Navigating Gospel Truth: A Guide to Faithfully Reading the Accounts of Jesus's LifeSýnishorn

The Authors

The names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were attached to the four Gospels very early on—very likely as soon as they were being passed around the first- and second-century churches—and we get clues about who those authors were both in our Bibles and in other early Christian writings.

Mark’s Gospel

Read Acts 12:11-14. What things do we learn about a man named Mark in verse 12?

Most experts agree that Mark’s Gospel was written first. Even non-Christian scholars date Mark between thirty-five and forty-five years after Jesus’s death (i.e., between AD 60 and 70). Some Christian scholars think it was written even earlier. Either way, Mark was written well within the lifetime of eyewitnesses to Jesus. So, who was Mark, and how do we know he was consulting with these witnesses? A Christian leader named Papias, who was writing around the turn of the first century (roughly AD 95–110), recorded the testimony of a man known as John the Elder, who said that Mark based his Gospel on the memories of the apostle Peter, who was one of Jesus’s closest friends.

Matthew’s Gospel

Read Matthew 10:2-4. What do we learn about Matthew from these verses?

Matthew’s Gospel is generally agreed to be later than Mark’s, with many experts dating it between AD 60 to 80. Papias also mentioned Matthew, suggesting that he may originally have written his Gospel in Hebrew or Aramaic (the common language of Jews of Jesus’s time and place). Matthew, Mark, and Luke all include someone named Matthew in their lists of Jesus’s twelve apostles (Matt. 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:15).

Luke’s Gospel

Read Colossians 4:14. What do we learn about Luke from Paul’s description?

Luke’s Gospel was likely written at a similar time to Matthew, between AD 60 and 80. But unlike the other Gospel authors, Luke went on to write a sequel, which we know as the book of Acts. Luke was also a companion of Paul’s.

John’s Gospel

Read John 13:23-25. John referenced an anonymous disciple in all these passages. How did he describe that disciple?

Most scholars think that John’s Gospel was the last one to be written, around sixty years after the events it records (approximately AD 90–95). But it’s also the only Gospel that claims in the text itself to have been written by an eyewitness. The name John was attached to this Gospel from the earliest records we have, and by the end of the second century, its author was identified with John the son of Zebedee, who was one of Jesus’s twelve apostles. Many contemporary scholars follow this identification. Others, like British New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham, argue that John was actually written by another disciple of Jesus: a young, Jerusalem-based disciple, who was later known as John the Elder.1 The author of John was a very close disciple of Jesus and an eyewitness to much of what he wrote in his Gospel. He also would have had access to the testimony of other eyewitnesses.

1. For Richard Bauckham’s argument, see Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 420–423, 458–468.