Over the last four weeks we've looked in detail at the books of the Old Testament, and seen where they came from and how they were compiled. We've seen, in particular, how they emerge from, and are shaped as a response to, the circumstances and experiences of the Jewish people.

We can do something similar with the New Testament books, starting with the gospels

The Gospels…

A generation passed from the time of Jesus before any gospels were produced. The first Christians did not need written gospels; their community included, and indeed was led by, witnesses to the life and teaching of Christ. Besides, they seem to have expected the return of Christ imminently; they saw no need for a long-term record.

But as the first generation began to die and the expectation of an early Second Coming lessened, there was a need to preserve Jesus' words and deeds for posterity.

So written stories about Jesus started to circulate. Some were collections of saying or teachings; others gave information about his background and life. May of them gave different, and in some cases conflicting, accounts — most importantly, of the Resurrection.

• Some argued for a physical resurrection, a unique event which happened at a particular time and place. And, since the best witnesses of such an event were those who were closest to it, the apostles were privileged witnesses on whom the mantle of leading the community naturally fell.
• Others presented the resurrection as a universal and ongoing spiritual event that anyone could experience. Consequently no special cachet was attached to the apostles. The important people were not those who saw the Resurrection and could testify to it, but those who understood it at the deepest level. That could be anyone.

Since these contrasting views profoundly affected the understanding of the apostolic role, they had implications for the shape and nature of the church. So which gospels became accepted was a matter of great importance.

We'll come back to the question of how the canonical books of the New Testament were settled next week. For now we'll just say that, about 180 AD, a bishop called Iraneus argued that the status of any book depended on whether it was "apostolic." That is, it should have been written by, or for, one of the Twelve.

None of the four gospels names its author. All originally circulated anonymously. But it wasn't long before tradition had attached the name of a supposed author to each of them. Two — Matthew and John — are attributed to two of the Twelve, one to Mark, supposedly a follower of Peter, and one to Luke, a follower of Paul. (Luke is also credited with writing the Acts of the Apostles and, whatever the author's name, it's accepted that the third Gospel and Acts were written by the same person).

But, as is probably well-known by now, scholarship only accepts these attributions in part. In the consensus view of the scholars, yes, Luke and Acts were written by a follower of Paul. It is debatable whether the author of Mark was a follower of Peter; he treats Peter quite unkindly, compared to some other gospels. John was probably not written by the apostle John himself, but may well have been written by a community inspired or led by him. And the attribution of Matthew to the apostle of that name is flatly rejected.

The starting point is that Matthew, Mark and Luke generally agree closely on the details and timeline of Jesus' life, sometimes even using exactly the same words to describe events. Clearly, some of these gospels are copied in part from others. Almost every verse of the gospel of Mark also appears either in Matthew, or in Luke, or both.

It's tempting to assume that the shortest gospel, Mark, must be the first. Why would anybody write a new gospel by dropping material from an existing gospel? A new gospel would add to, amplify or correct the existing material, not just drop it.

The author of Mark is not a Jew, is not writing for a Jewish audience, and is not familiar with the geography of Judaea and Samaria — he makes a number of geographical and other mistakes from which it is reasonable to infer all this. Matthew, by contrast, as well as including more material than Mark, corrects these errors in his retelling of the stories. We infer that the author of Matthew was probably a Judaean Jew.

But we also infer that Matthew is working from Mark, and not the other way around. This makes it it unlikely that he is the apostle Matthew. If he was a companion of Jesus and an eye-witness of the events he describes, why would he rely so heavily on Mark as a source, especially since the author of Mark was clearly not close to Jesus?

Luke is thought to be the latest of the three synoptic gospels. We know that the author of Luke was a companion or follower of Paul, that he also wrote Acts, that he was not an eye-witness to the gospel events (he tells us this himself) and that he was a doctor (Paul tells us this).

Luke and Matthew contain a significant amount of common material which is not taken from Mark; as neither of them is a direct witness they must be relying on a prior source for this material. And they share enough of this material to make it reasonable to infer that they both relied on the same source. But this is a conjecture; the source they both draw from has never been found.

The Gospel of John, the last to be written, differs dramatically from the other three books both in tone and in some historical details. John does not follow the timeline in the other three and adds quite a few stories and details not found in them. For this reason, it's thought that John's gospel does not come either from the synoptic gospels or from the sources which they used, but springs from an independent tradition. It's not unreasonable to think that it may be the work of a Christian community inspired, and initially led, by the apostle John.

There are, of course, many other gospel texts, with various names attached to them, but only these four made it into the Bible. Next week we'll take a look at the process by which these four made the cut and the others were ruled out. But first we need to look briefly at the remaining books of the New Testament.

The Letters of Paul…

Tradition names Paul as the author of the letters to the Romans, the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Ephesians, the Philippians, the Colossians, the Thessalonians, the Hebrews, Timothy, Titus and Philemon.

By and large, scholars agree, although there are a few points of difference. Some argue on stylistic grounds that he did not write Colossians or Ephesians or, at any rate, that he did not write the whole of them. Timothy and Titus may not be his work, or they may have been heavily reworked from original texts by Paul before they arrived at their present form.

More significantly, Paul almost certainly did not write Hebrews. We have no idea who did. The early church actually knew that this book was anonymous, but grouped it with the other Pauline epistles because it was valued, and because it was believed to come from a follower of Paul's. Tertullian (155-230 AD) ascribed it to Barnabas, an associate of Paul's who features in Acts, but there isn't a lot of evidence to support this.

But tradition and scholarship agree that Paul did indeed write the bulk of the New Testament books attributed to him. Paul was not, of course, an eye-witness to the life of Jesus, and must have relied on secondary sources for his information. We know he did not rely on any of the four gospels — some at least of his letters predate the gospels, and none of them quote from the gospels.

Paul, in fact, tell us very little about Jesus or his life. If we were reliant on Paul, all we would know about Jesus is that:

• He came from Nazareth
• He had a 'brother' called James (the exact nature of that relationship is, of course, a whole other debate)
• He was executed
• He rose from the dead
• That's about it, really

Even in regard to Jesus's teaching, the letters do not give us a huge amount of detail. For the most part, Paul comments on, explains or interprets Jesus' teachings, rather than restating the teachings themselves. Paul is writing for communities that already know about the life and teachings of Jesus, from apostolic memory and preaching.

James…

The letter of James names its author as "James", but we don't know who that is. There are five people named James in the New Testament, including James, the brother of the Lord, who tradition says is the author. There is not much evidence to support — or contradict — this attribution.

Peter…

It's always been assumed the first and second letters of Peter were in fact written by Saint Peter. No real objection to that belief has been raised until fairly recently, largely because few early church fathers quoted it as they did other canonically accepted books.

Revelations…

The author of Revelations names himself as "John". Tradition says this is the same as the author of the fourth gospel, but that seems unlikely. The style of the Greek is very different, and while the gospel author never mentions his own name, the author of Revelations does so repeatedly. Furthermore, he doesn't call himself an apostle, but a prophet.

Exactly who the author was is open to conjecture. There is no real consensus, except that he was a Jewish writer, writing in Greek to the Jewish believers certainly later than the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and probably around about 100 AD, which is about the same time that the Gospel of John is thought to have been produced.

Conclusion…

Unlike the Old Testament, the books of the New Testament were written over a relatively short period. Probably about sixty years separates the earliest of them from the latest.

Nevertheless, they were sixty action-packed years. The spread of the early church, and the growth in numbers of its adherents was fairly explosive. It's not often appreciated that, although there are no hard figures, a very significant proportion of the Jews of the Roman Empire, particularly Greek-speaking Jews from outside Judea, adopted Christianity. This, combined with the Jewish wars and the eventual destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish state, created tensions which profoundly affected the course the church took, and indeed is still taking.

This is reflected not only in the texts of the New Testament books, but in the fact that they came to be regarded as inspired scripture, while other texts were rejected. We'll see in more detail next week how the experience of the early church shaped the scriptures which it gave itself.

Next week: Peregrinus concludes this series by examining how the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John made it into the Bible and other contenders did not.

ARTICLE NAVIGATION: PART I | PART II | PART III | PART IV | PART V | PART VI

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Peregrinus can be contacted at: Peregrinus <peregrinus@catholica.com.au>

©2007 Peregrinus

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