An Evening with Barbara Walters

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 15 May 2014 3 Comments
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Question

I enjoy your writings very much. The question I have is: Why are the gospels arranged in the order they are rather than the order in which they were written? After reading a fair amount of your writings and now some of your new book about John, (The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic) I began to wonder if the gospels are arranged as they are due to their paralleling, to some degree, the development of Christianity? My point: Matthew is the most Jewish, then Mark not so much, Luke more Hellenistic/mythological and finally John which is not only advanced theology and mystical, but can be read as anti-Semitic, the very opposite of Matthew. It is possible that the council of Nicea, which arranged the canon, recognized John as anti-Semitic and was unaware of the theory you embrace about this book being about different factions within Judaism? Did they want to show two very different points of view at very different locations in the canon?

 

Answer

Dear Patrick,

Thank you for your letter and your question. When the Canon of the New Testament was being drawn up, I doubt if people knew the order in which the books were written. I also doubt that they followed your suggestion of moving from the gospel that was the most Jewish to the gospel that was perceived as anti-Jewish. I suspect it had more to do with the popularity of the various gospels in various parts of Christianity and with accidents associated with timing.

If one scans early church records, it is clear that Matthew was the most popular gospel; Mark appeared truncated by comparison. Indeed, it was thought that Mark was a kind of “Reader’s Digest” or shortened version of Matthew. Matthew had a birth story and a resurrection narrative that Mark did not have. Matthew expanded the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by giving content to the temptations and by supplying the biblical texts that Jesus used to reject those temptations. Matthew drew the portrait of Jesus as “The New Moses” and added much teaching material that Mark did not include. One finds, for example no Sermon on the Mount in any other gospel.

When John’s gospel emerged, near the end of the first century, it challenged Matthew’s popularity and the two of them became the most influential of the gospels. John’s star was destined to rise in Christian history, although a recent poll about people’s favorite books in the Bible still places Matthew ahead of John with Luke third and Mark bringing up the rear. If we were to put the gospels in the order of their writing they would line up Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. The biggest debate in scholarly circles today is about the date of Luke. Some scholars now advocate dating Luke as late as 140 CE. I disagree with that, but I am fascinated by their arguments.

Matthew also in the minds of early church leaders best reflected the transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament, which may have been a factor in letting it open the New Testament. He wrote his account of Jesus by wrapping Jesus deeply into the Hebrew Scriptures. “This was done that it might fulfill that which was spoken by the prophets” was a familiar line in Matthew.

The gospels were placed at the beginning of the New Testament, although all of them were written well after the authentic letters of Paul. I think it was done this way because it was believed that the gospels described the life of Jesus, while the epistles described life in the Christian Church after the time of Jesus.

The Pauline Epistles were organized according to length for the most part, that is why Romans is first and Philemon is last. When the Canon of the New Testament was finalized fourteen epistles were attributed to Paul. Today modern scholarship has cast great doubt on the Pauline authorship of half of them. The genuine Pauline epistles (and in the order in which they appear to have been written) are: I Thessalonians, Galatians, I Corinthians, II Corinthians, Romans, Philemon and Philippians. The epistles that are generally dismissed as the work of Paul today are: II Thessalonians, Colossians and Ephesians. The epistles that are all but universally dismissed as Pauline today are I Timothy, II Timothy, Titus and Hebrews. I laid all of this out in much greater detail in my book: Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World. I hope this helps.

My best,

John Shelby Spong

 

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