IT'S A TESTAMENT OF SOMETHING - Mark & the Origins of the Gospels

Codex Sinaiticus 4th Century New Testament

The St Mark attributed to this Gospel, was part of St Peters entourage, acting as his companion and translator. Mark, unlike Matthew, was not a disciple of Jesus at the time of his ministry. As I read the New Testament I am becoming increasingly fascinated by the whole history and process of how the New Testament came about. Not to mention some Christian's desire, however unrealistic, for these gospels to be the literal unvarnished words of the Apostles and Jesus.

Religions with founders from the so called ' Axial Age' ( 500 BC to 300 BCE ) encounter similar difficulties with provenance. The ' Axial Age' spans the period where all the worlds major religions emerge. This runs in parallel with increasing more widespread literacy. Prior to this period, mastery of the written word was the prerogative of priests, scribes and business. General society operated through a network of orally transmitted information. From the Axial Age onwards the written word slowly replaces that oral transmission. However, most religious texts from the Axial Age do not emerge until a few hundred years after the founding events. A clear sense of the sources and origins of those words, how they came to be written down, and by whom, at some point disappears off a cliff into a very murky pool of hearsay and suggestive inferences. It's in the nature of studying it, that one is forced into making conjectures. 

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Even though the Gospels have Saints names attached to them, there remains a huge amount of contention between biblical academics and Christians about authorship and sources. There are disparate Christian reports from 100-200  years later that vouch for Matthew, Mark, Luke and John's involvement in the creation of them. But you'd be unwise to take these word of mouth accounts unquestioningly at face value. Particularly when textual analysis tells you something that runs partially contrary to that narrative.

Matthew's own Gospel mentions Matthew the tax collector as having a part in one biblical incident. Talking about yourself but not owning it, would be a curious thing for any writer to do. This is suggestive that the compiler of his Gospel, was most likely not Matthew. But its important to stress here, that doesn't mean the accounts contained within it didn't originally come from Matthew. We just cannot say that with 100% certainty. 

Some biblical scholars take the view that all the four Canonical Gospels are not eye witness accounts, but are knitted into a narrative from a wider range of early Christian sources. Its certainly true that they are mostly written in a matter of fact style. That may have been a conscious choice, to deliberately depersonalise them. Though it would seem counter intuitive to name them after an apostle, who you then neuter the references to. Though perhaps they thought a degree of perceived objectivity was required.

Textual analysis of the four Canonical Gospels indicates that Mark seems the first gospel to be written down. Even though reports from nearer the time of Jesus, suggest that it was Matthew's gospel.  Matthew and Luke, share 60-80% of their content verbatim with Mark's. Its more likely they were adding the bits that Mark left out, wasn't aware of, or, heaven fore-fend, might possibly wish to exaggerate or elaborate upon. For Mark to deliberately omit including these stories, would be a very odd practice indeed. What Mark's Gospel does not have is the nativity and everything prior to John the Baptist's arrival. It also has a more abbreviated conclusion after the crucifixion.

Its clear that if any fiddling, elaborating or hagiography were to be introduced into the biblical stories, then that would have to be executed within a very narrow time frame - In the century or so immediately after the death of Jesus. Because quite remarkably early on, the form of the Gospel stories appears to have become set in stone. After which precious little is altered, except by human error during the copying of texts. Variations within the accounts of The Transfiguration, for instance, may be evidence that they came from different streams of oral storytelling originally.

One question that has crossed my mind is - why did they not just compile all the known parables and facts surrounding Jesus's life and ministry into one complete unified story? Why did they chose to go down the road of presenting them as individual apostles gospels? Particularly when so much of their contents was literally copied and pasted from one to the other? What is the benefit of leaving them as seeming to be the written testimony of individual Apostles, when they are patently not? Was there originally an evolutionary drift towards producing a definitive complete version of Jesus's life and ministry that got aborted half way ?  Which leaves us with the four Apostolic Gospels, repeating the same stories with slight to moderate differences in content, feeling tone and length. 

I think the reason for this may be similar to the words - Thus have I heard...that preface most Buddhist Sutras. This phrase was meant to be a guarantee that these were the actual words of the Buddha, but sometimes this plainly cannot be the case. Maybe here it is about having the Apostles name there to reassure you of the truths they contain. Its a familiar name that sells the book, the musical and the film versions. Without a named Apostle, how could you determine whether even one singular comprehensive version of Jesus's life and ministry was a transmission that could be relied upon to be truly authentic? What is authenticity anyway?

The Canonical Gospels are very consistent in the story they tell, and have, as I've previously said, remained largely unaltered over the millennia. This may suggest that the compilers/writers/editors, were more concerned to remain faithful to the integrity of the original stories, than putting their own individual spin on it. Which if you were writing a personal eyewitness account you would have been unable to resist doing. This may explain why the stories tend to be narrated from quite a removed authorial distance.

There really isn't much mileage in the idea that the church at a later date compiled a list of what was and wasn't Canonical. This contemporary false perception can be unceremoniously dumped at the feet of Dan Brown. The Church itself was too widely dispersed and disparate for far too many centuries to be able to do that. To this day there still remain differences in content between Orthodox, Coptic and Ethiopian Bibles, and their Roman Catholic and Protestant equivalents. 

Yes, Constantine did want a Bible to distribute across the Holy Roman Empire. But what he requested was coherence, with nothing too theologically contentious or liable to be misinterpreted in it. So every day folk could understand and follow it. He was authorising, essentially, what the basic teachings were to be.

Bible contents do appear to have mostly grown in an organic evolution. For example, The Shepherd of Hermas was a text in extremely widespread use in early Christian bibles, but this simply fell slowly out of popularity, so over time it disappeared from being included in bibles.

There are obvious incidents of excision, such as the Gospel of Thomas. Rediscovered in the cache of papyrus in Nag Hammadi. Its a book of sayings, not pinned into any narrative structure. Some of the content is similar to the Canonical gospels, but a lot is not. It openly declares itself to contain the secret mystical teachings that Jesus spoke only to his disciples. From a traditional perspective there are contentious ideas and perhaps misleading presentations of Jesus, within it. Its validity has hence been questioned from antiquity onwards. The primary reason is the metaphysics of it, this runs at variance to the Canonical version.  Elaine Pagels, a leading expert on Thomas's Gospel believes the enigmatic style of Jesus's teachings here, is clearly aligning itself with that of traditional Jewish mysticism. That it may possibly be exactly what it says it is, in its opening line - secret mystical teachings of Jesus.

Whilst I might feel at times cynical or dismissive about the New Testament, I would not be the first to do so. But I recognise in the title of this blog post that - It is a testament of something. And it would be very foolish and egotistical of me, after two millenia of Christianity forming the shape of Western Civilisation, to sweep it aside as of entirely no value, now or in the future. 

One point in my reading the New Testament is by way of investigating another faith, to probe deeper into what my own consists of. And when I come up against things I disagree with, or react badly to, this is all par for that course. I've already uncovered some fixed views, some harsh judgement or simple prejudices, founded and unfounded. All of these obstruct better understanding of why Christianity has struck a chord with people for so long. What is there that remains good about it? What do I feel about that?

These days we are made all too aware of Christianity's many reported failings. But the Buddha urged his followers not to be a fault finder. Primarily because its unhealthy to feed negative thoughts, but also there is inevitably a downward spiral inherent to the avid pursuit of negative criticism. One that progressively worsens the more entrenched one digs in to the self righteousness of it. One rarely reaches the truth through it, nor happiness, nor become equanimous, more the exact opposite. 

Yet it remains, in our age of anxiety and confusion, distinctly harder to speak up for the good. Because for the good to reach you, you have to consciously open up your heart and mind to it. It's so much easier to use negativity to close the whole lot down, so you don't have to think, feel or behave differently.