Can the two Gospels be brought together?

The spread of Christianity is a fascinating story. The Apostle Paul is properly given credit for much of the spread, but the story is much more complicated than Paul. For a period of decades, after his death, followers of Jesus from Nazareth were a sect of Judaism. When the Romans destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, a massive scattering of Jesus’ followers took place.

Paul had visited Antioch in Asia Minor, as did Peter and Barnabas. Following the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, Antioch became the center of the Christian movement. Antioch has rightly been called “the cradle of Christianity.” Under the rule of Julius Caesar, Antioch had become the eastern capital of the Roman Empire. The city grew rapidly. Before the ascendency of Antioch, Alexandria in Egypt was the center of post-temple Christian activity east of Rome. The story of the development of Egyptian Christianity is a story of its own. The point is that the temple destruction triggered the scattering of the followers of Jesus. They became a persecuted sect. Different understandings of the prophet from Nazareth developed across the Roman Empire.

Antioch under the influence of the Caesars became a hub city through which commerce, religion and culture passed. It was probably the most cosmopolitan city in the world. It is estimated that the population of Antioch approached a million people. Followers of Jesus in the Antioch area are thought to have numbered as many as 100,000 by the turn of the century.

Readers of the four gospels easily recognize that the Gospel of John is very different from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The material is different; the writing style is different. The Matthew, Mark, and Luke Gospels reflect the arguments and understandings of Jesus from Nazareth from the perspective of the environs of Jerusalem after the temple destruction. The Gospel of John was written at least a generation later in a completely different setting. The earlier Gospels are concerned with the Jesus of history, the stories that he told during his years in Northern Palestine, and the activities that took him from rural roots to his death at the hands of the Romans in Jerusalem for insurrection. On the other hand, the Gospel of John is a theological document written for a different audience at a different time. Trying to put the four Gospels into a coherent whole has long been a baffling and unproductive exercise.

Was Jesus from Nazareth a prophet and political reformer who took up the cause of poor people in the face of Roman political and economic oppression? Was he the leader of protest against religious tyranny by the priests and other officials who controlled the Jewish temple in Jerusalem? Was it because of political and religious activism that Jesus was crucified as an insurrectionist? This is the outline of the life of Jesus from the writers of Matthew, Mark and Luke against the background of the tensions of the temple destruction in Jerusalem.

The Gospel of John presents Jesus very differently. In John Jesus is presented as the incarnation of God, who came into the world to save the world. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Belief in Jesus was the ticket to blissful and never ending life with God. Jesus was the logos of God, who participated in the creation of the universe.

Many scholars now believeth that the Gospel of John was written in the context of the Antioch metropolis. The author of the John Gospel is unknown, but his version of the Gospel story became a literary success and quickly took its place among the Christian writings that were circulating all over the Roman Empire. As the collection of writings that became the New Testament were formed, the place for the John Gospel was never effectively challenged.

We Christians have ended up with four versions of the Jesus story. Three are roughly compatible. The fourth is an intellectual and factual misfit. It is a different Gospel when compared to Matthew, Mark and Luke.

I love the Gospel of John. I once set out to memorize the entire book. John is full of memorable quotes. John 3:16 is probably the most loved verse in the entire Bible. The sacramental system of the Christian Church is based on the Gospel of John. I also love the political activism of Jesus that is reported in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I have decided to embrace both the theological Jesus and the social reformer Jesus. People who are looking for coherence should look somewhere other than the Bible. The Gospel collection in particular is best understood as an invitation to discussion and argument.

I have concluded that Christianity is an activist faith. We believers ought to be asking constantly about the good that we ought to be doing in the name of Jesus, the activist prophet.

We ought also to be asking just who Jesus from Nazareth was. Why should we call him “Lord.” Why ought we to pray in his name? Why should we assign him divinity status?

Ought we to be listening to the voices of both Jerusalem and Antioch? Yes, indeed. We also need to be listening to Rome, Alexandria, and the neighbor next door. The discussions are ongoing.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.