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The Four Types of Gospel
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Extract
Dr John Marsh, in his excellent Penguin commentary on St John’s gospel, remarks that ‘the gospels read so very much like historical narratives of what took place that it requires effort not to treat them exclusively as such, but to understand them as much more concerned to indicate what was going on in the narrative provided’ (p. 52). One must make the same effort when faced with the differences between the four gospels: these are not simply re-editions, revisions, expansions of one basic ‘life of the historical Jesus’. As Dr Marsh puts it:
If even Mark is not constructed chronologically but theologically (i.e. is not concerned simply to report what took place but always to make plain what was going on), then any correction of Mark made by John could not, in the nature of things, be simply chronological. Any ‘correction’ would primarily be concerned with theology, with meaning, with what was going on and only secondarily by implication, as it were, with chronology, with what took place (p. 49).
This is well said, and nowadays commonly recognized. But is it enough? Is one merely shifting from the idea that later gospels were written to correct earlier gospels’ facts, to the idea that later gospels were written to correct earlier gospels’ theological ideas? To shift from thinking of gospellers as biographers to thinking of them as theologians seems still to perpetuate the idea that the gospels are four examples of one type of writing.
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- Copyright © 1969 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
page 702 note 1 The three scenes are announced perhaps in the act's opening words: ‘1, The Time is fulfilled. 2, The kingship of God is at hand. 3, Repent and believe the gospel’ (1, 15).
page 702 note 2 ‘Who can forgive sins?’ (2, 1–12). ‘Why does he eat with sinners?’ (2, 13–17). ‘Why do your disciples not fast?’ (2, 18–22). ‘Why do they/you break the sabbath?’ (2, 23–28; 3, 1–6).
page 703 note 1 With superb artistry Mark patterns the eight incidents in such a way that the second four reflect the first four.
First group: 1. Jesus as provider of bread enough for all (6, 30–56),
2. Opposition from the Pharisees (7, 1–23),
3. Restatement: bread enough for all (7, 24–30),
4. The opening of deaf ears (7, 31–37).
5. Second group: 5. Jesus as provider of bread enough for all (8, 1–10),
6. Opposition from the Pharisees (8, 11–12),
7. Restatement: bread enough for all (8, 14–21),
8. The opening of blind eyes (8, 22–26).
Mark is linking the need of the disciples (under the symbol of deafness and blindness) with the self‐revealing gift of Jesus (under the symbol of bread). The first desert feeding leading up to a manifestation of Jesus’ power on the lake (literally ‘Take heart; I AM, have no fear’) reminds us of the Old Testament manna (cf. Exodus 16, 12: ‘At twilight you shall eat flesh and in the morning be satisfied with bread; then you shall know that I am YHWH your God’). Then Mark contrasts the ritual exclusivism of the Pharisees with the availability of God's bread to all. Then comes an apparent discontinuity in the pattern: the healing of a deaf man. But when the fifth and sixth incidents have briefly served to set the pattern off again, a seventh incident draws the threads together: it is the disciples who are deaf and blind to the all‐sufficiency of the ‘new’ bread. And so Mark ends with the healing of a blind man in two stages, referring back symbolically to the twofold pattern of his whole scene.
page 704 note 1 It is generally recognized that Mark's original text ends at 16, 8.
page 706 note 1 I can no more accept the Jerusalem Bible's introductory description of Matthew's gospel as ‘a dramatic account in seven acts of the coming of the kingdom of heaven’, than I can its remark that ‘the plan Mark follows is the least systematic of all the synoptics’.
page 708 note 1 In John's first four chapters we find symbolized the whole of Luke's history as we have just described it. A journey of Jesus from Judea to Galilee during which the disciples learn to follow him and finally see his glory symbolizes the whole gospel story as we find it in Mark (John 1, 19–2, 12); a second journey which starts from the last Passover of Jesus’ life (2, 13–22) and passes from Jerusalem through Samaria to the resurrection of the pagan's son in Galilee symbolizes the history of the Church as we find it in Acts (John 2, 13–4, 54). Then, as though having summarized the synoptic point of view, John proceeds to identify Christ's life with the eternal sabbath work of God in chapter 5. Christ's life is where God has always been bringing the world to life.