GOSPELS
At the beginning, and in the NT itself, the term gospel did not designate any book, but rather the message, the good news.
During the post-apostolic period (around 150 AD, Justin Martyr, Apol. 1:66), however, the term “Euangelion” also designated the writings in which the apostles bore witness to Jesus.
Each of these writings received the name of Gospel; The name Gospel was also given to the group of four writings.
(a) The four gospels.
The testimony of history gives proof that, from the very beginning, the four gospels were attributed, respectively, to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; Already at the very beginning of the post-apostolic era the Church considered the Gospels as authoritative documents, which presented the apostolic testimony about the life and teaching of Christ.
During the second century the Gospels were cited, commented on and read: their authenticity is incontestable. Examination of the NT epistles also demonstrates that their allusions to Jesus and his works agree with the Gospel accounts. We can thus hold them as totally worthy of credit.
The first three gospels present a large number of analogies. They generally present the life of the Lord under the same aspect. They are called Synoptic Gospels (from the Greek “synopsis”, “overview”).
They are, however, of a totally different character from the Gospel of John. The main theme of the Synoptics is the ministry of Christ in Galilee; The fourth gospel, on the other hand, highlights his activity in Judea; However, the betrayal, arrest, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection are of such importance that they appear in all four gospels.
The only previous episode that appears in all four gospels is the multiplication of loaves to feed the 5,000. The Synoptics refer relatively little to the divinity of Christ, while John emphasizes the testimony of Jesus himself in this regard.
The Synoptics present above all the works of Jesus, as well as his words about the kingdom of God, the parables, the teachings given to the people; John quotes what Jesus said about Himself, usually in easily understandable speeches.
The fourth gospel supposes and implies the existence of the other three which, in turn, become intelligible thanks to the events related in the Gospel of John.
For example, Jn. 1:15 presupposes knowledge of Mt. 3:11, etc.; Jn. 3:24 that of Mt. 4:12; and Jn. 6:1-7:9, that of all the synoptic accounts of the ministry in Galilee, etc.
On the other hand, only the events related in chaps. 1 and 2 John explain the reception given to Jesus in Galilee, and the willingness of Peter, Andrew, James and John to leave everything to follow Jesus.
Likewise, the sudden controversy about the Sabbath presented in the Synoptics (cf. Mr. 2:23, etc.) is not understood without the account of Jn. 5.
All and having the same general characteristics, each of the three Synoptic Gospels has its own characteristics, due to the objective of the editor and the audience he addressed:
Matthew, writing for Jews, highlights the royal status of Jesus, the Messiah.
He constantly relies on quotations from the OT, and expounds the teaching of Christ about the true kingdom of God, in opposition to the erroneous opinions that existed within Judaism.
Mark wrote, however, primarily addressing the Gentiles, and emphasizes the power of Christ for salvation, manifested in his miracles.
Luke, who was a long-time companion of Paul, shows the Lord as a gracious Savior, caring in a special way for the fallen, the marginalized, and the destitute.
John highlights above all Jesus as the divine Word incarnate, revealing the Father to those who would accept him.
None of the evangelists set out to present a complete biography of our Lord. Each of the acts and words of Jesus presented in each Gospel has a didactic purpose.
The evangelists did not act with the supposed objective coldness of historians. Their purpose was also very different from that of a historian (Jn. 20:30, 31; cp. 21:25): they were witnesses of a Person (Jn. 15:27; 17:20).
Where did the evangelists get their data? Since Matthew and John were apostles, they would have been present at the events they recount or heard the words they record.
Mark accompanied Paul and Peter; A very ancient tradition claims that Mark summarized Peter’s preaching about Jesus in his Gospel.
Luke, for his part, affirms that he received information from those who “saw it with their eyes, and were ministers of the word” and that he wrote his Gospel “after having diligently investigated all things from their origin” (Luke 1:1-4).
Thus, the Gospels give us the testimony of the apostles. The numerous points in common found in the language of the Synoptics confirm this point.
An itinerant lecturer, or a missionary on temporary leave, when he goes from place to place telling his experiences, ends up collecting everything in a stereotyped story, in order to give precisely the same facts, adding from time to time details that may have been omitted. on other previous occasions.
It is likely that the apostles and early evangelists often proceeded in the same way, so that their account was, to some extent, stereotyped.
Somewhat later, fragments of this story were recorded in written form, for the benefit of the newly founded churches.
Thus, as the tradition immediately after the apostles tells us, an evangelical story of varied length was dispersed, but which would offer great uniformity, even in expression.
The linguistic similarities of the Synoptic Gospels thus indicate that they transmit to us the testimony given of Jesus by the apostles. The fourth gospel, on the other hand, deals with topics that were not so precise at the beginning.
John, who knew these issues personally, expounded them somewhat later, when the Church needed his knowledge.
(b) Criticism.
There is no historical data that allows us to doubt that the Synoptics were written between Pentecost and the destruction of the temple (between the years 30 and 70) by the authors whose name they bear, or that they were written in Greek.
However, critics have tried to assign as late a date as possible to the writing of the gospels, so that they would lose their historical testimonial value.
To this end, a whole chain of hypotheses has been built, of which a brief summary and examination is given below.
Literary criticism relies on a quote from Papias (at the beginning of the second century) to reject the authenticity of the Greek Gospel of Matthew, unanimously admitted by the Fathers of the Church.
Papias wrote (Eusebius, “Ecclesiastical History”, III, 39:16): “Matthew ordered the sentences in the Hebrew language, but each one translated them as best he could.”
Based on this quote, despite our total ignorance about these “sentences (Gr., “logia”) in the Hebrew language, the following is stated:
(A) Matthew did not write the Gospel in Greek because he wrote the Lodge in Hebrew;
(B) The Gospel of Matthew, written much later by someone unknown, possibly includes extracts from the Lodges, but they have been interspersed with accounts from other sources.
Baur’s school has stood out for its eagerness to discern a lack of unity in the Greek Gospel that bears the name of Matthew (cp. P. Fargues, “Les origines du N. T.”, Paris, 1928, PP. 56ff.).
This sap work is essentially subjective and marked from the outset by a systematic and very biased a priori dogmatism.
It cannot be claimed that Matthew wrote the Lodge and did not later write the Gospel that bears his name. Irenaeus (Against Heresies, 3:1, 1), among others, testifies to Matthew as the author of this Gospel.
It is a solid and permanent historical testimony against personal opinions highly conditioned by a philosophy in principle hostile to the factuality of divine revelation.
Regarding Mark, he would not have been the author of the second gospel. It would be based on an imaginary document that no one has ever seen: the proto-Mark, and the writing of the Gospel would have involved diverse sources that would allow certain “inconsistencies” to be postulated.
However, the internal evidence of the second gospel reveals a close relationship with Peter and the testimony of him (cp. J. Caba, “From the Gospels to the historical Jesus”, Madrid 1970, PP. 133-135).
There is another kind of evidence that has recently come to light regarding the Gospel of Mark.
The identification of some papyrus fragments written in Greek in the so-called Cave 7 of Qumran, dated between 50 and 100 AD, as belonging to the Gospel of Mark, definitively dispels the doubts that had been cast on the date of its writing.
Father José O’Callaghan, S.I., who carried out, after painful research, this identification on nine fragments, says: “I believe that I have found undeniable evidence that certain key books of the New Testament were already circulating during the lifetime of those who had walked and talked with Jesus” (cp. J. O’Callaghan, S.I., “The Greek Papyri of Cave 7 at Qumran”, Madrid, 1974; D. Estrada and William White, Jr., “The First New Testament », Nashville, 1978).
Of the third gospel it is stated that, although it is marked by a more real unity than the previous ones, it can no longer be attributed to Luke, and the only reason is that it is said to be by the same author as the book of Acts.
But what could prevent Luke from being the author of both Acts and the Gospel that bears his name? If the Gospel is by the same author as Acts, it fits perfectly well as the “first treatise” mentioned in Acts 1:1.
Regarding the fourth gospel, literary criticism also refuses to attribute it to John. The beloved disciple (John 19:26; 20:2) who, modestly, did not want to name him, has been universally recognized by church tradition from the earliest centuries as the author.
It has never been doubted within the church that John would have been “that disciple who testified to these things, and wrote these things” (John 21:24).
The church has never doubted that he was the most qualified to complete the work of the synoptists, by relating, for example, the Lord’s communications to his disciples on the eve of his death (John 15-16).
The fourth gospel makes us enter deeply into the intimacy of Christ, and insists more than the others on the divinity of the Savior, the eternally existing Word (John 1:1-2, 18; 8:58), “Creator” and ” Light” (John 1:3-12).
For rationalist and modernist criticism, the entire dogmatic element that characterizes the fourth gospel comes directly from Greek mysticism, finding its origin in the Alexandrian philosophy of the first century.
To this it could be replied that these statements come from a total ignorance of biblical thought, totally foreign to Hellenic thought, if they were not dominated by the a priori position that has motivated them: that they seek to deny the Gospels their value as reliable historical documents. .
Whoever reads the fourth gospel without previous prejudices, together with the 1st Epistle of the Corinthians, and confirms that John, like Paul, used Hellenic vocabulary, will recognize that he did so precisely to show the chasm that separated biblical revelation from dogma. pagan of the Greeks.
With respect to the writing of the Gospel of John, in the face of the many attempts by rationalists and modernists to attribute a post-apostolic writing date to it, the fact of the existence, in the John Rylands Library, of the University of Manchester, of a fragment of a codex containing a few verses from John 18.
Says Dr. F. F. Bruce: ‘Naturally, this small fragment cannot make much contribution to textual criticism; its true importance lies in the testimony it provides in favor of the traditional date of its writing by John (around 100 AD)” (cp. F. F. Bruce, “The Books and the Parchments”, Pickering and Inglis, Ltd. , London, 1963, p. 181).
(c) Date.
Although it is difficult to assign a precise date to the writing of the Synoptic Gospels, it can be accepted that they were written about 40 years after the death and resurrection of the Lord, between 65 and 70 AD.
At this time, the oral stories that circulated in Palestinian communities had to be recorded in writing. The Greek language was then widespread throughout the Mediterranean world.
The fourth gospel was undoubtedly written much later, long after the fall of Jerusalem, at the end of the first century. It is the work of the apostle John, author also of three short epistles that bear his name, and of the book of Revelation, which he received from Lord when he was exiled on the island of Patmos (Rev. 1:9).
In the middle of the 20th century, a new method of studying the NT was proposed that currently has numerous followers. This is the method of formal criticism or form criticism (Formgeschichtliche Schule, or Form Criticism), of which Rudolf Bultmann, a professor from Marburg, is the main exponent and promoter.
Among the most important representatives of this school we can mention Dibelius, Schmidt, Easton, Grant, Lightfoot. These authors assume that various traditions served as the basis for the development of the Gospels, but that they first circulated orally for many years.
Among these oral traditions would be found paradigms, stories, legends, miracles, parables, lodges, prophecies. These traditions would have been ordered based on the religious interests of the primitive communities.
The chronological table and geographical details would be a later contribution, added to the separate incidents and speeches. It is thus stated that the Gospel is not a narrative.
It is “kerygma”, preaching. The truth, in this scheme, is extra, or suprahistorical. It is necessary to leave the historical plan to reach the truth.
The method of formal criticism practices what is called demythologization, that is, the withdrawal of forms, or myths, in order to see through evangelical history.
Among these myths, which are nevertheless declared objects of faith, are the stories of Christmas, baptism, temptation, resurrection, etc. In short, the entire historical framework of the Gospels (cp. the works of R. Bultmann, and in particular “Theologie des Neuen Testaments”, 3 volumes, Tübingen, 1958; “Geschichte und Eschatologie”, Tübingen, 1958.
This last work brings together six lectures given in Edinburgh in 1955 under the general title of “History and Eschatology”).
Formal criticism constitutes a total denial of history.
Essentially existentialist, this method seeks pure subjectivism. It is the concrete world in which we are immersed that opens us to being, said Heidegger.
It is the world that opens us to truth and Christ, says Bultmann. But the concrete world only has meaning through man; He is dead without it.
And when man has demythologized (or demythologized) the entire evangelical tradition, what remains in the Gospels? What remains of Christ? A mystery that hides behind the Gospels with an indescribable imprecision.
Jesus said: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? » (John 5:46, 47).
These precarious hypotheses are based on a distortion of the history of the transmission of the evangelical text and the development of the apostolic church.
Their weakness rather serves to confirm the conviction that the Gospels are what they claim to be: historical and testimonial documents; If they were not, our faith would be just a word devoid of any content.
To have a clear idea of the life of Christ and his ministry, it is advisable to have at hand a Harmony of the Four Gospels, prepared taking into account the chronological indications and other historical indications that are useful.
It must be taken into account that in many of its points, such harmony can only be approximate. A work worth noting for the Hispanic reader is “A Harmony of the Four Gospels” by A. T. Robertson (Casa Bautista de Publicaciones, El Paso, Texas, 1975).