Who wrote first, Mark, Matthew or Luke?
Is Mark really Peter's memories as put down by a scribe? As here,
'The earliest statement we have comes from the early second-century historian Papias, who quotes a first-century figure known as “John the Presbyter” or “John the Elder” (Greek, presbuteros = “elder”). This figure was a disciple of Jesus. He is sometimes identified with John son of Zebedee, but a careful reading of Papias indicates that he was a separate individual (see Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, chs. 2, 9, 16).
According to John the Presbyter, “Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he [Peter] remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he [Mark] neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely” (Eusebius, Church History 3:39:15).
Since John the Presbyter is a first-century source and a witness of Jesus’ ministry, his testimony regarding Mark’s composition has great weight.'
How do Catholic Biblical schoalrs reconcile the so-called "synoptic problem" of Matthew Mark and Luke's Gospels? Here's what you need to know.
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Which do you prefer?
Does Luke have access to a source unknown to the others?
Why does Mark contain material not found in Matt or Luke if you believe both copied Mark?
Go!
Paul never met Jesus and neither did Luke. Their target audience were gentiles who spoke greek.
The year is roughly 36 AD, the place Jerusalem, this is the holy city where the teachings of
Christ once rang out into the air but now just a few years after the crucifixion, the winds have
changed direction and some people are on a hunt for Christian blood. An angry mob zeroes in on
a godly man by the name of Stephen drags him out of the city and begins to stone him. They lay
their coats in front of a young man called Saul of Tarsus who fully consented to Stephen’s death
and later admitted.
“ And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and
guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.”
~ Act 22:20
This story alone is shocking enough but this was not the only time Saul got his hands dirty. Saul
was born into a strict Jewish family and spent his youth studying under the famous Rabbi
Gamaliel the man who trained him as a Pharisee. These are the same Pharisees whom Jesus
referred to as Vipers and sons of the devil. Saul’s zeal for the law led him to become an
inquisitor of the Jerusalem temples priesthood. Saul was a blood hound and admitted to
mercilessly chasing and killing many Christians. According to the book of Acts, Saul was:
“Still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples”
~ Acts 9:1
When he had a transformative experience on the road to Damacus, a vision of the resurrected
Jesus. It was that experience which allegedly changed everything, Saul became Paul and
declared himself a freshly converted apostle of Christ but there is a problem with this story, Paul
can’t quite get the details straight. It is considered a red flag when a person can’t keep their story
straight when detectives work to solve a crime they test witnesses on the consistency of their
accounts if the story keeps changing, suspicions arise. You might assume that a vision of Jesus
would be memorable enough to stick in someone’s memory but the so-called Apostle Paul tells
three different versions of his operation on the road to Damacus recorded in the book of Acts. In
Acts chapter 9 verse 7 we find one account where Paul claims that his travel companions did not
see Jesus but heard his voice. And in Acts chapter 22 verse 9 we find another version of the story
they:
“Saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me”
~ Acts 22:9
In one version Paul is blinded for three days in another he makes no mention of such a thing. We
are left wondering which version should we believe but perhaps a more important question to ask
is why does this all matter? It matters because the entire validity of Paul as a messenger hinges
on this story. This is the single proof he used to convince people to take him seriously as a
messenger from God having never met Jesus in the flesh, this is all he has to go on and it just so
happens that it cannot be verified by anybody. There is no mention of Paul in the Gospels by
Jesus or anyone else for that matter nobody gives Paul the title of apostle other than Paul himself.
So we have to ask these questions was Paul a man who saw the error in his ways and turned his
life around or did he carry out his original agenda utilizing a different strategy destroying the
Christian faith from within. In any case one thing is certain, Paul’s claimed to Apostleship
directly contradicts what Jesus taught. Throughout his ministry, Jesus had many disciples, at one
he amassed followers in the thousands but there was always an inner circle of 12 men
handpicked by Jesus. That number twelve was no accident there was a specific purpose behind it.
Talking about his second coming Jesus said:
“Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the son of man sits on his glorious throne,
you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”
~ Matthew 19:28
These words demonstrate just how important the sacred number twelve is. How could 11 or 13
apostles judge twelve tribes? The disciples themselves understood the significance of this
number. After Jesus left them, the remaining 11 apostles set out to replace the fallen one from
among them Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus. Praying for divine guidance the men drew lots
and in the end they reported that God chose Matthias to be the 12 th disciple. There was one
important criteria for the selection. Therefore it is necessary to choose
“… one of the man who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus was living among
us, beginning from John’s baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us.”
~ Acts 1:21-22
So imagine the confusion of the 12 disciples when years later Paul came along and inserted
himself into the equation as the thirteen disciple. Paul a man who never met Jesus certainly
didn’t qualify to be one of them but that didn’t stop Paul from making some dramatic changes to
the religion of Jesus and the early Christians did not consider Paul to be an authority in the same
right as the 12. One of the most notable new concepts which Paul brought to Christianity was the
abolishment of the Old Testament law. Claiming to speak on behalf of Christ, Paul said:
“ For sin shall no longer be your Master, because you are not under the law, but under
grace.”
~ Roman 6:14
He claimed that:
“ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written
“Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole””
~ Galatians 3:13
Basically, Paul argued that when Jesus died so too did the law. The old covenant between God
and man was overturned in favor of a new one. One by which all sins are forgiven of the one
who simply says I believe. There is just one major problem with Paul’s logic though. According
to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus appeared to the twelve after the crucifixion saying this:
“ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations… and teaching them to obey everything I
have commanded you.”
~ Matthew 28:19-20
And Jesus clearly commanded them to keep the commandments:
“ Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy but to
fulfill them…”
~ Matthew 5:17
Jesus was a reformer. His mission was to bring things back to the old ways of theology. He came
to guide people back to the religion of God. Jesus the long-awaited Jewish Messiah affirmed the
message of the Hebrew prophets before him. He adhered to the Jewish law and never once
indicated that the law of the Old Testament prophets would or should be abolished. In fact he
said:
“ It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of
the law.”
~ Luke 16:17
So why did Paul come out and teach the opposite just as Jesus said:
“…If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”
~ Matthew 19:17
Paul said:
“… No one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law…”
~ Roman 3:20
It simply couldn’t make sense unless Paul had another agenda. Paul initially preached to people
of his same religious background the Jews but when he found that he could not convince many
that Jesus was divine, he went outside of Israel to the Gentiles but once again he faced difficulty.
The Gentiles who were open to accepting Christ were not observers of Jewish Law. Their food
wasn’t kosher but the biggest obstacle Paul faced with the Gentiles was the circumcision law the
covenant between God and believers dating back to Prophet Abraham. At first Paul encouraged
Gentile converts to follow the law. He even had his companion Timothy circumsized as
confirmed in acts 16 but somewhere along the way he changed his tune. The law was an obstacle
standing in his way so he cast it aside. Jesus said follow the law down to the letter but Paul said
the exact opposite. Not only did he remove its obligation, he went so far as to call it harmful:
“ I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at
all…You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have
fallen away from grace.”
~ Galatians 5:2-4
Where was he getting this from? It certainly wasn’t a man who Jesus named as his successor,
Simon Peter. When Jesus knew he wouldn’t be around much longer. He handed the keys of the
kingdom to his successor Simon Peter stating:
“ And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever
you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed
in heaven.
~ Matthew 16:18-19
Although Jesus clearly designated a shepherd for his flock to follow in Peter, Paul argued that he
was given a new gospel to spread, he said:
“And of this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher.”
~ 2 Timothy 1:11
You might imagine that Paul as a follower of Christ would have jumped at the chance to learn
from the twelve men who lived with and learned from Jesus in the flesh but that’s not what Paul
did. It was a full decade after Jesus’s death that Paul first met Peter in Jerusalem then he went out
preaching and teaching his own gospel in Asia Minor for another ten years before making a
return trip to Jerusalem around 50 AD. It was only then 20 years after the crucifixion that Paul
met the rest of the Apostles for the first time. Paul did not preach the same thing as the Twelve
Apostles and there was constant friction between him and the Jerusalem church about one issue
in particular the law. Tensions eventually boiled over and cause Peter and Paul to come to blows.
When Peter visited Antioch he clashed with Paul over whether or not Gentile Christians needed
to uphold the law. We only get to hear Paul’s side of the story of course but if we take his epistle
at its word the two men came to an agreement. Paul would go forth as an apostle to the Gentiles
while Peter would preach to the circumcised but there is a problem there. The agreement which
Paul speaks of contradicts the book of Acts which states that Peter not Paul was chosen by God
to minister to the Gentiles.
