Or if one is interested in the colors of the tabernacle: purple, was the color of kingship; scarlet the color of redemption; white, the color of purity and blue the color of heaven. All I am saying in all of these parallels is not for us to memorize them, but to show us that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and their distinctive emphasis, have parallels all the way through the Bible. And having four accounts harmonize with those parallels.

A fourth reason why we have four gospel accounts is to keep in line with the background of each writer. Matthew, as you probably already know was an official of the Roman government; was known as a publican (not a Republican) but a publican, or a tax collector. And as such, he was bitterly hated by the people. What a perfect choice to write about Jesus Christ who was despised and rejected of men.

Then John closes his gospel where do you suppose? What’s next on the gospel calendar? Our Lord’s promise of his own second coming—The return of the Master. So each of them has a continuing or progressive ending from the resurrection to the ascension to the coming of the spirit to the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Again, Matthew writes, “Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites, you are like white (washed) sepulchers.” well now that kind of a statement would be very meaningful to Jewish ears because to stumble over a grave, brought ceremonial defilement. We must understand that would have no meaning to a Greek, or to a Roman. Therefore, when Luke writes the same statement, he writes, “You are as graves which do not appear”—like graves that we don’t see. That would make more sense to a Greek, whereas for the Jew, become whitewashed sepulchers would have special significance. So, he is writing directly to Jews.

For twenty years or more after Jesus’ death the good news remained in an oral tradition. It was passed on by word of mouth, from one head of the family, let us say, to the children or from one generation to the next generation. It is the general opinion of scholarship today, though it is debated, that perhaps Mark may have been the earliest of the Gospel accounts there is some debate as to whether Matthew or Mark should be the earliest but I think most scholars today believe that Mark was the earliest probably written around the early sixties. If that is the case, then the earliest written records about Jesus did not emerge until thirty or forty years after the life of Jesus in the flesh.

This might surprise some, but many of the letters or epistles written by Paul and other writers preceded the Gospel accounts. Acts through the epistles were composed much earlier than the Gospel accounts. So, if we want to go to the earliest book of the New Testament we do not go the Gospels, we go to several of the epistles. Either 1 Thessalonians or Galatians or one of those books. So, that the earliest document is about thirty years possibly longer than thirty years after Christ’s death.

Why this delay before recording these books in words? Well I think there are several factors. First of all, there was no need to write it down. We have the oral tradition from those who were close to Jesus people who were his disciples, people who were eyewitnesses and therefore you didn’t need to have something written down. The spoken word was regarded more highly than written accounts in those days. Not only that but this was a nonliterary age. Apart from some of the centers of culture like Athens or Rome, the first half of the Christian century was a non-literary age—they didn’t put things down in writing. Obviously, the days of printing and circulation were still many, many centuries later. Unlike today, where we have hundreds and hundreds of books that come off the press every month, and a lot of it junk, at that time the pen was an unfamiliar tool, not many people did writing in those times. We can understand why that was the case because of the cost involved. For a scribe to put something down in writing would cost a tremendous amount of money. One must remember they would only do it one copy at a time—they had no duplication processes. Someone has estimated that the four gospels alone if you going to reproduce them in that day, in pre-inflation prices would have cost something like $255.00 for one copy. So, there was tremendous cost involved. Then there was the expectation of the Parousia, the expectation of the second coming of Christ. He could come at any moment. In a situation like that, books are pretty irrelevant. This basically explains why there was a gap of twenty, thirty, or forty years before the first books were penned about the life of Christ.

1958.