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Analysis Of The Origins And Development Of Gospels
Gospels, or can be referred to as the Good news from God, it is a way of description teaching that brings the message from God. It was written almost a century after Jesus’s death, a symbolic record of Christ’s life and reflects a variety of ideas and concerns in the first four books of the New Testaments in Religion society.
From the time all four Gospels have been written, they all have been using a common tradition way which is been records by orally then writing. There are totally four Gospels in the Bible, and they all have different names. There are attributed to Matthew(85AD), Mark(70AD), Luke(85AD) and John(90AD). We can find the Gospels in the collaboration in the New Testaments under Gospels.
The development of the four Gospels are used by the Catholic Church consists of three important stages to the transmission of the good news about Jesus: The first stage is the life and time of Jesus, and the second stage is the oral period. Tradition and the third stage are the periods of the Evangelist. Three stages in the Gospels can help us to get a deeper understanding of the New Testament and the Bible. The first stage of the formation is the historical time of Jesus, and it is the foundation of the four Gospels upon teaching and parables of Jesus. During this stage(30-33AD) Jesus has handpicked grouped of disciples known as the Apostles, this stage takes part of place during Jesus’s life and what things he did in his lifetime. During this period, Jesus did not leave anything writing. It is transmitted of oral talking through the Apostles so it can be preserving the Gospel in the first stage.
The second stage is the Oral Tradition. During this stage(30-70AD) the Apostles of Jesus begins to travel around the world to the transmission and preaching to other people that do not know Jesus to spread about what did Jesus said and did. To explaining the good message from God in more depth way for those who believed in Jesus. Secondly, to announce Jesus is the Son and Messiah of God publicly in the Church. However, as time goes some certain elements have been altered slightly through the decades goes. It is transmitted by Jesus’s Apostles orally preaching to people and public talking through churches. It was not written down in paper because people think the stories and ideas are still fresh in their mind, although some might changes slightly compare with the original.
Also, most people couldn’t read or write and the material for paper is a shortage during the time. So, this period it’s likely that written collections of these materials began to take shape before the first Gospel is composed. The last also known as the third stage of the formation is the stage of New Testament writings by the Evangelists.
During this period (50-90AD) it is a significant period toward the end of Gospel Formation, during this time people that believed in Jesus began to gradually be editing, collecting and writing down what had been taught and preached by Jesus. It is the time forming the four Gospels in the New Testaments, by people realizing the death of the Apostles and original eyewitness to Jesus life death and resurrection, it is the time to keep this teaching longer. The main reason the last stage of formation been transmitted in writing is that Christian thought Jesus has died, but his stories, actions, sayings need to note down and preserve the Gospels for longer.
Secondly, as time passes people begins to question the true version of the Gospel, and people during that time believes they need to have the true Gospel as one to preach. During the third stage of the Gospel Formation of writing, the source used in each Gospel came from different ways. Mark is the first that writing the Gospel (70 AD), the source that Mark gets is mainly from the Apostolic preaching, but with Matthew and Luke is quite different(85AD). The main sources that Matthew and Luke get are mainly one part from Mark as an agreement of Mark’s writing, but the second part came from an unknown resource that Mark does not mention in the Gospel before. And lastly John, John is a very independent writer that does not have any similarity with other Gospel writers, it has different sayings and stories of Jesus. Because John starts quite late with the Gospel, so his main sources came from the Apostolic Preaching of the oral tradition.
The unknown resource that appeals in the Gospel of Matthew is referred to as Doc Q. It is a hypothetical written set of announcements that are mainly Jesus used. Q is common uses in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but it is not part of the Gospel of Mark. “According to this hypothesis, this material comes from the oral tradition of the early church, and it was written in Koine Greek; the existence of Q was questioned by scholars, and some scholars assumed that Q was actually multiple sources, some were written, and some were verbal. Others tried to determine the compositional phase of Q.” A Bible Canon is a set of texts (or ‘books’) that a particular religious community considers to be authoritative verses. The English word ‘Canon’ comes from the Greek word κανών, which means ‘rule’ or ‘measure stick.’ Canon is about a collection of special, scared, authoritative writings by others that were based on Jesus, this including other Gospels, were in circulation at this time.
The scholars believe “the creation of the Canon in Christian believe was likely response to the career of the heretic Maricon (c. 85–160), who established a canon of his own belief with just one gospel, the gospel of Luke, which he edited to fit his own theology. “The importance of Canon, because it is an eyewitness to describe historical events of this magnitude, they really shape the world we live in. Without this book, most of the Western and Eastern worlds today will be completely different from the book’s events never happened. It can be said that the events recorded in this book are claimed by a considerable proportion of people who have lived on Earth. This is the most important event in the history of the world. This book is the foundation of everything that humans will know or accomplish. It directly led to a large-scale commitment to goodwill and philanthropy. Thanks to this book, many projects have been carried out, hospitals have been built, and a large number of feeding and clothing and orphanages have been established.
Matthew is a Jewish Christian, he lived in the Syria city of Antioch. Although we haven’t know the exact place where Matthew wrote his Gospels, people believe it’s in somewhere in Rome. Matthew’s Gospel is much longer than Mark, it uses 612 out of 622 of what Mark’s sources and it’s heavily linked to quotations in Old Testaments, plus another Q sources and people believe it most likely in Greek. Scholars say Matthew’s Gospel was probably written in around 85 AD. The original audience Matthew is writing to a very different group of Christians; a group of Jewish Christians who live in Antioch in Syria.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Matthew links Jesus to Moses, he believes Jesus is seen as the Messiah leading the Palestine people to a new life of freedom. Because religious tensions were running very high in 1st century Palestine. Matthew writing mainly his Gospel is for other converts from Judaism, as the state of community deals with things like persecution, how to become a Jewish Christian, how to deal with tensions and other issues… And that is the main idea in Matthew’s purpose is to lead this strong idea to his people from treating unequally ( slavery in Egypt) and living in horror, to liberate them into a new life with them living in their promised land.
To believe in Jesus, he is the only God, who would lead them to freedom and restore the kingdom of Israel. By learning the Good News for Jesus this gives more hope to Palestine people to face the future life and gives them affirmation and support, which makes them believe that they are no longer alone in the place of unequal and torturing because they believe in God and God‘s bless will always be with Palestine people. The main message from Matthew’s Gospel is about community is trying to organize itself as a whole and working together for the good of our brothers and sisters, anyone in the community is having trouble, the whole community helps that person together. By doing this Matthew decides to uses authoritative teaching.
“In Matthew’s Gospel Matthew is seeing Jesus as the fulfillment of the Jewish law, as the New Moses.” In Matthew’s Gospel, Matthew writes about the humanity of Jesus, Matthew links Jesus to Moses, he believes Jesus is seen as the Messiah leading the Palestine people to a new life of freedom and away of the slavery, brings his people in a land of no right or wrong and a place for giving and accept the others. Matthew uses parables to illustrate the truth in the Bible, to help make a new aspect of how God was using simply story to deepen our understanding and knowledge. The moral of the Parable of the Sower is an example in Matthew teaches us the main idea in the Bible. The implication of Sower parable is that not everyone who has heard the gospel of Christianity will have the same understand and believe, but as people keep follow the truth in the Bible it will eventually understand the main idea behind it.
There are four scenes for farmers to sow seeds. The first seed is planted along the path, representing those people do not understand. The second seed falls on the rock. But their growth time is short, but their beliefs have no roots and the faith has withered. The third seed falls in the thorny weeds. These seeds are those who believe, but the test of life kills any good works they may have done.
The last seed falls on “good soil,” and these people believe and continue to spread the Gospel to others and produce a good harvest. This parable tells us the truth in the Bible needs the same attempt from the learners, and then we could spread the Gospel well to the other that does not know about it. Having a strong faith and belief towards God and his words will help us to form a better community and working together for the goods in Christian society.
