THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THE GOSPELS

THE NATURE OF THE GOSPELS
We begin by asking the question, "What kind of literature do we have in these Gospels?" (This is a Literary Critical question.)
We note first that the four Gospels we have in our New Testament are fundamentally a different kind (genre) of literature from the Epistles we have in the New Testament.

From what we know from Literary Criticism, the Gospels incorporate a number of literary styles (parables, teaching materials, narrative materials) as they tell their story.  We need to know how these different literary types (genre) function in order to be able to interpret them.  (Literary Criticism asks serious literary questions of a document in order to establish what kind [genre] of literature it might be, and how different kinds of literature function.  Click on Literary Criticism to go to the Glossary of Biblical and Theological Terms.)

Biographies
In attempts to identify the literary genre or style of the Gospels some have concluded that what we have in the Gospels is biographical material, telling the life of Jesus. The problem with this is that the Gospels describe only of a short period of Jesus' life.  We know nothing of his childhood or youth other than a few snatches of information.  However, although this approach fell out of favor in times past, scholars are again looking at the Gospels as a type of biographical material.  The emphasis today is that we should not compare these 1st cent. AD biographies with modern biographies.   By comparing the Gospels with ancient biographies we see that they conform well with that category.  Ancient hero biographies did not attempt to tell everything about a hero, but only those matters that were important to the story they were telling.  With this in mind we note that the Gospels do compare favorably with ancient hero biographies.  Nevertheless, to define the Gospels as simply as biographies comes up short of the real genius of our Gospels.

History
But there is certainly more than material of biographical interest or significance in our Gospels!  Some have attempted to define the Gospels as historical narratives.  Although there was an interest in setting the story of Jesus into a historical context, there is obviously more than mere historical significance in the Gospels.  Truly, Jesus was an historical person who really did live, die, and rise again, although outside of Scripture it would be difficult to prove the historical nature of his resurrection.  However, there is enough other material in our Gospels that touch history to affirm that the history related in the Gospels is accurate.  It should not surprise us that the Gospel writers set the story of Jesus into history since it is in history that God has been working out his plan of salvation.  Biblical scholars like to speak of this plan of salvation as heilsgeschichte (salvation history, click on heilsgeschichte to go to the Glossary of Biblical and Theological Terms).  In critical studies of the Gospels much attention was given at the close of the 19th century to the Quest for the Historical Jesus.  Much of these efforts resulted in scholars reading into the life of Jesus their won psychological interests.  Some (Rudolf Bultmann and others of his school of thought) denied any historicity or historical value to the story of Jesus.  Others concluded that the kind of history found in the story of Jesus was not real history, but a history of a lesser type.  It was believed that real history needed scientific empirical verification.  For this history German scholars used the German term Historie.  For the other "lower" form of history that lacked scientific empirical verification they used the term Geschichte.  The term Geschichte in time has come to mean a history founded on testimony rather than empirical verification.  We have come to realize that much of the evidence upon which we base significant decisions in life is based on testimony rather than personal empirical verification.  We thus speak of Geschichte as significant history.  The conclusion to this brief introduction to the nature of the historical Jesus is that what we know of Jesus is based on reliable testimony rather than empirical evidence, although this should not be interpreted to mean that there is no empirical evidence for the life of Jesus.  The Gospel writers were concerned with reliable testimony as they told the significant facts of Jesus life and ministry.  So, do the Gospels relate the story of Jesus in historical terms, constructs, or contexts?  The answer is yes, but this is not their primary concern.

Theology
The Gospels are in fact theological writings, telling the story of Jesus (biographical facts significant to their purpose), placing him into a historical context (historical testimony significant to their story), but more than that, explaining why this Jesus is different from other interesting Jews or persons, why he has the right to be considered the Son of God, the Messiah (or the Christ - the Greek term christos [anointed] is the equivalent of the Hebrew messiah, and properly means the anointed one.  In Christian contexts it is used to demonstrate that Jesus is the anointed and chosen king of God's kingdom).  The purpose of the Gospels is fundamentally theological.   The Gospels incorporate biographical and historical material as they tell the story, but their primary purpose is theological. (Click on Theological to go to the Glossary of Biblical and Theological Terms.)

As theological writings the Gospels explain who this Jesus really is, why this is important to us, why we should follow him, and the eternal significance of this decision.

Some have suggested (with considerable reliability and significance) that our Gospels are Passion Narratives (passion referring to suffering) which focus in on the significance of Jesus' suffering, death, burial and resurrection.  They propose, therefore, that we see the Gospels as Passion Narratives with an extended Introduction (the first chapters of the Gospels).   The Introductions inform us why the death and resurrection of Jesus was different from any other persons death, and why we should follow him even unto death if that is what discipleship takes.  Note that Paul defines the gospel that he preached and by which we are saved as the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus (1 Cor 15: 1-5 read this great passage).  So what we have in the Gospels is an extended introduction describing who this Jesus was, why his life was different and significant, what discipleship of Jesus demands, leading up to the key to the central point of the gospel story, namely, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

The Theological Focus of the Individual Gospels
Each of the Gospels was written for a particular audience or community (Roman, Jewish, Greek, etc) with the purpose of explaining how the message of Jesus related to their needs and interests. 

For the Roman mindset, Mark wrote a gospel that stressed the mighty deeds of Jesus which established his right to be considered the Son of God.  Romans were interested in powerful deities.

For the Jewish mindset and especially those Jewish Christians that were displaced after the destruction of Jerusalem, Matthew wrote to establish Jesus' rightful claim to be the Messiah, the King of God's kingdom.

For the Greek and Gentile cultures Luke wrote demonstrating that Jesus was the Son of God who was really interested in people and who had died to save men from sin.  Jesus in Luke is the Savior of the world, he is the healer of mankind.

Each Gospel writer had a theological statement to make about Jesus.  Each set this theological message in the form of a ancient hero biographical narrative, set in real time and history to show that Jesus was the fulfillment of God's heilsgeschichte (plan of salvation played out in real history).

THE NEED AND PURPOSE OF THE GOSPELS
Several factors lay behind the need for the Gospel Story to be written down in reliable form.  We can group them under the following categories: the Apostolic Preaching, the Gentile Missions and Expansion of the Church, and the rise of Apocryphal Gospels and stories about Jesus.

The need to preserve the preaching message of the Apostles was becoming urgent as the Apostles were being persecuted and dying as martyrs for the cause and message of Christ.  We have no definite dates for the early martyrdom, but church history indicates that several of them died early as martyrs, especially Paul and Peter.  Dates for their martyrdom range in the mid to late 60's AD.  One early writing, the Anti Marcionite Prologues, indicates that Mark wrote his Gospel based on Peter's Apostolic preaching, and that he did this in Italy for a Roman audience.  A British scholar C. H. Dodd drew attention to the similarity of the narrative structure of Mark's Gospel to the sermon of Peter in Act 10:34-33.  One of the fundamental criterion for canonicity of a New Testament writing was its agreement with the Apostolic Preaching, and Mark's Gospel obviously does.   It became necessary around AD 65-70, with the passing of the Apostles, for the Apostolic Preaching to be committed to a more reliable form than the oral traditions that were  circulating everywhere, some of which were more fanciful than factual.  In time, our four Gospels became a form of Apostolic presence.

The dramatic Gentile mission and expansion created a situation that demanded a firm and reliable record of the Apostolic Preaching as well as a substitute "apostolic presence" in the form of the written Apostolic message.  It was simply impossible for the Apostles and apostolic evangelists to cover all of the new bases and churches in the Gentile world.  So devout men, two possibly apostles themselves, wrote the story of Jesus in the form of a Gospel.  Others, apostolic disciples or men, did likewise.  The Gospels took the place of the apostolic presence.

Perhaps even more significant than the above two reasons for the written form of the Gospels was the rise of a wide collection of "pseudo" gospels which were not recognized by the mainline orthodox churches.  We have several of such pseudo (Apocryphal) gospels in the Nag Hammadi library which possibly represented the favored writings of a Gnostic group of churches dating possibly from the late 1st or early 2nd centuries (gnostic - a broad term that identified a mindset of heretical Christian groups of the late 1st and 2nd century church).  One finds many of these "pseudo" gospels in collections known as the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (click on these and check them out in the Glossary of Biblical and Theological Terms).  Writings such as The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Basilides, The Gospel of the Egyptians, The Gospel of Phillip, The Gospel of Bartholomew, et al proliferated during the early years of the church.  These "pseudo gospels" represented the views of heretical groups, and were not accepted by orthodox churches.  The rise of such writings necessitated the collection of orthodox Gospels such as the four brought together by Tatian in his Diatessaron and others around 150 - 180 BC.  The rise of the Marcionite movement, a heretical group originating in Rome who followed a heretical bishop named Marcion, added to the need for reliable accounts of the story of Jesus and the canonization of the four Gospels.

We can summarize the need and purpose of the Gospels as the need to provide the rapid expansion of the church, especially into the Gentile world, with a reliable, normative, and authoritative account of the story of Jesus and his messianic kingdom.