Studies in the Gospels (Part Seven)
Welcome to the seventh post in my series on the gospels. I realized in preparing this post that I haven’t yet included the testimony of early church leaders about the gospels. That’s important to consider, so let’s look at that. As I stated before, each of the four gospels was originally an anonymous document and in the 2nd century the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John began to be associated with them. Our earliest testimony about gospel authors comes from a church leader named Papias writing around 140 CE. Papias wrote a five-volume collection called Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord. We don’t have any surviving copies, but we have quotations of that work from the 4th century church historian Eusebius. Papias was the bishop of the church at Hieropolis, which was a city in modern-day Turkey. According to Eusebius, Papias wrote,
“Matthew compiled the sayings [logia of Christ] in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as best he could” (Eusebius, The Church History, Book Three, section 39.16, translation by Paul L. Maier, Grand Rapids, Kregel, 1999).
This quote from Papias raises
many questions. If the gospel written by Matthew in Hebrew which Papias knew about was a collection of the sayings of Jesus, is that the same document as the gospel of Matthew that we now have? Our present gospel of Matthew contains
narrative as well as sayings. Could Papias have been talking about an earlier
version of Matthew’s gospel now lost to us which only contained sayings? Could that be related to the theoretical Q document? When Papias mentions the Hebrew language did
he really mean Aramaic? Aramaic was the language
that the disciple Matthew would have spoken.
Also, what did Papias mean by “each interpreted them as best he could”? Did he mean that each reader of this document
tried to understand it as best they could?
Did he mean that there were many translations (interpretations) of this
document? We just don’t know. What we can say is that Papias believed the disciple Matthew had collected the sayings of Jesus in writing.
Papias also reported that he knew “elders” who were second generation disciples. In other words, these elders did not know Jesus personally, but they were followers of the first generation of disciples. He mentions two of these elders by name: Aristion and John. Regarding the gospel of Mark, Papias wrote:
“The Elder used to say this also: ‘Mark became Peter’s interpreter and wrote down accurately, but not in order, all that he remembered of the things said and done by the Lord. For he had not heard the Lord or been one of his followers, but later, as I said, a follower of Peter. Peter used to teach as the occasion demanded, without giving systematic arrangement to the Lord’s sayings, so that Mark did not err in writing down some things just as he recalled them. For he had one overriding purpose: to omit nothing that he had heard and to make no false statements in his account’” (Ibid, Book Three, 39.15).
One important question here is how far does the quotation from the Elder go? There were no quotation marks in the original document. Some scholars think the Elder only said the first sentence, and the rest is commentary from Papias. Others think the entire quote came from the elder. Regardless, I think we can safely assume that Papias is talking about what we now know as the Gospel of Mark. Papias states that the stories and sayings in Mark’s gospel are accurate, but they are not told in the correct order. We do have a passage in the New Testament letter of 1 Peter where Peter calls Mark his son in the faith and indicates that they are working together in Rome (1 Peter 5:13). This would support the idea that the gospel may have been Mark's transcription of Peter's preaching. We know that Peter was martyred in Rome around 64 CE during Nero's reign and most scholars think Mark's gospel was first published around 65 CE. Unfortunately, we don’t have any surviving quotations from Papias regarding the gospels of Luke or John.
Prior to Papias we have documents from the early church which contain quotations from the canonical gospels, but the author of the gospel is never named. For example, church leader Ignatius of Antioch, writing to the church at Smyrna around 110 CE, mentions Jesus’ baptism. He says that the purpose of Jesus’ baptism by John was to “fulfill all righteousness.” That is a direct quote from Matthew 3:15, but Ignatius does not mention his source. The Didache (also written around 110 CE) quotes Matthew’s version of the Lord’s prayer rather than Luke’s but does not give a source (Didache 8.1-3). Clement was a church leader in Rome who wrote a letter to the church in Corinth around 90 CE which has been preserved. Here is a quote from this letter:
“Above all, remember the words of the Lord Jesus which he uttered while teaching forbearance and patience, ‘Be merciful, that you may receive mercy. Forgive, that forgiveness may be given you; as you do, so it shall be done to you; as you give, so shall it be given you; as you judge, so shall you be judged, as you show kindness, so will kindness be shown to you; the measure you give will be the measure you get’” (1 Clement 13.1-2 as quoted by E.P. Sanders in Studying the Synoptic Gospels, London, SCM Press, 1989, 9).
In this passage Clement
is combining material that we now have in Matthew 5:7, 6:14-15, 7:1-2, 12, and
Luke 6:31, 36-38. Perhaps Clement was
quoting these passages from memory or perhaps he was quoting from a harmony of
the gospels circulating in Rome that has since been lost. The main point here is that he does not
attribute this material to any of the gospel authors but simply to Jesus. This evidence suggests that the gospels were
originally anonymous collections of the sayings and deeds of Jesus. It is not until the mid-second century with
Papias that authors names begin to be associated with them.By the time we reach Irenaeus, a church
leader in Lyons (present day France) around 180 CE, we have clear statements of
four "orthodox" gospels attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. By the way, it's interesting to note that the final "canon" or set of "orthodox" books for the New Testament was not decided until the 5th century.
In our next post we will wrap up the study of the Synoptic gospels and move on to the gospel of John.
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