By Keith F. Nickle
Chapter 1
Gospel Beginnings
The first four books in the New
Testament section of the Bible are known as Gospels. Each of these books, in
its own way, relates incidents out of the life and ministry of Jesus of
Nazareth. He lived during the first third of the first century C.E. (C.E. is
the abbreviation for Common Era, that part of human history which Judaism
shares in common with Christianity. It refers to the same period of time as did
the earlier abbreviation A.D. 1 ). According to the information in the Gospels,
he was executed during the administration of Pontius Pilate, who was the Roman
procurator in Judea from 26 to 36 C.E. Although the exact date is not certain,
Jesus is assumed to have been crucified around 30 C.E. Where did the four
Gospels come from? Why were they written? Where did their authors obtain the
information they included in their Gospel narratives? The four Gospels
traditionally have been regarded as written by Matthew, a tax collector and one
of the Twelve; Mark, an assistant to Peter; Luke, a companion of Paul; and
John, a son of Zebedee and one of the Twelve. Are those traditions dependable,
and, if not, who actually wrote each of the four Gospels? In this chapter we will
consider the formation of the Christian church, the gospel message it preached,
the cultural contexts within which it moved, the nature and forms of oral
tradition, the different uses of the term “gospel,” and some general
observations about Gospel authorship.
1. THE EARLY CHURCH AND
ITS PREACHING
A. The Formation of the
Christian Church
Our knowledge of the first days
of the Christian church is very limited. Information about the earliest stages
in the life of the Christian fellowship that formed after the resurrection is
meager. Actually this is true not only of the beginnings of the church, but
also for its first one hundred years of existence. 2 It seems strange that this
is so, especially when we realize that this is precisely the period within which
all the documents that make up the New Testament were written.
The problem of scanty information
about the beginning decades in the church’s history is aggravated by the
limited sources. Most of the information we have comes from documents produced
by the church itself. And those documents were written to meet other needs and
purposes than to satisfy our curiosity about what really happened way back
then. Important as it is to recognize the limits of the sources available to
us, we must not become too discouraged. A careful examination of early
Christian literature discloses much information to help us recover aspects of
the earliest Christian experience. 3 Furthermore, scholars have studied the
first century C.E. intensely. We may use the results of their study to
reconstruct major features of the civilization and cultures of the
first-century world within which the church developed. It seems certain to most
New Testament scholars that Jesus did not organize the church as a religious
institution during the period of his public ministry. Rather, the relationship
he fostered between himself and his intimate followers was modeled in some ways
on the relationship that existed in Judaism between the rabbi (a Jewish expert
on the Torah, the holy Law of Moses) and his followers, his disciples. Yet
there were important differences. Jesus did not educate his disciples to become
rabbis themselves. Rather he offered them the possibility to share his own
destiny—being agents through whom God’s right and intent to rule redemptively
in creation was proclaimed. To that end he formed them together into an
intimate fellowship of itinerant preachers and healers.
His followers regarded the
crucifixion of Jesus as a tragically ruthless murder. Nonetheless they were
convinced that this did not thwart, but instead accomplished, the saving
purposes of God. Quite soon after his execution his followers showed themselves
to be persuaded that God had raised him from the dead. The explanation they
offered for this persuasion was the appearances of Jesus to them after his
burial. 5 They understood and described these appearances as more than just
ecstatic, visionary experiences. They were occasions by which God was revealing
Jesus to them as the Risen One, God’s chosen agent for eternal life, and
thereby disclosing that God was the Giver of Life. They had known and worshiped
God as the Giver of Life previously. But the raising of Jesus from the dead was
the manifestation “par excellence” of God as life giver. As far as we can tell
from the New Testament documents, all the first Christians were Jews. That is
because Jesus’ own ministry was mostly limited to Galilee and Judea, both
Jewish areas. The disciples he gathered around him were Jews. Consequently the
community they formed after the resurrection, that is the church in its
earliest stages, was a sect within Judaism. They continued to observe and
participate in Jewish cultic practices. They shared many of the convictions,
hopes, beliefs, and prejudices of religious Jews. The major distinctive feature
of their religious faith was their belief that Jesus was the Messiah whom God
had upheld and vindicated with the resurrection. The first Christians, the
Jewish Christians, found confirmation for their belief in the correspondence of
their experience with the expectations of Jewish scriptures. The Jews believed
that the Spirit of God had been uniquely with God’s people, Israel, from the
time of the patriarchs and of Moses through the time of the prophets. But then
the prophetic activity of God’s Spirit had been withdrawn. Their scriptures
anticipated that the time of the Messiah would be the time when God would
return the presence of God’s prophetic Spirit to Israel. The first Christians
were convinced that God had restored this Spirit of prophecy as a feature of
their community life.
Related to that conviction was
the persuasion of the Jewish Christians that they were living in the last days
before God brought this age to an end and completed God’s program of the
restoration of perfection to all of God’s creation. Their Jewish heritage had
taught them that the appearance of the Messiah and the return of God’s Spirit
to God’s people were signs of the last days. The Jews anticipated that God
would restore the entire creation to the perfection of Eden (the world when
first created in perfect harmony with the rule of God). The first Christians
believed that God was active among them creating the end-of-time people. They
were to inherit the blessings of the new age, when God brought the age of this
world to a close. They had been chosen to participate in God’s new creation,
over which God would rule as in the beginning in Eden.
B. The Church’s
Preaching
The Jewish Christian church lived
then much as did any other Jewish sect community. Of course, its lifestyle did
reflect the belief that God had poured out God’s Spirit on Christian believers
(the technical term is “charismatic”). More than that, the earliest Christians
believed that God wanted them to tell others that the end of this age was near,
that Jesus was the end-time Messiah, that God was reasserting God’s right to
rule. So they devoted much of their energy and efforts to preaching about these
distinctively Christian beliefs. Early Christian preaching developed in two
directions. The church sought to continue and extend the message that the
disciples had heard Jesus preach during his own ministry: “The kingdom of God
has come near” (Mark 1:15; cf. Matt. 4:17; 10:7). But the early church also
increased the content of the message to include preaching about Jesus himself.
Jewish traditions held that after God had created the world it became alienated
from God because of human sin. God desired to overcome that alienation. God
chose Israel as the people out of which to bring a Deliverer and Savior. The
early church declared that Jesus was the chosen agent through whom God had
worked, was working, and would continue to work to accomplish God’s intent to
save the estranged creation.
Since the people to whom the
first Christians preached were also Jews, they shared a common religious
heritage. “Messiah” was the Jewish term for the expected Deliverer sent by God.
(It comes from the Hebrew word meaning “to anoint.” Jews believed that God
anointed certain agents to accomplish special tasks.) By the time of Jesus,
Jewish hopes for the coming of the Messiah had been held for a long time. The
type of Deliverer that the Messiah would be was disputed. Some Jews looked for
a martial figure who would lead the forces of Israel to overthrow the armies of
foreign oppression. Others looked for a political leader who would restore the
international prestige and economic prosperity of Israel to the splendor of
King David’s reign. Others thought of the Messiah as the faultless high priest.
Still others expected the Messiah to be similar to some of its great religious
leaders in the past—Moses, or Elijah, or another of the prophets. When the
first Christians preached to Jews that Jesus was the Messiah they were using a
term that nearly everyone knew. But it was extremely ambiguous as a description
of the function and identity of Jesus in God’s saving plan. “What do you mean
by Messiah?” their Jewish listeners wanted to know. “Is he another King David?”
“Is he Moses who has returned to be with us?” “Is he a prophet of the end of
the world?” So they pressed Jewish Christian preachers for an explanation
clarifying in what sense they understood Jesus to be Messiah.
C. The Traditions about
Jesus
One of the most helpful ways the early church
had of responding to questions from the Jews was to tell stories about Jesus.
These stories were based for the most part on recollections that his disciples
had of events that had happened or things that had been said during their
association with Jesus. Those “stories from life” were dramatic, lively,
vividly concrete ways of clarifying the meaning of “Messiah” as it applied to
Jesus. The purposes for which the early church used stories about Jesus to
interpret and clarify their preaching affected the selection process. Those
stories which spoke most directly to questions that were being asked, those
narratives which seemed to call forth the clearest understanding were the
stories used most frequently. Other stories, interesting as they were in their
own right, were not retold so often. Certainly some were simply forgotten. In
its preaching the early church was not primarily interested in informing its
Jewish listeners about what Jesus had done or who he had been. Rather, the
Christian missionary preacher was concerned to describe to his listeners what
Jesus was doing right then and who Jesus presently was. This does not mean that
the early church was indifferent to its remembrances about what Jesus did and
what he said during his lifetime. The first Christians were greatly interested
in that. But the stories about Jesus that held the most enduring fascination
were those stories that explained the messianic identity of Jesus and pointed
to his continuing, present activity. That is what really interested them. That
is what they were so eager to communicate to the Jews hearing their preaching.
They chose those stories about Jesus which were the most convincing and
persuasive. Missionary motives imposed a selective process on the traditions
about Jesus that were preserved. Stories that served ordinary curiosity about
Jesus’ life and ministry but which did not serve to promote belief in Jesus as
Messiah were stressed less. Proclamation of the Easter message was intended to
stimulate faith. The appropriate response was not so much intellectual comprehension
as decision, resulting in a commitment of life.
It is hard for us to understand
why the early church was not more concerned to preserve and pass on for the
benefit of later generations every bit of information it could collect about
Jesus. But the first-century world, and particularly first[1]century Jews, were
not that interested in objective biography for its own sake. Further, except
for the opinions of Christians themselves, Jesus was not yet all that famous.
The first Christians were convinced that the last days of the existence of
God’s creation in the present order had begun. They were not expecting any
later generations. They had no motive to preserve every detail of Jesus’ life
for future ages. When the early Christian missionary announced to an audience
that Jesus was the Messiah-Christ, the Lord, that Christian had to be prepared
to answer questions. “Jesus” was a fairly common name. Which “Jesus” was meant?
“Messiah” was a title having several meanings. What kind of “messiah” was the
person talking about? “Lord” was a term that could encompass anything from a
polite form of address to implications of divinity. What was the nature and
source of the lordly authority of Jesus? Traditions about his birth, his home,
his family helped to distinguish which “Jesus” the preacher was talking about.
The genealogies, the allusions to scriptural descriptions of the Davidic
messiah, of the Suffering One of God, of the Moses servant-prophet served to
explain the content of “Messiah.” Stories about Jesus’ driving out demons or
performing nature miracles, or stories of his baptism and transfiguration,
served to illustrate that the source of his lordly authority was God.
As we have seen, Christian
preaching that began in two directions soon merged those directions. The early
church combined the message that Jesus had preached of the reestablishment of
God’s royal rule in creation with its own preaching of Jesus as the Messiah. In
the person and activity of the Messiah, Jesus (or “the Christ, Jesus”—”Christ”
is the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew “Messiah”), God again rules over
creation. God has demonstrated the reality of God’s rule by raising Jesus from
the dead after a hostile creation destroyed him. Jews who heard such Christian
preaching were often shocked and appalled. If the Christian claims were true,
why was it necessary for the Christ to suffer and be condemned to die on a
cross? Why had the Jewish religious leaders, the representatives of God’s own
people, judged the Messiah of God to be guilty of blasphemy? How could it be
that God would allow such an unjust tragedy to occur? To respond to such
protests the Jewish Christians appealed to certain passages in Jewish
scriptures. The Law and the Prophets foretold the fate of Jesus. Many of the
events in his life were foreshadowed in the Jewish scriptures. The incidents
that occurred during the last days of Jesus in Jerusalem were especially
significant in this regard. Think of all the events in those final days that
the church believed were in fulfillment of inspired scripture. They included
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the Temple, the amount of money
Judas received to betray Jesus, the use to which that money was finally put,
Jesus’ betrayal, his condemnation, the desertion by his disciples, his arrest,
trial, crucifixion, and resurrection.
All these moments in the Passion
of Jesus fulfilled prophecies in the Jewish scriptures. These scriptural
predictions were weighty evidence that God was revealing Jesus as the Messiah
through his death and resurrection. The Jewish scriptures testified that God
had already revealed through the prophets that God intended to accomplish God’s
saving purposes in this manner.
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