Can we trust the gospels of Matthew, Mark & Luke?

There are five crucial questions when we consider how reliable any historical document is, including the Bible.

1 Who wrote it?  

2 How near to the events was it written?

3 Does the author intend to be truthful?

4 Is he actually truthful or does he let his prejudices get in the way. 

5 What do other sources say?

THE CASE OF MARK

1 There is no reason to doubt that Mark wrote the gospel.  He was only a bit player in the gospel story; his mother’s house was a meeting place for the early church (Acts 12.12).  He may be the young man in Gethsemane “wearing nothing but a linen cloth.  They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.”  (Mark 14.51)

2 Since I believe that Luke wrote his gospel and Acts during Paul’s arrest and imprisonment, and he quotes large chunks of Mark’s gospel, Mark must have written before 60 AD.  Most New Testament scholars say that it was written before 70 AD.  I think it was written about 55 AD, about 20 years after Jesus’ death.  Compared with Luke and Matthew, Mark tells the stories in greater detail, indicating access to a first hand witness.

3 Mark writes as a person of faith, but there is every sign that he means to record faithfully the stories he had heard.  An early writer says that Mark wrote down what Peter had preached and wrote it down for the Christian community in Rome.

4 He has details which indicate a first-hand source.  E.g. when Jesus calmed the storm, only Mark notes that “other boats were with them”.   When throwing the traders out of the temple, only Mark tells us that this was the day after Jesus’ arrival:  “Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.”  (Mark 11.11)  And only Mark relates, that next day, in addition to throwing the traders out, he “would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.”  (Mark 11.16)  

Mark does not gloss over awkward facts.  When a young man asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus gives the uncomfortable answer, “Why do you call me good?  No one is good but God alone.”  (Mark 10.17, 18). Above all Mark unflinchingly records Jesus cry, at the end, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”  This does not come in Luke or John.

5 The gospels of Matthew and Luke fit well into Mark’s framework.  They do provide more of Jesus’ teaching, but all his healing acts come from Mark.  Paul in 1 Corinthians tells of Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, and they are virtually identical with what Mark writes.  (Mark 14.22-23, 1 Corinthians 11.23-15).

In summary:  Can we trust Mark?  I would say, yes.

THE CASE OF LUKE

1 Who was Luke?  

Luke never met Jesus.  He was a Gentile doctor, a Christian, and a companion of Paul.

2  When did he write?

When Luke wrote his gospel depends entirely on when he wrote the Acts of the Apostles, because that is volume 2 of a 2-volume work.  I believe that Acts was completed while Paul was in prison in Rome, before he suffered martyrdom i.e. around 62 AD.  My reasons for believing this are:

a) The book tails off with Paul under house arrest in Rome.  It is quite an anti-climax to end the book with.  It is not even bringing the gospel to Rome, because there were already Christians there to greet Paul when he arrived. (Acts 28.15)

b) The first 19 chapters cover a period of 25 years.  The last 8 chapters cover about 4 years, simply, I think, because Luke was there.  They are a first hand account.

c) A  major thrust of the argument of Acts is that this new Christian group should be treated as a “religio licita” – a legal religion.  He quotes numerous decisions by Roman officials to show that they did not think it was illegal.  Once Nero in 65 AD had declared the Christian sect illegal, being a Christian became a crime punishable by death for the next 250 years, and the arguments of Acts were largely redundant.

d) Luke says, “I decided, after investigating everything carefully, to write an orderly account  for you, most excellent Theophilus…”  (Luke 1.3)  When might he have done his investigations?  My guess is during the two years that Paul was in prison in Caesarea so Luke could visit people in Palestine, i.e. around 59-61 AD.  That’s within  living memory.

3  Luke claims to be reliable:  

“I too decided, after having investigated everything carefully from the  very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus…”  (Luke 1.2)  So Luke did mean to be truthful.  Did he succeed?

4  Is he reliable?

Luke tells us his gospel is a composite account.  That raises two questions:

1 Is he faithful to his sources? and  2 Are his sources reliable?

1.    What are his sources?

 a)   Mark’s gospel. He is faithful to Mark; so we can assume he is faithful to his other sources.                 

 b)    Q (for German Quelle meaning ‘source’)  This is material which Luke and Matthew have in common.  In fact there were several sources:

Q1  Written documents, e.g. sayings of John the Baptist.  Clearly reliable.

Q2  Sayings handed down by word of mouth, similar but with some real differences; e.g the Lord’s prayer in Luke has 38 words (in English); Matthew has 50.

Each case has to be decided on its own merits.

c)   L – Luke’s special material.  This includes some of the best loved parables, like the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.  And very human stories like Martha and Mary, Zacchaeus and the penitent thief. There is no reason to doubt their authenticity.   In the Christmas story, Luke tries to create a sort of Old Testament introduction to his gospel.  I think the bare outlines are reliable, but Luke adds colour.  He has his own tradition of Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, which he probably wrote down before he discovered Mark.  In particular, he has different quotations of what Jesus said on the cross.

5 What do other sources say?  Apart for Mark, there are no other sources against which to check Luke’s account, but it is a good litmus test which Luke passes well.

In summary:  A reliable secondary account, with some unique parables and stories. 

THE CASE OF MATTHEW 

1 Who was Matthew?   

Despite the early tradition of the church, I think we can safely say that the apostle Matthew had nothing to do with the making of the gospel which bears his name,  There is nothing in it that indicates a first hand account.  Instead, it is a compilation of a whole series of sources:  Mark’s gospel, some written documents and some oral traditions, possibly Palestinian in origin.  So what can we know about the writer?

a) The writer was a Jewish convert.  The very first verse of the gospel:  “Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham”,  could only have been written by a Jew.

b) He wrote in smooth, polished Greek.   

Perhaps he lived in the Diaspora, i.e. outside Palestine.   

c)  He was had an organised mind.   Jesus’ teachings are collected into five distinct blocs, according to subject matter:  chapters 5-7 the Sermon on the Mount; 10 the mission; 13 parables of the kingdom; 18 the church; and 23-25 judgement and the end of the age.

Perhaps 13.52 is a self-portrait:  Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”.

2 When was it written?

We don’t know.  It was certainly written before 100 AD because Bishop Ignatius of Antioch quotes it in his letters to 106-107 AD.  Guesses range for 80 to 60 AD.

3   Did Matthew intend to be truthful

I think the answer is yes and no.  He was careful to reproduce stories and sayings from his sources, but if there was a problem with something, he editorialised.

4  Is he actually truthful or does he let his prejudices get in the way.

I am sorry to say that he does let his prejudices get in the way.  In four ways.  He is sometimes ‘churchy’.  He enjoys people being punished.  He enjoys a good miraculous event, even when they may not have happened.  And he does somewhat gild the lily in stressing Jesus’ divinity.

 Churchiness

Some sayings in Matthew are better suited to church than to the radical rabbi of Galilee.   Luke’s beatitudes (Blessed are you who are poor, woe to you who are rich…) are spiritualised. (though still challenging) in Matthew (Blessed are the poor in spirit).   When it comes to forgiveness, Matthew gives us rules for dealing with a church member who sins (Matthew 18.15-18); and Jesus’ uncompromising teaching about divorce and remarriage is given a get-out clause for adultery (Matt. 19.9)

b)  Punishment  

Matthew often adds material which stresses the idea of God punishing people.  Both Matthew and Luke tell the parable of the great banquet to which the invited guests refuse to come and the rich man (king in Matthew) invite the riff-raff off the streets.  But Matthew has an extra bit of the story.  “The king noticed  a man who was not wearing a wedding garment….  he told the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’”.      (Matthew 22.11-14)   The phrase “weeping and gnashing of teeth occurs six times in Matthew, once in Luke and never in Mark or John or Paul.  I think they have been added by  Matthew, or by his church.

c)  Adding a miracle

There are 6 episodes which are recorded in Matthew alone, (excluding the infancy narratives which I regard as a special case).

   Peter walking on the water  (14.28-32)  Is it a sermon illustration that got out of hand?

Pilate’s wife’s dream  (27.19)  How did Matthew know?

Judas’ suicide (27.3-10)  More likely than Luke’s parallel story in Acts 1.18-19. 

Earthquake 1,  (27.51-53),  when Jesus died and several dead people rose from their graves.  No hint of this in the other gospels.  Because it didn’t happen?

   The Guards (27.62-66, 28.11-15)  Why only in Matthew?  Was it a later tradition?

   Earthquake 2 (28.2)  Sounds like a scene directed by Cecil B de Mille, of ‘The Ten     

      Commandments’ fame.  Contrast it with the sober account in Mark and even John.

d)  Gilding the lily   Matthew frequently changes words to reflect an attitude of worship of Jesus.  E.g., when Jesus walked on water, his disciples “were utterly astounded.” (Mark 6.51)   Matthew writes, “Those in the boat worshipped him, saying ‘Truly, you are the Son of God.’”   How we react to that depends on our personality, i.e. do we look for historical truth or theological truth.

5 What do other sources say?  The whole of this blog has been comparing Matthew with Mark and Luke.  The latter two both come out of it better.

In  summary  If we only had Matthew’s gospel, we would still have the basic facts and teachings of Jesus.  But on his own, his gospel tends to blunt the radical strangeness of Jesus’ ministry in favour of a high christology of Jesus as the Son of God.

Final verdict

I believe we have a convincing response to anyone who says that we know nothing about who Jesus was.  The answer is the gospel of Mark, plus the parables and stories in Luke.  The minor differences between Mark’s and Luke’s account of the Last Supper and crucifixion just need to be lived with.  Matthew can be used devotionally, but should not be relied upon in commending the gospel to those who don’t believe.

Forthcoming blogs:

March:   The Puzzle of John – History?  Theology?  Faction?  Fact?

April:      Holy Week – what really happened?