Since the Christian theologian Origen (c.185-254 CE) first surmised the chronological order of the four Canonical Gospels, biblical commentators have noted that Mark, Matthew, and Luke are strikingly similar to each other and yet differ markedly from John. Around the 18th Century these first three-Mark, Matthew, and Luke-became known as the Synoptic Gospels because they "saw" as with (syn) one eye (ops); they are similar enough to be read "synoptically," or in parallel columns. The Gospel of John, however, is a whole other story.
Why are there multiple accounts of Jesus' life? Where did each account come from and why? Scholars agree that either all three synoptic accounts relied on a common earlier written or oral gospel or they relied on each other. Some scholars still hold St. Augustine's view that Mark simply abbreviated Matthew and Luke abbreviated both. This has been the dominant belief for most of Church history and is indeed why Matthew is chronologically the first Gospel. However the view that eventually won out and that continues to be the majority view held by biblical scholars today is that Mark, not Matthew, is the earliest Gospel.
Modern scholarship shows that Matthew and Luke had both used Mark to compose their versions of Jesus' life along with another source not included in the Bible, called the 'Q' source (for Quelle, meaning "source" in German). This so-called "two-source hypothesis" ("two-source" because Q and Mark are two sources for Matthew and Luke) attributed to Mark passages common to all three Gospels, and passages that appeared only in Matthew and Luke were attributed to Q, which Mark, Matthew, and Luke all shared in common. But to the casual Christian a discussion about a theoretical undiscovered "Q-source" goes way beyond the pale-the important point is that there is reason to believe that Mark was written first, probably around 60-70 CE; Matthew second, around 70-80 CE; Luke third, around 80 CE; and John last, around 80-90 CE; also Mark, Matthew, and Luke stem ultimately from the same source, while John definitely does not.
Being now viewed as the earliest Gospel and the platform from which both Matthew and Luke wrote their versions, Mark's plot has became the privileged framework for reconstructions of the ministry of the historical Jesus, appearing to be the most realistic Gospel and the least shaped by the needs and concerns of the early Church community. The idea of Mark as chronologically first and therefore the "most historical" and the "least theological" is what is called the Markan hypothesis.
John's Gospel is different. John's Gospel omits familiar episodes from the Synoptic Gospels such as the birth of Jesus, his baptism, his temptations in the desert, the "institution narrative" at the Last Supper, the agony in the garden, and some of the resurrection stories. On the other hand, it includes a number of passages that have no Synoptic parallels, such as several intense encounters between Jesus and individual characters; a number of long, highly theological mystically oriented discourses; a very limited number of miracles that do not occur in the other Gospels, for example, the story of the water made into wine at Cana, the cure of the paralytic at the pool of Bethzatha, the story of the man born blind, the raising of Lazarus; as well as episodes such as Jesus' conversations with his first disciples, the foot washing, the scene between the dying Jesus and his mother and Beloved Disciple at the foot of the cross, and the story of "doubting Thomas"-these are all inventions, or "literary devices" particular to John's Gospel.
So why are there so many accounts of Jesus' life and why are they all different? How is it that the Gospel of John, written nearly fifty years after Jesus died, has episodes nowhere to be found in earlier Gospels? Where did these episodes come from? Scholars believe that early Markan Christians understood Jesus' "second coming" as immanent (immanent eschatology), while Matthean Christians, some ten to twenty years later, had to grapple with the reality that Jesus' "immanent" return was, for some reason, delayed (delayed eschatology). Fast forward, then, to Johannine Christians, who had to re-evaluate the meaning of the "second coming" altogether. For them, Jesus' coming was an event that occurred within the mind of the individual, a kind of "realized eschatology."
If you're a Christian, you may want to ask yourself what your "eschatology" might be. Are you waiting for Jesus to return from the heavens or does his return signal a point of internal conversion to a particular point of view?
Visit : Digital Scales Store. LOWER Prices in Same Item Lifting Cream Laser Brite
No comments:
Post a Comment