What is a Gospel? (Part 7)

Our main sources for the life of Jesus, of course, are the four gospels. But do we know what kind of literature we are reading (that is, what genre of literature we have before us) when we open up the gospels? Usually, Christians assume that the gospels are straight biographies of the life of Christ. But that is only part of the story.

In essence, a “gospel” is an early account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth that consists in the selective use and arrangement of essentially biographical material, in order to transmit a theological/spiritual message about the significance of Jesus to a particular Christian audience at the time it was written.

The ancient literary form that comes closest to the gospel genre is the “biography,” the writing of “Lives” of great men of the ancient world. As we mentioned in passing earlier in this web series, when ancient authors wrote the biography of someone, they felt free to do what biographers today would never do: rather than directly quote their subject’s words, they would often paraphrase words spoken by him, or elaborate upon his words to bring out their true meaning, and they would also chronologically rearrange some of the events in the life-story they were telling, in order to help the reader understand the significance of what the person had achieved. Their intent as biographers was not to falsify anything: they simply reasoned that exact, verbatim quotations and a strictly chronological account of the life-story of their subject would not necessarily help the reader to fully appreciate the life of the great man or woman in question. For example, in Matthew’s gospel he lumps together the main teachings of Jesus into five “discourses,” with each discourse bringing together in one place most of the sayings of Christ on a particular subject. The last discourse, for example includes all of the main sayings of Jesus about the end of the world. Did Jesus really say all those things at that precise time in his ministry? Probably not, but Matthew was not trying to deceive anyone here: he must have reasoned that keeping together in one place all of the Lord’s sayings about the End Times would be more helpful to his readers in understanding the scope and depth of Christ’s words on that subject.

Catholic New Testament scholar Brant Pitre, in his book The Case for Jesus (2016), compares the gospels to other ancient works:

When you actually take time to compare the Gospels with other ancient writings … the closest literary parallels are in fact Greco-Roman biographies. These biographies are known as “lives” (Greek bioi) because they focus on the life of a particular person, whether a philosopher, a teacher, a politician, an emperor, or whoever. [Pitre mentions as examples the biographies written by Josephus, Plutarch, Suetonius, and Lucian] … According to Richard Burridge, ancient Greco-Roman biographies often averaged somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 words — “the amount on a typical scroll, about 30-35 feet long.” … When we examine the length of the four Gospels, they fall within this ballpark [Mark is the shortest at about 11,000 words, and Luke the longest at about 19,000 words]. …

Ancient biographers — unlike some modern biographers, who often strive to give comprehensive portraits of their subjects — often did not even attempt to tell their readers everything about the person whose life they were describing. … Consider, for example, Plutarch, the Greek historian, in his biography of Alexander the Great. … Because Plutarch is not writing a “history” (Greek historia) but a “life” (Greek bios) of Alexander the Great, by definition [Plutarch says] he is not going to speak exhaustively of all the deeds done by Alexander. This does not mean that Plutarch’s biography is “unhistorical”; it just means that it is incomplete. … [Similarly, St. John writes]: “But there are also many things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25). …

Another significant parallel between Greco-Roman biographies and the four Gospels is that they are not necessarily strictly chronological accounts of a person’s life. In fact, the text can also be arranged topically or thematically. For example, the Roman biographer Suetonius writes the following in his life of Caesar Augustus:

“Having given as it were a summary of his life, I shall now take up its various phases one by one, not in chronological order, but by categories, to make the account clearer and more intelligible. (Suetonius, Life of the Deified Augustus, 9)”

This is strikingly similar to what Papias, the early church father, has to say about the Gospel of Mark:

“Mark, having become Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he remembered, though not in order, of the things either said or done by Christ. (Papias of Hierapolis)” …

It’s very easy for modern-day people in our age of audio and video recording to equate the historical truth of the Gospels with word-for-word accuracy. … [T]he historical character of the Gospels does mean that the authors intend to record the substance of what Jesus really said and did.

For example, the ancient Greek historian Thucydides makes clear that when he is recording the speeches that were given during the Peloponnesian War, he is not necessarily giving a verbatim account:

“With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one’s memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said. (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 1.22.1). (Pitre, pp. 70, 72, 75-76, 74, and 81).

Now let’s take a look at two examples of the gospel genre: that is, of how the gospels tell the life-story of Jesus Christ.

1) The Lord’s Prayer

The gospels actually give us two accounts of Jesus teaching his disciples the Lord’s Prayer, and on first glance they seem radically different in chronology and content. It leads the reader to wonder: when did Jesus really give his disciples this prayer, and what was its original form?

Matthew chapter 6 contains the longer form of the prayer that most Christians are familiar with, and Jesus teaches it to his disciples in his Sermon on the Mount. But Luke records a shorter version of the prayer, and this teaching is delivered well after that sermon, and in response to the disciples’ question: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John [the Baptist] taught his disciples” — a question that implies that Jesus had not yet taught them this prayer.

The two forms of the Lord’s Prayer look like this (with the portions in black in Matthew’s account marking additions to the prayer found in Luke’s account):

Luke 11:2-4 (some time after the Sermon on the Mount):

Father,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread;
And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive
everyone who is indebted to us;
And lead us not into temptation.

Matthew 6:8-13 (during the Sermon on the Mount):

Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our debts, as we also
have forgiven our debtors;
and lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.
(For Thine is the Kingdom, the power,
and the glory forever).

So: when did Jesus actually teach the Lord’s Prayer to his disciples, and what was its original form? One could make a good case that it is St. Luke who gives us the original form and setting of the Lord’s Prayer.

First, Luke is the only gospel writer who claims that he has endeavored to write “an orderly account” of the life of Jesus (LK 1:4), which might include a more careful attention to chronological order than the other gospel writers. Matthew, on the other hand (as we have already seen) often tends to chronologically re-arrange the teachings of Jesus, and in the Sermon on the Mount in particular he seems to have gathered into one place most of our Lord’s important sayings on prayer.

Second, it does not seem likely that Luke would have paraphrased the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11 (why would he bother to do that?). It seems more likely that Jesus first taught the short prayer to his disciples in response to their question, as a simple pattern of prayer for them to follow. Later, this basic version was elaborated upon by Matthew, or perhaps by all the apostles, or maybe even by Jesus himself after the resurrection when he taught his apostles for 40 days (Acts 1:3), and became the longer version we have today for use by the whole Christian community.When he wrote his gospel, Matthew then inserted it into his collection of the teachings of Jesus on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount.

This does not mean that Matthew “falsified” what Jesus originally taught. In fact, if we compare the two versions, we find that there is nothing in the longer version that is not implicit in the shorter one. The “Father” to whom Jesus taught them to pray is clearly “our” common Father “in heaven.” And what does it mean for his “Kingdom” to come? That Kingdom can only come when his “will” is done “on earth as it is in heaven.” So whoever did the elaborating on the original form of the Lord’s Prayer — the risen Jesus himself, or the apostles, or Matthew — no one was trying to deceive anyone about what Jesus intended to say, or how he intended them to pray.

2) The Cleansing of the Temple in Jerusalem

When did Jesus drive the money changers out of the Temple? The gospel writers do not agree with each other on this. According to St. John’s Gospel, chapter 2, Jesus did this right near the start of his public ministry. According to all of the synoptic gospels, however (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), he did it during the last week of his life, during “Holy Week,” just a few days before he was arrested and put on trial. So, when did he really do it?

Some Christian writers have claimed that he did it twice, but that hardly seems likely. It was such an unprecedented and provocative thing to do, it is not likely that the Temple authorities would have allowed Jesus to remain free for very long once he had publicly challenged their integrity and their authority in this way. The event makes much more sense just a few days before his capture, as one of the precipitate causes of the decision finally to arrest him and put him on trial. Besides, can you imagine what the reaction of the crowd would have been the second time around: “Look out: here he comes again!”

Also, it is three gospel accounts against one here, so St. John just does not have “multiple attestation” on his side in this case.

Some New Testament commentators have pointed out that St. John may have had a theological reason for putting the cleansing of the Temple near the start of his gospel. John’s account of the life of Jesus was known among the early church Fathers as the “spiritual gospel,” and for good reason, because one could argue that the order of events it records in the life of Jesus is meant to mirror and shed light on the spiritual journey of every Christian. Just as Jesus once cleansed the money-changers from the Temple (in John’s Gospel, chapter 2), so adult converts are to cleanse their hearts of sin in preparation for Christian baptism (Christ’s teachings on baptism occur in chapter 3), which brings spiritual rebirth, and causes the inner spring of the Holy Spirit to welling up the hearts of the faithful (chapter four). In chapter 5 Jesus debates with his Jewish detractors, but meanwhile, if we remain in allegiance to him, we are prepared for the great gift of the living bread in Holy Eucharist (chapter 6), which unites us even more deeply and intimately with him. Then the miracle of the healing of the man born blind (in chapter 7) shows us that those who are spiritually healed by Jesus Christ walk in the light and not in the darkness, for he is the true “Light of the World” (chapter 8) … and so on.

If this was the kind of thing that John was doing in his gospel, then he wasn’t trying to deceive anyone by putting the cleansing of the temple near the start of the life-story of Jesus. He was simply doing what ancient biographers often did: rearranging the events of the “life” in order to bring out their true meaning and significance — more than a straight chronological account could ever do. But John didn’t fabricate anything: Jesus really did one time drive the moneychangers from the Temple. Indeed, John adds some evidently eye-witness details that the other gospel writers do not mention, for example, that Jesus did so with the help of a whip of cords that he made just for the occasion: Jn 2:15!

Nor was John in “error” about anything here. It is not an error to “fail” to achieve a chronological order that you were not attempting to follow in the first place.

In 1964 the Pontifical Biblical Commission in Rome stated that the occasional use of chronological rearrangement of events, and paraphrase or elaboration of the words of historical characters by the gospel writers does not at all contradict the assertion by the Church of the historical trustworthiness of the Bible. It simply means that by the Holy Spirit (the guidance of the Spirit that Jesus repeatedly promised to his apostles) when the gospel writers paraphrased a person’s words, they did so truly (without distorting the person’s intended meaning); when they elaborated on the words of someone, they did so truly as well, and when they chronologically re-arranged the events of the life-story of Jesus, they did not fabricate events out of nothing, or report them falsely, or in any way distort their significance.

It is not to our purpose here to explain or defend the Church’s teaching on the inspired “inerrancy” of Scripture, for we are only looking at the New Testament books with the tools of historical research. But it is worth saying at this juncture that nothing that we have said so far necessarily contradicts that teaching about the authority of Scripture. Once you understand what kind of literature the “gospels” were meant to be by their authors, many of the problems with the alleged historical inaccuracy of the gospels no longer make any sense.

Next Time: How NOT to Undertake the Search for the Historical Jesus: an Example

Robert Stackpole, STD
©The Mere Christian Fellowship, 2017