06.22. Why Four Gospels?

Chapter 21 Why Four Gospels? In the progress of our studies we have reached the books of the New Testament and the question of the genuineness of the four Gospels. And at the beginning an inquiry suggests itself as to why there are four Gospels? Why was not one enough? And if more than one were needed, why not five, or twenty? Why just four? There must be some reason for this.

This, in turn, brings up another question, What is the nature and significance of the Gospels? Why are these first four books of the New Testament called the “Gospels?” The word “Gospel” means good news, and distinctively, that good news of which God is the author, and which Christ came to preach, and of which he is himself the sum and substance in his work for the salvation of men. Strictly speaking, of course, there is, and can be, but one Gospel, but one story of who he is and what he did, although this story may be presented from more than one point of view. Now, when we seek further the why and the wherefore for four points of view, we seem to find it in the Old Testament. Christ as the Coming One is foretold there, and although He is presented variously in type and prophecy, yet when all these preintimations of his person and work are grouped and classified, they range themselves under four heads. He is seen as the Messiah, the King of Israel; He is seen as the Servant of Jehovah; He is seen as the Son of man; and He is seen as the Son of God. As corresponding to this, Matthew’s Gospel presents Him in the first light, Mark’s in the second, Luke’s in the third, and John’s in the fourth.

Dr. E.W. Bullinger, in one of his writings, exhibits this from the Old Testament in a very interesting way. There are, for example, twenty Hebrew words translated “Branch,” but only one of them (Tsemech), is used exclusively of the Messiah, and this only four times, as follows:

·    Jeremiah 23:5-6, “Branch” the king.

·    Zechariah 3:8, “Branch” the servant.

·    Zechariah 6:12, “Branch” the man.

·    Isaiah 4:2, “Branch” Jehovah.

There is still another very interesting fact related to this inquiry as to why there are four Gospels. For, just as we find the Savior presented to men under four different aspects, so we find four different classes of men to whom these aspects must have severally appealed. A suggestion of three of these classes is found in Pilate’s inscription on the cross at Golgotha, which was in letters of Hebrew, of Latin and of Greek. These were the languages of the representative races of that day who differed from each other in ways that were very marked. The Hebrews were the children of revelation, and would be interested in no person claiming to be their Messiah who did not fulfill the teachings of the Old Testament prophets concerning Him. Hence Matthew writes distinctively for them as it were, and meets their peculiar need by presenting Jesus from that point of view, and showing Him to be unmistakably the promised King of Israel of whom the prophets spake. The Romans were the active, energetic people of the time. The race that did things. Their ideal was power, as evidenced in their worship of the state, or rather the emperor representing the state, to their mind the highest expression of power. Mark writes distinctively for them, presenting Jesus in such a way as to attract them, the man of power, of energy, the active Servant of Jehovah, the whole Gospel vibrating with movement. The Greeks, on the other hand, were the intellectual and contemplative people. Their ideal was wisdom. They conceived their mission to be to elevate man, not man as a race so much as the individual man. In that sense they were looking for the ideal man, and Luke presents him in Jesus the divine Son of man.

These first three Gospels, sometimes called the synoptics for a reason to be named later, did the work now usually ascribed to the foreign missionary. That is, they made converts to the Christian religion from among the three classes of men just described. But these converts by becoming Christians made of themselves a fourth class, they constituted the Christian church for which in a sense, a special Gospel was required. To meet their necessities John wrote a generation later than the other evangelists, recording certain deeds, and especially discourses, of Jesus which they had not recorded, and which were more fitted to answer the deeper questions concerning His person and work that had come up with the progress and development of the church. For further discussion of why there are four Gospels, the reader is referred to the author’s earlier work, Synthetic Bible Studies, “Matthew.”

Let us now consider more particularly, that further twofold division of the Gospels already hinted at in the use of the word “Synoptics” as differentiating the first three from the fourth. There is a remarkable agreement among the first three as distinguished from the fourth, an “agreement in the incidents and sayings selected and in the general order in which they are presented. Side by side they yield a synopsis or conspectus, i.e., the same general view or outline,” from which the word describing them is derived. On the other hand, the fourth Gospel stands alone. “The writer’s purpose is not so much to tell the story of the earthly life of Jesus, as to interpret Him as ‘the Christ, the Son of God.’ Familiarity with the facts and persons of the synoptics is constantly assumed, and while here and there the narratives coincide, yet for the most part the incidents are new and selected for the writer’s special purpose.” The question now arises as to the human source of the Synoptics? Of course, as to their divine source it will be shown in a later part of our work the sense in which they were inspired. But the agreements among them seem to point to a common human source, while the differences indicate at the same time a great measure of independence. Scholars are unable to explain this, although all are agreed that there was at first an oral or spoken Gospel, in other words, that the facts about Jesus Christ were told by the apostles and early disciples perhaps for twenty-five or thirty years before it was felt necessary to commit them to writing. This necessity was felt as the first generation of Christians began to pass away and the Lord still tarried. The idea is prevalent in these days that Mark’s Gospel was the earliest of all, and constituted a kind of original from which the first and third Gospels copied adding a little here and there, and changing the arrangement to suit these additions; but whether this was so or not we find in the introduction to the third Gospel, Luke 1:1-4, a very good account of the manner in which anyone of the three might have been put together, at least in part. You will find on reading the verses named that “Luke disclaimed any first-hand knowledge of what he chronicles, but with painstaking accuracy has gathered and sifted his authorities.” Among these latter were the testimonies of “eyewitnesses and ministers of the word,” he tells us, as well as “many” written fragments of which Mark, or even some earlier document may have had the chief place. Scholars know positively of no other earlier document, but imagine one to suit their convenience which they have designated as the “Logia,” which simply means the word or the oracles.