06.23. The Story of the Synoptics

Chapter 22 The Story of the Synoptics

We shall in this chapter consider the story of the synoptics in the order in which they appear in the Bible. It cannot be determined precisely when they were written, but there is practical unanimity that it was not later than A.D. 65, or about 30 years after our Lord’s ascension. The argument for this was hinted at in an earlier chapter where reference was made to the catalogs and the writings of the early Christian fathers, but those who wish more particular data will find them in Smith’s Bible Dictionary under the head of “Canon of Scripture.”

Tradition is a unit in ascribing the first Gospel to Matthew. It has always stood as it does now, the first of the four, and the beginning of the New Testament. Whether this is because of its earliest date, or the nature of its contents, or for some other reason is unknown. Nevertheless as to its authorship, it does to a certain extent bear its own credentials. Its author must have been a Christian Jew. Even a superficial perusal of its contents indicates that. He must also have been an eyewitness of most of what he relates, and familiar with the times as well as the events he describes. All this is seen on the face of the narrative. The only incident related of the writer himself in the book is his call to discipleship (Matthew 9:9). In the corresponding places in Mark and Luke, however, he is designated as Levi, which may have been his real name, while Matthew was an assumed one, taken by him at the time of his call. The latter means, “The Gift of Jehovah.” Mark says that Matthew was the son of Alpheus. Does this mean that he was the brother of James (Matthew 10:3)? Hardly so. Another Alpheus must is meant, for these two are never coupled together in any list of the apostles as is the case where other brothers are referred to. Matthew was a publican, a collector of taxes under the Roman government, an office odious in the sight of the Jews, and stationed at Capernaum. Publicans were classed with the sinners and outcasts of society, and it was the sneer of the Pharisees that Jesus mingled with such. That Matthew, at least, wrote as early as the date already mentioned, is determined by the circumstance that he alludes to Jerusalem and the temple (Matthew 4:5; Matthew 5:35; Matthew 22:7, and elsewhere), in language implying that their destruction (A.D. 70), had not as yet taken place. As has been said, he wrote distinctively for the Jews, a fact borne witness to not only by the writers of the first three centuries of the Christian era, but by the central plan of the Gospel itself. It is very clearly its plan to present Jesus as the Messiah of the Old Testament prophets and the King of Israel. In pursuance thereof the reader will notice that the genealogy of Jesus is traced to Abraham the founder of the Jewish race, that frequent references are made to the Old Testament prophets|the fulfillment of their predictions in Jesus, to the kingdom which Jesus came to set up and other things of the kind not spoken of in the same way or with the same emphasis, in the other Gospels. Furthermore, it will be noticed that unlike Mark for example, and sometimes John, Matthew in speaking of Jewish customs and localities never pauses to explain or describe them, as if those for whom he wrote understood his references. Those who would like to peruse an outline of his Gospel as compared with the others will find help in the author’s Synthetic Bible Studies, “Matthew.” The second Gospel has always been ascribed to Mark, the John Mark of the Acts and the Epistles, although his own personality as its author is nowhere obtruded within its pages. Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, in Phrygia, who lived and flourished in the early part of the second century, and who made it his business, he tells us, to inquire of the contemporaries of the apostles about these things, bears record that “Mark having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately all that he remembered of the words and deeds of Christ, although not in regular order.” This connection of Mark with Peter is further borne out by others of the earliest Christian writers following Papias, thus making the basis of the second Gospel that “of the evangelic narrative used by Peter in his public teaching.” Justin Martyn indeed, one of these early writers, speaks of this Gospel as from the “Memoirs of Peter.” For the personal history of Mark one must be referred to such places as Acts 12:12; Acts 12:25; Acts 13:5; Acts 13:13; Acts 15:36-40; Colossians 4:10-11, 2 Timothy 4:11 and 1 Peter 5:13. He was companion of Paul for a while, then of Barnabas, and finally of Peter. The estrangement from Paul recorded in the Acts seems to have been fully healed according to the references in the later epistles. “It is an interesting conjecture,” says one, “that the house of John Mark referred to in Acts 12:12 may have been the house where (in the lifetime of Mark’s father) the Last Supper was eaten (Mark 14:14); that the garden of Gethsemane was the property of its owner; and that Mark himself was the ‘young man’ of the incident related only by him (Mark 14:51-52).”

Mark, it has been said, wrote for the Romans, a belief to which all the writers of the first three centuries bear testimony, and which is corroborated by the central plan of the Gospel itself, which is to present Jesus as the energetic servant of Jehovah. The reason for such a presentation was suggested in the preceding chapter, but the proof of it is seen in the brevity of the Gospel, for example, and the omission of the discourses of Jesus rather than the acts. This fact, or rather these two facts, give point to the assumption that Mark was writing for a people more likely to be interested in concrete results than abstract philosophizing. Indeed, the whole construction of Mark’s narrative, and even certain words and phrases he uses constantly, lending vividness and power to his record, are seen to promote this same purpose. Take the word “straightway” for example, sometimes translated forthwith, or immediately, and which he uses forty-two times as compared with thirty-three times in the other Gospels. Observe that whatever its connection, this word uniformly designates rapidity of movement and promptness of action, appealing to the Roman spirit. Mark, moreover, explains Jewish customs and traditions as one would who is addressing a foreign people, see, for example, Mark 7:1-4, etc. For more of these details the reader is referred to Synthetic Bible Studies, “Mark.”

There has been some question among scholars as to the genuineness of the latter half of the last chapter of Mark’s Gospel, Mark 16:9-20. Everyone who reads that chapter carefully notices a change at Mark 16:9 from a vivid and continuous narrative to one more condensed and fragmentary, and wonders why? The style is rather unlike Mark in some particulars, and the verses are not found in some of the oldest manuscripts and versions. Nevertheless, while doubt attaches to them, it has not been sufficient to justify the revisers in omitting them, and no mention would have been made of the matter here but that it is occasionally referred to by others.

Luke has always been accepted as the author of the third Gospel, no serious question ever having been raised about it since the middle of the second century. Scholars, however, have usually regarded it as the latest of the synoptics, basing their opinion upon the language of the prologue, Luke 1:1-4, referred to in the last chapter, and upon certain touches showing what they conceive to be development in the treatment of the common tradition.

Legend has been busy with the name of this author as with other of the primitive Christians, identifying him as a Gentile and native of Antioch, but whether a proselyte to the Jewish faith before his conversion to Christianity or not, is not assumed to be known. His Gentilism is shown by the circumstance that in Colossians 4:11-14, he, with Epaphras and Demas is distinguished from those “who are of the circumcision.” He is spoken of as one of the seventy sent out by our Lord, and one of the two with whom he conversed on the way to Emmaus, but this only on the ground that he alone of the evangelists mentions these things.

There is little doubt, however, that as Mark wrote under the direction and influence of Peter, so Luke wrote as a kind of representative of Paul, and as some think during the latter’s imprisonment in Jerusalem and Cesarea. The intimacy of Luke with Paul is seen in such passages as Colossians 4:14, 2 Timothy 4:11, and Philemon 1:24. Significant, too, is the exchange of the historical “they” in the Acts of the Apostles (which, as we shall soon see, Luke also wrote), for the aubiographical “we,” showing that from Troas to Philippi he was with Paul, that he journeyed with him to Jerusalem, spent much of the time with him during his two years’ imprisonment at Cesarea, sailed into Italy with him, and remained during most of his long captivity in Rome (See Acts 10:11; Acts 16:8; Acts 16:21, etc.). “Luke, the companion of Paul, put down in a book the gospel preached by him,” says Irenaeus, writing about A.D. 180, and subsequent writers maintain this tradition unbroken. The same view of the authorship is strengthened by the correspondences between the general scope of this Gospel and Paul’s teaching about grace, forgiveness, justification, and kindred themes. The universality of the Gospel is more marked in Luke than in the other synoptics, suggesting Paul’s preaching to the Gentiles, see especially Luke 17:10; Luke 18:14. The account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper in Luke also, is almost identical with that of Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:23-25, while there are points of resemblance as well in the accounts of the resurrection, compare Luke 24:1-53 with 1 Corinthians 15:1-7. The universality of the Gospel as set forth by Luke is one of the features relied upon to show that he was writing for the Greeks distinctively--a people more interested in man as man than any other. Other features are found in the classic Greek in which the book is composed, in the fact that the discourses of Jesus are enlarged upon rather than his acts, appealing particularly to the meditative and intellectual side of man, and in the fact that Jesus Himself is set forth as the ideal man, i.e., a perfect humanity united with divinity. To quote Dr. Moorehead here: “Luke’s is the Gospel of the kinsman Redeemer whose compassions go out to all sorts of people, whose pity is as wide as the race of man. His genealogy is traced not merely to Abraham, but up to Adam, the father of the race, thus linking him with all mankind. The key is the midnight song of the angels--the Gloria in Excelsis, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”