Codex Sinaiticus
| Click here for an explanation of the color-coding used in the sayings and acts of Jesus. |
Writing the New Testament
The Jesus Tradition
Surviving Copies of the Gospels
"In the East when documents and books are worn out they are copied exactly and the originals are burned. This is due to the belief of the Eastern people that it is a sin to allow a book to fall to pieces."
- George M. Lamsa (translator), The Four Gospels : According to the Eastern Version (1933) p. x
A gap of about 175 years separates Jesus from the earliest surviving copies of the gospels.
"Today we know of just over thirty papyrus manuscripts of New Testament books which can be dated before the fourth century. That number is small in comparison with the scores of copies of Homer and the dozens of copies of other famous Greek authors."
"Each copy [of the New Testament texts] has its own oddities and mistakes: no two are completely identical, or the same as the Codex Sinaiticus [ca. 350 C.E.] or other later manuscripts....In the Gospels there are about seventy places altogether where scholars are doubtful about the original reading - that is to say are unsure whether one group of manuscripts or another has the correct words. Few of these places impinge on any major Christian doctrine, and in no case does any uncertainty affect the Christian faith."
- Alan Millard, Discoveries From the Time of Jesus
"The Four Gospels are indeed difficult sources; their initial selection from the dragnet does not mean that they are guaranteed to represent the historical words and deeds of Jesus. Shot through and through with the Easter faith of the early Church, highly selective, and ordered according to various theological programs, the canonical Gospels demand careful, critical sifting if they are to yield reliable information for the quest."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 1.
"The problems for the reconstruction of the best archetype for the manuscript tradition is more or less identical with the assumed autograph is precarious. The oldest known archetypes are separated from the autographs by more than a century. Textual critics of classical texts know that the first century of their transmission is the period in which the most serious corruptions occur."
- Helmut Koester, "The Text of the Synoptic Gospels in the Second Century", in Colloquy on New Testament Studies: A Time for Reappraisal and Fresh Approaches 81 (1989)
"We must learn to consider the gospels of the New Testament canon, in the form in which they existed before 180 C.E., in the same light in which we consider the apocrypha. At this earlier time the gospels were what the apocrypha never ceased to be. Like the apocrypha, the gospels of the New Testament were not yet canonical; they did not circulate together [for example, only Luke and John are present in Papyrus 45], and when they did, they did not always appear in the same sequence [for example, the order Matthew, John, Luke, Mark in Codex Bezae]."
- François Bovon, "The Synoptic Gospels and the Noncanonical Acts of the Apostles", Harvard Theological Review 81 (1988)
| For an explanation how scholars decide which texts are most reliable, see: |
The Oral Tradition
"Wooden writing tablets of Roman times have come to light in places as far apart as the fortress of Vindolanda, on the line of Hadrian's wall, and the deserted towns of Egypt....The writing could be done in ink directly on the wooden surface, or on to a white plaster coating the wood. Alternatively, the tablet was given a shallow recess which was filled with wax. With a pointed stylus the writer could scratch letters into the wax, and later erase them by smoothing it over with the flat end of the stylus.
"Wooden writing tablets of any type could be joined with hinges or thongs to make a pair or, when a lot of space was needed, to make a group of several boards or pages. Such a group of leaves was called in Latin a codex, the first century author Seneca informs us. Ordinarily, these tablets were for school exercises, accounts, messages and notes of all sorts. At Rome, shorthand writers took down speeches in the Senate; a secretary slave stood by the scholar Pliny to take down in shorthand anything his master found that would be useful in his studies. Manuals for teaching systems of Greek shorthand have been found among the papyri from Egypt."
"The fact that the Gospels were some of the first books to be copied in the codex form, as distinct form the scroll, leads to the suggestion that they were based on notebooks. Such notebooks could have held reports."
- Alan Millard, Discoveries From the Time of Jesus
C. H. Roberts, an expert on Greek papyrus books, suggests that actions and even the words of Jesus could have been recorded in shorthand by a scribe on the day they happened. The overwhelming opion of most scholars today is that the words of Jesus were transmitted orally for several decades before being set down on parchment or papyrus.
| ·"The oral memory best retains sayings and anecdotes that are short, provocative, memorable - and oft-repeated. ·The most frequently recorded words of Jesus in the surviving gospels take the form of aphorisms and parables. ·The earliest layer of the gospel tradition is made up of single aphorisms and parables that circulated by word of mouth prior to the written gospels. ·Jesus' disciples remembered the core or gist of his sayings and parables, not his precise words, except in rare cases." |
"...No witness simply hands down a complete, photograph-like description of an event; rather he [or she] selects, alters, interprets, and rationalizes. Insofar as this is true, an element of judgment is necessarily present. But... judgments are not mere random inventions or isolated occurrences of thought. They presuppose other judgments, beliefs, and opinions as the background against which they occur and in the light of which they have meaning. What a witness thinks he [or she] sees is in large part filtered through the prism of his/her own individual mode of perception and conception which, in turn, is heavily influenced by the modes of thought of the culture of which he/she is a part. Men/and women are historical creatures, and their judgments reflect the 'world' that they bring with them and to which they appeal in support of those judgments.
"It is the function of the historian to assess these judgments and inferences, to establish not only their meaning but their truth. He/she cannot avoid either task, for to assume that the reports mean what the ordinary reader takes them to mean overlooks the historically conditioned nature of thought. To leave them uncriticized is simply to attribute to the witness a capacity for critical judgment the historian him/herself lacks or is too timid to exercise.
"Insofar then as history aspires to be knowledge, in contrast to belief, the historian must give reasons for what he/she asserts. As soon as the reasons are forthcoming one ceases to rely on mere authority or testimony. . . . If the historian permits his/her authorities to stand uncriticized, he/she abdicates his/her role as critical historian. He/she is no longer a seeker of knowledge but a mediator of past belief; not a thinker but a transmitter of tradition."
- Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer. The Morality of Historical Knowledge and
Christian Belief. Macmillan, 1966, pp. 40-42.1
"...The burden of OT interpretive 'proofs' applied to the historic Jesus was such that many voices must have been transmitting the 'traditions' which found their way into the apologetics, instruction, and liturgical usages of the church. Inviting as it may be to reduce 'tradition' to the level of 'sayings,' any such lists of sayings, whether we think of them as perpetuated in some form of 'Q' or of Gospel of Thomas, HAD to have frameworks determined by usage or they would not have survived!
"Liturgically, the early Jewish congregation(s) appear to have rehearsed haggadoth about Jesus in their celebration of traditional Jewish worship!....It must have been in just such sharing, in just such 'study of Torah and the prophets' which was common in Jewish life that 'tradition' assumed its shape and was passed on from mouth to mouth."
- Philip B. Lewis (CrossTalk)
"Walter Ong SJ, in his celebrated book Orality and Literacy (1982; frequently reprinted), has examined the whole question of text fixity in oral societies and concluded, in essence, that there is no such thing. Oral traditions do not hand down texts in fixed form. They hand them down in approximate form, with much creative addition and subtraction, and with the constant re-improvising off a general narrative basis that is the real oral method revealed by the work of Parry and Lord. The idea of text fixity is inherently a product of a society affected by writing, and is not found in a pure oral society."
- E. Bruce Brooks (CrossTalk)
"Now what happens as an oral tradition arises about an historical event or an historical person is that, strangely enough, the first oral tradition is not an attempt to remember exactly what happened, but is rather a return into the symbols of the tradition that could explain an event. Therefore, one has to imagine that legend and myth and hymn and prayer are the vehicles in which oral traditions develop. The move into a formulated tradition that looks as if it was a description of the actual historical events is actually the end result of such a development. Only the later writer would bring a report about Jesus' suffering that has the semblance of the report of the actual events, one after another, that happened. One could, for example, imagine that the oldest way in which the early Christians told about Jesus' suffering and death was the hymn that Paul quotes in Philippians 2, about the one who was in the form of God who humiliated himself and was obedient even to death on the cross, and was therefore raised high up by God. This was a very old hymn. Paul quotes this hymn when he writes Philippians, that is, in the early 50s of the first century. He quotes this as a hymn that probably was sung in the Christian communities, ten or twenty years earlier. That is the way in which you first tell the story. And that you tell the story in the form of a hymn also shows that the telling of the story is anchored in the worship life of the community. So here is really the beginning of the oral tradition. And it becomes story as it is retold, resung....It could be resung as a hymn, but retold as a narrative, again in the worship setting of the community."
- Helmut Koester, "From Jesus to Christ", PBS Frontline On-line
"It is also important that the 1st century was not an oral society in Ong's terms. Writing was commonplace. Promising young Jews learned their tradition by reciting and internalizing the written texts of Judaism; those in Hellenized areas used instead the Greek Septuagint, but all had a precise textual basis, which was in turn in the custody of learned rabbis collectively. Ordinary persons such as travelling merchants communicated with their wives back home by writing letters. Writing and its expectations had pervaded every sphere of life. "
- E. Bruce Brooks (CrossTalk)
Most of the population, however, was illiterate, particularly the Galilean peasantry who formed the core of Jesus' constituency. Paul and his Hellenized cosmopolitan followers would have most likely been the first to set down any sayings and stories about Jesus into writing.
"The dates assigned to some of these supposed 'oral texts' put them very close to within a generation of the crucifixion of Jesus. At that range, there would seem to be available no established transmission mechanism that it is worthwhile to call 'oral tradition,' but instead these two options: (1) the personal memory of eyewitnesses, or (2) the personal memory of those who had heard the accounts of eyewitnesses. Reliance on the vague phrase 'oral tradition' under these circumstances, especially in reference to a thoroughly literized and urbanized society, seems questionable."
- E. Bruce Brooks (CrossTalk)
None of the authors of the canonical Gospels identity themselves, although Church tradition says that the apostle Peter dictated his account of Jesus life to the author of Mark in Rome. (See The Gospel According to Mark for details.) The other canonical gospels are believed by most biblical scholars to be secondary or tertiary sources which used Mark and possibly even earlier narrative material (the hypothetical Cross Gospel and Signs Gospel), a collection of sayings (Q) and new passages created by the authors themselves. (Each author expresses a distinct theological viewpoint which is expressed in the inaugural speech of Jesus.) The assigning of the authorship to the gospels was likely a matter of guesswork and the desire of later church officials to impart the gospels with apostolic authority. (The author of the Gospel of Thomas identifies himself as Didymus Judas Thomas.)
If the writers of the gospels were not present at the events they describe, would they have had access to actual eyewitnesses? It is uncertain to what extent the literate and predominantly Greek speaking members of Paul's community in Asia Minor and Europe were in direct contact with the Jewish community in Jerusalem. Letters traveled, emissaries were sent but there was a decided measure of hostility and distrust between the leaders of the two communities over the issue of gentile conversion. Paul may have known Peter but he only traveled twice to Jerusalem to meet with the other apostles (c. 48 C.E. and c. 58 C.E.) Only the Gospel of John, which was written approximately 70 years after Jesus death, claims to incorporate an actual eyewitness account. Referring to the Beloved Disciple, Jesus says::
"This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true."
- John 21:24
Memoirs During the Time of Paul
"Who, being in very nature [or 'in the form of'] God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature [or the form] of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
- Philippians 2:6-11
"...Some relatively early texts already reflect a high christology: e.g., the pre-Pauline hymn in Phil 2:6-11 probably existed in Aramaic and may go back to the first or second Christian decade."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
"When Paul happened to write a letter to his converts in Galatia (c. 49/50), he had no idea that he was writing the earliest Christian text which would survive for us, some fifteen years, perhaps, before any of our Gospels existed. Notoriously, Paul's surviving letters are not particularly concerned to quote Jesus's exact sayings at every opportunity: their concern is with Jesus as the risen Christ, although Paul's oral teaching, now lost to us, may have had a different focus."
- Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version
"The Greek of each of Paul's letters is stylish, grammatical, and erudite, and this is made all the more remarkable by the fact that Hebrew thought, Hebrew language forms, and Hebrew word-play may be discerned behind much of what they contain. Examples are legion, but one may serve to illustrate."
- Ed Form
"For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel--not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.' [Isaiah 29:14]
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.
Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength."
- 1 Corinthians 1:17-25
"In 1 Corinthians 1:17-25, the words... 'we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the Power of God, and the wisdom of God'... are an extended parachesis of Hebrew words which sound similar...
Christ, Mashiac
Cross, Maskal
Stumbling-block, Michshol
Foolishness, Sechel
Wisdom, Sekel
Power, Haschil
"In fact the entire paragraph is laced with these 'rhyming' words."
"...The presence of a Hebrew shadow, lightly concealed behind the writings of the New testament has been the subject of much scholarly comment. Not just Hebrew thought, but actual cleverness of words, when a Hebrew version of the text is assembled, is commonplace, but in Paul's writings it reaches the level of high art."
- Ed Form
"...There is nothing in Paul's letters that either hints at the existence of the Gospels or that even talks of a need for such biographical memoirs of Jesus Christ. Paul, the New Testament says, never saw the earthly Jesus but was totally convinced of his divinity. He was, he says, 'an apostle, not by human appointment or human commission, but by commission from Jesus Christ and from God the Father." [Galatians 1:1 NEB]
- John Romer, Testament- The Bible and History
"...It is noteworthy that, except for the words of the institution of the Lord's Supper themselves, Paul does not in any of his epistles quote the exact words of any of the saying so Jesus as we now have them in the Gospels. Nor does he mention a single event in the life of Jesus - again except for the institution of the Lord's Supper - between his birth and his death on the cross. From the writings of Paul we would not be able to know that Jesus ever taught in parables and proverbs or that he performed miracles or that he was born of a virgin. For that information we are dependent on the oral tradition of the early Christian communities as this was eventually deposited in the Gospels, all of which, in their present form at any rate, probably appeared later than most or all of the epistles of Paul."
- Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries
Paul does on occasion quote teachings of Jesus, however (i.e., on divorce in 1 Corinthians 7:10 and 11b). In addition, there is a strong correspondence between several verses in Paul's letter to the Romans and the Sermon on the Mount, including:
"Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves."
- 12:10
"Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse."
- 12:14
"Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn."
- 12:15
"Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, [for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.]"
- 13:8
"...Love your neighbor as yourself."
- 13:9
"You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat"
- 14:10
"There is not a single mention or even a hint of Paul's letters in the Gospels. Their vision seems far removed from the practicalities that are spelled out in Paul's letters. His main theme is Jesus' message of God's love for the world and also Christ's assertion that the ending of the world is imminent; his historical view is sharp and certain. In comparison, the Gospels often seem uncertain of their central message and of their central character; Jesus' purposes on earth seem curiously elusive....The Gospels' portrait of Jesus seems to be separated from real time. The central character is set in a rambling series of incidents and sermons, engaged in a mysterious progress revolving around an unstated drama that finally ensures his capture and death."
- John Romer, Testament - The Bible and History
Constructing the Gospels
"It certainly could be said that as long as Christianity was only a Palestinian sect it was not necessary to write a Gospel. But, once it became necessary to either expand to the Gentile community or to reach the Diaspora then it was necessary to write a Gospel."
- D. G. Conklin, "A Study on the Synoptic Gospels" Part 1: The Date of the Gospels
"Paul insists that there is only one 'gospel of Christ' (Galatians 1:7), so why did later Christians accept as 'Scripture' four written gospels?"
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 125
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"In the eighteenth century the central problem facing the student of the Gospels was that of chronology. True chronology was regarded as essential for true history. The conflicting chronologies of the four canonical Gospels cast doubt in the minds of thinking men concerning the reliability of these documents as trustworthy witnesses....The older type of Gospel 'harmonies' designed to reconcile the accounts of all four Gospels were replaced by a new type of Gospel 'parallel,' where no attempt was made to include the Gospel of John, except where in isolated instances there was some evidence of a close connection between John and one or more of the other three. This reflected a consciousness that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were more closely related to one another than they were to John."
- William. R. Farmer in The Synoptic Problem: A Critical Analysis (pp.1-6)
These three related gospels, Mark, Matthew and Luke, are known as the synoptic ("eye to eye") gospels,
"As the three synoptic authors are not primary and had never known Jesus closely, this material (whose scope is unclear at the edges) is evidence for his posthumous impact, for early Christian points of view, not the historical Jesus' own teaching."
- Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version
The gospel writers "constructed the memories out of common lore, drawn in large part from the Greek Bible, the message of John the Baptist, and their own emerging convictions about Jesus as the expected messiah, the Anointed."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"A writer would not normally refer back to [earlier] reading to verify individual references, and would instead rely on his memory, or on the briefest of notes...Stray facts and additions would be recalled from the preliminary available reading, but it would be a very different matter to recall the detail of an episode's presentation...Such a procedure seems less perverse in view of the physical difficulties of working with papyrus rolls...[with] non-existent or rudimentary...indexing, chapter-headings, line- and column-numbering...Even if, for example, a slave held a second roll for an author to compare accounts, or the author himself used a book-rest, combining versions would still be awkward."
- Pelling (quoted in F. G. Downing, "Compositional Conventions and the Synoptic Problem" JBL 107 (1988) p. 92f
The Role of the Sacred Story Teller
According to Michael Goulder, "'Midrash' is defined from its root darash, 'to probe or examine' (Goulder, Midrash and Lection in Matthew, p. 28) and Jewish writers from the Chronicler to the rabbis had a doctrine of inspiration whereby they would think 'Things must have been so (in view of the light cast by passage x): therefore they were so'."
- Dr. Mark S. Goodacre, Goulder and the Gospels: An Examination of a New Paradigm (1996), p. 244
"Traditional Jewish sources talk about four progressively deeper levels of exegesis of a text: pshat, drash, remez, and sode (plain meaning, inquiry, hint and secret). (Note that the 'house' of Hillel was a 'Beit midrash' - literally a 'House of Inquiry' and that term is still used today to describe the large hall in a traditional Yeshiva where studying takes place, usually in small groups.)
"Pshat has to do with ascertaining the plain literal meaning of the text, not always a straightforward task.
"Drash generally involves asking questions about apparent difficulties in the plain meaning of the text, and the midrash that results is (in the context most relevant to our situation) usually an effort to resolve that difficulty by telling a story that provides both an answer and a faith-strengthening lesson."
"Remez, or hint, involves veiled allusions such as numerical values ('gematria') and abbreviations ('notarikon').
"Sode, secret or mystery, involves esoteric interpretation."
- Lewis Reich (CrossTalk)
The Gospels are Jewish books "written, to a greater or lesser degree, in the midrashic style of the Jewish sacred storyteller, a style that most of us do not begin even now to comprehend. This style is not concerned with historic accuracy. It is concerted with meaning and understanding. [For example} the Jewish writers of antiquity interpreted God's presence to be with Joshua after the death of Moses by repeating the parting of the waters story (Joshua 3)....When the story of Jesus' baptism was told, the gospel writers asserted that Jesus parted not the Jordan River, but the heavens."
"That is the way the midrashic principle worked. Stories about heroes of the Jewish past were heightened and retold again and again about heroes of the present moment, not because those same events actually occurred, but because the reality of God revealed in those moments was like the reality of God known in the past."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, p. 36
Philip Alexander, "an expert on Judaism of the second Temple period, has made the case quite convincingly that midrash is a genre and it is a genre that is constituted by lemma + commentary. It will not do to apply it to the Gospels."
- Dr. Mark Goodacre (CrossTalk)
While the re-working of Old Testament material in the gospels cannot technically be called midrash (since passages are usually taken with no commentary), the principle of imaginative exposition or didactic story still applies.
"We find that the same procedure was followed by the biblical interpreters who authored the pesharim [in the Dead Sea Scrolls]. The authors of these texts drew passages from the prophets out of their contexts and applied them to events in the immediate past or future - events that they believed had eschatological significance. Thus, the New Testament authors were using a method of argumentation and interpretation that would have been quite familiar to at least a portion of their Jewish audience. The early midrashists of rabbinic Judaism would themselves build upon this method, which must have been popular not only among members of the Yahad movement but also among many Jewish authors in intertestamental times except for the Sadducees."
- Norman Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls?, (1995) pp. 374-375
The Use of the Old Testament and Aramaic Sources
"The original language of the Gospels...is the native Galilean Aramaic, the vernacular of northern Palestine, and not the Chaldean Aramaic which was spoken in southern Palestine. It was the same language that was spoken by the Assyrians, who were brought to the cities of Samaria and Galilee by the Assyrian kings after the ten tribes were carried into captivity (II King, 17:24 ff.). The manner of speech, the phraseology, the idioms, the orientation in the Gospels are vividly and distinctively northern Aramaic. Parables and allegories are all derived from Semitic customs, and there is no reference to incidents from alien sources. The constant repetitions are characteristic of Oriental usage. Such phrases as, 'Amen Amen arar na Lkhon,' 'Truly, truly, I say unto you,' 'In those days,' "And it came to pass,' 'And he said to them,' are peculiarly Aramaic."
- George M. Lamsa (translator), The Four Gospels : According to the Eastern Version (1933) p. xix
"The composition of speeches to present dramatically what an author thought might have been said in historic situations was a common practice among ancient historians, one defended and exemplified by Thucydides himself (The Peloponnesian War 1.22). However, Thucydides insisted that when events were concerned he would report only what had actually happened."
- Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) p. 49
"Words borrowed from the fund of common lore or the Greek scriptures are often put on the lips of Jesus."
"The proverb in Mark 2:17, for example, is attested in secular sources (Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius, for example):
"Jesus was not the only one and probably not the first to say it. In the parallel to the Markan passage, Matthew adds a sentence taken from the prophet Hosea (Matt 9:13):"Since when do the able-bodied need a doctor? It's the sick who do."
"The tendency of the gospel writers, especially Matthew, was to make the event fit the prophecies lifted (and occasionally edited) from the Old Testament. In addition, the gospel writers did not hesitate to take words from the Greek scriptures and put them on the lips of Jesus, because these words, too, were sacred words.""Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.'"
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"British theologians...discovered a variety of Aramaic sources within the gospels attesting to older traditions contained in them" including some passages of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount."
The Synoptic Gospels thus "appear to have been constructed upon collections of older Aramaic sayings and as literature read as C. S. Lewis has noted very much in the manner of 'reportage' as opposed to romantic myth. Names such as Lazarus are in Galilean form rather than the Eleazar of Jerusalem."
- Chris King, "Das Leben Jeshu - Vie de Jesus - The Life of Jesus"
"...There is more evidence of Essene [Enochian Judaic] influence in the post-Pauline epistles (especially Ephesians) than in the undisputed letters of Paul (notably Galatians and Romans). There is more evidence of Essene influence in Matthew and John, than in Mark, which antedates them."
- James H. Charlesworth, "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Historical Jesus" in Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1992), p. 39
"By adding a lection from the gospel to their synagogue tradition, some Jewish communities moved in the early decades of Christian history to incorporate Jesus specifically into the worship life of the Jewish people....When the Church entered the more hellenized and gentile world, the original synagogue reading from the Jewish scriptures were more and more de-emphasized or replaced by readings from the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles."
"Justin Martyr mentions the fact that Christian worship in the early second century included readings both from the Torah and from the Prophets, as well as Gospel Teachings (1 Apol. 67)."
- John Shelby Spong, Liberating the Gospels, pp. 94, 339
"...The version of the Gospels, honored by the Mohammedans, is not the Vulgate of the Western world, which they repudiate as second-hand and as an unreliable translation. But it was the Eastern version of the Gospels, the Peshitta, which means clear, straight and popularly accepted. This name is justified by its clarity of style, directness of expression and simplicity of language. This was the version which the people of this region knew and used before they became Mohammedans. This is, moreover, the authentic and official version of what once constituted the original Eastern church, the Mother Church of Christendom."
"The Eastern Version originally consisted of twenty-two books of the New Testament. The Revelation and the four Epistles of II Peter, II John, III John and Jude were not included. The Revelation was accepted after the Council of Nicaea, 325 A.D., but many of the Eastern bishops in Persia rejected it."
- George M. Lamsa (translator), The Four Gospels : According to the Eastern Version (1933) p. ix
| For a table showing how the synoptic gospels correspond to the Jewish feast days and annual reading of the Torah, see: |
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The Gospel According to Mark
Sayings Gospel Q
A Common Source?
"There are five basic reasons [for a literary relationship between the synoptics] that have been explained, of which the first two have been the most popular.
1. Verbatim agreement. For example, in one Q passage, Matthew and Luke agree for 61 out of 63 Greek words of a presumably Aramaic speech.
2. Extensive agreement in order and arrangement, featuring a modicum of creativity (e.g. agreements in topic arrangements of parables and miracle, which are probably not intended to merely be chronological).
3. Substantially similar selection of material, when it features a modicum of creativity.
4. Presence of editorial comments and redactional material in two texts.
5. A consistent literary pattern between three documents (e.g. the fundament synoptic fact that Mark is the middle term in the Synoptics)."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 1.
"In addition to the verbal agreements Matthew and Luke share with Mark, they also have striking verbal agreements in passages where Mark offers nothing comparable. There are about two hundred verses that fall into this category."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"Out of a total of 662 verses, Mark has 406 in common with Matthew and Luke, 145 with Matthew, 60 with Luke, and at most 51 peculiar to itself."
- Easton's Bible Dictionary
"The synoptic problem is
(1) an inquiry into the existence and nature of the literary relationship between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke,
(2) investigation of reconstructed non-surviving written sources, and
(3) exploration of the influence of oral tradition upon the development of manuscripts of these gospels."
- Mahlon Smith (CrossTalk)
The use of Mark by both Matthew and Luke is known as the "triple tradition". Material common to Matthew and Luke but not Mark is known as the "double tradition" This material consists not only of sayings but some narrative elements as well (i.e., the Temptation of Jesus (Matthew 4:2-10 // Luke 4:1b-13) and the Centurion's Servant (Matthew 8:5-13 // Luke 7:2-10 - colored black by the Jesus Seminar).
| "After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, 'If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.' Jesus answered, 'It is written: "Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God."' " | "Jesus was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. The devil said to him, 'If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.' Jesus answered, 'It is written: "Man does not live on bread alone."'" |
| "Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 'If you are the Son of God,' he said, 'throw yourself down. For it is written: "He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone."' Jesus answered him, 'It is also written: "Do not put the Lord your God to the test. "'" | "The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 'If you are the Son of God,' he said, 'throw yourself down from here. For it is written: "'He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone."' Jesus answered, 'It says: "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."'" |
| "Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 'All this I will give you,' he said, 'if you will bow down and worship me.' Jesus said to him, 'Away from me, Satan! For it is written: "Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only."'" - Matthew 4:2-10 | "The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, 'I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours.'
Jesus answered, 'It is written: "Worship the Lord your God and serve him only."'" - Luke 4:1b-12 (Verses 4-8 [high place] and 9-12 [temple] have been switched for clarity.) |
- John Wenham, Redating Matthew, Mark & Luke (1991), p. 54
A particularly good example of the double tradition is John the Baptist's speech to the Pharisees and Sadducees ("you spawn of Satin!") in Matthew 3:7-10 // Luke 3:7-9 where verbal agreement is 99%.
Matthew's and Luke's Gospels may share "a common source, rather than from Luke's use of Matthew: it is widely believed to have been a written work and thus available to two different authors at different times."
- Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version
This hypothetical common source has been labeled the Sayings Gospel Q from the German Quelle or "Source".
The Contents of Q
"Quite different in form and content from Mark is the Q tradition, which is made up almost entirely of sayings....Given its great emphasis on eschatological prophecy, Q, not surprisingly, highlights Jesus' knowledge of the future in various eschatological prophecies and parables."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2.
"Composed by the fifties, and possibly at Tiberias in Galilee, it [Sayings Gospel Q] contains no passion or resurrection account but presumes the same myth of divine Wisdom as do the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Hebrews."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
"Recent scholarship on the Q Gospel, and especially the work of John S. Kloppenborg, has argued for two principal layers in the composition of that gospel. The earlier one emphasized primarily life-style and missionary activity that, despite the expectation of opposition and even persecution, was remarkable open and hopeful."
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
"I would suggest that Greek Q1 [the earlier layer] and Greek Thomas had a common ancestor in Aramaic 'source.' At this point Q and Thomas had different redactional trajectories, Greek Thomas becoming an ascetic work and eventually utilized by Gnostics.... 'Q,' therefore is not a common non-Markan source between Luke and Matthew but a translational Greek document used by Matthew alone while Luke translated a first generation Aramaic 'source' himself....a Lukan 'Q.'"
- Jack Kilmon (CrossTalk)
"Later came a second one [layer], far more dark and defensive, threatening dire apocalyptic vengeance against 'this generation' for refusing to accept that missionary activity."
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
"...The sayings in which Jesus speaks of himself or his disciples as sheep among wolves, innocent outcasts in an evil generation and a wicked world destined for destruction, are probably products of his follower's reflection on his fate. The probability is clearest in sayings based on the crucifixion, for instance, that anyone who would be saved must 'take up his cross,' but the rest are suspect too, because there is no reliable evidence that he or his followers suffered any significant persecution before his last days in Jerusalem."
- Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? (1978) p. 30
"Yet the sayings material, viewed as a whole, is not what we would expect of a prophet of Jewish restoration. It is not focused on the nation of Israel. Jesus is not depicted (except in the opening summaries in the synoptics) as calling all Israel to repent, there is no teaching material about the reassembled twelve tribes (Matt. 19.28) cannot be considered 'teaching'), and in the material which can reasonably be considered authentic there is no prediction of a general judgment cast in terms of groups (leaving Matt. 25 out of account as inauthentic). The sayings material is markedly individual in tone, and when collective terms are used they do not imply 'all Israel': 'little flock', the 'poor', and the 'sinners'."
- E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985) p. 222
While Q is said to have been composed only of sayings, there are a number of narrative settings for the material and a clear narrative sequence.
- "Q 3.2-3: appearance of John the Baptist in region of the Jordan
Q 3.21-22: Jesus is baptized by John
Q 4.1-13: Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil who then leaves him
Q 4.16 Jesus is in Nazara [though only given a C rating by the IQP]
Q 6.20 (etc.): Jesus addresses his disciples
Q 7.1: after finishing his sermon, Jesus enters Capharnaum
Q 7.2-10: Jesus heals a Centurion's boy
Q.7.18-35: John sends disciples to Jesus with a question, which Jesus answers.
"Clearly John has to have been introduced (3.2-3) before one can have his preaching. Likewise, his identity is taken for granted in the baptism of Jesus (3.21-22) just as Jesus' identity as Son of God (3.21-22) is taken for granted in the Temptation narrative (4.1-13, 'If you are . . .'). John's arrest and imprisonment (clearly subsequent to John's ministry) is taken for granted in 7.18-35, which pericope itself takes for granted a period of preaching and healing by Jesus (provided in 6.20ff, 7.1ff etc.)."
- Dr. Mark Goodacre (Synoptic L)
(2) Arguments Against Q
Major Agreements
"...In half a dozen passages Matthew and Luke have taken a complete story from Mark -- Jesus' baptism, for example, or his temptation by the Devil, or the parable of the mustard seed -- and significantly reworked it or expanded it in almost exactly the same way. The favorite 'Q' passage of Q scholars -- Jesus' 'mission' instructions to his disciples not to carry food or money on their travels -- is not, strictly speaking, from Q at all but from a section of Mark that Matthew and Luke rewrote in parallel ways. These 'major agreements' between Matthew and Luke against Mark in triple-tradition material have come to be known as Mark-Q overlaps. They are very difficult to explain without hypothesizing that either Matthew or Luke had access to the other's Gospel -- which would obviate any need for Q in the first place."
- Charlotte Allen, "The Search for a No Frills Jesus", Atlantic Monthly, Dec 1996
| Mark-Q Overlap in the Parable of the Mustard Seed | |||
| "Consider the mustard: when it is thrown on the ground, though it is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth, - yet when it is sown, it comes up, and becomes the biggest of all garden plants, and produces branches, so that the birds of the sky can nest in its shade." - Mark 4:31 |
It "is like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. Though it is the smallest of all the seeds, yet, when it has grown up, it is the largest of garden plants, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the sky come and roost in its branches." - Matthew 13:31-32 |
"It is like a mustard seed that a man took and tossed into his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the sky roosted in its branches." - Luke 13:19 |
"It is like a mustard seed. (It's) the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky." - Thomas 20 |
(The allusion here is to the kingdom of God. For the sake of comparison I have included the quote from the Gospel of Thomas [which was voted red by the Jesus Seminar].)
"Goulder has argued that Matthew and Luke had no further sources: Matthew had only Mark and Old Testament; Luke had only Mark, Matthew and the Old Testament. Thus the material attributed by many to Q and other sayings sources was composed by Matthew and Luke."
- Margaret Davies in E. P. Sanders and Margaret Davies Studying the Synoptic Gospels (London,1989), page 93
"I believe that Luke and Matthew copied Mark and that Luke also copied Matthew,' says E. P. Sanders, a professor of religion at Duke University, the author of the recent book The Historical Figure of Jesus, and a leading Q nonbeliever. Sanders says that his theory of Gospel composition explains the similarities far more simply than any of the two-document theories: 'I think it accounts in the most direct way for the majority of the parallel material in Matthew and Luke'."
- Charlotte Allen, "The Search for a No Frills Jesus", Atlantic Monthly, Dec 1996
Goulder claims that Q's vocabulary is indistinguishable from Matthew's, but Dr. Mark Goodacre "discovered Matthean and Lucan vocabulary in roughly equal proportions...Especially problematic for Goulder's theory are the Lord's Prayer, the Messengers from John and the Lament over Jerusalem."
· The Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13 // Luke 11:2-4) - "an analysis of the QC [words, expressions or features occurring in Q contexts which are common to Matthew and Luke (and not in Mark)] words reveals no words which are characteristic of Matthew on Hawkins's criteria while there are two which are characteristic of Luke: peirasmoV ['temptation'] (Lk. 4.13 R/QD; 8.13 R) and eisferw ['(means) to bring'] (Lk. 5.18 R; 5.19 R)." · Messengers from John (Matthew 11.2-19 // Luke 7.18-35) - "provides a good example of a pericope which has more characteristic Luke than it has characteristic Matthew. On Hawkins's criteria there are three words/phrases characteristic of Matthew against seven characteristic of Luke and they include words which occur only here in Matthew, euaggelizomai ['to evangelize'<], prosphonew ['to call to'] and filoV ['friend']. On Goulder's criteria too there are more words characteristic of Luke." · The Lament over Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37-39 // Luke 13:34-35) - "there are no words characteristic of Matthew according to the Hawkin's criteria while there are two characteristic of Luke and ' Ierousalhm, Ierousalhm' ['Jerusalem, Jerusalem'] is striking. Matthew on every other occasion has the spelling ' Ierousoluma' and further, the doubled vocative is characteristic of Luke..." |
"While critics can call attention to several passages in Greek manuscripts where the text of Matthew and Luke contains some identical wording that is not found in any extant copy of Mark, it remains true that there is no general pattern of verbal agreement between Matthew and Luke against Mark in the triple tradition. It is a demonstrable fact in passage after passage that the Greek text of Mark is the mediating term in verbal agreements with either or both of the other synoptics. The converse is also demonstrable: where Matthew and Luke differ from the wording of Mark in the triple tradition they also usually differ from each other."
"It is this preponderance of differences between Matthew and Luke in substance as well as style that is decisive here. If there is direct literary dependence between the synoptic gospels -- as most scholars concede --, the only way to dispense with Q is to demonstrate that Luke is better explained as an edited version of Matthew. Yet providing a detailed coherent explanation of why Luke deleted, rearranged and generally rewrote Matthew is a Herculean task that no rival hypothesis has yet accomplished to the satisfaction of the majority of synoptic scholars."
- Mahlon H. Smith, "The Canonical Status of Q"
Michael Goulder would argue that the author of Luke omitted and made major changes to the content and position of non-Markan passages because he wanted his narrative sequence to faithfully parallel the reading of the Torah. Dr. Mark Goodacre has pointed out major shortcomings in Goulder's thesis, however, and argues that the Luke's reordering of Matthew resulted from Luke's perspective as a novelist.
"'Matthew's order' is precisely that, Matthew's order and it is straightforward to see why Luke would have wanted to alter it. Whereas Matthew's order is more wooden, with its five great edifices (5-7, 10, 13, 18, 24-25), Luke has a plausible, sequential narrative. In the words of Luke Johnson, his narrative is 'essentially linear, moving the reader from one event to another . . . Instead of inserting great blocks of discourse into the narrative, Luke more subtly interweaves deeds and sayings' (Anchor Bible Dictionary IV, 405- 6)."
- Dr. Mark Goodacre, "Frequently Asked Questions on Mark Without Q"
This argument could just as easily apply to Luke's handling of verses from a sayings gospel. To my mind, the biggest argument against Luke having any knowledge of the Gospel of Matthew lies not the order but in the content of the narrative, especially material not inherited from the Gospel of Mark. Whole sections in the Gospel of Luke are completely different from those in Matthew (i.e., the nativity of Jesus and resurrection appearances); key events happen in different locations (i.e., the sermon on the mount/plain); and passages from the Old Testament are applied differently as "prophesy historicized" (i.e., Psalm 69:21 - "drugged" or "poisoned" wine at Jesus' crucifixion.)
Minor Agreements (MAs)
"...The Q hypothesis is predicated on the assumption a.) that Luke did not know Matthew and b.) that they used Q, a document which contained largely sayings and no Passion Narrative. If, then, we were to find any agreements between Matthew and Luke in the Passion Narrative, the Q hypothesis would seem to have been falsified. And are there any agreements between Matthew and Luke in the Passion Narratives, in a place where Q has no parallel? Indeed there are -- lots of them, including verbatim agreement, non-verbatim agreement, use of rare and unusual words and so on."
- Dr. Mark Goodacre (CrossTalk)
For example:
| "Then they spat in his face, and struck him;and some slapped him,saying, 'Prophesy to us, Christ! Who is the one who smote you?'" [ tiV estin o paisaV se] - Matthew 26.67-8 | "And some began to spit on him, and to cover his face, and to strike him, and to say to him, 'Prophesy!'" - Mark 14.65 | "And the men who were holding him mocked him, beating him, and having covered his face, they asked him saying, 'Prophesy! Who is the one who smote you?'" [ tiV estin o paisaV se] - Luke 22.63-4 |
- Dr. Mark S. Goodacre, Goulder and the Gospels: An Examination of a New Paradigm (1996), p. 117
"He taught in their [ autwn] synagogues, and everyone praised him."
- Luke 4:15 (Matthew 13:54 // Mark 6:2)
"There are two places in Mark where the word
autwn ['their'] is used without the antecedent, meaning 'the Jews'. This use is congenial to Matthew, who has it in all seven times in his Gospel, this being one: 'their scribes', 'their synagogues' are tacitly contrasted with 'our scribes', 'our synagogues' in a Jewish-Christian community. It is not so congenial to Luke who, as a Gentile Christian, did not have a synagogue, or scribes in his Church: and Luke has the expression only one in the gospel and Acts, here."
- Michael Goulder, "On Putting Q to the Test", Luke: A New Paradigm (1989), p. 221
"Mt. 8.27 // Mk 4.41 // Lk. 8.25 features anemoV ['winds'] plural in Matthew and Luke against the singular in Mark. The plural comes only here in Luke (and once in Acts) but Matthew uses it five times including once elsewhere, redactionally, in this passage.""In fear and amazement they asked one another, 'Who is this? He commands even the winds [ anemoV] and the water, and they obey him.'"
- Luke 8:25b (Matthew 8:27 // Mark 4:41)
- Dr. Mark S. Goodacre, Goulder and the Gospels: An Examination of a New Paradigm (1996), p. 124
"But the crowds [ oi ocloi] learned about it and followed [ akolouqew] him."
- Luke 9:11a (Matthew 14:13 // Mark 6:33)
"Similarly, at Mt. 14:13 // Mk 6.33 // Lk. 9.11 (E.2.d), Matthew and Luke agree against Mark in the combination
oi ocloi ['crowds'] +
akolouqew ['followed'] which outside of this MA comes four times in Matthew, each time redactionally, and never in Luke. Further,
ochloV ['people/crowd'] plural comes four times in Matthew's account (Mt. 14.13-21) but only here in Luke's."
- Dr. Mark S. Goodacre, Goulder and the Gospels: An Examination of a New Paradigm (1996), p. 124
"Last of all [ usteron de pantwn], the woman died too."
- Luke 20:32 (Matthew 22:27 // Mark 12:22)
"In Mt. 22.27 // Mk 12.22 // Lk. 20.32 (E.2.e), Matthew and Luke agree in using
usteron ['lastly'] (Matthew +
pantwn) ['altogether'] where Mark has
escaton pantwn ['last of all']. Matthew uses
usteron six times elsewhere, twice redactionally, including Mt. 21.27 where it is again parallel to
escaton ['last in time'] in Mark (12:6) and used to represent the last in a series, as also at Mt. 26.60 R. Luke has the word only here."
- Dr. Mark S. Goodacre, Goulder and the Gospels: An Examination of a New Paradigm (1996), p. 124
"And the people all [ paV] tried to touch him, because power was coming from him and healing them all."
- Luke 6:19 (Matthew 12:15 // Mark 3:10)"While he was still speaking behold [ idou] a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them."
- Luke 22:47a (Matthew 26:47 // Mark 14:43)
"Two noticeable MAs are not discussed by Goulder, Mt. 12.15 // Mk 3.10 // Lk. 6.19, the addition of
paV ['all'] (E.2.a), and Mt. 26.47 // Mk 14.43 // Lk. 22.47, the addition of
idou ['behold'] (E.2.f). The first of these is significant because Matthew uses
paV of the sick six times elsewhere, often redactionally, but Luke never does. The second of these is important because Matthew has
idou ten times elsewhere after a genitive absolute; Luke never does. Matthew has
idou with the genitive absolute at least four times redactionally and on three of these occasions, as here, the
idou interrupts people speaking (Mt. 9.18 R; 12:46 R and 17.5 R)."
"These are striking examples but there is at least one impressive counter instance [Mt. 14:21 // Mk 6:44 // Lk. 9:14 - Lukan and un-Matthean]. They may, however, provide some indication of the way the wind is blowing and could add evidence to a cumulative argument for Lukan knowledge of Matthew."
- Dr. Mark S. Goodacre, Goulder and the Gospels: An Examination of a New Paradigm (1996), pp. 124, 125
"The number of those who ate was about five thousand [ wsei pentakiscilioi] men, besides women and children."
- Matthew 14:21a (Luke 9:14 // Mark 6:44)
"...Both Matthew and Luke qualify the number
pentakiscilioi ['five thousand'] with
wsei ['about'].
wsei with numbers or measures comes only here in Matthew, for whom
wsei is twice elsewhere used with images. Luke often uses
wsei in this way (1/0/7+4), often redactionally, including in the same verse, Lk. 9.14b R. Further, where Matthew has the nearly identical wording in 15.38, he does not use
wsei."
- Dr. Mark S. Goodacre, Goulder and the Gospels: An Examination of a New Paradigm (1996), p. 125
For more on the Q controversy see the relevant sections in Matthew and Luke.
| Recommended Sites |
|
A Synoptic Gospels Primer and The Canonical Status of Q Mahlon H. Smith, Associate Professor of Religion, Rutgers University, offers an in-depth analysis of parallel texts and argues in support of Q
The Synoptic Problem
A World Without Q World Without Q Debate |
Non-Canonical Texts
Mark Matthew Luke John Acts Paul Epp. 1 John 1 Peter Revelation |
'Disputed' James Jude 2 Peter 2, 3 John 'Spurious'
|
Gospel of Peter Gospel of Thomas Gospel of Matthias Acts of Andrew Acts of John |
(1) Gospel of Thomas
Nag Hammadi Codices |
Dating
"Portions of Greek versions of the Gospel of Thomas were found in Oxyrhynchus Egypt about one hundred years ago and these can be dated to about 140 A.D. or somewhat before. A complete version in Coptic (the native Egyptian language written in an alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet) was found in Nag Hammadi Egypt in 1945. That version can be dated to about 340 A.D."
- Neal C. Wickham
"Greek Thomas was popular enough as of somewhat before c. 200 that three scribally distinct copies of it (Oxy #1, 654, 655, no two written by the same person) were made in close enough proximity to turn up in the same rubbish heap....The text remained popular enough between c. 200 and c. 400 to have gone into a Coptic translation."
"The fragments of Coptic Thomas do not validate the existence of all of Coptic Thomas as of the earlier date, c. 200. They contain only (in terms of the Coptic Thomas order) sayings 1-7 (preceded by a heading, so we know they were the first 7 sayings), 24, 26-33, and 36-39, plus 77 attached to 30."
- E. Bruce Brooks (CrossTalk)
"[Jesus says], 'Where there are [three, they are without] God, and where there is only [one], I say, I am with that one.'"
- Greek Thomas 30:a (Matthew 18:20)
"The Coptic version of this saying is deficient, based perhaps on a scribal error. The Greek version is closer to the original."
- The Complete Gospels, Robert J. Miller (Ed.), p 310
"In the Coptic version of Thomas these verses are omitted here, but included at Thom 77:2-3.""Lift up the stone, and you will find me there. Split a piece of wood, and I am there."
- Greek Thomas 30:b
- The Complete Gospels, Robert J. Miller (Ed.), p 328
"Greek Thomas 30a and 30b are split up and widely separated in Coptic Thomas (as 30 and 77), but this is a matter of expansion and reordering in Coptic Thomas. The provable extent of Greek Thomas remains at 39 sayings. That others followed is quite possible, given the fragmentary nature of all three Oxy papyri, but their extent is not directly knowable."
"The extent of Coptic Thomas is 114 sayings. That three partial copies should all be confined to the first third (34.2%) of the text is at least somewhat unlikely. A better hypothesis is that the text grew in extent (remained not only popular...but textually active or in process of formation) between c. 200 and c. 400."
- E. Bruce Brooks (CrossTalk)
The Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas are now believed by many bible scholars to be the second edition of a much earlier independent source.
"The collection is independent of the intracanonical Gospels."
"It is known in three fragmentary Greek copies from Oxyrhynchus and in a Coptic translation among the Nag Hammadi codices. There may be at least two separate layers in it. One was composed by the fifties C.E., possibly in Jerusalem, under the aegis of James' authority."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
Comparisons with the Other Gospels
Like the hypothetical Sayings Gospel Q, the Gospel of Thomas is also a sayings gospel.
The three Oxyrhynchi fragments suggest that the "earlier form of this gospel existed in Greek in the latter half of the second century as a collection of the sayings of Jesus without any gnostic reinterpretation."
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus, The Oxford Bible Series (1989), paperback, p. 129
Coptic Thomas "contains one hundred and fourteen sayings and parables ascribed to Jesus; it has no narrative framework: no account of Jesus' trial, death, and resurrection; no birth or childhood stories, and no narrated account of his public ministry in Galilee and Judaea.
"Thomas has forty-seven parallels to Mark, forty parallels to Q, seventeen to Matthew, four to Luke, and five to John. These numbers include sayings that have been counted twice. About sixty-five sayings or parts of sayings are unique to Thomas."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"The relationship between Thomas and Q does not appear to have been a 'literary' one. Among the reasons which argue against this view are the following:
| · Only 1/4 (at most) of the sayings in Q have parallels in Thomas · The order of each sayings collection is altogether different · Thomas and Q do not agree word-for-word on any one saying |
- Kevin Johnson (CrossTalk)
"Nothing has seriously distorted or transformed those sayings in Thomas which have parallels in the synoptic gosples. In fact, overall, Thomas shows fewer signs of editorial modification than any of the New Testament gospels. Thomas contains none of the Christological developments introduced by the New Testament authors. Its wisdom-based conceptions are derived not from philosophical systematization but from simple equation of Jesus with wisdom, and of wisdom with the Kingdom of God."
"This wisdom-oriented Christianity began to crystallize very early on, but its precise origins are lost in the mists prior to the time when Paul declared Christ to be the wisdom of God. Both the synoptic gospels and the Q document contain more than a trace of wisdom-related speculation regarding Jesus. The simplest hypothesis concerning the date of the Gospel of Thomas is that it emerged at about the same time as the Q document, roughly between 45 and 70 A.D."
- Stevan Davies; Biblical Archaeologist Winter 1983
There are other indications that the Gospel of Thomas preceeded the writing of the cannonical gospels:
| · | "...The followers of Jesus are merely his 'disciples' and have not yet become 'the Twelve.' |
| · | "When compared to the synoptics, the sayings in GThomas do not show the redactions that the synoptics frequently contain - the intrusion of details derived from Old Testament 'proof texts,' allegorical parable interpretations presented by Jesus, the emphatic 'Hypocrite' and 'Fool' of Q, and so on." |
| · | "The theological orientation and concerns of the document, both in its presentation of wisdom materials and in its conception of the 'Kingdom,' place the document very early in the history of Christianity. The lack of explicit apocalyptic sayings and any concerns with the Son of Man and his coming 'day' also indicate an early date." |
- Kevin Johnson (CrossTalk)
Arguments can be made, however, that the Gospel of Thomas did draw at least some of its material from the cannonical gospels themselves, not just an overlapping oral tradition.
"...The Gospel of Thomas knew and used at least some of the canonical Gospels, notably Matthew and Luke. Indeed, if the Gospel of Thomas used all Four Gospels, the frequency with which each gospel is used would roughly mirror what we see throughout the rest of 2d-century Christian literature of the Synoptics, Matthew is used most often, then Luke, and least of all Mark. Before the time of Irenaeus, John stands to one side, and in some writings we have at best weak echoes rather than clear citations or allusions. The tendency to conflate, reorder, and paraphrase Gospel sayings is likewise common in the 2d century."
- John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew - Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 1.
In June, 1998, members of the list server CrossTalk compared sayings in Coptic Thomas with those in Q to determine whether the form is closer to Matthew or to Luke. Votes were tallied and the results are as follows:
| 4 | Matthew | 33 | Matthew | 54 | Luke | ||
| 5 | Luke | 34 | Matthew | 55 | Luke | ||
| 6b | Luke | 39 | Luke | 61 | Luke | ||
| 14b | Matthew? | 41 | Luke | 64 | Luke | ||
| 16 | Luke | 44 | Matthew | 69b | Luke | ||
| 20 | Luke | 47a | Luke | 89 | Luke | ||
| 21 | Matthew | 48 | Matthew | 91 | Luke | ||
| 24 | Luke |
The vogue of Luke with Marcion and his many followers (half of Christendom according to some popular accounts) might then have set a fashion for Luke in other strands of Gnosticism as well, and in due course influenced the priorities of this conjectured segment. This might have taken place at some time after c. 160 in Rome and points north, that is, in Marcion's homeland and the area of his great confrontation, and perhaps post c. 200 in points south, such as Egypt, where both copies of Thomas were discovered."
- E. Bruce Brooks (CrossTalk)
"Jesus said, 'No prophet is welcome [ dektoV] on his home turf.'."
- Gospel of Thomas 31:1
This saying is found in all the synoptic gospels but the proverbial sense is most apparent in the text from the Gospel of Thomas. Some scholars,therefore, think this version predates and and was the original inspiration for the passage in Mark. Others argue, however, that Thomas came later.
"Fitzmyer claims that Thomas is dependent on Luke 4:24 (No prophet is accepted in his home town) since Greek Thomas has a word that is clearly a Lukan redaction of the saying in Mark. Both Luke and Thomas share
dektoV (acceptable/welcome). Luke appears to have substituted
dektoV for
atimoV (un- honoured) that he found in Mark and Matthew. The reason for Luke's redaction is simple - the word
dektoV is found in the Septuagint quotation from Isaiah that Luke has introduced in verse 4:19. Since the whole of Luke 4:16-30 appears to be a Lukan creation the fact that Thomas and Luke share the same form of the saying in 4:24 is one of the strongest examples available of Thomas taking over a synoptic redaction."
- Antonio Jerez (Crosstalk)
The Apostles James and Thomas
The Gospel of Thomas opens with:
"These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded."
A "follower of Jesus called Jude or Judas (not Iscariot, of course)...had a bilingual nickname, 'the Twin', - Didymos in Greek and Thomas in Aramaic or Syriac."
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
"Didymus Judas Thomas...was revered in the Syrian church as an apostle (Matt 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15; cf. John 11:16; 20:24; 21:2) and as the twin brother of Jesus (so claimed by the Acts of Thomas, a third-century C.E. work)."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"Jesus said to his disciples, 'Compare me to something and tell me what I am like.'
Simon Peter said to him, 'You are like a just messenger.'
Matthew said to him, 'You are like a wise philosopher.'
Thomas said to him, 'Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like.'
Jesus said, 'I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended.' And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him.
When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, 'What did Jesus say to you?'
Thomas said to them, 'If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you.'"
- Gospel of Thomas 13
"The disciples said to Jesus, 'We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?'
Jesus said to them, 'No matter where you are you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being.'"
- Gospel of Thomas 12
"After his martyrdom in 62 C.E., the collection and maybe also its community, migrated to Syrian Edessa. There a second layer was added, possibly as early as the sixties or seventies, under the aegis of the Thomas authority."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
Theology
"The Gospel of Thomas is esoteric ascetical eschatology, a world-negation based on secret wisdom demanding celibacy as return to the unsplit state of the Primal Androgynous Being."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity (1998)
"Thomas is rooted in the Jewish wisdom tradition, such as we find in Psalms and Proverbs. It is a wisdom gospel made up of the teachings of a sage. But it is moving off in the direction of gnostic speculation such as we find in later gnostic documents. In these respects. Thomas represents an early stage in Christian gospel writing and theologizing, quite comparable to what we find in the New Testament, especially in Paul and the Gospel of John."
- Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and the Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels
"A good number of sayings in Thomas, at least, is historically Jewish. We have sayings about fasting, almsgiving, prayer (tradition signs of Jewish piety), dietary laws, usury, tribute money, circumcision(!), and the prophets; we have rabbinical phrases such as 'for whose sake heaven and earth came into being' and 'Sabbatizing the Sabbath.'"
- Kevin Johnson (CrossTalk)
Whereas the Gospels of John and Matthew placed Jesus in the context of OT prophesy, the Gospel of Thomas emphasized the living Jesus.
"His disciples said to him, 'Twenty-four prophets have spoken in Israel, and they all spoke of you.'
He said to them, 'You have disregarded the living one who is in your presence, and have spoken of the dead.'"
- Gospel of Thomas 52
(2) Other Early Texts (referred to on this site)
Gospel of the Hebrews
"Gospel of the Hebrews (GHeb) is the title given most frequently by early Christian authors to what they took to be a single Jewish-Christian gospel. It is impossible, however, to reconcile all of the extant fragments in to a single gospel and there is broad scholarly agreement that they derived from three gospels, though there is not always consensus on which fragment should be assigned to which gospel."
- The Complete Gospels, Robert J. Miller (Ed.), p. 427
"...The Gospel of the Hebrews written sometime after 100, was subsequently lost; but it was in existence during the life of St. Jerome (347-420), who was the principal translator of the Vulgate edition of the Bible."
- Frank C. Tribbe, Portrait of Jesus? (1983)
"The surviving fragments of the Gospel of the Hebrews do not give a clear indication of its genre, except that it contained narrative. We cannot tell whether GHeb 1 is a quotation or a summary, but if it is a quotation, it shows that is author worked extensive theological commentary into the narrative, which would make the Gospel of the Hebrews more like the Gospel of John than the synoptics. GHeb 4 takes the form of a first person report by Jesus himself, giving the reader a privileged insight into Jesus in much the same way as John does in presenting Jesus' final discourse (John 17)."
- The Complete Gospels, Robert J. Miller (Ed.), p. 427
Similarities with the Gospel of Thomas [i.e., the contents of Logion 12] suggests "that the Gospel of the Hebrews made use of the Gospel of Thomas to create narrative. Or, more likely, that both the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of Thomas had access to some similar materials from oral tradition."
- Steven Davies (CrossTalk)
"The Gospel of the Hebrews has a distinctive christology. Christ and his mother both existed before their appearance on earth in human form (GHeb 1). At his baptism, Jesus is addressed as son, not by God, but by the spirit, which turns out to be his mother (GHeb 3,4). Jesus is not merely lead by the spirit (as in Luke's gospel). He is completely united with her: 'the whole fountain of the holy spirit came down and rested on him' (GHeb3)."
- The Complete Gospels, Robert J. Miller (Ed.), p. 428
"Just now my mother, the holy spirit, took me by one of my hairs and brought me to Tabor, the great mountain."
- Hebrews 4a
"This gospel's depiction of the holy spirit as female is striking. GHeb 4c, 4d, and 4e explain that the Semitic word for 'spirit' is feminine in gender, but this way of portraying the spirit is due to more than a peculiarity of Hebrew grammar. This distinctive depiction of the spirit is rooted in Jewish speculation about divine Wisdom, a female personification of one of God's attributes who was believed to dwell with 'holy souls'."
- The Complete Gospels, Robert J. Miller (Ed.), p. 428
Odes of Solomon
"The 'Odes of Solomon' is the earliest known Christian book of hymns, psalms or odes. It probably dates from before 100 A.D. It has been reconstructed from manuscripts in the British Museum, John Rylands Library and Biblioth¸que Bodmer. It contained 42 Odes....The authors were probably Jewish-Christians and the originals were in Aramaic."
- "Early Christian Hymns: The Odes of Solomon"
"They were chanted a Capella in fulfillment of Paul's demand for 'speaking to one another with the word of Christ.' The odes, along with all favorable quotations about the harp or other instrument uses figurative speech to show that, in Christianity, God has given us the only instrument and the only songs which He will hear and honor."
- Bill Swetmon,"Odes of Solomon"
Epistle of Barnabas:
An "example among the early Christian writings for an allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament in the genre of scriptural gnosis...Its interpretive method is closely related to Hebrews, and Barnabas also strives for a scriptural understanding of the soteriological significance of Jesus' death, all the while holding to the apocalyptic expectation....New Testament writings are never used in Barnabas, neither explicitly nor tacitly, which would argue for an early date, perhaps even before the end of I [first century} C.E...The material presented by Barnabas represents the initial stages of the process that is continued in the Gospel of Peter, later in Matthew, and is completed in Justin Martyr."
- Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, 2 vols. (1982)
Sayings of Barnabas which have parallels in the New Testament include the following:
"Yea and further, He preached teaching Israel and performing so many wonders and miracles, and He loved him exceedingly."
"And when He chose His own apostles who were to proclaim His Gospel, who that He might show that He came not to call the righteous but sinners were sinners above every sin, then He manifested Himself to be the Son of God."
- Barnabas 5:8-9"For if I should write to you concerning things immediate or future, ye would not understand them, because they are put in parables. So much then for this."
- Barnabas 17:2"And the prophet saith again; The stone which the builders rejected, this became the head and the corner. And again He saith; This is the great and wonderful day, which the Lord made."
- Barnabas 6:4"Moreover understand this also, my brothers. When ye see that after so many signs and wonders wrought in Israel, even then they were abandoned, let us give heed, lest haply we be found, as the scripture saith, many are called but few are chosen.
"For to this end the Lord endured to deliver His flesh unto corruption, that by the remission of sins we might be cleansed, which cleansing is through the blood of His sprinkling.
"For the scripture concerning Him containeth some things relating to Israel, and some things relating to us. And it speaketh thus; He was wounded for your transgressions, and He hath been bruised for our sins; by His stripes we were healed. As a sheep He was led to slaughter, as a lamb is dumb before his shearer."
- Barnabas 4:14-5:2"What then meaneth this? Give heed. The one at the alter, and the other [the scapegoat]accursed. And moreover the accursed one crowned. For they shall see Him in that day wearing the long scarlet robe about His flesh, and shall say, Is not this He, Whom once we crucified and set at nought and spat upon; verily this was He, Who then said that He was the Son of God. "
- Barnabas 7:9"What then saith the prophet again? The assembly of evildoers gathered around Me, they surrounded Me as bees surround a comb; and; For My garment they cast a lot."
- Barnabas 6:6"To this end therefore He endured. For God saith of the wounds of His flesh that they came from them; When they shall smite their own shepherd, then shall the sheep of the flock be lost."
"But He Himself desired so to suffer; for it was necessary for Him to suffer on a tree. For he that prophesied said concerning Him, Spare My soul form the sword; and, Pierce My flesh with nails, for the congregations of evil-doers have risen up against Me."
"And again He saith; Behold I have given My back to stripes, and My cheeks to smitings, and My face did I set as a hard rock."
- Barnabas 5:12-14"But moreover when crucified He had vinegar and gall given Him to drink."
- Barnabas 7:3a"Forasmuch then as He renewed us in the remission of sins, He made us to be a new type, so that we should have the soul of children, as if He were recreating us."
- Barnabas 6:11"He meaneth this; whosoever, saith He, shall hear these things spoken and shall believe, shall live forever."
- Barnabas 11:11b
There are differences between Barnabas and the synoptic gospels, including the number of days until Jesus' ascension. The following verse justifies moving the Sabbath forward one day (Saturday to Sunday on our modern calendar):
"Wherefore also we keep the eighth day for rejoicing, in the which also Jesus rose from the dead, and having been manifested ascended into the heavens."
- Barnabas 15:9
Gospel of Peter
"The present fragment was discovered in 1884 in a tomb at Akhmimin Egypt. The manuscript in it is a little book containing a portion of the Book of Enoch in Greek, this fragment on the Passion and another, a description of Heaven and Hell, which is either (as I now think) a second fragment of the Gospel, or a piece of the Apocalypse of Peter."
"The Gospel of Peter is quoted by writers of the latter end of the second century. It has been contended that Justin Martyr also used it soon after the middle of that century, but the evidence is not demonstrative. I believe it is not safe to date the book much
earlier than A. D. 150.
"It uses all four canonical Gospels, and is the earliest uncanonical account of the Passion that exists. It is not wholly orthodox: for it throws doubt on the reality of the Lord's sufferings, and by consequence upon the reality of his human body. In other words it is, as Serapion of Antioch indicated, of a Docetic character.
"Another characteristic of it is its extremely anti-Jewish attitude. Blame is thrown on the Jews wherever possible, and Pilate is white-washed."
- The Apocryphal New Testament, M.R. James-Translation and Notes
The biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan dates the account of the passion within the Gospel of Peter to the middle of the first century C.E. "5:15-6:21 [is] a section I judge independent of the New Testament Gospels. It explicitly refers to the Deuteronomic degree [that a corpse hanging on a tree be buried the same day] and presumes that those who crucified Jesus took him down from the cross and buried him in compliance with that biblical law."
- John Dominic Crossan, Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography (1994)
"Such a gospel was referred to by Serapion, Bishop of Antioch, In 190 A.u.; Origen, historian, in 253 A.D.; Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea in 300 A.D.; Theodoret in 455 in his Religious History said that the Nazarenes used The Gospel According to Peter; and Justin Martyr includes the Memoirs of Peter in his "Apostolic Memoirs." Thus scholars have always recognized that such a document existed long ago, although its whereabouts and fate were a mystery until the discovery at Akhmim.
"While in general the story of the trial and crucifixion that is revealed here follows that of the canonical gospels, in detail it is very different. This account is freer from constraint; and with the events between the burial and resurrection of our Lord, it is much more ample and detailed than anything in the canonical tradition.
"There are indeed twenty-nine variations of fact between this Lost Gospel According to Peter and the four canonical gospels. Some of the most important that the reader will note are as follows:
| 1. Herod was the one who gave the order for the execution.
2. Joseph was a friend of Pilate. 3. In the darkness many went about with lamps and fell down. (That is a startling glimpse of the confusion that seized the people.) 4. Our Lord's cry of "My power, my power." 5. The account of how the disciples had to hide because they were searched for as malefactors anxious to burn the temple. 6. The name of the centurion who kept watch at the tomb was Petronius. |
"It is also interesting to note the prominence assigned to Mary Magdalene; and how this account tends to lay more responsibility on Herod and the people, while relieving Pilate somewhat of his share in the action that was taken. Also, the Resurrection and Ascension are here recorded not as separate events but as occurring on the same day."
- From The Pseudepigrapha Books & Apocrypha Books
The Gospel of Philip
"The Gospel of Philip is the third tractate in Codex II of the Nag Hammadi Library....The Gospel of Philip, dating from the second or third century C.E., is a collection of mystical meditations about Gnostic spirituality."
- Marvin W.Meyer (Editor), The Ancient Mysteries - A Sourcebook (1987) p. 235
Shepherd of Hermas
"Written at Rome around 100 C.E., and divided into Visions, Mandates, and Similitudes, it proposes an apocalyptic ordering of moral life. It is independent of the intracanonical Gospels."
- John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus, The Life of a Mediterranean Peasant (1991)
| Related Sites |
The Gospel of Thomas Various translations from the Greek and Coptic plus links The Gospel of Thomas Home Page Scholar's translation, FAQ, bibliography and essays by Stevan Davies The Gospel of Thomas Bibliography With translations from the Coptic version and the Papyrus Oxyrhynchus Oxyrhynchus Papyri vol.lxiv TOC Tables of contents of recent volumes, high quality photos of the fragments New Testament and Christianity Comprehensive listing of related WWW sites |