Bonus Episode: Why are the gospels in the order they are in?

Short teachings from Hillcrest Church further exploring Sunday's teachings.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey, how are you doing, Tim here? Hope you're having a good Memorial Day. We do just we do remember uh those who have given their lives and service and protection of our country this day, and uh and hope however you're spending the day um you were uh yeah having good connection uh with with your people. Um I wanted to do a special episode uh today. There was a question that came in a couple weeks ago uh that I thought I'd take this episode and uh and just put it out there. So the question was why do the four gospels come to us in the order that they do? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Why that order? And I think the person was wondering, because Luke uh, of course, wrote a sequel to his gospel, Acts. Uh and you can tell very clearly from the beginning of the book of Acts that these are meant to, they're the same author, but written to they fit together. And um Acts, you know, he starts it off um talking about all that he wrote before and and and how what's going on how Acts is how Jesus continues uh to act and to teach uh through his people by his spirit. And so uh part one and two, but they're separated in the ordering of our books of the Bible. Why why is that and that what you know why the order of the gospels that they're in? So interesting question. I never thought about it much before. I thought it was a good question. And just to be clear, I'm not an expert on the first those like the church fathers and those first few centuries of the church. I mean, I've I've I've read, I've learned, but that's not my expertise. So I had to do a little digging, I'll tell you what I learned. Um, and uh yeah, for your for your curiosity. So, uh first of all, we got to remember a couple things. Matthew, these gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, um, we you know, we think of them as books of the Bible, but when they were first written down, they were scrolls. Uh, the invention or the use of uh what is what scholars call a codex or a codices, uh, these happened later on. A codex, what we would call a book, is where you have flat pages all bound together at one end. Um, that was an innovation. Before that, it was scrolls where you had one very long piece of parchment or papyrus that was then rolled up. And when um when uh the Gospels were first being written down, it was still scroll time. Um and so they were written in scrolls, and that meant that they would, you know, in a sense, travel separately. They weren't bound, you know, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they if you if you just had if you just have a collection of scrolls, you don't put them in order, right? You just kind of you just have them. So one uh that they started at scrolls and so they didn't need to be in order at first. Secondly, um they don't uh and this is a whole kind of a whole nother rabbit trail, but no, like those four books don't identify their authors. Like Matthew doesn't say bye Matthew. Um, you know, uh Mark doesn't have a copyright page, uh and the author's bio on the back, right? So they're they're anonymous uh texts. We have um there uh you know the early on there was tradition around their authorship, but it's not actually written into the texts themselves. Now, if you get to the New Testament letters, the epistles, it's a different story. Uh, you know, Paul often say, like, this is from Paul and Timothy, uh, but we don't get that in the gospel. So so that's what you have. We have these scrolls, that in the scroll it isn't that that the author isn't written down, and they're not, they're just kind of free-floating. So early on, um what happened is uh the church is kind of nailing down what books, what scrolls should be part of the New Testament, and they're agreeing that these are the four scrolls. And early on, there's tradition that got uh uh associated to the authorship of these four scrolls. And when I say tradition, I don't mean that in a pejorative way, like it's absolutely untrue by any means. Uh I just mean that it's not actually part of holy scripture itself. Um but uh yeah, and so the the four uh the traditions were one, Matthew, the tax collector, uh, two, Mark, um the the scribe of Peter, uh Luke, the Gentile convert who traveled with Paul, and then John, um one of the sons of Zebedee. So these were the these were the early traditions. And so um it seemed like a couple things happened in the early church. And and as I was researching it, you do find some different orderings of the gospels in those first couple centuries. They're not all, you know, and and it start, man, I'm jumping all over the place. We we know about the orderings in a couple ways. Sometimes some church fathers talk about the order, and then the other way we know about the orderings is we literally start to find codexes of the Bible, a codec, like a book with them, and once you have a book, you have to put them in a certain order. And so we find a couple different orders, um, but we find a few things pretty consistently. Usually Matthew's at the front. Um, and one, it seems that that's because these church fathers uh you know believed it was written by one of the twelve, Matthew, and two, they thought it was written first. Augustine talks about this, and three, the early church loved the book of Matthew, just in terms of like the robustness of its teaching, the length, its attention to detail. It was just one of the favorite gospels. And so uh Matthew comes first. Uh Mark was often put next to it. Uh sometimes Luke was put next to it, but it seems like Mark, a lot of a lot of the early church just saw Mark as kind of an abbreviated form of Matthew. Now, I um yeah, I well, we'll go back, we'll come to modern opinions later, but I don't think it's just an abbreviated form of Matthew. But a lot of the early church saw it that way. Um, and so it was put next to Matthew, Luke, the Gentile gospel, was next, and then um John oftentimes was put last because uh for two reasons. He was the other kind of one of the twelve, you know, kind of start with one of the twelve, end with one of the twelve, John, son of Zebedee. And then also John was seen as the most kind of like theologically developed gospel. The first three are all very similar, they're called the synoptics. Um, and then John is kind of the most uh the most kind of reflective at the end, and also um was understood to be the last written, and so is put at the end. And so um it appears that for the first few centuries of the church uh there was some shuffling around of uh of of the order, uh, but it began to coalesce around this. Matthew and John as the book ends, as some of the twelve, uh, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the order that it was believed they were written. Um, Mark next to Matthew because it's abbreviated form, and you kind of even have this logical sequence. Matthew starts with the the genealogies out of the Hebrew scriptures, um, then you move to this um this abbreviated form, Matthew, and it seems to have this very Jewish sense in the book of Matthew. Then you move to the Gentile gospel, Luke, and then you move to the kind of most fully developed theological reflection, John, and that is how the four um hold together. So that seems to be how the early church thought about. We see it kind of it's um by the time of like Augustine, he describes it this way, and and it really seems to start to stick as the order that Bibles are copied in. Now, there's all kinds of interesting things because there's a lot of all sorts of stuff that I've mentioned. There's scholarship questions around. Most modern scholars now think that Mark was written first and Matthew borrowed from Mark. Um, there's questions about whether Matthew the tax collector the author of Matthew, um, or at least um uh, you know, I think I've I've heard a number of arguments where Matthew isn't necessarily the author in the sense of writing all writing the entire book of Matthew, but the uh the additional parts of Matthew, like the Sermon on the Mount, that aren't in Mark, those are the things that came from Matthew, and that somebody, some of Matthew's followers combined Matthew's recordings with Mark. So there's some stuff there. Um yeah, the the order, uh, like I said before, that a lot of scholars think Mark was first. Luke is pretty secure that um that it was written by this Luke, Luke the Doctor. And then John, there's there's debate. Most scholars believe that John was the last, um, but there also is debate about was it John son of Zebedee? Some scholars think it was actually a different John, John the Elder, who is also one of the disciples, not one of the 12 disciples, but kind of the circle of disciples. Some scholars think it was Lazarus. Um and there's reasons around because often the the book of John talks about the disciple Jesus loved, um, and when Jesus goes to raise Lazarus uh from the tomb, it's it um it mentions how Jesus loved Lazarus. Some people think there's a connection there. Um and so there's these authorship questions. Um so it's interesting, like what uh, like if if we end up, you know, if those in those first few centuries, if they put the gospels in a certain order for reasons that now we're not sure those reasons are 100% accurate, what what do we do with that? Um, you know, uh I'm personally I don't get too hung up on the ordering of the gospels. I don't think, like if like if somebody said, you know, you know, I think we should read Mark, Matthew, John, and then Luke, I'd be like, okay, great. Just as long I want you reading them. That's what I want you doing. I want you to know them. Um, I I I don't have heartburn over the order that they're printed uh in our Bibles, but I do think it's interesting uh to think about. And I do think maybe, maybe to uh maybe two maybe two thoughts to end. One, um, I do think there's an appropriateness of of Matthew starting with those genealogies flowing out of the Hebrew scriptures. That seems really appropriate. Um, I do think moving then towards Mark and then Luke, the Gentile gospel. I do think John is helpful after having read the three synoptic gospels to then encounter John, I think is a helpful way of doing it. And so I think I think there's some helpful kind of discipleship learning reasons to have them in the in the order they're in. I think that they're helpful there. But maybe more than anything, I do hope like um these questions of authorship and order of the gospel, those kinds of things, yeah, that we these are good things. Um I don't think Christians, I don't think we need to be ordering about the uh arguing about man um what order our Bibles are printed in. But I think it is good uh to be uh learning about the the authorship questions that Christian scholars are thinking about and the order um that our gospels uh were written in. Uh I think sometimes it can be easy um, you know, for the average Christian as part of a church to be like, I'm not gonna worry about that stuff. Uh I would love to invite you to learn more about that and to um and to to pick up an introduction to the gospels book. And if you need uh if you need recommendations, I'd always be happy to point you towards one. I would say if you just had you know, if you had to start one today, where do I even begin? Um Craig Bloomberg's, uh, where is that? It's on my I know it's on my bookshelf here. Yeah, Jesus and the Gospels would be a wonderful kind of starting point to just be introduced to some of these things. But um, I think I think loving God with our minds is a willingness to engage and think deeply about these things because the truth matters. So I've already talked too long about this. Order the gospels. Question at least answered to some degree. Have a great memorial day. And if you gotta uh if you have another question that's been banging around your mind, shoot it to me, Tim.k at hcbellingham.com. All right, talk to you later.