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New Testament Gospels

Luke and John “At a Glance” and Controversial Questions

As I indicated a few posts ago, I have decided to add a feature to my discussion of each NT book some of the additional materials I present in my New Testament textbook the books I discuss.  These are (a) rapid fire summaries of each book that I call “At a Glance” and (b) a set of study questions that challenge students to take a position on key aspects of the book, that I call “Take a Stand.” Here they are now for the Gospels of Luke and John.   The Gospel of Luke AT A GLANCE: Luke was probably written around 80–85 c.e., by a Greek-speaking Christian living outside of Palestine. Among his sources were Mark, Q, and L. He dedicates his book to an otherwise unknown person, “Theophilus.” Theophilus may have been a Roman administrative official, or the name may be symbolic, referring to the Christian audience as those “beloved of God.” A comparative method of analysis, which considers Luke’s similarities with and differences from other Gospels, reveals several distinctive themes. [...]

2025-05-19T10:40:05-04:00May 14th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

Is Paul One of Matthew’s Enemies?

In this "nutshell" series summarizing each book of the New Testament, I have now done both Matthew (the first book, canonically) and Galatians (the ninth). If you've paid heed to both sets of posts (or as I say to my students, "If you've been awake and sober this semester....") you will notice they have, well, a slightly different take on whether followers of Jesus should keep the Jewish law. Slightly different?  OK, well, let's ask it this way: if the author of Matthew and Paul were locked in a room and not allowed to emerge until they hammered out a consensus statement about the relevance of the Jewish law for followers of Jesus, would they ever have emerged?  Or would archaeologists discover their skeletons still in a joined in a death grip? To refresh your memories: Paul certainly had opponents in his lifetime:  "Judaizers," as scholars call them -- that is, Christian teachers who maintained that followers of Jesus had to follow the Jewish Law:  Men were to be circumcised to join the people [...]

2025-04-16T20:50:08-04:00April 24th, 2025|Canonical Gospels, Paul and His Letters, Public Forum|

Proof that Luke Used Matthew? And Interpolations in Luke about the Virgin Birth.

I continue to get terrific questions from readers.  Here are two rather tough ones on the Gospel of Luke, with my responses.   QUESTION: This is a question of whether there is some good evidence that Luke used Matthew (rather than both of them using the hypothetical Q source.) How do you explain the fact that Matthew and Luke add the very same five words to Mark’s story of Jesus being hit by the soldiers at his trial before the Jewish authorities, both using the Greek word for “hit”, a word which neither one of them uses in any other passage in their respective Gospels? Coincidence? Q didn’t have a Passion Narrative so they could not have gotten it from that source. Mark 14:65 “Some began to spit on him, to blindfold him, and to strike him, saying to him, “Prophesy!” The guards also took him and beat him.” Both Matthew and Luke add to this Markan passage: “Who is the one who hit you?” Matthew 26:67-68: Then they spat in his face [...]

2025-04-17T09:34:33-04:00April 19th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

Dating Manuscripts and Understanding Mark: Readers’ Questions

How much historical information about Jesus does the Gospel of Mark present?  How do you date an ancient manuscript?  Why does Mark have a "messianic secret"? These are among the very good questions I've received recently, and here is how I've tried to answer them succinctly. ****************************** QUESTION: How much of the historical Jesus does Mark capture, either purposefully or accidentally? RESPONSE: Well, it's impossible to put a percentage on it.  For one thing, if it’s correct that Jesus' lived for, say, 30-33 years (who knows?), it’s worth noting that Mark's Gospel takes roughly two hours to read/recite.  Necessarily he would have captured only a tiny fraction of the historical Jesus' life, even if he is 100% accurate. He's clearly not 100% accurate, so the question for most historical scholars is not how much of his life does he capture but how accurate is the information that he does give. That's impossible to quantify definitively, in no small measure be because different scholars would give different responses (though none of them in a percentage!). What [...]

2025-03-07T11:23:42-05:00March 11th, 2025|Canonical Gospels, Reader’s Questions|

The Gospel of Matthew. Are You Interested in a More Extended Discussion?

It has just occurred to me (duh) that some blog readers who are enjoying these "In a Nutshell" posts on the books of the New Testament may like to see a more extended exposition of the various issues I address, and I've devoted entire lectures courses for some of these books (and will be doing more).  You might be interested in them. One of the first I did was on the Gospel of Matthew, an eight-lecture course (50 minutes or so each; with two Q&A's; and additional materials provided).  You can find it here.  https://courses.bartehrman.com/matthew   Blog members get a discount with the code Blog5. Whether you want to get the course or not, I thought it would be valuable to explain what I cover there, lecture by lecture.  And so here is a summary! ****************************** The Genius of Matthew Lecture Descriptions   Lecture One:  How Do You Study a Gospel?  Take Matthew For Example. After a brief overview of the Gospel of Matthew – its contents, date, language, author, and sources of [...]

2025-03-06T22:22:59-05:00February 27th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

All Four Gospels in One Nutshell

So far in this thread on “The New Testament in a Nutshell” I’ve covered the four Gospels, each in four posts.  The first always begins with a 50-sentence summary of the major themes and emphases of the book.  In this post I want to make things easily accessible for anyone interested in the broad similarities and contrasts of the Gospels, by putting all four sentences in one place. But before that, it would be useful to have a fifty-word summary of all four Gospels as a whole. Give it a try yourself.  What can you come up with?  A statement that is accurate, informative, and concise?  Accuracy is particularly difficult, since a lot of general statements wold not apply to all four Gospels: for example, if your summary was to include a brief comment on the miracles and you included Jesus’ exorcisms, that wouldn’t be right, since Jesus never casts out a demon in the Gospel of John.  And you can’t say that in all four Jesus died (as an atonement) for the sake of [...]

2025-02-28T12:14:51-05:00February 25th, 2025|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum|

John Versus the Synoptics: How Does Jesus Raise the Dead?

I've discussed how John differs strikingly from the Synoptics, especially considering the stories and sayings/discourses in each.  I've also indicated that they differ strikingly even when they tell the same *kind* of story, but I haven't been able to illustrate that yet.  Here is one of my favorite examples. How does Jesus raise from the dead? In Mark 5 Jesus raises an unnamed young girl, the daughter of Jairus, from the dead; in John 11 he raises a (young?) man from the dead, Lazarus, sister of Mary and Martha.  How do these stories compare and contrast? The following discussion is based on what I say in my textbook (The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 7th ed. Oxford University Press), expanded and edited a bit here. ****************************** The differences between John and the Synoptics are particularly striking in stories that they have in common. You can see the differences yourself simply by taking any story of the Synoptics that is also told in John, and comparing the two accounts carefully.   Try [...]

2025-02-14T10:57:04-05:00February 23rd, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

The Gospel of John: For Your Further Reading

I have devoted two posts to major features of the Gospel of John, one that lays out its major themes and emphases, the other that deals with who wrote it, when, and why. Now I can provide some suggestions for further reading, important works written by scholars for non-scholars.   The list is annotated to give you a sense of what each book is about and so help you decide which, if any, might be worth your while. I have divided the list into three sections: Books that provide important discussion of John in general or with respect to a particularly key topic Commentaries that give lengthy introductions to all matters of importance about the Gospel and then go passage by passage to provide more detailed interpretation, where you can dig more deeply into what does a particular word actually means; that the real point of a passage is; how the passage relates to what John says elsewhere or to other parts of the New Testament; where you can we find similar ideas expressed in other [...]

2025-02-14T14:05:28-05:00February 22nd, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

The Gospel of John: Who Wrote It, When, and Why?

Now that I’ve summarized the major themes and emphases of the Gospel of John, I can turn to the historical questions of who wrote it, when, and why.  In this case, the biggest mystery is Who? To start with, the Gospel is anonymous – the author chose never to name himself.  The first author to attribute it to John the son of Zebedee is Irenaeus (around 185 CE).  Later readers found hints in the text to confirm this identification.  The matter may seem a bit convoluted at first, but there is a clear logic to it.  It was thought that the author was identifying himself in John 19:35 and John 21:20-24 as an eyewitness to the life of Jesus, one Gospel calls “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”  And so the question was: which disciple would that be? The figure is mentioned several times earlier in the account, where he is clearly one of Jesus’ closest companions: he is the one leaning on Jesus’ breast at his last meal (John 13:23).  That would [...]

2025-02-23T11:18:33-05:00February 20th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

The Gospel of John in a Nutshell

What is the Gospel of John all about, in a nutshell?  It’s worth knowing:  John continues to be one of the favorite books of the Bible and is the (only) source of many of the well-known sayings of Jesus: For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16) I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep (John 10:11) I am the Way the Truth and the Life: No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6) It is also the Gospel that gives us some of the most memorable miracles of Jesus: Turning water into wine (ch. 2) (the favorite miracle of college students everywhere) Raising Lazarus from the dead (ch. 11)   Have you read John’s Gospel all the way through, or even studied it?  If so, try to summarize it in one sentence of fifty words.  If you don’t know the Gospel well (or at all): keep [...]

2025-02-23T11:06:28-05:00February 19th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

For Further Reading on the Synoptic Problem and Its Possible Solutions

I have now finished my short thread on the Synoptic Problem and here would like to provide some guidelines for additional reading for anyone who, well, just can’t get enough!  These are books written by experts dealing with various aspects of the problem and its solution; I’ve indicated which ones are most suitable for beginners and non-specialists.  This is taken from my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (New York: Oxford University Press).  The eighth edition was co-authored with Hugo Mendez. ****************************** Allison, Dale. The Jesus Tradition in Q. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997. An intriguing attempt to reconstruct the history of the Q tradition, which disputes the influential conclusions of Kloppenborg. For advanced students. Farmer, William. The Synoptic Problem: A Critical Analysis. New York: Macmillan, 1964. One of the best attempts to argue, against the majority of scholars (and against the perspective found in this chapter), that Matthew was the first Gospel to be written. For advanced students. Goodacre, Mark. The Case Against Q: Studies [...]

2025-02-10T12:52:14-05:00February 16th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

Other Sources for Matthew and Luke: M and L! And Who CARES?

We have seen that most scholars agree that the problem of the close similarities and striking differences among our Synoptic Gospels -- the "Synoptic Problem" -- is best solved by thinking that Mark was copied (to a greater or lesser extent) by both Matthew and Luke, the view called "Markan Priority."  The majority continues to believe there was a "sayings source" available independently as well to Matthew and Luke, that gave them many of the sayings of Jesus that they record but are not found in Mark (the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, some of the parables, lots of his memorable one-liners).  Others, as I've said, maintain that Matthew copied Mark and that Luke copied both Matthew and Mark. Even if we agree there was probably a Q source  and even if we don’t, we are still left with the fact that a good number of Matthew's stories are not found in either Mark or Luke (Herod's slaughter of the innocents, the visit of the Magi, a bunch of his parables), just as there are a [...]

2025-02-09T13:04:10-05:00February 15th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

Evidence for Q: The Sequence of the Sayings

In my previous post I gave a simplified illustration to show why it is problematic to get rid of the Q source (the hypothetical  collection of sayings found in both Matthew and Luke but not in Mark).  Having this hypothetical source does not actually complicate the solution of the Synoptic Problem, it makes the solution simpler.  Supposing there was a Q is not a perfect solution, but it is better than the alternatives, in my opinion.  As my Doktorvater Bruce Metzger used to say (about Q and other things), "It is the least problematic solution." The reason it makes simplest and best sense is because of the sequence of the sayings of these "double traditions" (the technical term for the sayings materials in the TWO Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in Mark).  Unlike many of the narratives of these texts, these double-tradition sayings invariably occur in different places in the two Gospels.  Why is that? It would make sense if both of them have a source with a collection of Jesus' sayings of [...]

2025-02-09T12:51:44-05:00February 13th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

An Argument for Q: The Hypothetical Source That Seems to Have Existed

Why should we think there was a Q, the hypothetical document that contained principally sayings of Jesus, that was (according to this hypothesis) used by Matthew and Luke (but not by Mark) in constructing their Gospels? It is an issue because if Matthew and Luke both used Mark, as almost everyone agrees (for reasons I laid out in my earlier post), then one has to explain why they have so many other materials (mainly sayings) in common that are *not* found in Mark.  They didn’t get them from Mark!  Where then? In my earlier post I claimed that Matthew does not seem to have gotten those sayings from Luke or Luke from Matthew, and so they both most have gotten them from some other one-time-existing source.  That is a source commonly called Q (for the German word Quelle: Source). But some readers have asked exactly why it is unlikely that Matthew got these sayings from Luke or Luke from Matthew?  In particular, isn’t the best theory the one that has the least hypotheticals?  Why invent [...]

2025-02-09T12:35:32-05:00February 12th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

The Q Source Used by Matthew and Luke

If Mark was the first Gospel written, as  I tried to explain in my previous post, and it was used by both Matthew and Luke, how do we explain that there are many places in Matthew and Luke that agree with each but are not in Mark.? They didn’t get these passages from Mark, but if they agree word for word in places, there must be copying.  What are they copying?  Welcome to the world of Q! Q is the hypothetical source that scholars believe was used by Matthew and Luke to supplement the materials they got from Mark (“hypothetical” because it no longer survives – which is true, of course, of the vast majority of the earliest Christian writings).  The Q hypothesis was developed in the 19th century and has been the dominant view of scholarship for the past century, but it has come under attack in recent years (as I mention below).  But it continues to be the most widely accepted hypothesis to help solve the Synoptic Problem, for reasons I’ll explain in [...]

2025-02-03T11:51:07-05:00February 11th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

Gospel Problems: Does Matthew Ever “Correct” Mark?

In my previous post I indicated that one of the reasons for thinking that Matthew copied Mark instead of the other way around is that there are passages in Mark that can be read in ways (or maybe even were meant in ways) that could be seen as problematic -- they might be worded in an awkward way, for example, or they might say something that cold be seen as confusing or just wrong -- but that in Matthew are worded differently so that there is no longer a problem. That would make sense if Matthew was copying Mark and just reworded something to "correct" it or at least to get rid of the problem.  It would be harder to explain why Mark would create a problem that wasn't in the story he was copying.  If that's right, it would suggest Mark is the source of Matthew. Here's one example to consider out of many.  I choose this one because, well, it's one of my favorites! It comes in the opening of the story [...]

2025-02-03T11:29:45-05:00February 8th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

Why Assume the Synoptic Gospels Were COPYING One Another (and Other Sources)?

Why couldn't Matthew, Mark, and Luke just have the same stories?  Why do we have to assume someone was copying someone else's? In yesterday’s post,  I simply stated that copying must have been going on to explain the literary relationship among Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Synoptic Gospels, since they have so many similarities: they tell many of the same stories, often in the same sequence, and sometimes – lots of times – in the very same words.  That is to say, someone must be copying someone else, or they are all using the same written sources. But some of my students have trouble seeing that if two documents are word-for-word the same, one must be copying the other (or they both are copying a third source).  Many older adults don’t seem to have any problem seeing that, right off the bat.  But younger adults need to be convinced.  And so I do a little experiment with them that more or less proves it.  I do this every year in my New Testament class, which [...]

2025-02-03T11:21:01-05:00February 6th, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

The Synoptic Problem: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Who’s Zoomin Who?

Why are Matthew, Mark, and Luke are so similar to each other and yet have so many differences, lots of them minor but some of them significant? In my previous posts I’ve given “Nutshell” explanations of each of these Gospels.  Before moving on to John – which is remarkably different in many ways from these three, both individually and as  group – I want to devote a series of posts to their relationship to one another. How could they be so alike – often word for word the same – without some copying going on?  And how do we account for the (sometimes serious) differences? This has long been known as the “Synoptic Problem.”  It is not a problem connected with John because the features that create the problem for Mathew, Mark, and Luke (their extensive similarities often in extensive verbatim agreements) do not apply to John. I have just reread my explanation of the problem in my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings 7th ed. (Oxford University Press) [...]

2025-02-03T11:15:20-05:00February 5th, 2025|Canonical Gospels, Public Forum|

Is the Gospel of Luke Anti-Jewish?

If Luke is the most "gentile" Gospel, is it also "anti-Jewish"? In my earlier post on "The Gospel of Luke in a Nutshell," I argued that Luke, more than the other Gospels, went out of its way to portray Jesus as a great prophet (like Samuel, like Elijah, etc.).  In part, in Luke’s understanding, that is why Jesus had to die.  The Jewish people, in his view, always reject their own prophets sent from God.  Jesus was the last of the great prophets.  He too had to be rejected and killed at the hands of the Jewish people (see Luke 13:33-35). Some scholars have argued that because of this denigration of the Jewish people for always rejecting the prophets and Jesus, Luke is probably to be seen as an “anti-Jewish” Gospel.  In my judgment there is a lot to be said for this view.  The only Jews that the Gospel appears to approve of are the ones who recognize Jesus as a great prophet and son of God (his mother, Symeon and Anna, John the [...]

2025-01-25T22:01:42-05:00February 2nd, 2025|Canonical Gospels|

The Gospel of Luke: For Further Reading

Now that I’ve devoted two posts to the major sine qua non of Luke's Gospel – one that lays out its major themes and emphases, the other that deals with who wrote it, when, and why, I can provide some suggestions for further reading, important works written by scholars for non-scholars.   I have given brief annotations for each book a mention, to give you a sense of what it’s about and so help you decide which, if any, might be worth your while. I have divided the list into three sections: Books that provide important discussion of Luke in general or with respect to a particularly key topic Commentaries that give lengthy introductions to all matters of importance about the Gospel and then go passage by passage to provide more detailed interpretation (that’s where you can dig more deeply into “what does this particular word actually mean?”; “what is the real point of this passage”; how does this passage relate to what Luke says elsewhere in his Gospel or to what we can find in [...]

2025-01-25T21:52:40-05:00February 1st, 2025|Canonical Gospels|
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