other specific teaching of Jesus. There is no Sermon on the Mount. (Incidentally, the Sermon on the Mount becomes the Sermon on the Plain in Luke.) Also, Mark records certain (perhaps embarrassing) details—such as the cry of dereliction and forsakenness from the Cross—that Matthew or Luke either soften or, as I have said, leave out entirely. Mark frequently underlines as well the disciples’ well-nigh total inability to understand what was happening.
In addition to Mark, Matthew and Luke seem to have another common source of material not found in Mark. The traditional hypothesis here is that this source, called Q (from the German word Quelle, “source”), was a “sayings” gospel with no story of the Cross and Resurrection, much like the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. Over the years, this hypothesis (no document has ever been found) has spawned many books and a plethora of Ph.D. theses, and it is still widely believed in by critical scholars. However, a formidable challenge to the theory has recently been issued by the scholar Michael Goulder of Birmingham, England, in an article in a prestigious scholarly journal titled “Is Q a Juggernaut?” In this article Goulder says that there is scarcely a Biblical scholar in Oxford today who would vouch for the authenticity of a Q document. He believes that the simpler explanation for the common non-Markan material is that Luke had Matthew as well as Mark in front of him when he wrote.9
The final element in both Matthew and Luke is material peculiar to each alone. This is generally referred to as L for Luke’s and M for Matthew’s. We must remember that the Gospel authors often were acting as redactors or editors, collating material from a range of sources, not all of them known to us today and many of them much more ancient than scholars from traditional backgrounds would care to admit. For example, there was a vast store of oral, as well as written, “wisdom” sayings that circulated widely in the ancient Near East, particularly in the Mystery Religions. The Mystery Religions were movements that restricted full admission to those who had gone through certain secret initiation rites, or mysteries. The most famous were those of Demeter in Eleusis in Greece, as well as those of Dionysus, Mithras, Serapis and Isis. The “parts” acted out and spoken by the sun god or central speaker in the many Mystery Religion dramas formed a part of this collection of “sayings,” or Logia.
Why were four Gospels selected, and not three or six or eight? Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons around 190 CE, said there had to be four because there were four winds and four directions. This usually draws an indulgent smile from scholars, but there was a solid, though esoteric, reason behind the choice. For the ancients the number four was fundamental to the entire structure of life and the universe. The square, with its four sides, was the basis for any further elaboration in all forms of building, even the Pyramids. There were four major stages in evolution: the mineral, the vegetative, the animal and the human. Also, there were the four basic elements of water, earth, air and fire. This is the esoteric reason why the Egyptian sun god Horus had four sons. It is also behind the account of Jesus’ choice of four fishermen as his chief disciples: Peter, Andrew, James and John. It was perfectly natural, even necessary, then, that this fourfold order of nature be followed in structuring the Scriptures for the new movement, Christianity.
John’s Gospel
The last of the four Gospels, John, was probably composed around 95–100 CE, and is in a classification by itself. The vast differences between the Gospel According to St. John and the first three Synoptics have been commented upon by Christian scholars all the way back to the latter half of the second century. John may have followed some of Mark’s outline, especially the Passion narrative, but his Gospel is so different that we are in an almost completely other world. From the very outset, John’s Jesus is the Son of God in all his glory.
The differences between John and the Synoptics simply cannot be reconciled, much as some conservative scholars have tried. There are no parables in John. The account of the institution of Holy Communion, or the Mass, is missing completely, replaced by the washing of the disciples’ feet on Maundy Thursday, as it has come to be called. Like Mark, there is no nativity story and no virgin birth. Instead of a birth narrative, we are told Jesus was the divine Logos with God, and part of God’s being from eternity. The cleansing of the temple comes right at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in John, and not at the end, where the others all have it. The amazing story of Lazarus is unique to John. In general, John’s Gospel has been called “the spiritual Gospel” because of the various extensive and unique dialogues where the deep things of the Spirit are discussed.
At the same time, the Gospel of John is undoubtedly the most quoted of the four Gospels. It contains the famous text, John 3:16, which is so often held up on a card by that person who always manages to get a seat in the ball park right behind the catcher or in the part of the arena where the TV cameras zoom in most frequently. The same text is found on signs of every size all along the roads and highways of North America. It begins with the familiar words “For God so loved the world . . .” It’s the same chapter that tells the story so loved and quoted by the more conservative wing of contemporary Christianity, about the need to be “born again.” They misunderstand it completely in my view, but they certainly use it a lot.
In discussing what is meant by being born again (or better, in view of the Greek, “born from above”), in chapter 3 John makes it abundantly clear that what is being talked about is the fact that all humans are to have two births—the natural birth from “water,” as a human baby, and a second birth, which is spiritual. The “born again” experience is that of recognizing one’s true nature as a spark of the Divine—the light that gives light to everyone coming into the world. It has nothing whatever to do with what evangelicals describe as recognizing one’s status as a sinner and “accepting Christ as Saviour.” There is nowhere in the Gospels where this condition for “becoming a Christian” is ever laid out in the manner, for example, in which the famous Evangelist Billy Graham presents it. The traditional church teaching that we all, by our very nature as part of the human family, are contaminated by “original sin,” that is, by the sin of our mythical forefather Adam—Paul says that “in Adam all died” (because of his sin)—and that we add to this by our own sinful acts, has been the basis for clerical control all down the ages.
It’s important to remember that the idea of having a second birth is by no means unique to the New Testament. It was widespread in the cults and competing philosophies flourishing in the Greco-Roman world of that day. It even had its own term, palingenesia. In the Hermetic Literature (Corpus Hermeticum—recorded in the second and third centuries, but based upon Egyptian wisdom going back many centuries before that) the subtitle of chapter 13 is “On Being Born Again” and includes the “Hymn of Rebirth.”10
Significantly, John’s portrayal of Jesus and the whole story is, in fact, so different from the others that there were parts of the emerging ecclesiastical organization in Rome and elsewhere that wanted it rejected from the official canon of sacred scripture. One vivid way of describing this situation is to say that John’s Jesus “walks about four feet above the ground.” In other words, while this Jesus never categorically claims to be God (incidentally, this claim is not explicitly made anywhere in the New Testament), his status is one of great personal exaltation from the very outset. There is no Markan “Messianic Secret” here: there is no command not to tell anyone who he is. The Christology—the view of who Jesus is—is far “higher” in John than it is in Matthew, Luke and Mark. John’s Jesus moves and speaks with the total authority of the central figure of the ancient mythos or mystery play, with no attempt to cloak or veil the fully allegorical nature of the drama. (For more on the differences between John and the Synoptics, see Appendix A.)
What are we to say to all of the above? The implications, it seems to me, are quite clear. While each of the Gospels is a mythical rendition of the Jesus Story, the Fourth Gospel is to my mind the most conspicuously so. Read literally, it is, with some brilliant exceptions, a laborious and quite unbelievable task. Taken fully in its deeper, spiritual sense as the drama of the soul in matter, it is a virtuoso piece of illumination and inspiration full of joy
