Jesus Tradition 4: The Gospel of John

This is the last in a series I've done explaining the basic issues and majority positions of biblical experts on how traditions about Jesus more or less seem to have come together into the canonical texts.  The previous posts were:

1. Jesus Tradition in Paul
2. Mark Came First
3. Common Sayings in Matthew and Luke

Now the final one.

It will probably come as a surprise to just about everyone reading this post that I actually think that the foundational layer of John is the only one of the four gospels likely to go back to someone who actually knew Jesus.  Mark and Luke were not eyewitnesses, and while I have a pet hypothesis that a core of the translated sayings behind Matthew goes back to Matthew, the strong majority of experts on Matthew think that the editor who put it into its current form was a Greek speaking Jew rather than the disciple himself.

By contrast, John 21:24 says that the "beloved disciple" is "the one witnessing concerning these things and the one who wrote these things, and we know that his witness is true."  Now the Gospel of John never actually tells us who this beloved disciple was.  Tradition says it was John the son of Zebedee, but Dionysius of Alexandria in the 3rd century (and others) indicated there were two Johns at this time.  Interestingly, one was called John "the elder."  "The elder" is the way the author of 2 and 3 John self-identifies, and they clearly have much in common with 1 John and the Gospel of John stylistically and theologically.

Dionysius says that we basically should choose between the two Johns as authors of the Gospel of John and Revelation respectively.  He thus anticipated 1700 years ago the current consensus today among the experts, namely, that the author of John and the author of Revelation are not likely to have been the same person.  Dionysius says we have John the son of Zebedee and John the elder.  One wrote John.  One wrote Revelation.  You pick.

It thus seems to me that it is quite possible that the "beloved disciple" was not one of the Twelve but the one we call John the elder.  Martin Hengel wondered if he was a follower of Jesus not so much in Galilee as in the area of Jerusalem.  If so, it might explain the Gospel of John's preoccupation with Jesus' trips to Judea as well as its curiously different flavor with regard to Jesus' ministry in Galilee.

And let's be very up front about how different the style and presentation of John is.  Mark 4:34 indicates that Jesus' teaching was permeated with parables.  John doesn't have even one.  One of the key features of Jesus' ministry was exorcism.  John doesn't have even one.  The cornerstone of Jesus' preaching was the kingdom of God and Jesus was very vague, even secretive about his role in it.  Jesus' role in "eternal life" and the nature of his identity permeates John.

Of course as Christians we believe in John's characterizations of Jesus and John's understanding of Jesus' role in eternal life.  But it is hard not to conclude that we are getting much more of an interpreted and paraphrased Jesus--The Message version, if you would--than what we would see on a video.  The Gospel of John moves some things around and coordinates events with pithy "I am" statements to bring out who Jesus is.

One of the most famous "move arounds" is bringing the money changer event into the first year of Jesus' ministry rather than the final week.  Sure, it could have happened twice, but you really won't hear many experts suggest something like that.  After painstaking examination of how the gospels have edited material, this sort of thing seems pretty typical.  Also, there's really no reason to worry about it.  Somehow the people arguing 100 years ago got fixated on historicity rather than on whether the message was true (that includes both sides--modernists and fundamentalists).

So I personally have not found any good reason not to think that the foundational source/layer behind John is an eyewitness/follower of Jesus called the "beloved disciple."  However, notice how John 21:24 put things--"he is the one... his witness is true."  This sounds like someone writing about what the beloved disciple wrote and taught rather than the beloved disciple himself.

There is thus good reason to think that the Gospel of John has layers.  Hard of course to determine exactly what those layers are, but there are hints of them.  For example, if you look at John 2:11, turning water into wine is the first sign Jesus does.  Then in John 4:54 Jesus heals a man's son, the second sign.  What is interesting, though, is that John 2:23 implies that Jesus did a lot of signs in between.

Now there are no doubt many ways to explain this seeming curiosity, that Jesus does signs in between his first and second sign.  But the person interested in truth is not oriented around explaining things away but with finding the most likely explanation.  At least at first glance, it seems that we have a hint here of layers in John, a shadow of earlier and later material.  So perhaps one source had 7 signs Jesus did.  The other might have mentioned in the normal course of things that Jesus did many signs.

Again, John is not my area of expertise so I offer these sorts of things as illustrations of the kinds of issues that exist with regard to the Jesus tradition in John, not as final answers. Like the other gospels, those who were involved in John's creation wrote the story in such a way as to put things in their environment into perspective. For example, John may give hints of conflicts between followers of Jesus and followers of John the Baptist at Ephesus (cf. Acts 19).  The Gospel of John, while it clearly respects John the Baptist, consistently downplays his role in things.

1 John also indicates that John's community was wrestling with incipient Gnosticism at the end of the first century, Docetism in particular.  Docetism was the belief that Jesus only appeared to become human.  So it is no surprise that John 1:14 emphasizes the word becoming flesh and that John 6:54 emphasizes eating Jesus' flesh.  1 John 2:19 tells of a split in John's community, where the Docetists separated.  Yet John 10:16 may also hint that John's community stood somewhat apart from other, more mainstream Christians as well (e.g., Pauline Christians or Jamesian Christians).

Much of the above is educated guessing.  I didn't come up with it and who knows how much of it is right.  What does seem to be the case is that the Gospel of John is far more symbolic in its presentation of Jesus than the other gospels.  It's teaching seems to have as much to say about the issues its community was wrestling with as about Jesus from the past.  As Christians, we believe it's conclusions on those issues were correct! But you can see it can be tricky in John to distinguish the translation of Jesus from Jesus as he would have been on videotape.

Nevertheless, while many completely discarded John as a window on history in the late 1800s, the mid-1900s saw individuals like C. H. Dodd re-arguing that John cannot be discarded historically.  For example, several features of its passion story may provide significant historical insight into Jesus' final hours (e.g., his somewhat private meeting with Annas).

The key, I believe, is to realize that it is wrong to assume that the primary focus of an eyewitness like the beloved disciple would be on historical precision.  This, I do not believe, is how ancient interpreters and story tellers were wired.  They were wired to tell the stories of things in such a way as to make a point--for example, to share who they were or to embody values.  That does not mean that they did not maintain oral kernels intact.  It just means that they felt much more freedom than many of us would to vary the details and to make allegories out of things.

Here endeth the series.

Jesus Tradition 3: Common Sayings in Matthew and Luke

If Mark is a primary source behind Matthew and Luke, then we still have to explain where the material common to Matthew and Luke that is not in Mark comes from.  For some, it is just easier to go with Matthew as the first gospel.  Then Mark and Luke can simply be an abbreviation and rearrangement of Matthew respectively.  But if the last post about Markan priority holds true, then we will need an alternative explanation.

The "common oral tradition" explanation does not seem, at least to me in my limited exploration, to be able to account for the amount of this common material (remembering that Jesus did a lot more than what is recorded) and the extent of its verbal similarity (although my sense is that this material is less close verbally than the Markan material).  In any case, by far the majority position is that some written source explains this material.

There are two main alternatives.  The one sees Luke drawing directly on Matthew and Mark.  The other sees both Matthew and Luke drawing on some common source or sources, primarily a collection of Jesus' sayings. Gospel experts are less united on this one.  Probably a majority still go with a common source, a collection of Jesus' sayings.  It's usually called "Q," which is short for Quelle, "source."

Renewed studies of oral tradition do complicate these hypotheses.  Despite any written sources that may have been in play, Matthew or Luke's memory of sayings and events was probably also a factor in how things ended up like they did. Also, even if Luke had a written source of Jesus' sayings in front of him, he might also have a copy of Matthew in front of him or have heard Matthew at some time.  If we knew the complete story, I imagine it would be pretty complicated.

So here is my current sense of things as someone who has done some study but who is not an authority on them per se.  Yes, there are some places where Matthew and Luke agree in wording against Mark, sometimes used to argue that Luke knew Matthew even though he primarily followed Mark.  In the opinion of most, these instances are not significant enough to dislodge Markan priority.  However, some believe they are significant enough to make it unnecessary to hypothesize some sayings source (e.g., Mark Goodacre).  Rather, they suggest that Luke had Matthew in addition to Mark and that Luke's sayings material comes from Matthew rather than some Q.

On the one hand, I am very open to the possibility that Luke knew Matthew.  However, in the end, I am still siding with the majority that the evidence ultimately suggests Luke also had a sayings source that Matthew also used.   I offer a few reasons why I think this majority position--again, a position that has stuck around for well over 100 years--seems more likely.

First, if we look at Matthew and Luke's common material, sometimes Matthew's version seems more original and sometimes Luke's version seems more original.  This speaks to a common source rather than to one of them using the other.  On the one hand, I don't know any voice of any significance that argues that Matthew used Luke.  It can be argued, of course, but look at the way that Luke arguably edits this saying that is also in Matthew:

Matthew 10:28
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but rather be afraid of the one able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.

Luke 12:4-5
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after these things are not having something further to do.  I will show you whom you should fear.  Be afraid of the one who, after killing, has the authority to cast into Gehenna.

Here, it seems to me, Matthew preserves the more original wording and Luke has expanded on the saying.  The real question is thus whether Luke at some point has a more original version of a saying and Matthew seems more to paraphrase it.  Consider the following possibility:

Matthew 5:3
Blessed [are] the poor in spirit, because theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Luke 6:20
Blessed [are] the poor, because yours is the kingdom of God.

It is hard to argue for which might be original.  The poor are a major theme of Luke, so one might argue that it  might despiritualize Matthew's version.  On the other hand "kingdom of heaven" is a clear redactional tendency of Matthew, something he might modify from Mark.  In the end, I think it slightly more likely that Matthew would spiritualize the saying than that Luke would despiritualize it.

But the strongest reason why I think Luke does not get his common sayings material from Matthew is the fact that I can't think of any reason he would scatter Matthew's teaching.  Take Luke 16:14-18.  This material appears in three different places in Matthew.  Matthew's presentation of it is magisterial and great pedagogically, appearing in coherent sermon contexts.  In Luke, though, even the NIV puts as the heading for these verses, "Additional Teachings."  They just seem to come out of nowhere and to be grouped somewhat randomly.

In short, it makes sense to me that Matthew might take a sayings source and organize some of its material together.  It makes no sense to me that Luke would look at Matthew and partition its sayings material.  For this reason, a majority still leans toward the over a century old suggestion that both Matthew and Luke drew on a common source, consisting mostly of Jesus' sayings, for this common material, called "Q" for short.  Luke's order for this material is often taken to be closer to how it might have actually appeared in this source than Matthew's order.

Now if you follow this line of thinking, it leads to some thoughts that might feel a little uncomfortable.  I am not going to die for any of them but you can see that they are not simply some whacko liberal clap trap.  They are the result of experts doing detailed analyses and following the evidence to what seems to be its most logical conclusions.  These are not beyond question for certain, but they're also certainly not some attempt to undermine the Bible.

For example, the Sermon on the Mount would turn out to be in part a collection of Jesus material, with Luke's Sermon on the Plain as its core.  Matthew as we now have it would probably not turn out to be in the same form as the gospel the second century Papias mentions--a collection of Jesus' sayings in Aramaic.  Although it is not a popular suggestion these days, I myself like to think that what we call "Q" was actually an expanded Greek version of an Aramaic collection of Jesus' sayings that the disciple Matthew made.  I can't prove it, of course.

The Gospel of Matthew would thus be named after one of its primary sources.  We do have examples of these sorts of sayings collections.  The Gospel of Thomas is one, as are 4QTestimonia and 4QFlorilegium from Qumran (although they're a little different from what we are picturing here).

In any case, this is some of the stuff that gospel experts assume and some of the stuff they debate...

Jesus Tradition 2: Mark came first

Yesterday I started a brief series to fill in some of the common understanding of gospel experts that may or may not have trickled down to pulpit and pew.  If we are to do an archaeological dig on Jesus Tradition, the earliest material at our disposal is found in Paul.  That does not, of course, mean that later material might not give as good or even a better window on Jesus.  But earlier is prima facie more likely to give us that window.

Today I want to speak of another majority opinion of gospel experts--one that is now going on 150 years old.  If you step back and think about it, it is rather impressive for a group of experts to agree solidly on something like this for such a long period of time.  I am referring here to "Markan priority," the conclusion first reached in the late 1800s that the Gospel of Mark is most likely the earliest of the gospels and that Matthew and Luke almost certainly used it (or some edition of it) as a primary source.

The reason for this conclusion goes something like this:
1. All about about 31 verses of Mark can be found in almost identical form in Matthew and Luke.  This begins to suggest that Mark was either a source for the other two or that he summarized by drawing from both of them.  Very rarely do Matthew and Luke have the same wording in disagreement with Mark.  Far more often, either Matthew and Mark agree in wording and Luke is different or Mark and Luke agree and Matthew is different.

2. Important to recognize is that the wording is too similar to be a matter of oral tradition.  The overwhelming majority of experts consider it definitive that these three gospels stand in some literary relationship to each other.

Consider the following:

Mark
And after six days takes Jesus the Peter and the James and the John and brings them up into a hill high privately alone (9:2)...

And a cloud came overshadowing them and a voice came from the cloud, "This is my Son, my beloved [Son], hear him" (9:7)

Matthew
And after six days takes Jesus the Peter and James and John the brother of him and brings them up into a hill high privately (17:1)...

... a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold a voice from the cloud speaking, "This is my Son, my beloved [Son], in whom I am pleased, hear him" (17:5).

Luke
About eight days taking Peter and John and James he went up into the mountain to pray... (9:28)

A cloud came and was overshadowing them... and a voice came from the cloud saying, "This is my Son, who has been chosen, him hear" (9:34-35).

As is often the case, the verbal similarity between Matthew and Mark is very close, with only some minor variations.  Notice, however, that in the case of the second verse, Mark and Luke are closer at some points.  The virtually unanimous sense of those who have gone through all three gospels with a fine tooth comb of comparison is thus that these three gospels stand in some literary relationship to each other.

As a side note, God could have dictated such strong similarities in the midst of minor differences, but why would he?  The minor variations are meaningless--they would serve no purpose for God to dictate in such a way. And these gospels never claim to be dictated word for word from God and in fact Luke tells us he used sources.  It is overwhelmingly likely that inspiration worked through a normal process of using sources and writing in a way that worked together and through the minds and categories of the authors.

A second realization is that Mark was almost certainly not an eyewitness to anything but perhaps some of the final events in Jerusalem.  The earliest witness to him points this out (Papias).  He was not a disciple.  People often get this confused.  Neither Mark nor Luke were eyewitnesses, and Luke may not even have been a Jew.

3. The order of the gospels is also quite interesting.  Matthew and Mark are very close.  Luke often is the same but also is different in order at some points.  This is quite remarkable when we consider that Jesus did many things that aren't in the gospels.  That Matthew-Mark-and Luke would narrate the same basic events in the same basic order also points to a literary relationship.

4. Among these three, Mark's grammar is the least polished (the most Semitic, in my opinion) and least theologically developed.  This points to Mark being the first rather than the last.  For example, in Mark Jesus is simply baptized by John.  By contrast, Matthew deems it important to clarify that Jesus does not need to be baptized by John--he is doing it because it is part of the plan.  Mark has Aramaic words like "Talitha cumi," "Ephatha," and "Abba" that Matthew and Luke do not have.  Mark 1 starts numerous verses with "and," "and," "and," "and," a fact that most translations have altered because it is bad English style.  That same material is somewhat spread out and smoothed out in Matthew.

Here's just a small example of the kind of dynamics we find repeatedly:

Mark
"And whenever you see the abomination of desolation standing where it is not supposed to (let the reader understand), then let those in Judea flee to the hills" (13:14).

Matthew
"Therefore, whenever you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken through Daniel the prophet, having stood in the Holy Place (let the reader understand), then let those in Judea flee to the hill" (24:15-16).

This is an even better illustration of how close the Synoptic gospels (Matthew-Mark-Luke) can be at times.  Notice that they even have a parenthetical comment in common ("let the reader understand").  If we ask which is more likely to be original, we see that one of Matthew's characteristic themes--the fulfillment of Scripture.  In general, things tend to expand rather than condense, although this is not an absolute.  Mark's style is a little rougher, though not much.

Let's then look at Luke:

"And whenever you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near.  Then let those in Judea flee to the hills.

I have put the verbal similarities in bold.  You can once again see a word-for-word layer in Luke, but it has also tweaked the prophecy to make it correspond more closely to the way the prophesy actually played out.  Rather that the temple being desecrated by some object placed in it (as in Daniel), the temple was destroyed by the Roman armies.  This modification Luke has made makes it virtually certain that Luke-Acts were both written after the temple's destruction in AD70.  Notice also that Luke follows Mark's "and" rather than Matthew's "therefore."


Conclusion
What we find is that the assumption that Mark was first and that Matthew and Luke then used Mark as a primary source has incredible explanatory power.  Time after time, this assumption yields a plausible explanation for the various similarities and modifications we find between the Synoptics.

Two closing examples:

1. In Matthew we are a little puzzled by the way Jesus curses a fig tree that immediately withers (21:18-22).  Matthew uses the event as an illustration of what a person with faith can do.

Mark has the story different.  In Mark, Jesus does not curse the fig tree after he has overturned the tables in the temple but right before.  Then the next day they find that the tree has withered.  This is a "sandwich."  Mark sandwiches Jesus' action in the temple with the incident with the fig tree.

If we assume Markan priority, we can see what happened.  In the original version of Mark, the fig tree story was very relevant to the passion story.  Matthew's modifications, by contrast, have left us with a story that seems oddly placed.  Luke then doesn't copy the story at all.

2. In Luke 23:25, Pilate has been talking to the chief priests, the rulers, and the people (23:13).  In 23:25-26, it seems like Pilate delivers Jesus over to these people.  When we look at Matthew 27:27-31 and Mark 15:16-20, we realize that Luke has abbreviated the account.  He has omitted material in which soldiers take Jesus away and beat him.

So, like any hypothesis, the repeated and detailed comparison of the Synoptics has resulted in a very strong consensus among gospel experts that Mark was very likely the first of the gospels and that Matthew and Luke used it as the starting point for their own gospels.

Jesus Tradition 1: Paul's Writings

Since I've been looking at the gospels recently, I thought I would do a brief series showing some dynamics of the gospels that are common knowledge, yet often unknown.  I'm calling this brief series, "Jesus Tradition."

For example, there is often an assumption that the gospels are earlier writings than the rest of the New Testament, because they are about Jesus, and he was before Paul.  This reflects a fascinating dynamic where the content of a story is confused with when it was written, or the main character of a story is confused with its author.  In actuality, all or almost all the gospels were written after Paul's lifetime.  There are some who date Mark to the early 60s (not me), which in that case would leave a small overlap there.  Even then, however, it would be after most of Paul's writings were written.

Paul thus gives us the earliest witness to Jesus.  Paul does not give us much Jesus tradition, but he arguably does give us some (I'm using "Jesus tradition" in a very broad sense here, including storied material).  One such example is what he says about the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians 11.  From the standpoint of an objective historian, this is incredibly important because it makes it very hard, in my opinion, to argue that Jesus did not have a final meal with his disciples in which he likened the wine of the meal with the blood he was about to shed.

What is revealing, then, is to compare Paul's version of this last supper with the gospels:

Paul (1 Cor. 10:23-26)    
bread
cup after supper that inaugurates the new covenant

Mark (14:22-24)
bread
cup, blood of the covenant


Matthew (26:26-28)
bread
cup, blood of the covenant


Luke (22:17-20)
cup
bread
cup after supper that inaugurates the new covenant

The second part of Luke's version is very similar to Paul's and perhaps reflects the influence of Paul on the way it tells the story.  Nevertheless, Mark is very similar as well, and Matthew follows Mark very closely as it usually does.

Luke for some reason has moved the "I will not drink the fruit of the vine again" to an additional cup drinking during the dinner (in fact, some early manuscripts have deleted the second cup drinking after supper to simplify the story).  It is not likely that Jesus said this both during and after dinner but rather that we have here varying traditions, one of which has him say it before dinner and the other after.  This is not important, except that it is one of thousands of illustrations that the gospels are not precise historical accounts at every point.

John does not record these words at all.