Dating the Synoptic Gospels

What Did Jesus Actually Say and Do? Part Two

This is part two of a multipart series.

We can never 100% trust any passage we read about Jesus to be historically accurate. But there are various criteria we can apply that can mark a passage as more probable, or less probable, as the case may be. Let’s dive in and explore a few simple tools to help us judge the historical accuracy of any story on Jesus’s life. Once again, the Actual Jesus Heuristics™ I present here are not original. The goal is to bring them all into once place in a short, simple guide.

One critical criterion is to examine when the text was written. Even if the text is a first-hand account of events, the more time that passes between the event and the telling, the more memories change. A second-hand account presents an opportunity for the person in the middle to introduce changes — either intentionally or unintentionally — that more closely match their personal beliefs and biases. The more steps in the chain, the worse it gets, and at some point, the historical Jesus is replaced by a mythological Jesus.¹ There may be internal or external evidence about a text to help gauge how close to the actual event the author was. But in general, we can use the date of authorship as a proxy. As a general rule of thumb, a text would have to be written within a hundred years of his death (i.e., circa 130 AD) to be at all useful as a historical source. To sum up, I present my first Actual Jesus Heuristic™:

➧AJH #1➧ The later the account was written, the less likely it is to be accurate.

I’m presenting this heuristic first, because it provides a great excuse to introduce our cast: those texts that may (or may not) inform us about the words and deeds of the actual Jesus. I’m going to start with the Synoptic Gospels — Mark, Matthew, and Luke — and treat them as a group, as they are interdependent.

The Calming of the Storm

The Gospel of Mark is believed to be written around 60-70 AD, making it the earliest of the four canonical gospels. Jesus is believed to have been crucified around 30-33 AD, so the Markian account is within 3 or 4 decades of his death. One caveat here: the ending of this Gospel, Mark 16:9-20, was a late addition: probably late second century or early third century. It seems to be drawn from post-resurrection narratives found in the other three canonical gospels, and was probably added because an ending at Mark 16:8 is rather abrupt. It’s possible that an original ending was lost.

The Gospel of Matthew is generally believed to have been written around 75-100 AD, and the Gospel of Luke, 80–90 AD. If these authors were first-hand witnesses to Jesus’s ministry, we might guess they were at least 20 at the time of his crucifixion, which would put them at least in their sixties when they wrote their gospel. That’s a ripe old age for the time.

A thoughtful person, wondering why these three gospels are called the Synoptic Gospels, might guess it’s because they provide a sort of synopsis, or summary, of Jesus’s life. It’s a good guess, but it isn’t right. The Greek root syn- means “together”, and opsis is for “sight”, so the word can mean “taking a general or comprehensive view.” But in our case, it means “giving an account of events from the same point of view.” Mark, Matthew, and Luke are called the Synoptic Gospels because they are so much alike.

In fact, the authors of Matthew and Luke² both had a copy of Mark on hand, and were using it as source material.³ 94% of Mark made it into Matthew, and 78% made it into Luke. It’s particularly important to keep this in mind when we encounter a passage in Mark that is paralleled⁴ in Matthew or Luke, because we must not mistake this for an independent attestation. Normally, if we find corroborating accounts from two separate, reliable texts, this is a big win. But they have to be independent, and Matthew and Luke are both dependent on Mark.

➧ AJH #2 ➧ Multiple attestations from independent sources increases the likelihood of accuracy.

Knowing that Matthew and Luke relied on Mark as a source provides an interesting avenue: analyzing the changes that Matthew and Luke introduce. Mark’s Greek grammar is pretty bad, and the two other authors often correct it. Mark clearly did not have a copy of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) on hand, because he often misquotes scripture⁵. For example, Mark 1:2-3 reads:⁶

As has been written by Isaiah the prophet, “See, I send forth my messenger before your face, who will prepare your path” — “A voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the Lord’s way, make straight his paths’” — John baptizing in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of the heart’s transformation, for forgiveness of sins.

The second scriptural quotation is indeed from Isaiah, but the first is from Malachi 3:1. The authors of Matthew and Luke both work around this flub by leaving out the Malachi quote entirely. Interestingly, Luke also extends the second quote from Isaiah 40:3 to Isaiah 40:3-5.

Other changes that the authors of Matthew or Luke introduce — those that are not simple corrections — can provide more meaningful insight. For instance, we might learn about the author’s biases or intentions. Take the story told in Mark 7:24-30, where a gentile woman begs Jesus to heal her daughter, and Jesus heals her. Matthew’s version adds the following (Matthew 15:23-24):

But he answered not a word to her. And, approaching, his disciples implored him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out behind us.” But in reply he said, “I was not sent forth except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

In the Matthew version, the woman continues to beg, and Jesus eventually relents. We might read into this that Matthew’s author has some sort of grudge against gentiles, or at least, gentile women. (While Mark refers to the woman as a Syrophoenician, Matthew calls her a Canaanite.) Perhaps that is true, but it’s more fruitful to focus on the part where Jesus claims his ministry is for the Israelites alone. There was a major conflict in the early Christian church between two factions. One side, typified by Peter, thought of themselves as Jews, and required gentiles to essentially convert to Judaism, and follow Jewish law, to become Christian. The other side, typified by Paul, was much more accommodating to gentiles who wished to become Christian. No adult circumcision necessary! Matthew was definitely in the Jewish faction, and their addition can be seen as an attempt to shift this portrayal of Jesus to be more in line with the Peter faction than the Paul.

For our present purposes, it is clear that if Matthew or Luke take a story out of Mark, and include it in their own text with changes, those changes are highly unlikely to reflect the “actual Jesus,” or historical truth. Matthew and Luke made changes to the story for their own purposes, and not because they knew more or better than Mark did on the matter. It is not impossible that Matthew or Luke had another source that develops the same underlying story in a different direction, and they have combined the two versions into one. But even if this is the case, the Markian version is an earlier, and thus more reliable, attestation.

➧AJH #3➧ If a story occurs in Matthew or Luke, and also in Mark, then any changes or additions introduced by Matthew or Luke are dubious.

Relationships between the Synoptic Gospels

Matthew and Luke share another source, named the Q Gospel by scholars, that is lost to us. Everything we know about Q comes out of what we can infer from Matthew and Luke. Generally speaking, everything that Matthew and Luke have in common, but Mark doesn’t have, is considered to come from the Q Gospel.

Q is a sayings gospel, or a collection of things that Jesus purportedly said and taught. Sayings gospels seem more reliable to me than the gospels we have in the New Testament, because of what we can glean of the authors’ intent. We’ll talk more about intent and bias later, but briefly put, giving an accurate account of the sayings and doings of Jesus of Nazareth was not the primary goal of the four canonical gospels. This is secondary to the primary goal of each of the four gospel authors, which is to sell a narrative of the “good news”,⁷ and to convert people over to Christianity. Contrast this to the goal of somebody writing a sayings gospel. They are more likely trying to preserve the teachings of a revered teacher, so accuracy becomes more relevant.

The best estimates of scholarship date of authorship of the Q Gospel between the late 40s and the 60s AD. Late 40s would put it earlier than anything we find in the New Testament. In terms of AJH #1 — the above principle that earlier texts are more likely to be reliable — such an early date would make it one of the most reliable sources we have. But unfortunately, we don’t actually have it. We just have Matthew and Luke, and they may have made their own changes, which weakens that reliability. For instance, compare these parallel verses, first from Matthew 5:46-47:

For if you love only those who love you, what recompense do you have? Do not even tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing that is extraordinary? Do not even the gentiles do the same?

And from Luke 6:32-33:

And if you love those who love you, what is your thanks? For even sinners love those who love them. For even if you do good to those who do good to you, what is your thanks? Even sinners do the same.

While these two pairs of verses are quite similar, Matthew uses tax collectors and gentiles as his foils, whereas Luke uses sinners. At least one of these authors has made changes in the language from the original Q source, and we can’t really be sure what Q used in these positions. It probably wasn’t tax collectors and gentiles. Perhaps it was sinners, but perhaps not.

In contrast, compare these two verses on serving two masters, first from Matthew 6:24:

No one can be a slave to two lords; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will stand fast by the one and disdain the other. You cannot be a slave to both God and to Mammon.

Next from Luke 16:13:

No household slave can be a slave to two lords, for either he will hate the one and will love the other, or he will stand fast by the one and disdain the other. You cannot be a slave both to God and to Mammon.

As you can see, these verses are nearly identical. Even in the original Greek, only one word differs: Matthew uses δουλεύω (douleuó) whereas Luke uses οἰκέτης (oiketes). I don’t know ancient Greek, but the former is perhaps closer in meaning to slavery, whereas the latter is more like servitude. In any event, these verses are so close that it is safe to say that neither author has made any significant edits to the original Q, and this can be dated as early, or earlier than Mark for all practical purposes.

➧AJH #4➧ If a story occurs in Matthew or Luke, but not in Mark, it probably comes from the Q Gospel, which most likely dates earlier than Mark, making it quite reliable compared to other New Testament texts.

The Lion of Saint Mark

There is more to say about the Synoptic Gospels, but even just in terms of dating, we can see the story is quite complicated. To recap: If it’s in Matthew and Luke, but not Mark, it’s from Q, and probably dates to the 40’s or 50’s. If it’s in Mark, and Matthew and/or Luke, it’s from Mark, and probably dates to around 65. If it’s in just Matthew or just Luke, it’s from the tail end of the first century.

Next time, we’ll round out the canonical gospels by taking a look at the Gospel of John.

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PS: If you find this subject matter interesting, I strongly recommend you check out this Centre Place lecture Which Sayings of Jesus Are Authentic? John Hamer, the lecturer, is incredibly smart and knowledgeable. I’ve probably watched about a hundred of his lectures over the last few years, and they are always very interesting and highly informative.

1. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with a Mythological Jesus! I will probably talk about this more later. But for now, the point is to try to understand as best we can who the actual Jesus really was.

2. Mark, Matthew, and Luke were not the authors of these gospels. But I may call them Mark, Matthew, and Luke from time to time, because it gets tiresome to constantly say “Mark’s author,” or “the authors of Matthew and Luke.” You might think something like pseudo-Mark would work, but that’s not quite right. A pseudo-Mark would be someone who was writing in Mark’s name. These three gospels were anonymously authored, and only later attributed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

3. I’m going to get bored of saying “the general consensus among scholars” at some point, so if I state something as fact that I obviously could not know, this is what I mean.

4. Online bibles such as Bible Hub will list any parallel passages found at other locations in the Bible. For a more visual comparison of parallels from the five major gospels, plus some from Paul’s letters as well, I recommend The Five Gospels Parallels by Dr. John Marshall of the University of Toronto.

5. Generally speaking, for the authors of the New Testament, “scripture” means the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament. Of course, it has to be a little more complicated than that, because at the time, there was no fixed list of books that comprised the Hebrew Bible. Some books, like those of the Torah, were definitely in. For others, it was more of a matter of preference.

6. As always, I use the David Bentley Hart translation throughout. Hart takes pains to reproduce bad grammar in the translation whenever possible, whereas other translators will prefer to make corrections. Presumably, presenting the text in correct English grammar is supposed to make it easier to read, but, ironically, Hart’s is by far the most readable translation I have encountered.

7. The word “gospel” has its roots in Old English (godspel) and is a translation of the Greek word εὐαγγέλιον (euaggelion), which means “good news” or “good tidings.” In a religious context, particularly within Christianity, the term “gospel” refers to the message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.