Second Century Gospel: Duane W. H. Arnold, PhD
“There are fundamental differences between a second-century user of a Gospel and a fourth- or fifth-century quotation in a Church Father: (1) For a later user, the Gospels of the New Testament were available as part of the four-Gospel canon; in the period before the year 200 CE, the Gospels were usually transmitted separately. (2) In the later period, the Gospels were considered holy scripture; no such respect was accorded them in the earliest period. (3) Beginning only with the third century can we assign quotations to certain text types, attested in extant manuscripts, and often confirmed by translations into Syriac, Coptic and Latin; for the earlier period, we have no manuscript evidence at all, and text types can be identified only by the evidence that comes from those who used Gospels.”
Helmut Koester
Recently, after re-reading James Dunn’s book, ‘The Oral Gospel Tradition’ which increased my understanding of the first century, I turned my attention to the second century. Years ago, I had attended a seminar on ‘Gospel Traditions in the Second Century’ at the University of Notre Dame, chaired by William L. Petersen. Searching through my shelves, I found the published proceedings of the seminar and settled in to read on a rainy afternoon.
Coming across an opening quote from Helmut Koester (see above) I began to see the early generations of the Christian era in a different light. Taken together, Dunn and Petersen, became my guides to the transmission of the text of the Gospels through the first two centuries of the Christian era. One thing became very clear on this journey. The first several generations of Christians were not biblio-centric. That is, their access to actual texts or codices was very limited. This is evidenced by the close to complete absence of extant manuscripts or papyri and the limited number of direct quotes from the Gospels that are to be found in the works and letters of the Apostolic Fathers and other second century Christian writers. The words of Jesus that are most often referenced are those relating to the Eucharist and, to a lesser extent, baptism. From references to the “memoirs of the Apostles” in Justin Martyr (c. 100 – c. 165) it seems as though separate Gospels or collections of the “sayings of Jesus” were in some limited circulation among the churches, but we are uncertain as to the extent of that circulation or, indeed, their exact content. (Even papyri from a later period are of interest as the earliest fragments are amateurish while the later fragments are “professional” indicating a greater appreciation of the texts reflected in the hiring of scribes.)
So, one might ask the following question, “Without an established four-Gospel canon, what was ‘the Gospel’ for these early generations of believers?”.
I would submit that “the Gospel” for them is exactly the same as “the Gospel” is for us. It consists, firstly, of the proposition that God was in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to himself and, secondly, in our response to that proposition evidenced in community and conduct. In the second century, baptism and the Eucharist are clearly the “markers” of a Christian community and are sanctioned by the words of Christ, whether those words came by oral tradition, by a catalog of the sayings of Jesus or by one of the nascent four Gospels. This is simply irrefutable from the writings of the era. The second aspect of Christian conduct is also irrefutable. Time and time again, early Christian writers point to the exemplary conduct of believers as part of the evidence of the truth of the Gospel. It was very much an argument along the lines of, “You don’t have to believe what we say, but you have to believe what you see us do…” The Gospel was, and is, embodied in Christian conduct.
One might now ask the next question, “What constituted Christian conduct in the second century?”. From the Letter to Diognetus, to the Apostolic Tradition, to Clement and the Didache, the answer is remarkably consistent and easy to understand. It is showing love to all, whether they are within the Church or without. It is caring for the poor, feeding the hungry and welcoming the immigrant. It is faithfulness in marriage. It is looking to the good of others before oneself. It is Matthew 25 and the Sermon on the Mount not merely read, or debated, but actually lived. It is well to remember that the observation “behold how they love one another” was not made by a Christian, but by a pagan.
“Christians are not distinguished from other men by country, language, nor by the customs which they observe. They do not inhabit cities of their own, use a particular way of speaking, nor lead a life marked out by any curiosity. The course of conduct they follow has not been devised by the speculation and deliberation of inquisitive men. The do not, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of merely human doctrines. Instead, they inhabit both Greek and barbarian cities, however things have fallen to each of them. And it is while following the customs of the natives in clothing, food, and the rest of ordinary life that they display to us their wonderful and admittedly striking way of life. They live in their own countries, but they do so as those who are just passing through. As citizens they participate in everything with others, yet they endure everything as if they were foreigners. Every foreign land is like their homeland to them, and every land of their birth is like a land of strangers. They marry, like everyone else, and they have children, but they do not destroy their offspring. They share a common table, but not a common bed. They exist in the flesh, but they do not live by the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, all the while surpassing the laws by their lives. They love all men and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned. They are put to death and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich. They lack everything, yet they overflow in everything. They are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor they are glorified; they are spoken ill of and yet are justified; they are reviled but bless; they are insulted and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evildoers; when punished, they rejoice as if raised from the dead…”
The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus
I sometimes believe that we have fallen so in love with words, both ours and others, that we have forgotten that the Gospel is more than letters on a page. It is the good news of God in Christ which is to be proclaimed and it is a life to be lived, both in the community of the Church and in the eyes of a watching world. Maybe the second century Christians had a better grasp of that truth. Even without reading it, they heard it and they lived it.
The fascinating part of this beyond the fact that there was no settled, easily accessible canon of Scripture…is that the people that wrote about how Christians conducted themselves were not fans of the sect.
The world saw us as distinct and the distinctions were love and good works…not our view of the empire…
Michael
Even in the late fourth century, the emperor Julian the Apostate did not fault the conduct of Christians, although he did castigate their beliefs… nothing was said of their politics.
I think we need to be really clear…Christians were still working out various doctrines…the unchanging bedrock of the faith was their conduct and their message.
The “word of God” was not a string of canonized words, but the good news about what God has done in Christ.
It’s my assumption that an early Christian (circa- Acts) would not be focused on the Scriptures appart from attending Synagogue or believer’s gatherings. After the Judean War, accessing Scripture, particularly the four Gospels. may have been complicated with Judiaism falling out of favor.
Michael
Agreed. The development of doctrine is a given… both message and conduct, however, are there from the first assemblies of believers.
Nathan
Not only that, but it really is not until the 130s that the Jewish community came to some agreement on a canon and, at the same time, set aside the LXX which the Christian community had embraced…
Fidelity to the collected text has replaced a commitment to love in community as our primary boundary marker
We can manipulate the text to our liking…even to the point of endorsing hate….
The church has become centered on documents rather than incarnation…thus, it has no problem slipping the Constitution and other political documents inside it’s Scriptures…
Michael @ 8:33
I sure hope that is not true….
But this nation was founded by folk who had respect for our scriptures. Sad to think today God and country comingle…
Just reading O.T. this morning where God is instructing the Jew to keep a clean camp….
How do we, the Redeemed, function in a secular world today?
Em,
This country was founded mainly by deists.
Look up the Jefferson Bible…
As to how we function today…the early church gave us the template.
I would also commend the first letter of Peter to the “exiles”…it starts with knowing who we are.
I see in the NT a tremendous reliance on and fidelity to Scripture, in the case of the Apostles, the OT. Moreover, Apostolic letters were treated as Scripture. Based on the Didache, we can find a lot of what is included in the Gospels, particularly Matthew.
The Word of God is a unique genre of writing, which has power (because it is God-breathed) to convey the grace of God to lost sinners, to free captives to sin, to grant life eternal, to create brothers and sisters of our Lord, to bestow God’s love, which makes lovers of us.
Without the written Scriptures, God’s love in Christ for fallen sinners would stand unrevealed, his grace and mercy would remain in heaven, no one would have knowledge of Christ, the cross, the resurrection, His ascension, His atonement, etc. All would be damned, no one would have faith, the world would be infinitely worse off than it is today.
Yes there are too many false teachers, and too many gullible, ignorant and foolish sheep. “But it is not as though the word of God has failed.”
Jean,
That is one theology of Scripture…which would have not been known to the early church as they had no such canon yet.
Without it, they still “turned the world upside down” with the message of what God did in Christ lived out as well as proclaimed.
Too many false teachers, ignorant, gullible sheep? Sad truth
Few people today respect academic, honest academic discipline…. sig
sig? Ha ha, no… sigh
The written Scripture means nothing to the self absorbed, but if you stand back and think on it, it is God’s miracle that it HAS survived..
Jean
With regard to the Didache, you bring up an interesting point. The is an overlap with Matthew, although it also contains sayings of Jesus not in the synoptics. So, did Matthew and the Didache have a common source? Was there an interdependence? We don’t know because we don’t have the manuscript evidence…
Additionally, many of the sayings of Jesus in the Apostolic Fathers do not correspond readily to the synoptics. It appears that much was in flux in this period. This does not diminish the Gospels in any way, but there was a process …
Great article!
I don’t think the take-away is to be less “document-centered”. The early ones we speak of are the very same ones who spoke, wrote, codified, and canonized the text that we have today. It is completely abuseable, but it is also all we have.
Josh
My take away is that lacking a four-Gospel canon they defined the “Gospel” in terms of the proclamation of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself, and living the Gospel in their conduct…
Oh yes, but I also think it fallacy to say they weren’t as dependent on scripture. They saw Christ in the Old Testament, while speaking the New Testament themselves. We only need the written documents because they aren’t alive to tell us. Again though, that doesn’t diminish the written documents that we have. We have exactly what those first believers wanted us to have!
Josh
They had contact with the LXX, but access to what we now know as New Testament writings was fragmentary during most of this time…
I don’t think they were nearly as dependent on Scripture as we claim to be…even access to the OT canon was limited.
This is not to diminish what we have…but I certainly see it differently than I did before.
An” inspired” text without “inspired” interpretation is a recipe for the chaos we have today.
I’m much more concerned as a pastor that my flock embrace the holistic message of what God has done in Christ and live out that then how well they can do in a Bible quiz.
Fragmentary, obviously, but the Apostles were speaking the documents, and their speech was carried on through oral tradition. I think we also err when we assume the written word is the only accurate form of historical recording.
I’m not sure how the holistic message can be discovered without the Scriptures that we have.
Michael
All of this has not even touched on the issue of literacy… We see so much of this in terms of our own contemporary experience, which was not the experience of the early Church.
Josh
Oral tradition indeed! Take a look at James Dunn, you’ll like it, I think.
Josh,
I am not diminishing the value of what we have, but asserting that without the conduct and heart proscribed in Scripture they will lack authority and power in the world.
“issue of literacy”
This is really part of where I’m pointing. Written word has not always been held superior to the spoken, and I think that’s one of our issues in understanding the transmission of scripture.
Dunn – a specific title?
Michael, no doubt, and to be clear, I was accusing you, personally, of diminishing scripture.
I was NOT accusing you…NOT!!
Geez, typos.
Josh
The Oral Gospel Tradition (in the article, BTW 😁)
Josh,
It’s all good. 🙂
I still teach verse by verse through the book…but the older I get the more I realize that without living it, I may as well be quiet.
There are giant themes that I was never taught…
“Recently, after re-reading James Dunn’s book, ‘The Oral Gospel Tradition’”
Duh 🙂 Missed it twice.
All to say, the early Church wasn’t all about Bible studies, whereas Bible study is all some groups have to offer today.
I know too many people who sneer at church attendance and say they are content with Bible study at home. To me, that’s like getting a new blender and spending all your time reading the instructions and never making a smoothie.
While we are told to not forsake assembling, we are also told to renew our minds – the washing of the Wod
We do need more good teachers, guidance in comparing Scrip Scripture with Scripture
That said, any honestly, humble prayerful reading of our Bible will go far to the renewing of our minds…
My question these days is, can some of the O.T. directions to Israel as a nation apply to the Church today?
I firmly believe secular government can be influenced by the Church, but we don’t control it….
Does “word” refer to the Scriptures or does it refer to Christ?
Xenia,
Both, and…
Why do we need to refer to the OT when it was fulfilled in Christ?
If we all took on the first three chapters of 1 Peter,…or the Sermon On the Mount… we’d change the world…
Michael
Perhaps the problem is that we don’t want to change the world… we want to make it more comfortable for our presuppositions and prejudices. Much of the appeal to Scripture is mere window dressing… and that is a tragedy.
Duane,
Exactly…
Xenia,
I completely understand the fact that many have issues with church attendance.
However, the Scriptures they claim to own demand that faith be lived out in a faithful community…
Dr. Duane @ 11:44
Observation is an XLNT ponder ! ! !
“I know too many people who sneer at church attendance and say they are content with Bible study at home. To me, that’s like getting a new blender and spending all your time reading the instructions and never making a smoothie.”
It’s actually worse! One cannot remain (or abide) in the true Vine if he or she despises the body of Christ and the place where He has promised His presence.
God’s grace was never ordered by God to be self-administered.
Wah-wah-wahhhh
Fun while it lasted. Checking out 🙂
Good article Duane!
Josh
Many thanks…
I think distinctions can be made between attending a building and being part of a worshipping community.
Xenia @ 11:15 yesterday
Agree with Michael – both – context again
Duane and Michael,
I appreciate your article and your observations related to it.
“Little children, love one another.”
Thanks!
Bruce
Many thanks…