I hadn’t planned on coming back to the idea of Canon so quickly, but reader turned commenter Jared White posted a good question about the formation of the Gospels. First off, let’s review his question. He asked about the so-called “proto-Gospel”, which some scholars theorize was a prelude to the three synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. (These are called “Synoptic” because they show a similar “synopsis” or image of Jesus and the events surrounding his life.) This theory states that the source document, called “Q” or “Quelle” by most scholars, represents an older, more accurate depiction of Christ and was basically copied by different authors to create the three synoptics. The fourth Gospel, John, would be the oddball and would represent a later Christology, one in which Jesus’ followers deified him long after his death. In a nutshell: “Q” (and by extension the synoptic Gospels) = Jesus just a man, not really God. John = Later tradition of Christ being God as well.

This is a long topic, so we’re gonna break it up a little bit. We’ll talk about the formation of the Gospels and the earliest Christian writings in this post, and then draw some conclusions and such from it in a later post. Sound good? Ok, well, let’s dive right in. I’ll try to keep it as short as I can, and still get the facts across.

First, let’s talk a little bit about how the Gospels were formed. The earliest complete examples we have of the Gospels date to the 4th century, or the time period between 300 and 399 A.D. These are, in no particular order: Codex (just means book) Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Vaticanus. These books contain the earliest whole copies of the Gospels we know about. While there are a lot of fragments that date earlier than these, chances are (if you’re using anything other than the KJV) the Bible on your shelf at home is a direct translation of these texts. The earliest piece of evidence for the Gospels is a fragment called the John Ryland Fragment or P52. I know, some of you may think that’s the space modulator, but it’s not. All texts of the Bible that are discovered are given special abbreviations such as P52 to identify them. P, for example, stands for “papyrus�, while the Codices are called C and a number. You guessed it. C stands for codex. This is so scholars can refer to certain books without confusion.

Ok, now that you are an expert on the historical evidence for the New Testament, and how people refer to it, let’s talk about how the individual books came into being. The truth is, we have very little physical evidence about the date and authorship of the Gospels. What we do know, we know because early church fathers (Christian leaders writing in the 2nd through 4th centuries) told us in their writings. Without them telling us, for example, that the Gospel of Mark was written by Mark, how would we know who wrote it? The Gospel authors didn’t put their name to their works, so in a way, we have to take their word for it. This shouldn’t scare us out of believing in the inspiration or the accuracy of the Gospels because the early church fathers were not idiots. They were only a few generations away from Jesus himself, and were very discerning about which books they accepted. It should also be noted that none of the fragmentary evidence opposes the authorship and dating of the Gospels, or of the New Testament. In a previous post I talked about the Moratorian Canon which lists most of the books of the New Testament. This list, which dates to the mid 2nd century A.D. does not contradict the orthodox view of New Testament authorship.

Most scholars agree that the Gospel of Mark was the first to be penned. While there is no physical evidence to prove this, there are textual clues. The first is that Mark is much shorter and “to the point” than even the other synoptic Gospels. He tends to leave out certain stories, and appears to be keeping his narrative short on purpose. Many theorize the brevity of Mark is caused by the need to get Jesus’ words and deeds in writing. A need made more urgent by the persecution of the Emperor Nero in c. 60 A.D. Mark would not only want something that could be written quickly, but copied quickly as well. Because of it’s length, composition and Greek structure (which may make its way into another post, but is a very lengthy topic), Mark is given credit as the first Gospel.

The dating of Matthew and Luke are not as precise in relation to one another, but it is fairly safe to say that they were written sometime after the Gospel of Mark. Luke even mentions in his forward that many have written down the things Jesus did and said. Matthew, while not giving us details, is written with a distinctly Jewish audience in mind. The content of the other two synoptic Gospels and the time period in which they were written leads me to believe that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a guide when composing their own narratives.

Well, that’s about it for this post. I’ll put up another soon to continue my explaination as we continue on with the Gospel of John. Thanks for reading. If you are interested in reading more about the history of the Church, the Canon, or Early Christianity in general, feel free to subscribe to the “History Stuff� category on the right hand side by click on the “rss� beside it. That’ll keep you updated on any posts I put into that category.