Matthew's gospel in Hebrew. This gave it more credible historical roots and so they placed it first in the New Testament.
The Church Fathers knew that the third gospel and the Acts of the Apostles were written by the same individual, but there was no Luke in the list of disciples. However, the second half of Acts relates the missionary journeys of Paul. In one of Paul’s letters, he mentioned a traveling companion named Luke. For the Fathers, this was eyewitness testimony to the missions. The fourth gospel, John consistently refers to a character by the name of "the beloved disciple". The Church Fathers knew of someone named John the Elder in Ephesus who was supposedly an original disciple and so assigned this gospel to him and claimed that he was John, the brother of James (the sons of Zebedee).
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