The Four Gospels and the Life of Jesus
The New Testament begins with four “gospels,” which are similar to biographies but rather than a cold set of dates and events, a “gospel” is making a statement of faith, laying out the evidence that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. The story of Jesus’ birth is only found in Matthew and Luke; Mark’s gospel begins telling the story when Jesus is already an adult, and John’s gospel begins with a theological statement about Jesus as part of the Holy Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) that has always existed.
Besides his birth story, Matthew and Luke both include his family tree too, which they put in there to prove that Jesus was descended from King David (because the messiah was supposed to be). Interestingly, Matthew traces Jesus’ family tree all the way back to Abraham, the “Father of the Jews,” but Luke’s gospel traces Jesus’ family tree all the way back to Adam, to show that Jesus is “related” to all humankind, and not just the Jewish people. We will see later why that matters, and what motivated each gospel writer to begin their gospel in slightly different ways.
In terms of “history,” we know that Jesus’ parents lived in the town of Nazareth, which was in an area called “Galilee” (you might get in the habit of consulting maps of biblical times, often found in the back of bibles–it is often helpful). However, just before Jesus was born, the Roman government forced everyone to travel to their historic hometown for a census, and that is why Jesus happened to be born in the town of Bethlehem (his father Joseph’s hometown). The evil King Herod heard about the special star in the sky when Jesus was born, and thinking it was a sign that a new future king had just been born, he ordered all baby boys from birth to two years old to be killed to eliminate any future competition. But God warned Joseph and Mary, and they fled to Egypt to save their baby, eventually moving back to Nazareth after King Herod died. Jesus then grew up and lived for the next 30 years in Nazareth. During that time we know he grew up in a religious Jewish family, and that he became a carpenter, and that he showed early signs of understanding the scriptures and having great wisdom. Everything else in the gospels is about the last three years of his life—his public ministry.
Mark and John begin their gospels at this point in the story. All four gospels tell how John the Baptist began to baptize people in the river and tell people to get ready for the messiah. When John the Baptist baptized Jesus, he already knew that Jesus was the messiah everyone had been waiting for, but most people did not realize that yet. After his baptism, Jesus went out into the desert himself for 40 days, and was tempted to use his power in wrong ways, but he successfully resisted the temptations. Then he asked several fishermen and other not-too-churchy people to follow him. He could have gone to the Temple and asked well-educated priests and religious leaders to follow him, but as we will see, the “traditional church” leaders ended up resisting Jesus instead of helping him. Happily, the fishermen left their boats behind, and with his handful of new disciples Jesus began a life of wandering from town to town, teaching people about what it means to be truly religious instead of just “outwardly religious.” He also did astonishing miracles, showed incredible compassion for people who were outcast or otherwise put down, and he healed many people who were sick.
After an early rejection in his northern hometown of Nazareth, he spent his time first in the southern region of Judea (closer to the Temple), and later back in his home turf of Galilee, and then at the end of his ministry he made the fateful trip back to Jerusalem. Huge crowds began to follow him everywhere; you can imagine if the word got around that a miracle-worker could heal the sick, then every person with an illness would flock to his side, hoping to get healed, and countless others would want to see it happen. Still, his miracles were never just for show. They always served the purpose of encouraging people to believe in God, and to believe that Jesus was God’s son.
When Jesus taught, he usually spoke in short, catchy sayings like “That which is impossible for man is possible with God,” or told memorable stories called “parables.” A parable is especially clever because it doesn’t sound like what its really about. It may sound like its a story about someone planting grain, but after you get home and start thinking about it, you suddenly realize that Jesus was telling you to spread the good news like a farmer spreads grain! Using parables meant people could easily remember what he said.
Even though Jesus’ disciples were with him all the time, they were slow to understand him. One real turning point was the day Simon Peter answered Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” by declaring “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!” It was the first time he “got it,” and expressed his faith.
Shortly after that, Jesus realized that God was calling him to go to Jerusalem, the capital city of Israel, even though it was obvious he could be killed for trying to confront the religious leaders and the government leaders there. Peter, sensing the danger, tried to stop Jesus, but Jesus went anyway. He even entered the city with a parade (Palm Sunday).
Jesus’ activities quickly caught the attention of the religious leaders, especially in Jerusalem, who felt threatened by his growing popularity. They were also angry that Jesus had exposed their moneymaking schemes by overturning the tables in the temple, and repeatedly called the leaders hypocritical. Several times they argued with him, tried to attack him, or discredit him with trick questions. Nothing seemed to work, so they plotted to kill him. But they didn’t want to arrest Jesus in front of crowds because Jesus was so popular with them.
So the religious leaders bribed Judas, one of Jesus’ 12 disciples, to tell them where Jesus would be one evening when the crowds would not be surrounding Jesus. Shortly after that Jesus was having what he figured was his last supper with his disciples (which we remember with communion), and later that evening Judas showed up and kissed Jesus on the cheek, a prearranged “tip” to the authorities to let the arresting soldiers know which one of the men in the group was Jesus. The disciples started to draw their swords to fight, but Jesus told them to remain peaceful, and then he was arrested in the Garden of Gesthemane.
His religious trial was a mockery, but in that time, the religious leaders didn’t have the authority to sentence anyone to death, and the Roman government, couldn’t find any of their laws that Jesus had broken. However, the Roman leaders eventually gave in to public pressure and had Jesus crucified anyway (nailed to a wooden cross). He died hours later, on “Good Friday,” and was buried.
Then on Sunday morning, his body was missing! Soon he made several appearances as the risen Christ to the disciples and others. They believed in him, and realized that God had been at work through everything that had happened. The disciples and new converts began to preach to others and meet together, and to form the beginnings of the Christian church, but more about that next.
The History of the Early Church
After the four gospels tell the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the next book in the Bible is Acts. It tells the history of the early church just after Jesus’ death and resurrection. It was written by Luke, the same person who wrote the gospel of Luke. He is the only one of the gospel writers who continued telling the story after the earthly life of Jesus, kind of like a movie sequel. The book features two important New Testament characters; Peter and Paul. Peter was one of Jesus’ disciples, and the one Jesus called the “rock on which he would build his church.” Many people, including Peter himself and the other disciples, thought that meant Jesus wanted Peter to be the leader after Jesus’ death. However, Paul’s conversion after being confronted by the risen Christ, and his obvious zeal for leadership meant that the early church had two strong leaders.
Strong leaders do not always agree and work in perfect harmony, and so predictably, there was some conflict in this case. At first, Peter and Paul just “divided and conquered.” Peter concentrated on converting Jewish people who lived in the Holy Land, and Paul took on “the rest of the world.” At first, this worked out fine, but eventually there was a conflict. Peter was dealing with Jewish people, so he told them they had to continue keeping all the Jewish laws–like eating certain foods, and not working on the Sabbath, and so on. However, Paul was dealing the “Gentiles.” (“Gentile” is the Jewish word for everyone in the world who is not Jewish.) So, the Gentiles had never kept a Jewish food law in their life, nor did they understand why Jewish people kept a whole host of other rules and religious laws. Naturally, new Gentile Christians just wanted to follow Jesus, and not also keep a bewildering list of Jewish rules. Eventually the two leaders clashed about what it really means to be a Christian–are we “saved” by faithfully keeping a long list of Jewish rules and regulations, or are we saved by God’s grace even though we are not perfect or sinless?
Peter originally thought that Christians had to keep the Jewish laws, but Paul disagreed. Eventually God helped Peter see that Paul was right. They settled their differences, and the church grew even larger and stronger over time. The book of Acts records the many actions and speeches of Peter and Paul and tells about the spread of the early church.
By the way, this early conflict between Peter and Paul might provide a hint as to why the gospels written by Matthew and Luke had different “slants” as they told the story of Jesus. It is easy to imagine that Matthew’s gospel, which is careful to tell about Jesus keeping all of the Jewish laws, would be more popular with Peter and his Jewish followers. Likewise, Paul was out in the rest of the world converting people who didn’t even understand the Jewish faith, let alone care about following it, so Luke’s gospel would have been more “ecumenical” for Paul to use with his non-Jewish audience. Nothing too major, but consider, for example, this difference: Luke traced Jesus’ family tree back to Adam, who we are all related to, but Matthew only went back to Abraham, who only Jewish people are related to. So does it make sense that Paul would have preferred Luke’s gospel, since it uses the genealogy to show that Jesus was human, like all of us, instead of Jewish, unlike the people Paul was seeing on a daily basis? Of course, there are many more examples when the two gospels are compared side by side, but for now, hopefully it is interesting to notice that both gospels tell the same basic story, and yet, whether or not we fully understand it, there is a reason behind the approach they each took as they told the story.
The Writings (Letters) of the Early Church
An “epistle” is a letter which, from the beginning, was probably intended to be read by a wider audience (i.e., a whole church). While it was written in the general format of personal correspondence of the day, its content is closer to a sermon or philosophical treatise. If it had been available, Paul almost certainly would have possessed a cellular phone and run up a terrible bill! But since no cellular service had yet come to the Holy Land, the epistle was “the next best thing to being there.” As Paul began churches all over the place between the Holy Land and Rome, he could not be everywhere at once. Therefore, he wrote letters to maintain contact with the churches he had begun, answer their questions, and solve problems. The questions and problems can often be “read between the lines.” For instance, there is no need to write an epistle stressing the unity of all believers unless the church in question is fighting amongst itself.
Like our letters today, epistles had a recognizable form, which is followed closely in the letters written by Paul and the other New Testament writers. While we close a letter by signing our name, they put the writer’s name first, followed by the person/group to whom the letter is addressed, followed by a formal greeting, and finally the body of the letter.
Letters were sent via a personal, trusted messenger traveling on foot or by ship. Paul’s letters were obviously kept, treasured, reread, copied (by hand…photocopies were way too expensive back then!!!), and shared with others. Eventually many of them were given the status of scripture. Many scholars think that the longer letters of Paul are compilations of many short letters, later reorganized into the form of a single, longer letter.
In any case, we are fortunate that since Paul was such a key person in Christian history, we have both a description of his ministry (written by Luke in the book of Acts) as well as so many samples of Paul’s writings.
The New Testament continues with a compilation of Paul’s letters, roughly arranged from the longest to the shortest. Paul’s letters are, in order, Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galations, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. The name of each of Paul’s letters comes from the person or church to which he was writing (the churches at Rome, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, Philippi, Colossae, and Thessalonica; and to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon.)
It is unknown whether Paul wrote the letter to the Hebrews (but most scholars do not think he did). The intended audience is also pretty general–like saying this is a letter for “Americans” instead of a letter to the church in Philadelphia. Thus, Hebrews is placed in the bible between Paul’s letters and the letters of other New Testament letter writers.
The next group of New Testament books carry the name of their respective authors: James, Peter, John (but this is apparently a different writer than the author of John’s gospel), and Jude.
Revelation: A Strange Kind of Writing
To add to the confusion about the writers named “John,” the last book in the Bible, Revelation, is also written by someone named John, but apparently not the gospel writer or the epistle writer! The book of Revelation is an example of “apocalyptic” writing (think of the world “Apocalypse,” or end of the world). The only other example of this type of writing in the Bible is the Old Testament book of Daniel.
As you may recall from our earlier discussion about Daniel in the Old Testament, apocalyptic writing was originally intended for people undergoing persecution. The need for secrecy helps explains the reason for the heavy symbolism (for example, the “seven lamps” probably mean the churches, since churches are the light for the world). The purpose of this type of writing is to encourage people to remain faithful in spite of the threatening, hostile atmosphere in which they live. It conveys a terrifying picture of the battle between good and evil, painting in graphic images the destruction of evil and the glorious reward of those who persevere to the end, thus motivating people not to abandon their faith even when under the threat of death.
Why was this important? Well, Christianity was an “outlaw” religion for the first 300 years of it’s existence; the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity and declare it a “legal” religion was Emperor Constantine in the Edict of Milan in 313 AD. Before that, there were various Emperors or other regional rulers who did their level best to wipe out Christians; they actively tried to find Christians and use them to fight lions for weekend entertainment down at the arena, or had them crucified upside down or burned alive; all these things made Christians want to abandon their faith, and many did, but people with the strongest beliefs defied the evil rulers and preferred to die rather than deny their faith in Christ; their examples actually had the effect of inspiring others, and making the church grow stronger. But in such an environment, I hope you can see why they needed encouragement not to give up their faith, and why they portrayed the Emperors and political rulers of their day as terrifying monsters, and why they wrote in a symbolic and secret code so that the wrong people would not be able to understand their attempts to help encourage each other.
Jeffrey Rasche 