The Gospels: Are They Historical?

The Ancients

Tristan Hughes and Professor Helen Bond explore the historical reliability and literary nature of the four canonical Gospels. They examine t

Key takeaways

• The Gospels are best understood as ancient Jewish biographies rather than modern eyewitness reports.
• There is a scholarly consensus regarding the historical existence of Jesus of Nazareth.

Main topics

• Historicity of the Gospels
• The Synoptic Problem

Notable quotes

The question they're addressing isn't, 'what exactly can we know about the historical Jesus?' The question they're addressing is, 'How can this man be the Christ... and how should I live my life?'

Conclusion

The episode provides a nuanced look at how literary analysis of ancien

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Teutoburg Forest? What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? Or what made Alexander truly great? With a subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. He turned water into wine, fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish, calmed a raging storm with the sound of his voice. These stories, these miracles of Jesus of Nazareth are famous around the world. But how do we know about them? The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John give us the four most famous accounts of his life. But were they written by eyewitnesses? How much did their authors know about the events they describe? And can we really use the Gospels to reconstruct the life of the historical Jesus? I'm Tristan Hughes, welcome to the Ancients, and today I'm once again joined by friend of the show, Professor Helen Bond. to ask a question that has shaped Christianity for centuries. Are the Gospels historical? Let's get into it. Speaker 2 (1:34) Helen, it is great to have you back on the show and great to have you here in our studio. Speaker 4 (1:38) Thank you. Yeah, it's great to see you again. And I'm loving the studio. I Speaker 2 (1:41) know for our first time doing it in person when it's not been in Edinburgh. That's Speaker 4 (1:44) true. We did Speaker 2 (1:45) Pontius Pilate all those years ago. Yeah, Speaker 4 (1:47) that's right. And Speaker 2 (1:48) now we are covering still the New Testament story. But the Gospels themselves, the four Gospels, is it fair to say that the question of their historicity, it's one of the most charged parts of, well, Christian theology of the study of early Christianity. Speaker 4 (2:06) Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, it really polarises people. Everybody has an idea on how historical they think the Gospels are. So, yeah, and they're very, you know, forthright in their views. Speaker 2 (2:17) But regardless, they're really interesting sources, even though that there are so many different opinions out there. And I guess we should say at the beginning, we'll agree disagreeably or disagree agreeably, right? I guess of all the different theories there are out there. Speaker 4 (2:29) Yeah, of course. I mean, you have to be respectful of people's views. But as an academic and a historian, you know, I... So what's interesting to me is to put them alongside other ancient texts. That's the thing. And to look at, you know, how they sort of fare in that sort of company. And Speaker 2 (2:45) can archaeology help us as well? Or is it more looking at the, as you say, the non-canonical four gospels on the side? Speaker 4 (2:51) Yeah, I think it's really a question of sort of comparing them with other similar texts and seeing what they're doing, you know, what this kind of text, particularly a biographical kind of text, is really trying to do. Speaker 2 (3:02) And so when we mention a gospel, What do we mean by a gospel? What do they talk about? Speaker 4 (3:07) Well, they're basically a book about Jesus. So gospel is not an ancient genre. It's what we tend nowadays to call a book about Jesus. In fact, it probably quite early on people started to call the gospels as we know them, the four gospels in the New Testament. They probably started to call them gospels quite early. So this is not particularly a new genre. It's basically a biography. I was going to say, is Speaker 2 (3:32) it a biography? Yeah, Speaker 4 (3:33) I think so. Yeah, it's a Jewish version of a biography. But yeah, so they are, when we talk nowadays about a gospel, we really mean a book about Jesus. Speaker 2 (3:44) And should we also mention at the start that they're books about Jesus, biographies of Jesus. And we do think, I mean, there is large scholarly consensus that there was a real figure called Jesus of Nazareth. Speaker 4 (3:55) Yeah, I mean, you know, you're always hearing people on the internet, the mythicists saying, oh, there's not much evidence. But Jesus was a peasant. I mean, you wouldn't expect a huge amount to be written about him anyway. It's actually quite incredible that we have the letters of Paul written 15, 20 years after Jesus's death. Even the earliest gospel is about 40 years after. So I think for all, there's some recent polls said that 40 % of people in the UK doubted that Jesus actually existed. I think really they're all wrong. There's good evidence that Jesus did exist. Speaker 2 (4:32) So because you've got the gospel evidence, but you also have, as you mentioned, you mentioned there the letters of Paul. And do we have several other sources? We Speaker 4 (4:38) have Josephus, the Jewish historian who's writing in the 90s. He has some evidence about Jesus and also Tacitus early second century. So, yeah, you know, I think this is all really quite early evidence for somebody of Jesus's lowly status. Speaker 2 (4:56) And so we have four gospels. And what are these four Gospels? Speaker 4 (5:01) Well, there's Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the order that they come in the New Testament. So we have to be clear, though, that these are the canonical Gospels. These are in the New Testament. There's actually loads and loads of Gospels. You know, once Christians started writing these lies of Jesus, they were well away. And there's a whole load of non-canonical Gospels, some of them perfectly fine, you know, perfectly orthodox. Some of them are slightly dubious. they continue to be written into the 4th, 5th, 6th century. So there's actually loads and loads of Gospels. And people can read them nowadays in what's called the New Testament Apocrypha, which has them all sort of gathered together. So Speaker 2 (5:40) these are the so-called Apocryphal Gospels. Today, we see them as non-canonical because they're not the big four. Because they're not in the Speaker 4 (5:46) canon. Speaker 2 (5:47) But before the Council of Nicaea and times of that, you know, there are many Christian communities across the Mediterranean world that they wouldn't have had Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They might have had Thomas, James. Speaker 4 (5:58) Gospel of Peter was quite popular as far as we know. But we do know that these four do seem to have sort of got a certain status already by the second century. So Irenaeus talks about the fourfold gospel. So already they seem to be the earliest ones as far as I know. as we know, and they seem to have been the ones that are most popular within the early churches. So even though there might be other groups that favour the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Peter or whatever it is, these four do seem to be common to most. christ believers in the in the early centuries do Speaker 2 (6:34) you think it's interesting that peter didn't make it into the into the canonical form it says because you think of the first pope of rome and you know you are my rock and then yeah Speaker 4 (6:42) i mean it it is i'm sure we'll come on to the question of who wrote the gospels but it is strange that none of them are attributed to peter um I mean, you do get the stories that Mark is the interpreter of Peter and there's that sort of link with Peter there. But no, nobody ever says, apart from the Gospel of Peter, that is probably second century and it's clearly derivative from the others. Speaker 2 (7:06) Well, shall we introduce these figures one by one? And of the four, there are two who are disciples of Jesus. Speaker 4 (7:14) Well, they're attributed. So Matthew and John are attributed to at least people with the same name as two of Jesus's disciples. Most scholars think that the Gospels circulated anonymously at first, and then they got the names added. So, you know, what are we to make of these? Are these just random names? the names of apostles? Is that, you know, why they got these names? Or are they, I mean, these are also quite common names, Matthias, Johannes. There's a lot Speaker 2 (7:46) of Speaker 4 (7:46) Johns, aren't there? Exactly. So, you know, are these particularly gospel, you know, are these the names of disciples? And clearly two of them, Mark and Luke, are not the names of disciples, though they are also linked with figures in the New Testament. Speaker 2 (8:01) So, I mean, we need that caveat straight away. But if we mention Matthew, who do people normally believe Matthew is, even if he's not actually the author of this gospel, who is this figure of Matthew? The Speaker 4 (8:12) traditional answer is that he's Matthew the tax collector, who's one of Jesus's disciples. So an eyewitness of events. And Speaker 2 (8:19) John? Speaker 4 (8:20) John is John son of Zebedee, sometimes linked with the beloved disciple in John's gospel. He's Speaker 2 (8:26) at Speaker 4 (8:26) the Speaker 2 (8:26) foot of the cross, isn't he? At Speaker 4 (8:27) the foot of the cross, yes. And the one who sort of always gets it, you know, in comparison to Peter, who often doesn't get it. John is always just that little bit more. savvy than the others. Speaker 2 (8:37) And then we have... Mark. Speaker 4 (8:40) Yeah, Mark is traditionally linked to John Mark, who is associated with a sort of a Christian safe house in Jerusalem. He's also mentioned in the first letter of Peter. The author there says, my son, Mark. I mean, it's very tenuous. But the idea is that Peter has a particularly close connection with Mark. And Mark is the interpreter of Peter, whatever exactly that means. And according to to Papias, who's a second century church father, he says that Mark wrote down everything that Peter remembered. So again, I think what these authors are trying to do in the second century, particularly in the fight against heretics, is to give these gospels sort of the stamp of authenticity. They're saying, okay, Mark may not have been an eyewitness himself. But he knew Peter and he's writing down very carefully, though not in order, he says, everything that Peter remembered. So, you know, that means that this is a trustworthy gospel. Speaker 2 (9:45) So we mentioned Peter not being there earlier, but actually, if you're looking at it then through that lens, it's Mark through the words of Peter. So you actually have Peter in the four canonical gospels. Exactly. Speaker 4 (9:55) Peter's just really the scribe. And Speaker 2 (9:57) fourth. But certainly not least, Luke, yes. Speaker 4 (10:00) Yeah, so Luke is traditionally said to be the travelling companion of Paul in Acts, because obviously Luke has a two-volume work, whereas the others are just Gospels. Luke has the Gospel and Acts, which traces early Christian history onto the 60s or so. And so the idea there is that Luke is somebody who knows Paul very well. Speaker 2 (10:23) So those are the four. And the subject matter, you said, Lucy, as an overview, it's the life of Jesus. And death, particularly the death and resurrection. Death and resurrection. But do they all include kind of the classic parts of Jesus's story? What do we know about the style in which these are written? Speaker 4 (10:42) Yeah, they don't all include the same material. So only two, for example, have birth stories. Only Matthew and Luke have birth stories. Only John's gospel opens with that grand prologue, you know, in the beginning was the word and he traces things from before creation. Mark's gospel doesn't have any resurrection stories. All the others do. So there's a lot of overlap, a lot of similarity. In fact, in some cases, there's word for word overlap. But it's generally speaking, they all have their own slant. Speaker 2 (11:17) They have all ends of the kind of the... The scale then, you can see parts where they are completely similar, almost word for word. But also if you explore certain times, there are times where you have the same story but disagree on certain details and sometimes where they're completely different. Speaker 4 (11:29) Exactly. They have the whole range of the spectrum. And I mean, I think this is one of the really fascinating things about it. And this is one of the things that got me into studying this in the first place. It's called the synoptic problem. And it's trying to work out the literary relationships between the Gospels. And Speaker 2 (11:45) how much they might have been in. I guess, competition with each other, trying to outdo one another or trying to support one another? That Speaker 4 (11:53) is a really interesting question. And what, you know, so if, for example, Matthew uses Mark, as most people think, in fact, Matthew sort of uses the whole of Mark, he adds extra bits to it. So then what is he trying to do? Is he eating up Mark? Does he expect Mark still, you know, does Mark still have value if Matthew has used it all up? Speaker 2 (12:15) Exactly, Speaker 4 (12:16) exactly. Is it a competitive thing or is it supplementing? Is it complementing? And as you move on, particularly by the time you get to John, if there's three already, what does John think he's doing? You know, is he just adding another voice? Is he replacing? It's a fascinating question, I think. what they think they're doing. Well, Speaker 2 (12:37) let's delve more into that kind of chronological order. So which of the four do we think comes first? Speaker 4 (12:42) Almost certainly Mark. Speaker 2 (12:43) Mark, okay. And how long after the life of Jesus is he writing? Speaker 4 (12:47) Well, I think current sort of dating of Mark puts him after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 CE. So maybe early 70s. So that gives us about 40 years between the death of Jesus and Mark. So a couple of generations, really. Speaker 2 (13:04) The fact that the earliest one is written only 40 years after the crucifixion event. In regards to kind of biographies of ancient figures, Speaker 4 (13:12) that's Speaker 2 (13:13) pretty close to the events themselves, right? You would still probably have had at least one or two eyewitnesses. Exactly. Speaker 4 (13:19) It's not that long. You know, we tend to think, oh, 40 years. But yeah, there might still have been people who remembered Jesus, people who were still telling their stories, people who could verify these accounts. So yeah, it's not, I mean, it's not the next day, but it's not bad. And like you say, there's plenty of biographies written about characters from much, much more distant periods than our own Gospels. I Speaker 2 (13:42) always think of her like in Nicolaus and Damascus with like the assassination of Julius Caesar being the closest one and then the rest are always much later than that. And so we have Mark first and then who follows, you said Matthew, so Matthew comes not long afterwards? Yes, Speaker 4 (13:56) I mean people tend to put Matthew next. I mean we don't know for sure but Matthew may be about... the 80s, something like that. Matthew is using Mark and adds extra material himself. And then probably we get Luke. Luke could be any time 90s, around about 100 maybe, possibly quite a bit later. And then John from about the same time, maybe a little bit later. Again, John could easily be into the second century. And Speaker 2 (14:25) let's delve into the first of those three, because why are Mark, Matthew, and Luke, often linked very closely together. Speaker 4 (14:35) They're sort of known as a group as the synoptic gospels. And that's from a Greek word, synopsis, meaning, you know, looked at together, seen side by side. And the reason for that is that they are very, very similar. Sometimes they are, they have verbal similarities. And these verbal... similarities can stretch for several sentences. And stories are in the same order as well. So there's obviously some kind of literary dependency. And what people think nowadays is that Mark wrote first, and then Matthew and Luke both used Mark in the composition of their own gospel. And Speaker 2 (15:16) what are some of these stories that almost are word for word in these three accounts? Speaker 4 (15:19) Oh, I mean... Lots of them, lots and lots of them. So, I mean, the story of the man with the withered hand in the synagogue, for example. I mean, another one is the entrance