Recovering the Jewish-Messianic Gospel, Part Three


Before we look at Philippians 2, let us first summarize the Christological developments in the canonical gospels.   

Mark is our first gospel and it was written around 65 AD.  That is followed by Luke (sometime in the 80’s) and then Matthew (later in the 80’s).  These dates are generally accepted by the majority of New Testament scholars.

These three gospels are called the Synoptic gospels because they share the same basic story about the life of Jesus.  John’s gospel is very different and we will cover that later. Luke and Matthew have both borrowed heavily from Mark although they make some minor editorial changes to Mark’s account and they re-arrange the order of the stories for their own editorial purposes. Luke and Matthew also include an additional body of material not present in Mark that has come to be called Q from the German word for source.

We know that the stories of Jesus’ teachings and miracles first existed in oral tradition and then after about 30 years the author of Mark’s gospel set some of these traditions down in writing.  Matthew and Luke reproduce many of Mark’s stories, teachings and parables, and they add the Q material. Matthew and Luke also have material unique to their gospels, which is traditionally called “M” and “L”.   So the Synoptic gospels essentially consist of Mark + Q + M + L.

In the Synoptic gospels we see a developing Christology over time. In Mark’s gospel we start out in verse one with the declaration that Jesus is the son of God.  As we learned in our previous post, the term “son of God” simply meant “King of Israel” to first century Jewish readers.  Mark also tells the story of Jesus’ baptism, and he relates that at that point God spoke from heaven and declared that Jesus was his beloved son – the God-appointed Davidic King (see Mark 1:11).

Already we have a big difference from Paul’s theology some 10 years earlier.  Paul said that Jesus was first appointed to the office of King of Israel at his resurrection (Romans 1:3-4).  Mark is pushing that event back earlier in the life of Jesus to his baptism.  There is no hint in the gospel of Mark that Jesus is anything more than the Messiah – a human being chosen by God to be the King of Israel.  This is what Peter declares in Mark 8:29 “You are the Messiah.” Note that the added phrase “son of the Living God” does not appear in Mark’s gospel in this story of Peter’s great confession.  It is added by Matthew 20 years later (and not added by Luke).

Now let’s move on to Luke, which I think was written next.  (There are many editorial changes to the Q tradition in Matthew that lead me to believe that Matthew was written after Luke).  In Luke, the declaration that Jesus is the son of God moves back even earlier in his life.  Here it is not just at his baptism – it is at his birth! There is no birth narrative in the gospel of Mark.  Here in Luke we read that the angel Gabriel tells Mary that her child will be called the “son of the Most High”.  Let us read it in Luke 1:30-32:

"30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; 33 and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.”

Luke is telling us that Jesus is a man designated as the son of God, the Davidic King of Israel, but now instead of this designation happening at his resurrection (Paul in 55 AD) or at his baptism (Mark in 65 AD), it happens at his birth (Luke 80 AD)!  As we can see, the designation of Jesus as son of God gets pushed back earlier and earlier in Jesus’ life as the story is told again years later. This reflects a developing theology about Jesus in the early Christian communities.

There is nothing in the gospel of Luke to indicate that Jesus is anything more than a human being filled with the Holy Spirit, chosen by God to be the Messiah and the Savior of the world.  His kingdom will last forever because after his death he is raised from the dead and installed as the permanent Lord of creation at the right hand of God in heaven.  The book of Acts was also written by Luke around the same time and this is the same gospel proclaimed throughout the book of Acts.  Here is my paraphrase of the apostolic gospel:  “the man Jesus has been anointed by God as Messiah, he died for the sins of humanity and is now resurrected and exalted to God’s right hand as reigning Lord and Judge of humanity, ushering in forgiveness of sins and a new creation for all who surrender to him as Lord."

By the way, the term “son of God” applied to Jesus is a direct confrontation to Caesar who was also called “son of God” in a Greco-Roman context, so there are definitely political overtones in these New Testament documents.

We will look at the gospel of Matthew in our next post.

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