A little bit like chinese wispers

The gospels are a very interesting collection to figure out how they actually were written or were the information came from. I was taught that the gospels were written by the persons whose name is the book we call it and that was that, what they wrote was the complete infallible word of God.  My study of the background behind the gospels has shown that it is not as straight forward as what may I may have originally thought. I thought that each gospel was written completely by each author and was divinely inspired, I hadn’t thought about when each gospel was written and the material that was common to all of them.

Matthew, Mark and Luke whom make up the synoptic gospels, all share common material to an extent with each other. I agree with the common assumption (well at least shared with my NIV study bible written in 1995) is that Mark was written before the other two gospels in around 50-65 AD and Matthew and Luke was written both in the 70’s AD. Mark is believed to be written by John Mark who was one of Peter’s disciples and may be the young man who became the streaker in the garden of Gethsemane.  Most likely Peter in his old age would have told Mark what happened and Mark would have written it down. Matthew and Luke although having firsthand knowledge may have relied on Mark’s gospel to fill in the gaps and the information they didn’t have would have come from what we believe to be ‘source q’. Jona Lendering has identified that Q may be a representation of the German word ‘Quelle’ which means “source”[1].

The identification and understanding of the origins would have had little to no effect on Matthew and Luke as Q may just have been a lesser known gospel style writing that covered some areas of Jesus life Mark didn’t cover. What we consider source Q may have actually been different sources but it is generally believed Q was a direct singular source, which may have even been something created by one of the other apostles. The dating of Q is unknown but may have been written after Mark as Mark doesn’t contain material that is reliant on Q. One thing that is known is that Most often stories were shared verbally as most written records of that time were still questionable in their reliability and accuracy. By the time the gospels were written the scribal process had improved to a standard that literal recording was considered acceptable.

John is different again to the synoptics as different focus is given to what stories he tells. The synoptic's main focus was the ministry of Jesus and touching on the last week & month of Jesus life. John’s main focus was the earlier years of Jesus life and emphasis of the later part of Jesus life mainly the last week before his death. It is for these reasons that John is the only gospel that covers Jesus performing the miracle at Cana. Due to their only being one account in one gospel we have a disagreement as to whether Jesus really turned water into wine.

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[1] Jona Lending, Livius, http://www.livius.org/q/q-source/q1.htm, 31 October 2012
(Image) http://www.franceskeevilart.com.au/daina_mattis.htm