BOOK CRITIQUE:
WHY FOUR GOSPELS?

Tiago Souza
NBST 515
September 24, 2013

INTRODUCTION
This work will analyze the book “Why Four Gospels” by David Alan Black. The main objective will be compare the Fourfold-Gospel Hypothesis opposed to the Markan Priority. In order to do that, this work will first analyze the historical background and reality context of the composition of each gospel.
The author David Black has published over 100 scholarly articles and book reviews in such journals as Novum Testamentum, New Testament Studies, Bible Translator, Journal of Biblical Literature, and many others. He also serves as Professor of New Testament and Greek and the Dr. M. O. Owens Jr. Chair in New Testament Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
SUMMARY
The book starts by bringing up a description of the development of the gospels, and a not very known basic historical fact is that the Gospels were written through a not so brief period of time. The “Gospel according to Mathew” was published in 42 AD, and there was a 20-25 years gap between its publication and the publication of “Luke’s Gospel” and “The gospel according to Mark”. And than, another huge gap between the publication of those and finally “The Gospel of John” being published in 96 AD, so there was a 54 years interval between the publication of the 4 Gospels, and that fact shows that sometimes God likes to act in a way that takes time, seems unusual to human eyes, but in the end everything fits and make complete sense, because “The Gospels” are the foundation and most important books on the Bible until today.
In the first part Black exposes that the Gospels are the most important part of the written tradition handed on by the twelve apostles by virtue of their personal knowledge of Jesus acquired during their instruction by Him in the course of His earthly mission. For Iraneus each of the four gospels accounts, and all of them together, have a common message as documents of faith in the service of faith. Thus, for Iraneus the fourfold Canon of the Gospels represented a profoundly significant fact, foreseen and willed by God.
The book of Mathew was composed to meet the urgent needs of the primitive church. Luke was written at the request of Paul to meet the urgent need of his churches to have their own manifesto to prove their full equality with Jewish Christians. While neither Mathew nor Luke begins in the same way as Mark, their basic message is identical. Mark was the result of the collaboration of Peter and Paul to make sure that the spiritual and doctrinal unity of the universal church was not impaired as a result of the appearance of Luke beside Mathew in the churches of both. And John made it clear that the primary objective of Jesus throughout his public ministry was the winning over of the spiritual authorities in Jerusalem.
In Chapter 2, Blacks concernment is to show more about the Origins of the Gospels, and in order to do that he explains that the Gospels came into existence in response to the needs experienced in some locality for an authoritative written Word in addition to the continuous oral and unwritten preaching of the gospels by the earliest apostles. The author states that each of the four Gospels came to existence in response to the needs of the church at different moments during the lifetime of the original Twelve. For instance, the significance of Mark lies in Peter’s guarantee that Luke was fit to be read beside Mathew in the churches of both Peter and Paul. Mark is therefore to be viewed as the bridge between Mathew and Luke, that is, as a document enabling Luke’s Gospel to be used in all churches to which the authority of Peter, the chief eyewitness, extended; and it stands as a recognition of the equality of the Gentiles in all the churches and that is very important, because Mathews message was centered mainly on jews, and before Paul’s ministry only 2 gentiles have actually been saved (Cornelius and the Ethiopian eunuch), and part because of the fact of Mathew’s gospel being directed for the jewish.
Finally in Chapter 3, Black offers a detailed description on the making process of each Gospel. He states that Mathew was probably composed in Greek. It’s first concern was to prove from the canonical books of the Jews that Jesus was the Christ and He came not to destroy, but to fulfill the Law of Moses. Mathew also deals with liturgical, ritual, moral, and social questions in a manner that met the anxieties and needs of a Christian minority in the midst of a hostile Jewish environment. On the other hand, the Gospel of Luke is the product of the crisis caused by the emergence of the Gentile churches alongside the primitive Jewish church; and they were churches that needed to develop their own interpretation of the Christian mission as a sign and proof of their full and equal status. It was the vital need to fuse together these two traditions – and the Gospels that symbolized them – into an unbreakable unity that led to the “Gospel of Mark” as the bridge between them and as the enabling document for Luke’s Gospel to take it’s place as the second authentic witness to Jesus in the churches of both Peter and Paul. Finally the “Gospel of John” which almost all agree is subsequent to the Synoptics, supplements the earlier accounts by supplying information not already accessible in them.
ANALYSIS
To accomplish the main objective of this work, which will be a comparison of the Fourfold-Gospel-Hypothesis along with the Markan Priority Theory, first thing necessary is to analyze each of these theories.
The Fourfold-Gospel Hypothesis
The Holy-Spirit directed process of inscripturating this fourfold Gospel involved 4 main phases: four turning points at each of which a suitable gospel statement was found to be necessary for it’s proper growth. Theses stages were the following: 1. The Jerusalem phase (Acts 1-12) under the leadership of Peter. 2. The Gentile mission phase (Acts 13-28) under the leadership of Paul. 3. The Roman phase requiring joint action by Peter and Paul 4. The Johannine supplement.

1. The Jerusalem Phase (A.D. 30-42; Acts 1-12)
According to the divine plan of salvation, the Messiah was not to appear until the times and circumstances were right. Here is a list of the circumstances needed in order to set the stage for the Messiah’s coming: 1. The existence of the Septuagint – a greek version of the sacred writings of the Jews (the Old Testament). 2. The Diaspora (dispersion) – The Jews were spreaded throughout the whole Roman Empire. 3. The Pax Romana (Roman Peace) – The “globalization” process around the Roman Culture gave the Christianity the opportunity to take firm root during the lifetime of the twelve apostles, whose function it was, as the principal witnesses of the Lord’s life, death and resurrection, to proclaim all that He had taught him.
2. The Gentile Mission Phase (A.D. 42-62; Acts 13-28) At the very beginning the apostles and their disciples had been content to preach only to Jews and God-fearers (pagans who believed in the truth of Judaism). But three events that occurred during the first phase were portents that laid a foundation for the expansion of what was soon to follow: 1. The dispersion of the disciples during the persecution and martyrdom of Stephen (Acts 7), which first brought missionaries to Antioch (Acts 11), who converted a number of pagans in that wealthy city. 2. The conversion of Paul, God’s chosen vessel for the conversion of Gentiles, on the road to Damascus (Acts 9) 3. The reception of the centurion Cornelius and his family into the church by Peter with the approval of the Jerusalem church (Acts 10-11), without the obligation to be circumcised or to keep the food and marriage regulations that prevented Jews from associating with Gentiles.
In the First Phase the apostles major concern were to bring the message to their fellow Jews. Now, during his third missionary journey Paul came to recognize the paramount need to integrate into one harmonious body the Jewish Christians with their Mosaic-Pharisaic traditions and the Greek and Roman converts. His missionary experience had proved that “The Gospel of Mathew”, which he was faithfully using as a follow up to his oral teaching, did not answer all the questions of his Asian and Greek converts. This made him acutely aware of the need for a presentation of the gospel nuanced to suit the mentality of the Hellenistic world.
He was now faced with a twofold task: (1) to produce a version of Mathew’s Gospel that would meet the spiritual needs of the Greek world and (2) to make sure that this modified version would be acceptable to Peter and the other pillars. Due this reasons, Paul chose his friend Luke, a physician, who joined him on the latter stages of his voyage back to Jerusalem. Throughout hindsight it can be determined that the assignment that Luke received from Paul by comparing the Gospels of Luke and Mathew and by noting Luke’s deviations. In the first place, Luke carefully followed the main structure of Mathew throughout and generally adhered to the order of its various sections and anecdotes, though he also made highly interesting changes. For example, his story of the birth of Jesus is totally different for Mathew’s, which (as have noted) was almost entirely apologetic in tone and content. Luke, however, provided a straightforward narrative that stems either directly or indirectly from Mary herself. When Luke came to Jesus’ Galilean ministry he added certain details to each of the stories from “Mathew’s Gospel” that he decided to adopt. Indeed, one way or another he absorbed nearly everything that Mathew had written, and yet managed to add a good deal of extra material.
All the time he was composing. Luke kept his eye on the audience and readership for which Paul needed this Gospel, in particular the Greek’s scientific bent, their desire to know dates and times, and their interest in the emancipation of woman. Moreover, he made it his aim to reveal an aspect of Jesus that would impress the Gentile reader, namely by exhibiting him as a hero blessed by God, one too good for this world yet one who after His glorification was still bringing blessings to the world that He had rescued by his sacrificial death. Luke’s Gospel couldn’t be published right away due to 2 main reasons: 1) The necessity of evaluation by a eyewitness of Jesus’ ministry, such as Peter and (2) It could maybe result in another eruption from the circumcision party, which was still active and was to remain so until the destruction of the temple in 70. Therefore, Luke’s Gospel could not be published until this peril had been defused.
3. The Roman Phase (A.D. 62-67)
The Gospel according to Mathew had been in circulation for some twenty years throughout the Christian world both inside and beyond the Roman Empire; and Paul was due to arrive in Rome as a prisoner of Caesar in 61 or 62 (Acts 28:30). Luke accompanied Paul, bringing him a document that he had compiled (an adaptation of the “Gospel of Mathew”. Paul’s former disciple Mark, however, who had left him at earlier in his first missionary journey at Perga and later gone with Barnabas to Ciprus, had since become Peter’s devoted assistant (1 Pet. 5:12-13).
Paul was well aware of the importance attached by the secular Greek and Roman world to the testimony of actual eyewitness. As far as Luke was concerned, he too had to rely entirely on the tradition ha had received from the apostles and from the gospel of Mathew, to which his added his own personal researches into the events of the life of Jesus, gleaned from material supplied to him by many surviving witness whom he had succeeded in interrogating (cf. Luke 1:1-4), but in order for Luke’s work to be recognized as a true account and one worthy to be read in the Christian assembly, Paul still needed to have it endorsed by an apostolic eyewitness.
Peter happened to be in Rome at the time of Paul’s captivity; and he was the prime eyewitness of the public ministry of Jesus, so Paul approached Peter to ask his advice about the best procedure. Peter realized what was happening and he was happy to compare Luke’s work with Mathew’s parallel account of the events at which he himself had been a participant or had witnessed. Peter was planning on giving a series of speeches in the Roman location that he had designated for his weekly worship celebration. His secretary Mark helped prepare this talks, which were bound to excite the interest of the most influential Christians in Rome, including members of the Praetorium, which was the headquarters of the Roman army and equivalent to our Pentagon, The news that Peter was going to give a series of lectures on the life of Jesus spreaded fast and Mark arranged a way to register it.
Peters speech was based on Mathew and Luke’s Gospel, and he brought both scrolls to use as a reference and support for his speech. His intention was to refer only those incidents in the life of Jesus of which he had been an eyewitness or could personally vouch for; therefore he would say nothing about the birth and resurrection narratives or about the collection of Jesus’ sayings in Luke’s central section. The simple fact that Peter was prepared to devote so much attention to this new work by Luke shows that he believed it to be worthy of adoption in its entirety by the church.
Peter, aided by Mark, divided for his own immediate purpose the Gospels of Mathew and Luke lying before into five discourses of 20-25 minutes each, in the following manner: 1. Beginning of ministry: Mark 1:2-3-19 = Matthew 3:1-5:1; Luke 3:1-6:19 2. Early Galilean ministry: Mark 3:20-6-13 = Matthew 5:2-13:58; Luke 6:20-9:6 3. Later Galilean ministry: Mark 6:14-10:1 = Mathew 14:1-18:35; Luke 9:7-50 4. Post Galilean ministry: Mark 10:2-13:37 = Mathew 19:1-25:46; Luke 9:51-21:38 5. Passion narrative: Mark 14:1-16:8 = Mathew 26:1-28:20; Luke 22:1-24:53

At the end of the 5th discourse Peter had covered all the main stories that Mathew and Luke had in common (except for the centurion’s slave), from the baptism of John to Peter’s personal discovery of the empty tomb. There, at the conclusion of the earthly ministry of Jesus, Peter ended his discourses. Those who listened to Peter were delighted with everything they had heard, and they requested from Mark copies of what Peter had said. It is thus clear that Peter was personally responsible for the text of our “Gospel of Mark” and that it was composed not only after Mathew and Luke, but also with their aid. 4. The Johannine Supplement
Christian tradition names John the son of Zebedee, the apostle and beloved disciple, as the fourth evangelist, and there is no solid reason to think other way. John wrote in Greek, like the other evangelists and in fact knew all the other three Gospels, making use of them, especially Luke. The purpose of John was to supplement in several ways the account about the ministry of Jesus provided by the Synoptic Gospels:
1.Set his Gospel in an eternal perspective by the beginning showing the heavenly existence of the Son of God. (John1:1-18).
2. Makes it clear that Jesus asserted His claim at the beginning of His ministry.
3. Only John’s Gospel makes it clear that Jesus’ public ministry extended two years, possibly longer, and only part of it was spent in Galilee.
4. Records that during Jesus’ visits to Jerusalem a number of intimate dialogues took place that uniquely reveal the mind and heart of Jesus and His relationship to His Father and to the Holy Spirit.
It is John’s intention to confirm and deepen the faith of his readers in Jesus as the consubstantial Son of God and thereby to ensure that by their faith they may obtain eternal life. One of the main reasons for this, is to argument against the Gnosticism, which was a growing philosophical way of thinking, that sees Jesus as a human, and deny His divinity attributes.
The Markan Priority
The patristic evidence for the authenticity and historicity of the Gospels is not normally discussed nowadays at any length, if at all, by Markan priorists. Today the academic guild, assumes that patristic evidence is legendary and unreliable and the reasons most often given are the following: 1. The patristic testimony is said to be inconsistent, contradictory and insecurely based. 2. It is highly unlikely that an eyewitness authority like Peter (if Peter is behind Mark) would have wanted to produce a document dependent on Mathew and Luke if, in fact, these two Gospels were already in existence. And why did Mark leave out so much? 3. Internal evidence is said to be decisive for Markan priority.

Adherents of Markan priority often pose the question, “Why should anyone have wanted to write a new Gospel that omitted so much from his sources?”
To bring all this material into coherent order, Markan priorists invoke final editors of two sources in particular: the editor of Mark (or a recension of it) and the independent editor of a contemporary sayings source Q. Mark is therefore seen as the source of all the material that Mathew has in common with it, while Q is said to be the source of all the material common to Mathew and Luke alone, that is, material not found in Mark. In addition, both Mathew and Luke have some special sources. All this material is said to been revised by the final editor of Matthew independently of the final editor of Luke, for the notion of two editors working in parallel, yet not knowing what the other is doing, is normally a further condition of Markan Priority.
CONCLUSION
I personally agree with the author when he states that Mark was never meant to be an independent Gospel. The reason for its existence is connected with the unfolding of the brilliant strategy of Paul and the sympathetic collaboration of Peter as they saw their mighty labors beginning to bear fruit. The Fourfold-Gospel Hypothesis is the solution that conforms to the historical and patristic evidence; it meets the internal data at least as well as the Markan priority hypothesis, and often much better, and it’s the only solution that explains the need for three Synoptic Gospels – no fewer and no more. The book has a lot of strengths and it’s a very powerful tool for a better understanding of the origins of this important piece of the scriptures. I personally learned a lot of new facts about the history of the Gospels, and it was a very edifying reading. One personal thing that bothered me though, was that through the whole book, the author always refer to our savior Jesus Christ, as he, him or his, instead of He, Him or His. And besides that, Black could explain more about the Markan priority hypothesis and the source Q, which he doesn’t explore a lot on this book.