After last week’s blog post I got to thinking about how much people know about the Gospels in general. Sunday School education really doesn’t get into it, and most Sunday School teachers have never been taught the differences and assumed histories of the four Gospels in the first place.

We have four Gospels in the New Testament, or Christian Scriptures canon. We can only assume why these four were chosen while so many others were not, because the criteria has been lost to time. This is a good place to look if you want to see many of the other writings in Early Church history, including what was known as Gnostic writings (not all books or letters excluded from the Christian canon are considered Gnostic).

The four Gospels were written anonymously. We can only guess at who the writer, or writers, based on how they wrote, the words and language they used, and any historic or geographical references we might be able to identify. That is not a lot to go on, so most Christian scholars today stick with the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, names that were assigned by the early church.

Matthew was named after the disciple Matthew who was described as a wealthy Hebrew who was once a tax collector, Matthew 9:9, 10:3. This fits with the Gospel of Matthew having the most references to the Hebraic tradition and language. It is believed this scripture was written for the Hebraic-Christian community in Antioch, around 80 CE (Common Era). They would have been a small but wealthy group of early followers living in a large Hellenistic city. Matthew is the first Gospel we see because of its length, not because it was written first or is the most accurate or important.

Mark is named for a companion of Paul who also knew Peter, and travelled with Paul on his early missionary trips. His name pops up in several places in Paul’s letters, or the letters people assume Paul wrote. {Colossians (4:10), Philemon (1:24), and potentially 2 Timothy (4:11)} This makes Mark one of the first known people to share the word of Jesus outside of Peter and Paul, which would fit as the writer of the first Gospel. This Gospel was probably written in Rome, around 60-70 CE, just before or just after the Roman government destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem and kicked all the Hebrews out of that territory. What makes Mark unique is that it is styled after a Greek play that assumed the audience would respond to the open-endedness of the play by deciding their own conclusions.

Luke was originally named after a reference in pseudo-Pauline letter Colossians (meaning people thought Paul wrote it, but scholars today do not agree). The reference was to a physician named Luke, Colossians 4:14. They thought it had to be Luke because of all the stories about healings, but today scholars are no longer convinced of that. They think it is more likely that Luke was just a very well educated Greek convert to Christianity, because the Gospel is written in very advance Greek, and he would be considered the first historian of the church. The writer of Luke also wrote the Book of Acts. Scholars can’t agree about where Luke was written, but they do agree it was in a very wealthy Hellenistic centre within easy travel to Jerusalem, around 90 CE.

John has a slightly different story. Throughout the Gospel of John, we read about the Beloved Disciple, but there is no name attached. Then at the crucifixion Jesus tells John to take care of his mother, Mary, when he sees her standing beside the “Beloved Disciple”, John 19:26-27. Modern feminist scholars think putting John in that story came afterwards and that the Beloved Disciple was in fact Mary Magdalene. There are a number of reasons to think this might be the case, given books outside the Christian canon that highlight Jesus and Mary of Magdalene’s close relationship (and no, I do not think they were married or in a romantic relationship, I think Mary of Magdalene was old enough to be his mother). Also, how full her story is at Resurrection, and that there was a final chapter added after the book was completed that highlighted Peter, a disciple who was known to have issues with Jesus’ close relationship with Mary Magdalene. This Gospel was believed to be written in Ephesus, around 100 CE.

None of this is absolute history, but rather conjecture based on how each book was written. Scholars hope that someday there will be more discoveries of ancient texts that will give us more information.