The Gospels: Are They Historical?

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2:10Fed 5000 people with five loaves and two fish. Calm deraging 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 foremost 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. Helen, it is great to have you back on the show and great to have you here in Australia. Thank you. Yeah, it's great to see you again and I'm loving the studio. Oh, I know.

3:10Our first time doing it in person when it's not been in Edinburgh. That's true. And we did Pontius Pile all those years ago. Yeah, that's right. And now we are covering still the New Testament story, but the Gospels themselves, the four Gospels, as it fair to say that the question of their historicity, it's one of the most charged parts of Christian theology of the study of early Christianity. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, it really polarises people. Everybody has an idea on how historical I think the Gospels are. So yeah, and they're very, you know, forthright in their views. Regardless, they're really interesting sources, even though 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. Yeah, of course. I mean, you have to be respectful of people's views, but as a Macademic and a historian, you know, 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.

4:13And can archaeology help us as well? Or is it more looking at the, as you say, the non-canonical for Gospels? Yeah, I think it's really a question 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. And so when we mention a gospel, what do we mean by a gospel? What do they talk about? 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 it's not particularly a new genre. It's basically a biography. I was going to say is it a biography? Yeah, 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. Actually, we also mentioned at the start that there are books about Jesus,

5:16the biographies of Jesus. And we do think, I mean, there is largely a legal consensus that there was a real figure called Jesus and Nazareth. 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. 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, but I think really they're all wrong. There's good evidence that Jesus did exist. It's because you've got the gospel evidence, but you also have, as you mentioned, you mentioned the letters of Paul. And do we have several other sources? We have Josephus, who's a Jewish historian who's writing in the 90s. He has some evidence about Jesus and also Tacitus, early, early second century.

6:17So yeah, you know, I think this is all really quite early evidence for somebody of Jesus as lowly status. And so we have four gospels. And what are these four gospels? 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. Once Christian 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. And they continue to be written into the four fifth, sixth 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 these are the so-called apocryphal gospels that I say today we see them as non-canonical because they're not the big ones. Because they're not in the canon. Yeah, before the counts of Nicer and times of that, you know, there are many Christian

7:20communities across the Mediterranean world that they wouldn't have had Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They might have had Thomas James. 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 Iron Ears talks about the fourfold gospels. So already, they seem to be the earliest ones as far 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 favor the gospel of Thomas or the gospel of the Peter or whatever it is, these four do seem to be common to most Christ believers in the early centuries. Do you think it's interesting that Peter didn't make it into the canonical form? Most says because you think of the first Pope of Rome and you are my rock in them. Yeah, I mean, 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. I mean, you do get the stories that Mark is the interpreter of Peter and there's that

8:24sort 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. Which how we introduce these figures one by one. And of the four, there are two who are disciples of Jesus. Well, they're attributed. So Matthew and John are attributed to at least people with the same name as two of Jesus' disciples. Most scholars think that the gospels circulated anonymously at first and then they got the names added. So what are we to make of these? Are these just random names? The names of apostles? Is that why they got these names? Or are they, I mean, these are also quite common names. Matias. There's a lot of John's on there. Exactly. So are these particularly gospel, are these the names of disciples? And clearly two of them, Mark and Luke are not the names of disciples, though they are

9:26also linked with figures in the New Testament. 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 traditional answer is that he's Matthew the tax collector who's one of Jesus' disciples. So an eyewitness of events. And John? John is John son of Zebedee. Zebedee. He's linked with the beloved disciple in John's gospel. Is it the foot of the cross, isn't it? At 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. And then we have Mark. 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.

10:31And Mark is the interpreter of Peter, whatever exactly that means. And according 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 to 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. 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 fork and on the other hand. Exactly. Peter's just really the scribe. And fourth, certainly not least Luke. Yes. So Luke is traditionally said to be the traveling companion of Paul in Acts, because obviously

11:35Luke has a two volume work, whereas the others are just gospels. Luke has the gospel and Acts, which traces early Christian history onto the sixties or so. And so the idea there is that Luke is somebody who knows Paul very well. So those are the four. And the subject matter you said, Luke, as an overview, it's the life of Jesus. But do they all... And death. Particularly the death and resurrection. Yes. But do they all include kind of the classic parts of Jesus' story? And do we know about the style in which these are written? 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.

12:37In fact, in some cases, there's word for word overlap. But it's generally speaking, they all have their own slants. So you have all lens of the kind of the scale of 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 they have the same story, but disagree on certain details and something that they have completely different. 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. Of course. And how much may they might have been in, I guess, competition with each other, trying to outdo one another or trying to support one another? That 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?

13:38Does he expect Mark's, does Mark still have value if Matthew has used his firm? He's only around two. Exactly. 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? Is he just adding another voice? Is he replacing? It's a fascinating question, I think. What, what they think they're doing. Well, let's get, let's delve more into that chronological order. So which of the four do we think comes first? Almost certainly Mark. Mark, okay. And how long after the life of Jesus is he writing? 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. The fact that the fact that the earliest one is written only kind of 40 years after the crucifixion event in regards to kind of biographies of ancient figures, that's pretty close to

14:42the events themselves. Right. You would still probably have had at least one or two eye witnesses. Exactly. 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 are 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 gospel. I always think of it like in Nikolaus and Tabascus. We've like the assassination of Julius Caesar being the closest one and then the rest are always much later than that. So we have Mark first and then who follows? You said Matthew. So Matthew comes not long afterwards. Yes. 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 anytime 90s, around about 100 maybe, possibly quite a bit later.

15:47And then John from about the same time, maybe a little bit later again, John could easily be into the second century. And let's go into the first of those three, because why are Mark, Matthew and Luke often linked very closely together? They're known as a group as the synoptic gospels. And that's from a Greek word synopsis, meaning 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. So, 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 what are some of these stories that almost have worked for word in these three accounts?

16:48Oh, 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 into Jerusalem. Again, if you put the stories side by side and look at them, you see long, long sort of lists. This is something I get students to do, you know, underline the words of the same in all of this. And even when they're not the same, they're similar. So, you know, I say to them, well, if two students handed these in or three students handed these in as an essay, what would you think? And they also say, oh, there's been copying, copying going on here. So I think it is fairly clear. If you do look at them in this sort of side by side, you can see there is some literary link between them. When I think of like copying of like one source from slightly later, like redoing a source from earlier, I might think of like an epitome or something like that. But then, you know, there are clear differences between the two at the same time.

17:51It's the amount of similarity. The fact that it is almost in cases word for word. Is that quite strange in its own way for, you know, these gospel writers to actually be making something so, so, so similar? Yeah, I think so. I think it's really unusual in the ancient world. I mean, you know, all ancient authors use sources. And I mean, they're encouraged to do that, you know, the whole sort of imitation thing. You sort of write and rewrite stuff that's out there already. So that's that's sort of normal practice. But this sort of, it's almost like a scribble activity. You know, you're writing, you're writing out whole sentences and then you're adding bits and pieces. And one of the things about the changes is that when you look at all the changes together, you can see certain sort of interests, whether they're theological interests or social interests or, or whatever it is. And you're, Matthew always changes Mark in a particular way. Luke always changes Mark in a particular way. So, so there, you could almost see them sort of working with these texts and changing them

18:56so that they fit into their own particular interest. So how does Matthew change Mark and then how does Luke change Mark? Well, Matthew is very interested in Jewish scriptures, scriptural fulfilment. So he will often change Mark so that it's more obvious that he might quote something from the scriptures. He might change something so that it's more obvious that there is a scriptural passage there that it's been fulfilled. Luke tends, Luke is a better writer altogether, he's a better writer of Greek so he does make Mark's Greek better but he's very interested in the poor and the marginalised so he will add extra bits that kind of bring in these groups. And also there's less, Mark is very keen on sort of the imminent end of all things, you know, that the kingdom of God is about to break into human life. Yeah, this apocalyptic Jesus, whereas Luke tends to sort of tone that down a bit.

19:57So again, if you sort of look at all of these sometimes very, very minor changes but all together, you can sort of build up a picture of yeah, this is what Luke is particularly interested in, this is what Matthew is interested in. Whoever Luke was or who he was, we just call them those names. Absolutely. Yeah, short term. And you say, but you mentioned, even once in a while, you do see disagreements between the two or emissions between you mentioned the birth story, the virgin birth, Bethlehem, the stable, is that only one of the accounts? That is only in Luke. That's only in Luke. Yep. And the Magi and King Herod only Matthews. So yeah, they have very, very different birth stories and John has this sort of prolog that starts in sort of prehistory. So they all choose to sort of situate their stories in slightly different ways. And Mark just starts straight away with John the Baptist and River Jordan. We'll get more into John the Baptist in the bit. In that sense, like Mark has already seen as the earliest and then can Luke and Matthew

21:01evidently know Mark and copying out quite sort of Mark. But what is this amazing, really interesting debates among scholars about whether there was a source for themselves, like as well, a source for Mark, an earlier source dating even closer to the time of Jesus. Q. Yes. Sounds like something from out of James Bond. But it's called Q because that's the German word for Kveller. Q is just the abbreviation for that. So just to add to the complexity, sometimes Matthew Mark and Luke are identical across all three. Sometimes though, Matthew and Luke are identical. But in a passage that's not in Mark. So then the question is where have these passages come from? Now one way of looking at that is just to say, well, Mark wrote first, then Matthew and then Luke had both texts and that accounts for all these these things. Sometimes they're the same,

22:04sometimes Matthew and Luke are the same. But another view is that in addition to Mark, Matthew and Luke had this source that's now no longer extant called Q, which was largely sort of sayings of Jesus. And they both use, so they're both writing completely independently. They're both using Mark and they're both using this source Q. And so that again explains why sometimes they follow the structure of Mark, but they also follow Q, which is why they have some material in common. And it's also in the same order, which is why people think it's a written document rather than just oral sources. And what are the examples of this? What are the ones that are in Matthew? Well, so the temptation stories, for example, I mean, if you look in Mark, he just says, Jesus was in the wilderness 40 days. This is the wilderness. Yeah, Jesus goes to the wilderness. Mark just says he was tempted by Satan and then he came back. Matthew and Luke though have sort of very convoluted stories

23:10about Satan takes him up to the highest pinnacle of the temple and says throw yourself down and see whether God will come and save you. And Satan says, you know, make the stones into bread and you know, three very sort of distinct temptation stories. And they're very similar in both works, which suggests that again, they're from a written source. And much of the sermon on the man's in Matthew's gospel is from the Q source. It's also in Luke, but Luke has what's called the sermon on the plane. He sort of, I know, you got a mountain in one place. He's a subal of the river next. He sort of, he pulls it apart a little bit, but still the material is largely in the same order. And it's largely the same, which makes people think this is from a written source. So what do you think? Q or no Q? Well, I had to say, I've, a lot of these things, it's what you

24:11were taught, isn't it? So I was taught Q and I've had no reason particularly to relinquish Q, but I am starting to wobble on Q. I found a few places where I'm starting to think maybe, maybe Luke does just know Matthew. That would make some sense. But I think scholarship is largely half and half on this. It used to be the case that nearly everyone was a Q believer. Now I think, I think, you know, it's more, it's more sort of polarised. So if there's no Q, the line of thinking being that, let's say the temptation stories, the added detail is almost added later. No, the detail then in that case, Mark, right first, Matthew uses Mark, he adds in the extra bit. Yes, we don't know where he's got those from. And then Luke is using both Mark and Matthew. And could it be that some of the information that we have in the Gospels was passed down to the likes of Mark, Matthew, Luke and then John through oral tradition, as we see with so many other

25:16stories, I mean, Homer, Zilliard passed down for so many centuries, that there are parts of the story that were written down in the Gospels, passed down from people, from eyewitnesses, and that word and mouth continued for one generation or two. I think that's possible, but I think you have to be a little bit cautious with that, because an old fashioned idea was that the gospel writers were just simply editors and compilers. So basically what they did was they sort of, you know, they went around, found a few Christians, got their stories and just wrote them down in any old order. And that was very much the sort of the the the general accepted view of the Gospels in the early 20th century. Since then, people have really begun to realize that these are these are really good literary texts. They may not be written in the most elegant Greek, but you know, they're competent biographies. They they're written by people who have a good level of Greek education. They they can use nice little literary tropes.

26:16They are, you know, they are literary endeavors. So I'm sure that certainly Mark and probably the other Gospels too would have tried to you know, to find out information about Jesus. Some of it would have been written down. Some of it would have been oral. And I'm sure that's that's what happened. But at the same time, they are writing a literary text. And so they're going to be selective. They're going to shape their materials so that it fits in with what they want to say. So I think that the slight nervousness I have about saying, you know, there's oral traditions here is that it sounds as though you've necessarily got that link back with with Jesus. And I'm not sure the oral traditions will give you that. You don't necessarily know that they're going all the way back to Jesus. And you don't actually know how much the gospel writers have have shaped them in the telling. And when they're making the Gospels, these figures, are they all writing in Greek? Or are they all written in Greek? Yes, and there's no reason to think that they were written in.

27:18We don't think there's a sort of Aramaic original there. They're all written in Greek. So you've already got that process of translation from Jesus who would have spoken Aramaic to the Gospels being written in Greek. And then evidently being spread far and wide very, very quickly. But if we think they're Matthew and Luke and using Mark, not only a decade or so, maybe a few decades after Mark, and then you get John as well. Evidently, they're being then re-copied and re-copied and spread across Christian communities in the Eastern Mediterranean. That's right. I mean, again, we don't know exactly where these Gospels were written, but if only we did. But the best guess is that they probably come from urban environments in the Eastern Mediterranean. And yes, like you say, they're spreading very quickly. And then we get to John. So this is a conversation in its own right, isn't it, Helen? And because he is very different in his tone and style. Yes. And I mean, even the portrait of Jesus that you have in John's Gospel

28:23is very different. You have this opening prologue that puts him there at the beginning of creation. In the beginning was the word and the word was God. So you get this divine figure in John's Gospel. He sort of comes down to earth and he's often been described as God's striding over the earth. There's no doubt that Jesus is something different. He's sort of a god-like figure. He talks of himself, the son and the father are one, he says. And he has these long dialogues. And it's a very different kind of flavor in John's Gospel to the other three. And how are those long dialogues different? What do you think is the purpose with the longer dialogues? Which does he put more speeches in the mouth of Jesus? Yes, many more more speeches. In the synoptic Gospels, Jesus speaks in fairly short sort of pizzy ways. You'll get a sort of a little a little sentence here or you don't really get long sermons. I suppose the sermon on the man

29:27is one of the few that you do get that's quite long and the apocalyptic material marked chapter 13. But largely there's sort of little sayings. In John's Gospel though, you get these long dialogues that sort of spiral round and round and round. He picks up words and he sort of works with them and then he picks up another word. And it's also very difficult to know when the voice of Jesus stops and the voice of the narrator starts. So people who are translating these and trying to put in sort of inverted commas for when the voice of Jesus stops actually find it really difficult because the narrator sounds exactly the same as Jesus. So it could almost all be from the voice of Jesus. Do we think the purpose of it is to convey a particular message? Is there more kind of, I can't, is this the word parabillic? I guess it's fair to say. I don't know if that's the right way to say it, but in John because of the longer speeches that are attributed to Jesus. Yeah, it's a different, the sort of the divinity of Jesus is much more obvious there. And the whole

30:31point, I mean for John, Jesus's death is a sort of a triumph. He talks about it as being lifted up on the cross. And John only has seven, seven miracles unlike the many, many miracles that you get in the others. And one of those is the resurrection at the end. So the miracles are all signs that point to Jesus as glory that finally you're going to see when he's on the cross. So it's this sort of inverted idea that, you know, death is triumph. So it's, yeah, it's heavily theological throughout. And there's always, there's always something else happening, you know, double layers and and actually the Greek is very, very simple in John, but, but the thought is intensely complex. That's the interesting part. It's actually studying the words themselves and the style of the wording compared to the earlier three gospels. And why has, for so long, have many people always kind of put John to one side compared to the other three and then with, yeah, put him in his own

31:35little box. Yeah, I mean, I think from very early times it's been realized that there's something slightly different about John. And in the very early period, people used to say that the other gospels had captured the sort of the physical side and John had written the spiritual side of things. So, you know, people realized that that they were very different in some ways. Mark, for example, just has one trip to Jerusalem. John has three at least and some other differences like that. So the explanation early on was them that John was more spiritual. Then in the 20th century, people started to say that maybe John was completely independent of the others and didn't know them at all. This then becomes interesting in terms of questions of history because if John is completely separate, areas where John and the others are in agreement are obviously more likely

32:36to be historical. That's more the historical parts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then nowadays, there's been a bit of a move back from that. You know, it just seems unlikely. If Matthew and Luke know Mark, how likely is it that John is writing somewhere and doesn't know the other ones at all? And actually, for all their differences, when you look at John and the others, there are also some big similarities. Apart from the prologue, they all start basically with John the Baptist. John also gives about half of the gospel to the telling of Jesus's death in the same way that Mark devotes about half of the gospel to Jesus's death. They all have the entry into Jerusalem. They have some shared stories. In fact, John's gospel has the feeding of the 5,000 directly followed by Jesus walking on the water exactly the same as you have in the synoptic

33:39gospels. So when you look at the similarities like that, it becomes a little bit difficult to say he doesn't know the others. That miracle, that part of Jesus's story, the feeding of the 5,000, I mentioned it before as well. I am intrigued by, you know, of all the stories of Jesus, you know, that's the one that is in all four, you know, for all the differences between John and we'll get into some of the different stories. But I am always struck by the fact that that really well-known one, you know, is visible in all four. And that's one of the most important stories in 1st century Judaism as well, because it obviously sort of reflects the story of Moses in the wilderness when, you know, the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness after they've come out of Egypt and God sends them manner in the wilderness. So this is what they're eating in the wilderness. And there's all sorts of links with that story in the gospels. And that story of God's provision for his people in the wilderness was thought of as being the greatest miracle in amongst 1st century

34:43Jews. So I think it's no accident that that particular story is picked up by all four gospel writers, you know, this is Jesus as a second Moses. And Moses had to ask God for the manor, whereas Jesus himself is providing for the people. So it very much paints Jesus as a second at Moses. We'll continue this interview in a moment, right after these efforts. Hi there. Just before we return to the episode, I wanted to pop in here to tell you about the history hits subscription and give you a taste of the exclusive content that our subscribers get. Now, as a history hit subscriber, you have access to hundreds of Brad new documentaries with a new release every week from Dan's to no exploring Maya ruins to my documentary on Petra and the Nabateans. There's an app where you can search for any time period, people or presenter. There is something for everyone. You also get, as part of the subscription, early access to all

35:45of our podcasts with no ads. Now on the engines, we really value our listeners without you doing this podcast would not be possible. So we also release an exclusive subscriber only episode every two weeks. And our most recent installment published last Friday was with our guest for this very episode, the wonderful Helen Bond. Together, we delve into the origins of her interest in biblical history and Helen reveals some enticing tidbits from the real history of Jesus of Nazareth. Did you know, for example, that Jesus is a female disciple and may have been bankrolling his whole Galilean operation? Just how much influence did these women have? Here's Helen explaining more. And going back to the women who knew Jesus. I mean, you've also researched extensively with Joan Taylor, who we've also had on the podcast, great friend on the show, about the female disciples of Jesus. Firstly, what a title, the female disciples of Jesus. But what was it like, I'm picking the

36:48lives of these figures that are often overlooked? And what was it like unpacking, let's say, Mary Magdalene's story or Salamese story? Yeah, well, I mean, the difficulty with some of them is we know so little, but you know, we'll have a little tiny fragment. We'll hear from the gospel writers that these women were traveling around Galilee with Jesus. And in Luke's gospel, he says that these women are sort of basically bankrolling the operation. He tells us that and then he moves on and he's thinking, well, tell us more, you know, what's happening? Why are these women following? Where are they sleeping at night? How are they helping from their own resources? What are they doing? And so just being imaginative and trying to think through these things was really interesting. I mean, hopefully there's more than just imagination. And it's sort of informed imagination based on what we know of the first century period and the social context of all of that.

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39:22And so from what you were saying before, like it was once believed as you say that Mark did not know Luke Matthew or in particular, that John didn't know Mark. And so the old argument being that because they also include let's use for instance the story of the feeding of the 5,000 because both Mark and John used that story, but evident that they believed John didn't know of Mark, then that was evidence for that event actually happening almost. That added credence to the historicity. So that was the old argument. Yeah, yeah. So the old argument, if John is completely independent of the other two, areas where they overlap suggest that they're both dependent on earlier tradition. Now that may not necessarily go back to Jesus, but it's earlier and you're sort of pushing things back and the way that people got over those similarities between the two texts, in two texts that supposedly don't know each other, is to say that they are all pieces of oral tradition

40:26that are floating about. And so yeah, the idea, it then becomes easier or at least possible to sort of say, well, places where they are similar do suggest that it's some sort of shared tradition and this may well go back to an earlier stage and may well be historical. So it's interesting from a historical angle. Of course, as soon as you start saying John is simply picking up on the others, that just collapses. Well, I'm going to ask you now, do you think John actually did know of the writings of Mark and then Matthew and Luke? I'm absolutely convinced that he certainly think that he knows Mark, yep. And all the work I've done ever since my PhD was sort of comparative stuff across all four gospels. And in every case, I always thought John is, John is sort of finding a new angle on Mark. There's something in Mark that John is bringing out and developing. So,

41:27although I was taught that John didn't know the others, I never believed it. So I always thought that John knew Mark. Nowadays, there's been quite a lot of new work on whether he knew Luke and Matthew. Luke, I think, is fairly clear. Matthew is the one that's not entirely, not quite so obvious because so many times Matthew is the same as Mark. And it's difficult to know if he's getting it from Mark or Matthew. But I think enough has been written recently to convince me that probably John knew all three. Well, let's explore some parts of John's gospels. It is very interesting. And you did mention that that prelude, that prologue that is in John. So what does this, you think? It takes us back into prehistory. This is great for the ancient's podcast. Yes, yes, well, right the beginning. The whole sort of the first phrase in the beginning is taking you back to Genesis because that's the way that Genesis starts. And the way that books were known in certainly amongst Jews is by the first word. So in the beginning, we call it Genesis, which again

42:33is from the Greek meaning in the beginning. So straight away, a hero is transported to the world of Genesis. And we're hearing a creation story. But this time, it includes Jesus. In the beginning was the word and the word was God. The word was with God, the word was God. And so Jesus is part of this creative process right from the start. And it brings in traditions of wisdom and proverbs and all kinds of other sort of Hebrew Bible elements. People who are used to hearing these scriptures are, there is a pinging with all of these resonances. And so what John is doing is rewriting the history of the world, but putting Jesus in it. And so for him, Jesus is pre-existent. Jesus was there at the beginning. So he comes, he sort of closes himself as a human. He comes and has his ministry. And then he goes back up to God at the end. So it's a very different picture

43:34to the one that we get in the synoptics where he's just, you know, well certainly in Marx gospel, he's he's just a bloke. But you can argue it's a more popular way of writing at the time, I guess, with the time of John, if he's including this preamble compared to the others, I guess it wants, as we'll delve into other kind of differences in the story, maybe it's also a reflection of the world that this figure of John was living in when he was writing this, well, this gospel. Yeah, and I think John's sort of, you know, immense creative abilities that in Matthew also wants to link Jesus with the Jewish scriptures, but he tends to do it in a more clunky way. He'll just say, this was to fulfill the scripture. And then he quotes the scripture. Whereas John does quote some scriptures, but more often he'll just kind of tell the story so that you hear the scriptures through it. So it's a more creative way of dealing with it, I think. Well, let's explore some of the past. I mean, I mentioned we should talk a bit more about John the Baptist as our chat goes on. And you say how it begins with John the Baptist. So it doesn't

44:38seem to be much difference there. But there is an interesting difference in how he's portrayed in John compared to Matthew, Mark and Luke, if I'm mistaken. Yes, yes, which is an interesting contrast. So what is this contrast? So in the synoptic gospels, John is portrayed as a kind of Elijah figure. So there was an idea in Jewish thought that Elijah would come first before the Messiah. And he's the chariots of fire, man. Yeah, he's the guy who goes up because and that's the whole point. Elijah is his great prophet from ancient times, sort of, you know, 8th century BCE, something like that. And he doesn't die. He goes up to heaven. And the idea is that he's still waiting in heaven. He's going to come back at the end times. And he's going to come back and he's going to restore everything before the Messiah comes or at least before, you know, God comes to inaugurate the end times. And so in in Mark's gospel, which is then followed by Matthew and Luke, John the Baptist is presented as Elijah. He's wearing the clothes of Elijah. He's got this sort of

45:38camel hair clothing and he's got a leather belt. Yeah, the wild locusts. He's having a great time out in the wilderness. So he's this sort of bed-o-in figure who's sort of, you know, reminding people of Elijah. And he has great success with the people. And it's only once he's finished when he's arrested that Jesus then embarks on his own ministry. So Elijah comes first. He restores all things as he's supposed to do in the book of Malachi. And then Jesus starts. In John's gospel though, John the Baptist is not Elijah. John the Baptist's role is as a witness to Jesus. So in John's gospel, you have a sort of a ministry that that continues. So Jesus goes to John the Baptist. He gets baptized even though that's not really described very clearly in John. But then the two men are sort of continuing side by side. And John the Baptist takes several opportunities to say, you know,

46:42behold the Lamb of God. Behold the Lamb of God and keeps telling people who he is. And so his purpose in John's gospel is really to be a witness to Jesus. So it's just a different use of John the Baptist. I mean, I just want to use that example to kind of further what I was saying before that is this a reflection of almost developing thoughts or the theological philosophical early Christian thoughts about, you know, these parts of Jesus' story. Let's say from the time of Mark now to the time of John, there's been a development of thinking at least in some Christian early Christian communities that John the Baptist is not meant to be Elijah. So I think, stuff like that. Yeah, I think certainly there's been a sort of a downplaying of that apocalyptic sense that the end is now. I mean, it's still very clear in Mark's gospel, but it gets less and less. And by the time you get to John, John actually doesn't say much about sort of apocalyptic ideas.

47:42For John, you can have eternal life now if you believe in Jesus. So it's very much a kind of a playing down of all of that. And so the idea of seeing John the Baptist as Elijah and sort of pointing to the end of time wouldn't really fit for him. So instead, he has him as a witness. And another thing that John has is a sort of a law court motif all the way through. So he has several characters in the gospels bearing witness to Jesus. And John the Baptist is just sort of one of the first of this. The idea of sort of a trial, I suppose, the whole, the whole of the gospel in some ways is a trial. And sort of that fits in then with his use of John the Baptist. And so different types of miracles as well that are performed and the amount of people who are watching them as well. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's right. And that's very different too, because in in the synoptic gospels, the thing that leads to Jesus's death is the incident in the temple. Jesus goes into the temple. He knocks over the the the tables of the money changers and the

48:46the people selling the doves. And he says, my my father's house should be a house of prayer. And and then the chief priests get really worked up and decide, you know, oh, we better we better arrest him. There's in John's gospel though, the incident in the temple is right in the very beginning. And it's not the thing that leads to Jesus's death. But the thing that leads to his death, ironically, is his offer of life to Lazarus. So he raises Lazarus from the dead. And it's that that the chief priests and decide, you know, we're going to we're going to kill him. Did Jesus raise any other people to life in the other gospel? He does. Yes. So there's not a Lazarus figure in the other one. But that bet. Well, interestingly, there is a Lazarus figure. There's a there's a parable in Luke's gospel of a poor man called Lazarus and a rich man. And the poor man Lazarus is at the the rich man's gate and they both die. They go to well, they they die and then they go to the next world. Lazarus is in the bosom of Abraham. And he's

49:48having a great time in the afterlife. The the rich man though is in this terrible sort of hell-like place of flames and torture. And he says and he realizes that, you know, it's because he's been rich and he's not cared about the poor. And so he says to Abraham, can can you send Lazarus back to back to the earth to warn my brothers? And Abraham says, no, no, they get one chance, you know, I'm not going to send Lazarus back. So it's interesting, I think that and and one of the reasons why I think probably John does know Luke is that he I'm fairly certain he takes that parable and dramatizes it into the raising of Lazarus so that, you know, Lazarus does come back in John's gospel. And this is the greatest miracle that Jesus performs. Gosh, I could ask about so many other miracles as well and in which in which gospels they feature because I don't know like the good Samaritan, is that Luke? I can't remember. That's Luke and many others. But we'll go on to the next part of our chat, which is going to refresh on the

50:52authorship question, the genre, and then whether there are any parts of these gospels that can be verified kind of stories from extra gospel sources. We'll continue this interview in a moment right after these others. At Edward Jones, we believe rich means opening yourself to new possibilities. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are, helping you move forward with confidence. Let's find your rich Edward Jones, member SIPC. At QVC, shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering something new every day. Start with today's special value. Then explore exciting finds across the brands and categories you love from beauty and fashion to home, culinary, and outdoor living. Shop now at QVC.com.

52:09Let's refresh ourselves first of all with the authorship of these four gospels. Do we think there's any chance that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John did write them? If you mean by those people, the people in the New Testament. Don't mention those. The apostles, no, I don't think so. I think it's perfectly possible that the person who wrote Mark's gospel was called Markus. It was a common name. Why not? I think as certainly as soon as you've got a couple of gospels, you've got to find some way to distinguish between them. These names are remarkably consistent in the tradition, but the idea that they relate to people who we know of in the New Testament, I think, is very unlikely. Can we say that the quality of the writing of the style and the way that these biographies are formed, although we might not be able to give them particular names, we can say these are

53:14evidently educated early Christian figures who are creating the gospel. Yes, I don't think they're Galilee and fishermen. Also, by the time you've got Matthew and now John using Mark's gospel, would eyewitnesses be using another gospel that even tradition doesn't think that Mark himself was an eyewitness, even if he's using material from Peter? I think it's unlikely. Also, the dates to make it very unlikely that they would have to be extremely... How could Jonathan live that wrong? Yes, it's extremely old. How does now, if we get to this other figure, I've got one of my notes, Irenaeus. How does he come into the story then with the authorship? Yes, so he's a second century, late second century Christian figure, and he doubles down on the traditional names really because of the fight against heretics, because other people, other

54:20gospels are appearing. As I said before, a lot of them are perfectly fine, but some of them are, you know, not quite as the bishop would like. I mean, you can't really talk about heresy at this period because it's too early, you know, there's no orthodoxy, there's no heresy. As we mentioned earlier, you know, following different gospels, different parts. Yeah, exactly. There's different, different ideas. It's only sort of when the creeds start to come into existence that we can talk about orthodoxy really, but there's certain things that make Irenaeus sort of happier than others, and he really sort of doubled down on the four gospels, and he talks about why there should be four gospels. There's four corners of the earth, four winds, and he's really responsible for sort of giving these four, these particular four gospels, a higher standing in the early church. And I do think that it's probably because they're already, you know, he's not inventing this out of nothing. They're already the ones that are most popular. But he, and he, I think it's really

55:23interesting that, you know, the early church didn't decide they had to just have one or two, you know, they were very happy to have four different perspectives on Jesus. But he's very much the one who sort of said that these are the four. So of all the events in Jesus' life, miracles included, are there any parts of the story that we see in the gospels that are also reported in extra gospel literature that can give more historicity to them actually happening? Well, if you include Paul, so Paul's letters. So obviously he's still, he's a Christian, but he's not one of the gospels, and, and he is obsessed by Jesus's death and resurrection. I mean, those are the things that he talks about most. Strangely, Paul doesn't say much about the historical Jesus, but he does, he does include a tradition about the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist, the bread and the wine, the night before he's arrested. And he has one or two other sayings of Jesus

56:28in there. He mentions Jesus as brothers as well, and Peter and James, and, you know, some of the other disciples. So we get some sort of corroboration there from, from Paul. Otherwise, you've got to wait, I mean, other New Testament texts, of course, mention other things, but otherwise, you've got to wait till Josephus, the Jewish historian, in the 90s, when he has, he has a little paragraph about Jesus where he says that he was handed over to Pilate by the leading men of the Jews and, and, and Jesus was crucified, and his followers believed that he'd been resurrected from the dead afterwards. Now that the paragraph as we have it has clearly been edited by Christian scribes, because he's got bits in there that Josephus would never have said. So he, if it was right to call him a man, he has, if, I know, he was the Messiah, and then something about the resurrection being in accordance with

57:32the Scriptures. So, you know, these are things that the Pharisee Josephus would never have said. But most people think that if you take those away, and maybe there was something that the Christian scribes deleted, because this is in a section that talks about trouble in the time of Pilate, and as we have it, there's no particular trouble. So most people nowadays think that something was there, possibly not too far removed from what we have at the moment, that it was more tweaked, and perhaps something's omitted. But in any case, that does mean that in the 90s or so, you have a non-Christian Jew mentioning Jesus. And that's really quite early as well. The trial of Jesus, because it's sentencing by Pilate, the crucifixion, that seems pretty beyond out that that historically did happen to his figure called Jesus of Nazareth. And what about the baptism by John the Baptist? Is that also quite universally accepted? That a historical figure called

58:33Jesus was baptized by a man called John the Baptist? Well, again, we know about John the Baptist from Josephus, who actually says more about John the Baptist than he does about Jesus. And he seems to be quite, quite favorably disposed to John the Baptist. The interesting thing about the baptism is that although Mark describes it in some detail, the other gospels are a little bit twitchy about it. So Matthew includes a little bit where, where John the Baptist says, you know, oh, I shouldn't be baptising you, you should be baptising me. And Jesus says, no, just get on with it. And in John, it's it's sort of almost not there. Jesus goes for baptism and then he sort of moves on that you don't actually get told about the baptism as as such. So the implication of all of this is that the early Christians were a bit embarrassed about the fact that Jesus was baptized by John probably because John's baptism is for the forgiveness of sins. So whereas that didn't bother

59:33Mark, clearly as time goes on, Christians are a little bit worried about the idea that, you know, surely Jesus doesn't have too many sins. And so they they sort of go through the motions of this, but they're a little bit embarrassed by it. And so the idea goes if if if they could have got away with not saying anything about it, they might have done. And that does suggest perhaps that it's a historical piece that that has just got into the tradition and it's fairly well established. Are there any other kind of key parts of the Jesus' story that I mentioned in in the gospels that, you know, if you look at external evidence, you know, people have debated long and hard, you know, that there might be some historic there, you know, these this something like this might have happened. So feeding it the 5,000 prints that's going back to that, yes, okay, maybe it wasn't, is it two loaves and five fish, no two fish and five loaves, but it may be something similar that

1:00:36a lot of people were fed with seemingly a little amount of food or something like that. I think it's difficult in that particular one. I mean, that's just an example, but other other other pieces. Yeah, I mean there's big debate. I mean, obviously the miracles are the really difficult thing when it comes to historicity, you know, what happened. And obviously, we explain it in unlogical terms. Yeah, exactly. To us reading these things today, we think, but that doesn't happen, you know, that doesn't square with my idea of what normally goes on in the universe. But obviously we're living in the first century in a time where people do go to the shrines of Asclepius. They give their offerings. They receive a vision from Asclepius and people are leaving sort of inscriptions in these shrines to thank the God for healing them. There are other Jewish holy men who are also said to be able to heal. So, I mean, this is a world where healing does happen and whatever we might think about it in the present day, it's not impossible that

1:01:36there are, that there were things that that made, you know, these, these sort of paradoxical events. I mean, Josephus also says that Jesus was a worker of amazing deeds. So clearly, Jesus has this reputation, whatever we make of it. I mean, there's even stories of Vespasian being able to, you know, heal the, heal somebody's arm and give sites to somebody. Well, this is the thing. And I think of Plutarch as well with some of his famous lives that these actual historical figures are given extra extraordinary abilities. I was like, some say they did this. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it becomes reported word of mouth, which leads me to a question about the genre. What type of genre should we perceive the gospels as? Are they historical reportage? I witness accounts. Or is it better to perceive them as the same as kind of Greco-Roman biographies? Like, for instance, Plutarch, Xenophon, Sirotoneus and so on? Yeah, I would say as Greco-Roman biographies,

1:02:39very much so. Or I mean, there are Jewish version of it, you know, so you have similar stories in the Hebrew Bible. I mean, there's all kinds of sort of miraculous things happening in the the Hebrew Bible. But I think largely they are literary sources and they have a theological emphasis. They're wanting to convince people that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. They're strengthening people who probably already believe in Jesus. They're strengthening them in their faith. They're offering Jesus as an example because ancient biographies has moralistic a moralistic purpose. They're offering Jesus as an example to people, to model their lives on, to be like Jesus. This refrain, follow me, follow me. It's all about being like Jesus, devoting your life to Jesus. And I think that they're shaping the material to so that it coheres with their sort of literary aims. And so I think they may well have some good

1:03:41historical material in there. But the most important thing is that portrait of Jesus that they're wanting to paint. Well, this is the thing. I mean, the big question I had originally was, you know, are the gospels historical? I guess I could just as much ask, are they meant to be historical? Exactly. Exactly. I don't think. And again, it's very much a modern thing. Our idea in the sort of post-enlightenment world that unless something happened, it's not true. Now, ancient people didn't have that. I mean, clearly they had a sense of, did it happen or did it not? And as you say, a lot of biographers will say, well, some say and others say, and you get people who say, well, it's reported, but I don't think so. But still, they're putting those stories in, which is interesting, you know, if they didn't think so, why are they? But, you know, what's the purpose of retelling some of these sort of miraculous stories? So I think the gospels are, they are historical, but they're not designed to be eyewitness. They're not, the question they're addressing isn't

1:04:45what exactly can we know about the historical Jesus? The question they're addressing is, how can this man be the Christ, the Son of God? And how should I live my life if I want to follow him? And I think that's, that's a subtly different question. They may well be drawing on historical reminiscences. And I'm sure there is historical material there, but it's very difficult to know which bits are historical, which aren't, particularly when you have different slants in different gospels. And this is not so that they don't have value as historical sources because they still do, they give you insights into life in Judean, the first century, and then early Christ, developing early Christianity as well. Exactly. Exactly. That's another layer of history that they tell us about, you know, how, how at least some Christian communities were changing and adapting their view of Jesus in the late first century. Mark versus John, for instance. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And of course, then many other books in the New Testament as well that add even more color

1:05:46to that picture. Yeah. And Helen, this has been absolutely fantastic. Is there anything else you'd like to mention about the gospels before we completely wrap up? Oh, well, I think, I think people should have a read of them and just sit down. I think so often people don't, you know, if you go to church, you hear bits and pieces. Good. As mentioned earlier. Yeah. Or people think that, you know, oh, I did, you know, I did some of those years ago in some, in Sunday schools, but if you sit down and read them as ancient documents, I think they are fascinating. Absolutely. And you have, of course, your brilliant podcast yourself and another friend at the show, Lloyd Lurell and Jones. Yes, biblical time machine. Yes. Yes. Where we discuss everything to do with. Well, Hebrew Bible as well. So from creation right up to late antiquity, where we're covering all sorts of stuff. You absolutely do. And it just goes me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the show. Thank you. Well, there you go. There was Professor Helen Bond talking all about the historicity of the four gospels and who these figures were. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

1:06:51I really hope you enjoyed the episode. Now, if you want to learn more about the history of early Christianity, then do go and check out our episodes from earlier this year about the Pharisees and the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. We'll put links to both of those episodes in the show notes. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Engines. Please make sure to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get to your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favor. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, well, we'd really appreciate that. And don't forget, you can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week. Sign up at historyhit.com slash subscribe. That's all from me. I'll see you in the next episode. At Edward Jones, we believe Rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you

1:07:55where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your Rich together. Edward Jones, member SIPC. At QVC, fall shopping is more than just checking out. It's discovering the brands you love across beauty, fashion, home, and culinary all in one place. Whether you're getting ready for crisp mornings, cozy nights, or everyday moments, QVC has what you need for the season ahead with brands like Laura Geller, Philosophy, Ninja, and so many more. Shop now at QVC.com.