Category: Matthew

Why Four Gospels? Review

In writing Why Four Gospels? The Historical Origins of the Gospels, David Alan Black has put what has become a minority opinion in scholarship into popular form. Working off of the ideas of Bernard Orchard and his own, Dr. Black has made a case to return to the majority opinion of the historic church: that of Matthean priority. The position is known as the Four-Fold Gospel Hypothesis.

The book weighs in at only 78 pages of text, consisting of three main sections. The prose is very readable making it an enjoyable read. Student and layperson alike will benefit greatly from this initial exposure into the world of the origins of the Gospels.

In his first section, “The Development of the Gospels,” Black has written a narratival reconstruction of how the Gospels were first constructed, including their circumstances. He breaks the development into four phases, wherein each of the Gospels finds a home. The four phases are the Jerusalem Phase, the Gentile Phase, the Roman Phase, and the Johannine Supplement. You can perhaps guess where each of the four Gospels fits and if you can, you will notice that the order of writing he proposes is Matthew, Luke, Mark and John, not the common proposal found today (priority often goes to Mark).

The narratival reconstruction is engagingly written but he says some strange things, at least they were strange to me. There were numerous occassions where I had no idea how he would justify, what I thought to be, a fanciful historical fiction. Black claims that Luke was written second, commissioned by Paul for use in his gentile mission, but not published until after they could get it authenticated by Peter in Rome, who then lectured in five sessions using both Matthew and Luke and his own recollections, which was immediately copied by competent scribes, including his assistant Mark, and in due course became the Gospel of Mark. I had decided ahead of time to read only the first section before going to bed one night but I had to hear more from him on it, so I proceeded to read section 2: “The Origins of the Gospels.” How on earth would he justify the story?

In the second section, Black sets forth his arguments to support the reconstruction he gave in section one. It is at this point where I started to see the pieces of the puzzle come together: he didn’t create a fanciful historical account! He actually bases his reconstruction on patristic evidence. As I now thought back to section one and saw the patristic evidence in front of me, I kept wanting to open my Bible and ask, “Does that work?” Indeed one of the best blessings of this book was the excitement to move back to the Bible to test and explore what I was reading for the first time.

But it is not as though Black is reading patristic writings that have been lost to every other scholar. So why the difference in opinion today? The problem is they have been dismissed and/or overlooked. The majority opinion is that Mark wrote first and so the patristics’ testimony must be explained away. But Black is reluctant to lose their testimony. In his preface (to the 2nd edition) he claims that they are necessary for this task. But, he says, “it is not that the fathers of the church solve the synoptic problem. It is that any approach to a solution that rejects their testimony is, by definition, illegitimate” (ix).

So what becomes of internal evidence? The sad truth is that internal evidence has not yielded the results expected of it: i.e. the priority of Mark is not proven by internal evidence. Just about any order can be justified by the internal evidence but with a guide like the evidence of the Fathers present, a more likely approach to the internal evidence is found.

Black’s final section returns to the story of the development of the Gospels by discussing each of their respective compositions. It was by the end of this section, and the end of the book, that I had the full picture in my head that bewildered me only 70 pages earlier. Only having studied Matthew and Mark heavily in the Greek (Luke much less so), I had not yet given much thought to the historical order of the Gospels besides the popular majority opinions. I now feel equipped to return to the study of the Greek Gospels with a viable hypothesis (indeed very viable) to test as I read through.

Given the target readership of the book, I have no criticisms. As I said above, it is readable and engaging. As for further study on the issue, I would love to see how the divisions of Mark’s Gospel into the five lectures of Peter proposed work with a discourse analysis approach to Mark’s Gospel. For example, can a division break be justified between 3:19 and 3:20? The text as we have it seems seamless. If so, should we attribute some redacting to Mark as well?

To read the reconstruction that at first bewildered me but gripped me, and later made perfect sense, get a hold of the book. At a very reasonable $10.19 (Amazon.com price as of 03/03/11), you can’t go wrong. It will expand your horizons, expose you to the historical majority viewpoint of the church on this issue, and help you read the Gospels with new vigour. No matter what your training, this book is worth reading. And more than that, I think Dr. Black has made a convincing case for Matthean priority. One I want to inspect more for myself now.

Thank you to Dave and Energion Publications for providing this book for review.

Matt. 1:1-17

Matthew 1:1-17 – The Expected Son of David Is Here

Not many modern writers I’m aware of would start their works with a genealogy. And I’m not sure many modern readers would tolerate it if they did. So what happens when we come to the Gospel according to Matthew in the New Testament? Do we read the first line and immediately jump to verse 17 to get on with the good stuff? Do we have the patience required to hear how Asa fathered Jehoshophat and Jehoshapat fathered Jehoram, on and on, world without end, Amen? We might not, but then again, if this is God’s Word, we might do well to first ask what this genealogy is trying to accomplish and what it tells us about its main topic.

The first thing we need to remember is that we are reading a book that was written in the first century. This is significant. We first need to approach it on its own terms and recognize Hebrew and Christian literary devices and works. While much debate surrounds the genre classification of the four Gospels the easiest way to first approach them is to see them as a form of ancient biography. The word “ancient” is important because the four Gospels don’t read like a John F. Kennedy biography. Instead, these books were written by eyewitnesses and disciples of eyewitnesses of Jesus who want you to know who Jesus was and trust in who he is still today.

Pre-Matthew

Part of communicating to us who Jesus was hinges on what precedes Matthew, namely, the Hebrew Tanakh, or what Christians call the Old Testament. Ever since Genesis 3 (The Fall), the world has awaited someone who would come and right the wrong. Who would restore the relationship with God lost in our rebellion against him? Who even could restore the relationship? But in what’s called the protoevangelium (Latin for the “first gospel”), we are given the first glimpse at good news: speaking to the serpent God says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Gen. 3:15, TNIV, emphasis mine). Already, immediately following The Fall, yes God punishes the sin, but he also promises a crushing of Satan that would come from the offspring of the woman.

The Scriptures move forward and God writes covenants with people whom he chooses (for example, Abraham, see Genesis 12 and following, or Moses, see Exodus 3-4 and 32-34) and brings Israel as a nation into being. He sets up the Levitical priesthood and the sacrificial system and eventually the Israelites receive a king and soon David takes to the throne, a man after God’s heart (1 Sam. 13:14).

In 2 Samuel 7, God makes a promise to David. There is no temple in Jerusalem at this time and David has decided that he would be the one to build a house for God to dwell in. But God turns it around on him. God says that he will build a house (household, family, dynasty) for David (v. 11b) (this is a pun in the Hebrew, the word ‘bayit’ can mean both ‘house’ as in a building and ‘family’ or ‘dynasty’).[1] Then he says in verses 12-16,

When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by human beings, with floggings inflicted by human hands. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever. (TNIV)

So, who is God talking about? On the face of it, the “Sunday School Answer” won’t work. It’s not Jesus. How would you then deal with verse 14: “When he does wrong I will punish him”? The answer is that God is talking about Solomon, David’s direct son. And indeed, Solomon will be the one to build a temple for God (see 1 Kings 6).

But something more is going on here. God tells David that his house and his kingdom will endure forever; his throne will be established forever. There are two options for what this means. Either David will always have a direct descendent on the throne, one after another after another forever (which didn’t happen), or a son of David will come who will reign eternally. Yes, the Messiah will come and reign on David’s throne. The Messiah is a type of David, so that when we come to Hebrews 1:5 in the New Testament, the writer can attribute 2 Sam. 7:14 (“I will be his Father, and he will be my Son”) directly about Jesus.  

And this then becomes built into the expectations of the Israelites for centuries following so that Jeremiah can say, “‘The days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ‘when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land…. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteous Savior’” (Jer. 23:5-6, TNIV). Space doesn’t permit our looking even into Isaiah or the Minor Prophets right down to the fourth century before Christ.

Back to Matthew

But finally we turn the pages into the New Testament and return to Matthew, about one millennium after David and about six centuries after Jeremiah. Matthew begins his Gospel, “This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Matthew then traces Jesus’ lineage from Abraham to David, from David to the Babyonian exile and from that exile to Jesus himself.

There you have it; the genealogy has a great purpose indeed.  Matthew has just tied the whole Bible’s storyline together. The seed of the offspring of Abraham, the expected son of David, the one who would reign eternally, the one first vaguely but certainly prophesied about in Genesis 3, the one more clearly talked about for centuries by the prophets…  he has come in the flesh and his name is Jesus.

[1] Brown, Francis, Samuel Rolles Driver, and Charles Augustus Briggs. Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. electronic ed. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, 2000. בַּ֫יִת
Carson, D. A. New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition. 4th ed. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, Ill., USA: Inter-Varsity Press, 1994. In location.