Which Gospel was written first?

[Charlemagne_II]

Here are excerpts from the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia analysis of the question:

The prevailing view at the present among Protestant scholars and not a few Catholics, in America and England as well as in Germany, is that St. Mark’s Gospel is prior to St. Matthew’s, and used in it as well as in St. Luke’s. Thus Gigot writes: “The Gospel according to Mark was written first and utilized by the other two Synoptics” (“The New York Review”, Sept.-Dec., 1907). So too Bacon, Yale Divinity School: “It appears that the narrative material of Matthew is simply that of Mark transferred to form a framework for the masses of discourse” . . . “We find here positive proof of dependence by our Matthew on our Mark” (Introd. to the N.T., 1905, 186-89). Allen, art. “Matthew” in “The International Critical Commentary”, speaks of the priority of the Second to the other two Synoptic Gospels as “the one solid result of literary criticism”; and Burkitt in “The Gospel History” (1907), 37, writes: “We are bound to conclude that Mark contains the whole of a document which Matthew and Luke have independently used, and, further, that Mark contains very little else beside. This conclusion is extremely important; it is the one solid contribution made by the scholarship of the nineteenth century towards the solution of the Synoptic Problem”.

It may possibly be that the solution of the peculiar relations between Matthew and Mark is to be found neither in the dependence of both upon oral tradition nor in the dependence of either upon the other, but in the use by one or both of previous documents. If we may suppose, and Luke 1:1, gives ground for the supposition, that Matthew had access to a document written probably in Aramaic, embodying the Petrine tradition, he may have combined with it one or more other documents, containing chiefly Christ’s discourses, to form his Aramaic Gospel. But the same Petrine tradition, perhaps in a Greek form, might have been known to Mark also; for the early authorities hardly oblige us to hold that he made no use of pre-existing documents. Papias (apud Eus., Church History III.39) speaks of him as writing down some things as he remembered them, and if Clement of Alexandria (ap. Eus., Church History VI.14) represents the Romans as thinking that he could write everything from memory, it does not at all follow that he did. Let us suppose, then, that Matthew embodied the Petrine tradition in his Aramaic Gospel, and that Mark afterwards used it or rather a Greek form of it somewhat different, combining with it reminiscences of Peter’s discourses. If, in addition to this, we suppose the Greek translator of Matthew to have made use of our present Mark for his phraseology, we have quite a possible means of accounting for the similarities and dissimilarities of our first two Gospels, and we are free at the same time to accept the traditional view in regard to the priority of Matthew. Luke might then be held to have used our present Mark or perhaps an earlier form of the Petrine tradition, combining with it a source or sources which it does not belong to the present article to consider.

Of course the existence of early documents, such as are here supposed, cannot be directly proved, unless the spade should chance to disclose them; but it is not at all improbable. It is reasonable to think that not many years elapsed after Christ’s death before attempts were made to put into written form some account of His words and works. Luke tells us that many such attempts had been made before he wrote; and it needs no effort to believe that the Petrine form of the Gospel had been committed to writing before the Apostles separated; that it disappeared afterwards would not be wonderful, seeing that it was embodied in the Gospels. It is hardly necessary to add that the use of earlier documents by an inspired writer is quite intelligible. Grace does not dispense with nature nor, as a rule, inspiration with ordinary, natural means.

There is no reason, therefore, why Catholics should be timid about admitting, if necessary, the dependence of the inspired evangelists upon earlier documents, and, in view of the difficulties against the other theories, it is well to bear this possibility in mind in attempting to account for the puzzling relations of Mark to the other two synoptists.

 

[TMC]

There are arguments for both Mark and Matthew, but I think Mark was likely first. There are two (or three) arguments that I find convincing for Mark, although none are really conclusive. The first relates to the content of each. Matthew contains information that is not in Mark. It seems odd for Mark to take Matthew and remove information to create his Gospel. The second is more theological. It seems to me that Mark is simpler and evinces more of “low Christology” than Matthew or Luke, with John presenting a more fully developed high Christology. It makes more sense for early writers to have struggled more in understanding, while later evangelists had the benefit of a more developed theology, particularly as Paul’s writings made their way around. The possible third relates to structure. I have read some convincing arguments that the structure of Matthew suggests it relies on Mark, but I don’t remember enough about them to relay them here. I recall that they had something to do with Mark’s way of framing one story with another (sometines called Triptychs).

 

[SFH]

There are arguments for both Mark and Matthew, but I think Mark was likely first. There are two (or three) arguments that I find convincing for Mark, although none are really conclusive. The first relates to the content of each. Matthew contains information that is not in Mark. It seems odd for Mark to take Matthew and remove information to create his Gospel. The second is more theological. It seems to me that Mark is simpler and evinces more of “low Christology” than Matthew or Luke, with John presenting a more fully developed high Christology. It makes more sense for early writers to have struggled more in understanding, while later evangelists had the benefit of a more developed theology, particularly as Paul’s writings made their way around. The possible third relates to structure. I have read some convincing arguments that the structure of Matthew suggests it relies on Mark, but I don’t remember enough about them to relay them here. I recall that they had something to do with Mark’s way of framing one story with another (sometines called Triptychs).

I don’t buy it. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, Christ only prohibits a man from getting a divorce. In St. Mark’s Gospel, Christ prohibits both a man and a woman from getting a divorce. Why? In Jewish society, only men could get a divorce, but in Roman society, both men and women could get a divorce. So which seems more likely that Christ would have said given that His audience was Jewish? I think St. Matthew’s account. Moreover, the portions of St. Matthew’s Gospel that contain Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount” retain much more of the Aramaic idiom and grammatical structure than the portions of St. Mark’s Gospel that contain Christ’s words.

What probably happened, and I think more biblical scholars are coming around to this view, is that St. Matthew compiled a collection of Christ’s sayings in Aramaic (perhaps the portion we call the “Sermon on the Mount”) and a few isolated events from Christ’s life. This was probably the Aramaic Gospel of St. Matthew to which Papias refers, and the “Q” source of the German theologians. St. Mark combined the Passion narrative and a few other events from Christ’s life that he heard about from St. Peter in Rome with St. Matthew’s Aramaic Gospel, moving Christ’s words around in the Gospel narrative to fit with his overall theological purpose. Later, St. Matthew, or a disciple of St. Matthew, wrote the Greek Gospel of St. Matthew, which drew heavily from St. Mark’s Greek Gospel. St. Luke’s Gospel borrowed from the available sources and also included other oral traditions he had learned. St. John’s Gospel was written last.

This theory has several advantages: (1) it is consistent with the earliest recorded testimonies of the Gospels’ authorship (see Papias and Clement of Alexandria); and (2) it accounts for the theological progression from St. Mark in Greek to St. Matthew in Greek.

 

[jmcrae]

Matthew is put first in the Bible because it applied to JEWS. And JEWS were the ones putting the Bible together.

Actually, it was the Councils of Rome, Carthage and Hippo, together with Pope Damasus I, whose work was completed by Pope Innocent I, and ultimately in the end, St. Jerome, who put together the New Testament, between 381-405 AD.

As far as I know, none of those men was Jewish.

But Matthew and Luke use information from Marks.

Mark was a disciple of St. Peter, and Luke was a disciple of St. Paul. Matthew, by contrast, was one of the original 12. It stands to reason that Matthew’s was first. His would have been used as the source material for both Mark’s and Luke’s, together with the oral tradition that each of them would have been hearing in their respective communities (which accounts for the differences).

John didn’t write his until much later - the late 80s or early 90s AD - he of course is also one of the original 12, and it’s obvious that he is not using any of the other three Gospels for source material, since he is writing from personal experience and memory.

 

[Chrysostom324]

I’ll go with the modern scholars. Mark (70 A.D.) Matthew (85 A.D.) Luke (90 A.D.) John (105 A.D.) Just my opinion.

jk

 

[TMC]

I don’t buy it. In St. Matthew’s Gospel, Christ only prohibits a man from getting a divorce. In St. Mark’s Gospel, Christ prohibits both a man and a woman from getting a divorce. Why? In Jewish society, only men could get a divorce, but in Roman society, both men and women could get a divorce. So which seems more likely that Christ would have said given that His audience was Jewish? I think St. Matthew’s account. Moreover, the portions of St. Matthew’s Gospel that contain Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount” retain much more of the Aramaic idiom and grammatical structure than the portions of St. Mark’s Gospel that contain Christ’s words.

What probably happened, and I think more biblical scholars are coming around to this view, is that St. Matthew compiled a collection of Christ’s sayings in Aramaic (perhaps the portion we call the “Sermon on the Mount”) and a few isolated events from Christ’s life. This was probably the Aramaic Gospel of St. Matthew to which Papias refers, and the “Q” source of the German theologians. St. Mark combined the Passion narrative and a few other events from Christ’s life that he heard about from St. Peter in Rome with St. Matthew’s Aramaic Gospel, moving Christ’s words around in the Gospel narrative to fit with his overall theological purpose. Later, St. Matthew, or a disciple of St. Matthew, wrote the Greek Gospel of St. Matthew, which drew heavily from St. Mark’s Greek Gospel. St. Luke’s Gospel borrowed from the available sources and also included other oral traditions he had learned. St. John’s Gospel was written last.

This theory has several advantages: (1) it is consistent with the earliest recorded testimonies of the Gospels’ authorship (see Papias and Clement of Alexandria); and (2) it accounts for the theological progression from St. Mark in Greek to St. Matthew in Greek.

Interesting. I agree that this would harmonize the Q theory with the traditional primacy of Matthew, and also account for the points I made in my earlier post. It also explains why a work as important as the theoretical Q is not extant today – it morphed into Matthew. I have always thought that, if there is such a thing as Q, it was an oral tradition and not a written work. This theory for the Q source makes more sense to me than a now lost book of sayings.

But I would point out that this doesn’t make the canonical Matthew first, it makes the hypothetical Q Matthew first.

Also, I still wonder why Mark did not include the Q material (whether from Q Matthew or elsewhere) in his Gospel? Of course that’s a relevant question under any of the theories and there are many plausible explanations, but its an interesting question.

 

[Veridical16]

Wow, when I looked I thought this was just going to be a simple answer and response “Mark” , I was taught in Catholic High School that it was Mark, and completely unaware of that it might have been Matthew… I guess my theology teacher did not know of it.

I think Matthew being the first seems possible, but was always taught it was Mark was the first ~ 60-70 A.D. Matthew and Luke being ~85-90 and John the start of the 2nd century.
But always found it odd why the order “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John” was presented as such when I was younger.

It is also funny that atheists like to argue because Mark was the shortest and used as source material it is proof that the gospel writers were making things up as they went along, embellishing more and more…although that’s a superficial judgment.

If Matthew was indeed first, according to the Church Fathers, that criticism holds even less weight.

Philthy’s post is very enlightening.

Here’s the conclusion from this link:

We may sum up the relationships(and the chronological appearance - philthy) between the Gospels as follows:

1. Matthew was composed to meet the urgent needs of the primitive Church of Jerusalem (the Church set up by Peter), which needed a manifesto defending its integrity and its right to exist in the earliest days.

1. Luke was written at the behest of Paul to meet the urgent need of his churches to have their own manifesto to prove their full equality with Jewish Christians.

1. Mark was the result of the collaboration of Peter and Paul to make sure that the spiritual and doctrinal unity of the Universal Church was not impaired as a result of the appearance of Luke beside Matthew in the churches of both.

1. The Gospel of John made it clear that the primary objective of Jesus throughout his public ministry was the winning over of the spiritual authorities in Jerusalem; at the same time it had the further purpose of readjusting the chronological sequence of his ministry which had been somewhat distorted by the literary sequence of the three synoptic Gospels.

Dom Bernard Orchard is a Benedictine monk at Ealing Abbey, England. He was general editor of the Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (1953), served as chairman of the editorial committee for the New Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (1969), and is the author, with Harold Riley, of The Order of the Synoptics (1987).

 

[David_Zampino]

Strangely enough I was just studying this topic yesterday:nerd:. From what I gather, the standard Catholic teaching is that Matthew came first in Hebrew/Aramaic. This was first suggested by Papias. But there is enough flexibility in the Church’s statement to allow for the case of Markan priority.

And unfortunately, all we have are fragments from Papias, which might be problematic.

One writer suggested that Matthew wrote first in Aramaic but later revised his Gospel, writing it in Greek and using some of Mark. There definately is a strong case for Matthew using Mark.

This seems to be what Papias suggests: a “sayings of Jesus” in Hebrew or Aramaic by Matthew, with Mark being the first completed Greek Gospel. It is evident (to me, anyway) that the final version of Matthew relied, to a certain extent, on Mark – but with different emphases and internal arrangements to better fit his intended audience (1st century Jewish Christians).

Blessings,

 

[David_Zampino]

Here are excerpts from the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia analysis of the question:

The prevailing view at the present among Protestant scholars and not a few Catholics, in America and England as well as in Germany, is that St. Mark’s Gospel is prior to St. Matthew’s, and used in it as well as in St. Luke’s. Thus Gigot writes: “The Gospel according to Mark was written first and utilized by the other two Synoptics” (“The New York Review”, Sept.-Dec., 1907). So too Bacon, Yale Divinity School: “It appears that the narrative material of Matthew is simply that of Mark transferred to form a framework for the masses of discourse” . . . “We find here positive proof of dependence by our Matthew on our Mark” (Introd. to the N.T., 1905, 186-89). Allen, art. “Matthew” in “The International Critical Commentary”, speaks of the priority of the Second to the other two Synoptic Gospels as “the one solid result of literary criticism”; and Burkitt in “The Gospel History” (1907), 37, writes: “We are bound to conclude that Mark contains the whole of a document which Matthew and Luke have independently used, and, further, that Mark contains very little else beside. This conclusion is extremely important; it is the one solid contribution made by the scholarship of the nineteenth century towards the solution of the Synoptic Problem”.

It may possibly be that the solution of the peculiar relations between Matthew and Mark is to be found neither in the dependence of both upon oral tradition nor in the dependence of either upon the other, but in the use by one or both of previous documents. If we may suppose, and Luke 1:1, gives ground for the supposition, that Matthew had access to a document written probably in Aramaic, embodying the Petrine tradition, he may have combined with it one or more other documents, containing chiefly Christ’s discourses, to form his Aramaic Gospel. But the same Petrine tradition, perhaps in a Greek form, might have been known to Mark also; for the early authorities hardly oblige us to hold that he made no use of pre-existing documents. Papias (apud Eus., Church History III.39) speaks of him as writing down some things as he remembered them, and if Clement of Alexandria (ap. Eus., Church History VI.14) represents the Romans as thinking that he could write everything from memory, it does not at all follow that he did. Let us suppose, then, that Matthew embodied the Petrine tradition in his Aramaic Gospel, and that Mark afterwards used it or rather a Greek form of it somewhat different, combining with it reminiscences of Peter’s discourses. If, in addition to this, we suppose the Greek translator of Matthew to have made use of our present Mark for his phraseology, we have quite a possible means of accounting for the similarities and dissimilarities of our first two Gospels, and we are free at the same time to accept the traditional view in regard to the priority of Matthew. Luke might then be held to have used our present Mark or perhaps an earlier form of the Petrine tradition, combining with it a source or sources which it does not belong to the present article to consider.

Of course the existence of early documents, such as are here supposed, cannot be directly proved, unless the spade should chance to disclose them; but it is not at all improbable. It is reasonable to think that not many years elapsed after Christ’s death before attempts were made to put into written form some account of His words and works. Luke tells us that many such attempts had been made before he wrote; and it needs no effort to believe that the Petrine form of the Gospel had been committed to writing before the Apostles separated; that it disappeared afterwards would not be wonderful, seeing that it was embodied in the Gospels. It is hardly necessary to add that the use of earlier documents by an inspired writer is quite intelligible. Grace does not dispense with nature nor, as a rule, inspiration with ordinary, natural means.

There is no reason, therefore, why Catholics should be timid about admitting, if necessary, the dependence of the inspired evangelists upon earlier documents, and, in view of the difficulties against the other theories, it is well to bear this possibility in mind in attempting to account for the puzzling relations of Mark to the other two synoptists.

I’ve read that article as well. It seems a thoughtful and reasoned approach to me.

 

[Holly3278]

I would have to say that the Gospel of Mark was written first. I know this because of a documentary I saw on the History Channel. I have also read about it somewhere. Here is some interesting information for you:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel

wiki.answers.com/Q/When_was_the_first_and_last_gospel_written_and_by_whom