Introduction to the Gospels Lecture

What is a “Gospel”?

• Godspell - story about a God

• Euangelion - good news

• Four Stages - 1) preaching of Jesus, 2) preaching of early Christian leaders on death and resurrection of Christ, 3) combined 1 & 2, and 4) Matthew, Mark, Luke, John

• Anonymous - text does not identify who wrote them

• Compilation - many writers wrote with sources all compiled in one

• Jewish - all writers were Jews and had Jewish perspectives

• Ancient Biographies - Greco-Roman types of biographies were often slanted and very biased; sometimes things are made up or change chronologies

• Narrative - told as a story and meant to be entertaining

• Evangelistic - wanted to convince the reader to believe in Jesus

Inspiration

• Dictation Theory - word for word what God dictated the writers to write

  • Inerrancy - the Bible is without error in the original text (which we don’t have any of)

• Dynamic Theory - mix of divine and human effort; shows human bias with God’s intention coming through too

  • Trustworthy - trustworthiness does not equal perfect

Sources of Truth

• Oral Tradition - scripture being passed down generation by generation orally

• Scripture - Septuagint

• “Word of God” in New Testament

  • Not the Bible as we have it today

  • Jesus

  • Oral Tradition

  • Preaching

Stages of the Gospel

• Life setting of Jesus - what Jesus said and did

• Period of Oral Tradition and Early Written Sources - compiling these to help create the Gospel’s

• Evangelists Interpret - Their own opinion added to the Gospel’s

Four Witnesses

• Matthew - Depicted as a man

• Mark - Depicted as a lion

• Luke - Depicted as an ox

• John - Depicted as an eagle

• Synoptic Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke; “seem to hold together”

• Chronology - Mark was first, then probably a decade later Matthew and Luke, THEN John

• Why not just one gospel? - Four witnesses, no one of them is perfect

  • Marcion - wanted only Luke as the Gospel

• Synoptic puzzle - why are the details of the Gospel’s different

Two-Source Hypothesis

• Q - Sayings of Jesus; Material found in Matthew and Luke but not in Mark

• M - Matthew’s other sources

• L - Luke’s other sources

Criticism

• Source Criticism - discern the sources a writer used

• Textual Criticism - find the closest to what could be what the author meant

• Literacy Criticism - study the text’s form and style

• Historical Criticism - reconstruct what happened in the world at that time to understand the people and agendas at that time