What's in a Gospel?
Jesus charged the Apostles with a commission to go into the world and share the gospel. Gospel was initially oral teaching — an imparting of “good news.” The word “gospel” is usually thought of as a written account of Jesus' life and teachings. More generally, a gospel may simply be a teaching or doctrine of a religious teacher. The New Testament contains only four (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) out of the many circulating in the first few centuries. In the Gnostic Bible, there are six: the Gospels of Thomas, Philip, John, Truth, Mary (Magdalene), and the Secret Supper. In the collection of Gnostic texts found in the clay jar at Nag Hammadi, there were five: the Gospels of Truth, Thomas, Philip, the Egyptians, and Mary. These gospels, along with other texts in the jar, offer glimpses into ancient Judaism and early Christianity as well as into the life of Jesus. Of course these gospels, like the canonical texts, can only reveal how Jesus' life was described by later followers. There is no way to know about the actual details of the life of Jesus and his followers, whether they were Jews, Egyptians, or Gentiles, or Gnostics from around the Greco-Roman empire.
The Canonical Gospels and the Synoptic Problem
The synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) possess similar stories about Jesus' life and sayings attributed to him told in similar phrases and, in some cases, identical wording (the Gospel of John is quite different in literary style and content). So, were the three similar gospels separate accounts by three different writers or was one account written and the others generated from it? An eighteenth-century German scholar named J. J. Griesbach positioned the three gospels in a three-column table (a “synopsis”) to study their relationship. It became apparent that not only were many of the same stories occurring in the same sequences but being told in the same or similar ways.
While the canonical and the Gnostic Gospels had differences, they also had some areas of agreement. One of those was the practice of asceticism. It was a moral and religious behavior that both groups respected and practiced, although some biblical scholars say the point was played down or sidestepped in polemics against Gnostic heresies.
Scholars have debated many different reasons for the similarities. It is plausible that the gospels are written versions of popular stories about Jesus that were told and repeated innumerable times. However, they would have been told in Aramaic, Jesus' language, and the New Testament was written in Greek. The synoptic Gospels share many of the same Greek words, suggesting that perhaps one gospel was written, and the other two either were written independently, borrowing from a third source or simply from the original gospel. Modern scholarship indicates that Mark was likely the first gospel written, and that Matthew and Luke depended on it as a source.
The “Q” Source
A collection of the sayings of Jesus' deemed “Q” by some scholars and called the “Sayings Gospel Q” by others, provides sayings contained in Matthew and Luke that are not found in Mark. The Sayings Gospel Q is part of the “Two Source theory” solution to the synoptic problem surrounding the three synoptic Gospels. Most scholars agree that the Gospel of Mark was written in the late 60s
