How close were the authors of the synoptic gospels to the eyewitness tradition of Jesus’ life and teaching?
‘Many have undertaken to compile a narrative of things that
have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were
eyewitnesses have delivered them to us’ (Lk 1.1-2). So opens Luke’s gospel, third in the canon of
the synoptic gospels. In order to establish the veracity of Luke’s claims, how
close he was to the sources and to what extent our conclusions can be applied
to all three synoptic gospels, I am going to examine a historically held
position contrary to Luke’s assertion, and then look at all three gospels to
establish that, in all likelihood, the authors of the synoptic gospels were
sufficiently close to the eyewitness traditions of Jesus’ life that they can be
usefully used as truthful, historical testimony.
As I will
show later, the early church associated the gospels with eyewitness testimony, but in the early
twentieth century, form criticism began to examine the nature of how those
accounts were transmitted to the gospel writers. Form critics such as K.L
Schmidt, Martin Debelius and Rudolph Bultmann based their work on the studies
of German folklore and believed that the gospels were written between 70 and
100 AD after an ‘oral period’ of anonymous circulation when individual traditions
or ‘forms’ evolved and changed (Wenham & Walton, 2011, 75). This does not
take account of the fact that many original eyewitnesses would still have been
alive to see written gospels and to correct any errors. Although the gospel
writers were unlikely to be concerned with historical accuracy in the modernist
sense, there are many people specifically named in all of the gospels whose
stories could have been checked. As Taylor puts it, “if the Form-Critics are
right, the disciples must have been translated to heaven immediately after the
resurrection.” (Vincent Taylor, The
formation of the gospel tradition, 41).
While there is not scope in this brief
assignment to fully address the ‘synoptic problem’ of how they came to have so
much shared content, some discussion is necessary. A commonly held, although
not undisputed view, is that Mark was written first, in the mid to late 60s AD
(Wenham & Walton, 2011, 218), and was the source of the Markan material in
Matthew and Luke (Wenham & Walton, 2011, 66 and Gooder, P, Timelines: The Gospel of Mark, an
introduction). Furthermore, there is
good evidence to support the view that Mark was Peter the apostle’s scribe in Rome.
Bishop Papias is quoted by Eusebius in the early second century as saying
“Mark, became Peter’s interpreter, and wrote down accurately, but not in order,
all that he remembered” (Eusebius, 114). Moreover, there are structural clues
in the gospels: Mark is much shorter, supporting the hypothesis that Matthew
and Luke added their own separately-sourced material, and yet many of the
individual stories are longer in Mark, supporting the hypothesis that Matthew
and Luke edited the material. Other
evidence (Wenham & Walton, 2011, 66) supports the widely, though certainly
not universally accepted view that it is reasonable that Matthew and Luke wrote
their gospels using, and therefore after, Mark, and that Mark’s gospel was
based directly on the eyewitness testimony of one of the primary participants
in Jesus’ life and teaching. If this is true, then all of one gospel and a
significant portion of the two other synoptic gospels were written from first
hand accounts.
Yet more
evidence that Mark dates to earlier than the Form Critics believed is Mark’s
inclusion of Jesus’ prophecy that the temple will be torn down (Mk 13.2), an
act which we know occurred in 70AD. Scholars are divided as to whether it was
written before this event, as prophecy, or after it, as reaction, but in either
case date the writing of Mark to within just a few years of 70AD (Gooder, P, Timelines: The Gospel of Mark, an
introduction).
If then we
accept that Mark was written between 67 and 73 AD, what of the other Gospels?
Assuming Markan priority, Matthew and Luke must have been written afterwards,
fixing the earliest date in the ranges. Many scholars date Matthew to the
Jamnian council of c. 90AD, but some argue for an earlier date (Wenham &
Walton, 2011, 236), and in terms of Luke, Paula Gooder tells us that ‘the vast
majority of scholars make it 80-90 AD’ (Gooder, P, Timelines: Gospel of Luke). With dates for Matthew and Luke’s
gospels established within 40 and 60 years of Jesus crucifixion, we can see
that it is quite feasible for the authors to have collected eyewitness testimony
in the years prior to setting their gospels down.
Having
looked at the time of Matthew and Luke, what can be said of the authors’ access
to eyewitness traditions? The traditional view is that Matthew was written by
the apostle Matthew, featured in that gospel. Certainly the gospel was
associated with having been written by a
Matthew from at least the 2nd century (Wenham & Walton, 2011,
235), although whether or not that Matthew was the apostle is unclear (Wenham
& Walton, 2011, 236). That said, Paula Gooder says that ‘it is probably
sensible to associate that Matthew (i.e., the Matthew of the titular author)
with the Mathew of Mathew’s Gospel’ (Gooder, P, Luke’s Gospel, Timelines). In that case, Matthew’s gospel contains
not only second-hand eyewitness accounts, but is based also upon the first-hand
eyewitness testimony of one of Jesus’ close circle of 12.
We know from
Colossians that Luke, the author of Luke’s gospel as well as the book of Acts,
was a gentile physician and travelling companion of Paul (Col 4.14). What
person could have had better opportunity to gather eyewitness accounts,
travelling the length and breadth of the early Christian world? Visiting
churches all around the Mediterranean must have exposed Luke to many of the
tradents.
Even if
Matthew the apostle was not the author of Matthew, the presence of the Markan
material, as in Luke’s gospel, indicates the practice of those authors of using
eyewitness testimony. This is certainly not unusual. Recently, scholars such as
Byrksog, Dunn and Bauckham have established that ancient historians placed the
highest value on eyewitness accounts from participants in the events. Bishop
Papias in his 2nd century work writes that he preferred recent 1st
or second hand oral testimony from eyewitnesses for he ‘did not think that information from books would help (him) as much as the
word of a living, surviving voice’ (Eusebius, 112. italics mine). According
to Byrksog, Graeco-Roman historians only regarded historical writing as valid
if it was written within a generation of events, and they saw eyewitness
testimony as crucial (Wenham & Walton, 2011, 84), an approach very similar
to modern oral history and one that fits entirely well with Luke’s claim at the
beginning of his gospel.
To conclude,
the synoptic gospels were written within sufficient time of the events that
they relate, and by authors with sufficient access to main protagonists and at
a time when the standard for historical writing was such that they are likely
to be very close to the traditions of Jesus’ life and teaching, despite their
differing treatments of that material.
Bibliography, for any who are interested.
Bauckham, R. (2006) The
Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Eerdmans
Publishing Company
Taylor, V (1933) The
formation of the gospel tradition. Macmillan
Eusebius (translated 2007, Paul L Maier) The Church History. Kregel Publications
Wenham, D & Walton, S (2011) Exploring the New Testament Volume 1 (Gospels and Acts) (2nd
edition). SPCK Publishing
Gooder, P (date unknown) Timelines
DVD (Various sections) St John’s Nottingham.
(DVD accessed online at http://stjt.org.uk/NT_and_OT/NT/ )
