The Jesus Stories

“May you live in interesting times!” Ok, how about c. 30 CE? Interesting enough for you? Rome’s military, political, economic and cultural power is at its peak. And yet there is pervasive spiritual malaise across the Mediterranean basin.

Traditional religion, in the form of Greco-Roman mythology and pre-exilic Judaism, is losing its appeal and, more importantly, its heuristic power. Thought leaders are looking far afield to satisfy their spiritual longing and their philosophical curiosity. Stoicism, gnostic mystery cults, fundamentalist sects, and revolutionary political cells are surging. It’s a great time to be an ‘ideological entrepreneur’…or not! 

Yes, the ground was fertile, but getting heard over the cacophony of ‘new ideas’ was daunting – a bit like today’s internet. And did I mention Rome? Ruthlessly sniffing out every whisper of dissent! Nevertheless, many of the new movements left a mark on civilianization; but one, obviously, triumphed over the rest, and over the forces of political and religious reaction. I am referring, of course, to Christianity.

Sometimes things just happen to work out. Call it serendipity, call it grace, call it the will of God. Sometimes things come together and so it was with the early Christian Church. After 33 CE, versions of the Jesus Story began popping up from Alexandria to Antioch. Four of these versions, however, became ‘canonical’. We know them, of course, as the four Gospels found today in the New Testament.

The first of these was Mark. Short, earthy, it reads like a journalist’s real time account of contemporary events. It was written specifically for the benefit of the early church. As such it was a bit abbreviated, sectarian, and partisan. Had our knowledge of Jesus been limited to Mark, the movement might not have survived.

Fortunately for all of us, three other versions of the Jesus Story appeared, aimed at other, broader audiences. Begin with Matthew, because it begins with Mark. 90% of the Markan content is reprised in the much longer version attributed to Matthew. 

Matthew wraps Mark with infancy narratives and excerpts from the oral tradition of Jesus’ Sayings, known by scholars as “Q”. Like a successful 21st century political movement, having won the ‘nomination’ so to speak, it was now necessary to ‘move to the middle’, to ‘appeal to the moderates’. 

Matthew steps into that space! It is written to appeal to the non-Christian Jews throughout Judea and the diaspora. Job One, therefore, is to ‘prove’ that Jesus is indeed the Messiah long awaited by Israel and to demonstrate how events in the life of Jesus ‘fulfill’ Messianic prophesies found in the Old Testament. From Matthew’s perspective, every Jew is potentially a proto-Christian.

Not to be outdone, Luke does the same, but for an entirely different audience.  A disciple of Paul, Luke is at pains to show how the teachings of Jesus fulfill the spiritual longing no longer adequately met by Greco-Roman mythology. Matthew and Luke give us the twin pillars of Christianity. Together, they point the Mediterranean’s two great spiritualities toward a common vanishing point (i.e. Jesus).

And then there’s John! Mark wrote for the here and now, Matthew and Luke for their respective constituencies and traditions; John wrote for the ages! Mark wrote for Galilee, Matthew for Jerusalem, Luke for Antioch. But it is the Gospel of John that will accompany Bach into space in a time capsule meant to acquaint extra-terrestrial civilizations with the highest achievements of homo sapiens. 

It is unclear whether John had even read any of the other (‘synoptic’) Gospels. His biographical material re Jesus seems to come from an independent source (was he an eyewitness?). He weaves that material into a poetic presentation of the Cosmic Christ that reprises the best of Homer and Milton. 

2,000 years later, no one has made any advance on John and it’s not clear that anyone ever will. One can find John in Handel’s Messiah, in Beethoven’s Ode to Joy and in the work of the other four evangelists: John, Paul, George, and Ringo! 

20th century philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, said that Western philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato’s Timaeus. In that same spirit, I would suggest that Western theology consists of footnotes to the Gospel of John.

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