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CHAPTER ONE
About The Gospels
In a study of the Gospels one needs to have some knowledge, slight though it may be, of how the list of books to be included in the Bible came to be fixed; how the New Testament came down to us; and what was the origin of the Gospel Story? And, later, when dealing with each Gospel, we should know something of its Author; we should think about the people to whom he was writing, and we ought to try and analyse the subject matter peculiar to each Writer. That is what I suggest we do. And, where possible, I suggest we compare and contrast some of the New Testament themes with those of the Persian Prophet, Bahá’u’lláh.
Mankind is undoubtedly entering a new Era. In it we see its political, social and religious thinking undergoing dramatic changes. From dogmatic insistence on what has always been, we are having to venture into deeper waters of thoughts, bravely facing truths heretofor undreamed of. For that reason, if for no other, it is interesting to note Bahá’u’lláh’s words: “He who turns away from this Beauty hath turned away from the Messengers of the past.”1
This would seem to imp'ly that the Christian, Muslim, Jew or Hindu who denies the Divinity of Bahá’u’lláh does, by his denial, automatically deny and refute the Founder of his own Faith, because as Bahá’u’lláh says, He is the return of the Spirit found in all former Prophets. But is it sufficient to simply say such a thing? Are we not entitled to some proof of the assertion? .
One day in a street, I Watched a pilot in an aeroplane doing skywriting. I would not have seen the plane had not a man on the footpath drawn my attention to it. Later, I drew someone else’s attention to it. At that moment, another man came along. He looked upwards, saw the sky-writing and turned pitying eyes upon us as we gazed fascinated at the sight. An expression of amused disdain crossed his face. Fancy people bothering with such a sight!
Many people are like that—even when the subject is of the utmost importance. To be disdainful is a sign of ignorance; to investigate, to have the capacity to wonder, to be ready to receive Truth from
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whatever source it may come is the Hall Mark of wisdom. For that
reason, let us turn to these ancient writings and investigate their
contents. Let us try to understand and appreciate any new revelation.
The Bible consists of two great divisions, the Old and the New Testaments. In the early days of Christianity, the Old Testament was generally referred to as the “Scriptures”, though the full Jewish title was “The Law, The Prophets and The Writings.” When the Christian books were collected it became necessary to distinguish between the two sets of writings and the Old Testament became known as the ‘Old Covenant’, because it records the Covenant between God and Man made through Moses, and the later books were the ‘New Covenant’, made through Jesus. The language of that day was Aramaic and the writings were later translated into Greek and subsequently Latin. The Latin translation for the Greek word ‘Covenant’ was ‘Testamentum’, from which comes our English word, Testament. Through every day usage of the word, it has come to mean a ‘Will’. Hence, it would be 'more correct for us to revert to the old titles and refer to the Books as the Old and New Covenants.
An interesting point arises here for the Bahá’í people: The Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, perhaps more particularly His ‘Book of Certitude’, could be regarded as another Covenant, God’s latest Covenant with Man through Bahá’u’lláh. Whereas, that of His son, Abdu’l-Bahá’s ‘Will and Testament’, is strictly a Will, for in it He makes bequests. For example, He bequeaths to humanity the foundations for the Institution of an International House of Justice, as a safeguard for mankind’s future well-being; and t0 the Believers He bequeathed the knowledge and wise guidence of His grandson, Shoghi Effendi, by appointing him to be the first Guardian of the Cause, thus protecting it from manmade schisms.
But getting back to the New Testament as we know it: How did the books come to be fixed? The New Testament, like the Old Testament, is a library of books, written over a period of perhaps fifty or a hundred years followingjesus’ death. As the books were mostly written in the form of long letters to different churches, it was a great while before they were generally known, and still longer before any agreement was reached as to which books (or letters) could be regarded , as authoritative. When this agreement was reached, and the books listed, it became known as the Canon of the New Testament, a Greek word meaning ‘rule’ or ‘measure’. The standard for judging Christian truth. Some of these earliest lists have come down to us and I
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understand, one of them, found in an old manuscript, is now at Milan,
having been published in 1740.
It should be borne in mind, however, that in compiling the Canonical Books— our New Testament — many interesting books that had been used in the early Churches were rejected. Among the better known of these were: ‘The Apocalypse of Peter’, the ‘Epistle of Barnabas’, ‘The Epistle of Clement’, ‘The Shepherd of Hermas’ and the ‘Teachings of The Twelve Apostles.’ Conversely, some of the books now in our New Testament were not recognised by the early Churches, namely: Hebrews, 2 Peter,]ames,]ude, 2 and 3John and Revelations. Why this should be, we will never know for sure; an opinion, at best, would be only conjecture. But one can, in the light of other known events which took place in the early days of the Church, assume fairly safely that deliberate intent to control the minds of the people was one powerful reason. On the other hand, one should allow that advancing scholarship could bring further knowledge to light which might cast doubt on something formerly held to be fact.
Our list of twenty-seven books appears for the first time at the proceedings of the Synod of Laodicea in 363 A.D. and again at the Council of Carthage in 397 A.D. Although the books of the New Testament are grouped under different headings, such as: The Synoptic Gospels, The Evangelical Epistles and so on, I feel we ought to think more particularly about the Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and the supplementary Gospel written to complete the Synoptics, John. The remaining books of the New Testament we can leave for now, as I want us to look more closely into the Life and work of Jesus as revealed in the Gospels.
In Jesus’ day, Greek was the accepted language in many parts of the Roman Empire around the Mediterranean seaboard. From many old letters, household bills and personal notes which have been found in the Nile Valley, it is quite apparent that the Greek used in the New Testament, when translated from the original Aramaic, was the ordinary colloquial Greek in everyday use by the people, and not classical Greek. The differences would be like the language used in daily conversation by an average educated person and that used in Milton’s prose. But apart from the knowledge of the language used, it helps us to understand the contents of the books if we can picture them being written and passed on from one person to another.
Printing presses were not in operation in those days. Until printing was invented about 1450, A.D., Scriptures were done on parchment
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by hand. This allowed for many variations, caused largely by human
agencies. For instance, a writer may not agree entirely with what was
formerly written, so he would alter it slightly to convey the meaning
he believed to be the more correct one. Another cause of error to be
considered, is that the Copyist could make slips, omitting a word here,
writing in a word twice somewhere else, or trying to write from
memory. And, too we must realise that we 'have insertions and
deletions. Take for example the last verse of John 7 and running into
chapter 8, where the story is recorded of the woman taken in adultery.
It is most likely a true story of jesus, but it is not recorded in the earliest
manuscripts and it was not in the Gospel as John wrote it. In some
early writings it is placed after Luke 21:38, others again place it
differently. In the New English Bible the story is related more correctly
as an incident and appears at the close of St John’s Gospel and just
before the commencement of Acts of The Apostles. What may have
happened, is that some reader had heard of the incident and, when
readingJohn’s record, made a note of it in the margin. The next copyist
to work on the manuscript would see the note and work it into the
text. While there can be no certainty about this, one can readily see
how errors, variations, or deletions could occur.
Such human acts as these must, in time, have effected the sum content of what many people regard as “The Holy Word of God.” In one’s association with one’s Christian friends, and when discussion arises about what the Bible says, it helps a great deal if one can remind them of these contingencies. Such contingencies did arise, thereby causing our Matthew, Mark, Luke orJohn Gospels of the Authorised Version to be not strictly in accordance with the original writings. However, I deplore the way some people, when dealing with devout followers of other beliefs, adopt an attitude of sanctimonious, all-knowing wisdom. We are not as wise as we think! For that reason, if for no other, it behooves us to go no further than to suggest to our acquaintances that, because there are known variations in translations, it could be that what is written in our Bibles today may not be precisely what was written in the earliest days of Christianity.
That being so, it may be wise to interpret any alleged sayings of Jesus in the light of, or in context with, His combined sayings and the life He lived.
Without wishing to confuse you with too many technicalities concerning early translations of Scripture, it might suffice if I draw your attention to some details you may not have thought about. For
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example: the earliest accounts of Christ’s ministry were naturally passed
on orally. Later, fifty years or so later, attempts were made to retain
these stories in written form. But what of language? Greek was the
most popular medium, but Latin, Syriac, Egyptian and Armenian
were all used. Then, too, what if fifty copies of the same manuscript
were wanted, and they were done by several Writers and Translators
whose interpretation of a word might differ? Could not error creep
in? And so, what our fathers of old did, was to examine critically all
manuscripts, checking the nature of the material on which they were
written, recalling to whom they were written, remembering the tongue
in which they were originally set down and into what language they
were translated. In time it was found that these various manuscripts
formed themselves into similar groups, and by the predominance of
a certain teaching in any one group, it came to be accepted as being,
in all probability, reliable.
Among other early writings are some which refer to the New Testament writings of their day, and the Writers usually say from which translation they worked. This again helps to confirm the student in his choice of the authentic, as distinct from the less reliable until, today, we can accept the Authorised Version of the KingJames Bible as being reasonably accurate, but by no means completely so. Hence, it should be clear to us all, that to pick up the Bible and thunder the assertion: “This is the inspired Word of God! I believe every word of it from cover to cover!” is, to say the least, rather naive.
Now let us turn to the origin of the Gospels. In announcing the birth of Jesus, the Angel said: “I bring you good tidings.”2 Thus, the story of Jesus and His Message came to be known among the early Christians as the Good Tidings, or Good News. The Greek word for this is pronounced: ‘Eu-ang-gel-ion’ and this became in Latin, ‘Evan-gelium’, so we get our ‘Evangel’, with the corresponding word, ‘Evangelist’, for the Writer of the Story. But we also have a Saxon word, dating from early Christianity in England—‘God Spell’, which probably means God Story, or Good Story, from which we get our familiar word, Gospel.
When we speak of the four Gospels, we are not being strictly correct. There is only one Gospel, one story proclaimed by jesus. Our four books are more correctly four accounts of the one Gospel, by four different Writers with, unfortunately, many additions and deletions by people other than the Authors.
Books were rarely used among the Jews and their teaching was almost entirely oral. With the exception of Paul, and possibly
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Matthew—being a Tax gatherer, he probably had some knowledge
of writing—the Apostles were not literary men; their job was to preach,
not write! In the first generation or two there was no need for a written
Gospel: the story was passed on by word of mouth and soon took a
fairly standardised form.
However, though the churches founded by Paul knew the Gospels from his teaching, various difficulties arose in their church life which required prompt attention. And as he could not go to them at once, he wrote letters to them. That is why we find the surprising fact that a large part of the New Testament was written before the earliest Gospels. It was about the year 60 A.D. that the written Gospels began to appear. Quite a few of these early written accounts were fanciful and erroneous, and as the ranks of the Apostles were thinning by reason of death, it became important to have a true written record before all the eye-witnesses were dead. Luke makes that clear in the preface to his Gospel. Quoting from the New England Bible: “The Author to Theophilus: Many Writers have undertaken to draw up an account of the events that have happened among us, following the tradition handed down to us by the original witnesses and servants of the Gospel. And so I in my turn, your Excellency, as one who has gone over the whole course of these events in details, have decided to write a connected narrative for you, so as to give you authentic knowledge about the matter of which you have been informed.”
It is not known for sure who Theophilus was, but by Luke’s manner of addressing him, and the fact that Luke appears to have viewed favourably the institutions of the Roman Empire, he was probably a Roman official. On the other hand, some of those early writings were pure frabrications, and some fanciful stories appear among the writings, such as the one about the boy who claimed to fashion clay pigeons which he made to fly.*
But as is historically vouched for, early versions of the New Testament in whole or in part, were translated into a number of languages at a very early date. The great versions were prepared for the churches which spoke Latin, Syriac, Egyptian or Armenian. And different versions were made in various dialects of these languages. In the course of time, three versions became prominent: The Lewis
- See C.F. Hunter, B.A. “The New Testament— Its Writers and Their
Messages.”
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Syriac, The Old Latin, and the Vulgate.*
Nevertheless, in the Gospel writings there were four accounts which were distinguished by their simplicity and obvious factualness. They were soon recognized as the only reliable ones, as well as being among the earliest written. The narratives are sober, straightforward and matter—of—fact; they describe a Jesus who worked miracles, but the miracles do not strike us as strange or incredible; they describe a character so beautiful, so consistant, so large and noble that it must have been drawn from life. I have heard it said that Charles Reade, a prominent novelist in his day, once pointed out that there are little touches in the narratives which, he considered, no writer of fiction would have even thought of introducing, let alone that a Galilean peasant should do so!
Now then, let us give some thought to the likely authorship of these four Gospels. It must be clear to any student of the New Testament, that the first three Gospels give us very similar narratives. That is why they are knoWn as the Synoptic Gospels, from the Greek word meaning that their writers looked at the life of Jesus in the same way. How did that come about? Would not each writer desire to relate in his own way what he believed to be the salient features of Christ’s life and teachings? At a first glance, except for their titles, the first three Gospels give us no clue to their author’s name, but the Church has, from a very early date, accepted the Apostle’s name as proving he was the writer, especially when the words ‘according to’ is taken to mean ‘written by’ the writer. However, another person could have written the Gospel ‘according to’ the line of teaching propounded by the Apostle named.
Consider the Gospel of Mark. A very old manuscript written about the year 125 A.D. by Papias, related a story that John the Disciple did say: “Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately—not, however, in order—as many as he remembered of the things either spoken or done by Jesus.” A good deal has been discovered to prove the reliability of this story and few authorities today doubt that Mark did write the second Gospel and that it records the story of Jesus very much as Peter used to tell it.
Strangely enough, the author of our first Gospel, Matthew, is even
- C.F. Hunter, B.A. “The New Testament—Its Writers and Their
Messages.”
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today unknown. One school of thought leans to the theory that
Matthew did actually write a small volume containing the sayings of
Jesus, but no narrative. And that he wrote it in Hebrew, and our
Gospel was copied from it. However, as our Gospel was in Greek,
I think it is most likely it is only a copy of an early Aramaic version.
But the opinion is fairly general that Matthew did not write the Gospel.
Personally, I lean more to the school of thought which sees no reason
for assuming he did not write an early Aramaic account of what he
had seen and heard concerning Jesus. He may have written a little
book of the sayings of Jesus, and if someone did work from it, then
the words ‘according to’ Matthew could mean it was written along the
lines of Matthew’s teaching about Jesus. But there are other authorities
who claim that whoever wrote it almost certainly worked from Marks’s
writings, and only one of the Twelve would use Mark because, being
himself one of the Twelve, he would know Mark’s account to be correct.
Against that theory, it is claimed in various references (a) that Matthew was so inconspicuous among the Twelve that no one would dream of attributing a Gospel to him, unless he was known to have written it; and (b) in the list of the Twelve given in Matthew, he is called ‘the publican’, while in the other Gospels the disreputable occupation is not mentioned. From this it is argued that the only person not likely ever to forget the fact would be Matthew and, therefore, he must have written the story. But this is all slender evidence and I think it is better to admit that it is not known positively who wrote the Gospel of Matthew.
When we come to Luke, we are on safer ground. If we compare the preface to Luke with the preface to Acts, it appears quite Clear that the Gospel and Acts are by the same person. He does not name himself in either work, but he claims to have accompanied Paul in some of his travels, and on his voyage to Rome. Other indications are that he was a Gentile and some phrases in the book indicate he was a physician. Now Paul in his writings refers to a companion named Luke, and he says he was a Gentile and a physician and that he was imprisoned with him. So it seems most feasable that of all Paul’s companions, this one should be the same Luke who wrote the Gospel and the Acts of The Apostles.
