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Recent scholarship or, more correctly, recent rethinking of previous scholarship has brought an intriguing possibility to the table. Matthew, Mark and Luke are termed the Synoptic Gospels, so called because they generally agree on the details and timeline of Jesus’ life, sometimes even using the same words to describe the same events. Because of this similarity, quite a few scholars posit that there was a previous collection of Jesus’ sayings and works which all three gospel writers relied on when compiling their histories. This collection, as yet just a theoretical construct, has been given the name “Q” (short for Quelle, German for “source”).
It’s a tempting idea. Mark is regarded as the earliest gospel and hence closest to Q. Of the 661 verses in Mark, only 24 aren’t quoted in either Matthew or Luke. Matthew and Luke occasionally disagree with Mark regarding Jesus’ words or the order of events, but they never both disagree on the same point.
Burton Mack in The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins offers another conjecture. It’s possible Q was the work not of a single person, but rather of a community trying to give written form and substance to what it believed. If that’s the case, the question of authorship in the usual sense evaporates. But rather than have this discussion come to an abrupt end, we’ll work on the assumption that the authors were individuals, not a committee.
Mark, not an apostle himself, was an associate of the apostle Paul for a short time, but the gospel bearing his name is (to some minds) based on the preaching of Peter. It’s generally assumed to have been the first gospel written, coming in right before Matthew at about 65 AD.
The author of Matthew is traditionally held to be the tax collector mentioned in Matthew 9:9, sometimes referred to as Levi. However, Matthew borrows heavily from the Gospel of Mark. It’s hard to believe someone who was in close contact with Jesus would have had to rely on secondary sources. Since this gospel has the most quotations from the Old Testament, sometimes going to ridiculous lengths to try to show that Jesus was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, it’s assumed that Matthew was written for a Jewish audience. There is suspicion that it might have been originally written in Hebrew, although only Greek texts have ever been found. Scholars differ on the composition date, but most agree on roughly 65 – 70 AD with a few placing at as late as 100 – 134 AD.
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It’s a tempting idea. Mark is regarded as the earliest gospel and hence closest to Q. Of the 661 verses in Mark, only 24 aren’t quoted in either Matthew or Luke. Matthew and Luke occasionally disagree with Mark regarding Jesus’ words or the order of events, but they never both disagree on the same point.
Burton Mack in The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins offers another conjecture. It’s possible Q was the work not of a single person, but rather of a community trying to give written form and substance to what it believed. If that’s the case, the question of authorship in the usual sense evaporates. But rather than have this discussion come to an abrupt end, we’ll work on the assumption that the authors were individuals, not a committee.
Mark, not an apostle himself, was an associate of the apostle Paul for a short time, but the gospel bearing his name is (to some minds) based on the preaching of Peter. It’s generally assumed to have been the first gospel written, coming in right before Matthew at about 65 AD.
The author of Matthew is traditionally held to be the tax collector mentioned in Matthew 9:9, sometimes referred to as Levi. However, Matthew borrows heavily from the Gospel of Mark. It’s hard to believe someone who was in close contact with Jesus would have had to rely on secondary sources. Since this gospel has the most quotations from the Old Testament, sometimes going to ridiculous lengths to try to show that Jesus was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, it’s assumed that Matthew was written for a Jewish audience. There is suspicion that it might have been originally written in Hebrew, although only Greek texts have ever been found. Scholars differ on the composition date, but most agree on roughly 65 – 70 AD with a few placing at as late as 100 – 134 AD.
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