New Life for an Old Dispute

By Richard N. Ostling.

Which Gospel was the first to be written, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John? That question is not only historically intriguing but important for interpreting the life of Jesus and the development of early Christian belief. Traditionally, biblical scholars, especially Roman Catholics, gave pride of place to Matthew, a view that prevailed until Victorian times. Then, in the 19th century, Protestant scholars rallied around Mark as the first Gospel writer, and most Catholics later followed suit. Today the predominant theory of how the Gospels were written holds that Mark served, along with a collection of Jesus' teachings, as a major source for the writings of both Matthew and Luke. (The fourth Gospel, of John, came later.)

Now that consensus faces a spirited challenge. The latest installment of the Anchor Bible, a new study by C.S. Mann, a respected Gospel expert, boldly challenges Mark's precedence as "at best debatable, and at worst indefensible." If Mann is correct, Matthew would be restored as the probable first among equals. The world of biblical scholarship thus appears headed for another round in an old and sometimes heated controversy.

The new Anchor Bible volume is the latest in Doubleday's distinguished series of new translations and line-by-line studies of all the biblical books. When completed, the set will consist of 65 volumes by 46 Protestant, Catholic and Jewish experts. Mann's 715-page analysis took nine years to complete. An Anglican clergyman, the author was a Bible professor and dean at St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore from 1968 until his 1983 retirement. He is best known as co-author of a 1971 Anchor Bible volume on the Gospel of Matthew.

Influenced by scholarly skepticism about Mark's priority, Mann decided to examine particularly the ways in which the three Gospels differ about the order of events in Jesus' life. Where such differences exist, Mann shows, Mark rarely departs significantly from Matthew or Luke. There is agreement in most cases between the accounts in Mark and Matthew and, less frequently, between Mark and Luke. To Mann, that is strong evidence that Mark's Gospel derives from the other two. In addition, where Mark and Matthew coincide, both narratives are usually very similar in substance. One of many examples, Mann notes, is the close parallel in Mark and Matthew when they recount Jesus' predictions of the fall of the Jerusalem Temple and the subsequent persecution of Christian believers.

To Mann, the most convincing explanation for these patterns is that Matthew and Luke clearly preceded Mark. Although he does not endorse either as being the first Gospel writer, the implicit result of his study is to restore Matthew to the primacy he once held in biblical studies. Mann's belief in fact is that Mark wrote a digest that combines the events of Luke and Matthew.

Last week in Atlanta, at the annual convention of the Society of Biblical Literature, the major organization of North American Scripture scholars, Mann's thesis provoked skepticism. John Dominic Crossan, a professor at DePaul University, pointed out a major problem in Mann's thesis: although Mark covers Jesus' life, he leaves out much of his teaching. Why? Crossan believes there is no good answer to that question. In his alleged paraphrase, Crossan says, Mark would have had to ignore important parts of Matthew and Luke, "leaving out huge sections" of famous instructions contained in the other Gospels. Notable among the omissions are the Sermon on the Mount and most of Jesus' parables, including those of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. Also missing are the Nativity story, the notion of the virgin birth, Jesus' appearances to the disciples after the Resurrection, and the granting of the "keys of the kingdom" to Peter, with which Catholicism has buttressed papal authority.

Professor Paul J. Achtemeier of Union Theological Seminary in Richmond has another difficulty with Mann's work. If Mark wrote from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Achtemeier says, he did a poor job of it. Mark's narrative is cruder than the other accounts, and he makes grammatical, geographical and theological mistakes. For example, Mark describes the Decapolis, a large biblical region southeast of the Sea of Galilee, as though it surrounded that body of water. "It would be strange to take a clear source and make it muddled," Achtemeier asserts.

Mann provides an original, if "tentative," explanation for the lapses. He believes that Mark, making use of Matthew and Luke as well as reminiscences from Peter, wrote under extraordinary circumstances. The beleaguered Christians of Palestine, stirring restlessly just prior to the disastrous Jewish revolt against Rome of 66 to 70 A.D., were plagued by doubts about their new creed. To comfort them, Mark produced a deliberately truncated portrait of Jesus as a powerful but mysterious Messiah and miracle worker. Along the way he omitted the more complicated ethical teachings, the Nativity story and the like. Those aspects of Jesus' life were covered by Matthew and Luke, who wrote during less turbulent times.

Mann, who is relatively conservative on matters of biblical interpretation, suspects that the theory of the primacy of Mark's Gospel became popular in the 19th century for other than scholarly reasons. Liberal Protestants of those days, he thinks, instinctively preferred Mark as the original Gospel account because its omissions better conformed to their theology on such issues as papal supremacy and the virgin birth. Thus Mann's thesis is almost bound to produce further conflicts between scholarly liberals, who think the New Testament includes numerous fabrications, and conservatives, who take the Scriptures literally as historical truth.

Controversy is nothing new to the Doubleday Anchor project, where the publisher has always allowed scholars free rein for unconventional conclusions. Mann's views are certainly iconoclastic enough, and their publication means that in all likelihood the debate over the words of Matthew, Mark and Luke will grow louder.

With reporting by B. Russell Leavitt/Atlanta