Where did the evangelists source their information from?

Answer 1

The term 'evangelist', in this sense, is used in reference to the authors of the canonical gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Christian tradition

Christian tradition says that they sourced their information from their personal experience as disciples. Matthew, Mark and John were disciples of Jesus, while Luke was an associate of Paul.

However, the gospels are believed to have been written anonymously and only attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the second century, based on clues in the gospels that seemed to identify the authors.

Modern critical scholarship

Biblical scholars say that the evangelists could not have been first-hand witnesses to the life of Jesus.

Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels in Greek, using Mark's Gospel as their main source of information about Jesus. Whenever they follow Mark, they both use almost the same Greek text as Mark did. Moreover, Luke is obviously unaware of the contents of a section of Mark's Gospel known as the "Missing Block" (Mark 6:47 to 8:27a, a total of 74.5 verses) - even the important miracle of Jesus walking on water. From this, it seems that Luke knew nothing of the life of Jesus other than what he found in his copy of Mark's Gospel.

Whenever Matthew and Luke agree with each other on material that is not in Mark, they attribute the same sayings to Jesus, but in different contexts and at different times in his ministry. From this, scholars assess that they must have used a common document, which the call the Q Document. The close similarity between Matthew and Luke means that the Q document must have been a written document, in the Greek language, not an oral tradition.

Matthew also used the Old Testament extensively as a source, as he was probably writing for a Jewish audience. We know that he used the Greek Septuagint translation because he relied on a Septuagint mistranslation of a verse in the Book of Isaiah.

Luke appears to have also relied to some extent on the works of the Jewish historian, Josephus, to place his Gospel in a historical context.

John's principal source appears to have been Luke's Gospel, although he seems to have reworked some of the accounts in Luke. Some examples are: Luke and John are the only gospels that mention sisters called Mary and Martha, and the only gospels that mention Lazarus. Luke contains a brief story of Jesus visiting the sisters, while Lazarus is in a parable that mentions his resurrection hypothetically. John wrote an important episode, in which Jesus visited the sisters, Mary and Martha, and resurrected their dead brother, Lazarus. The similarities are too great to be mere coincidences, yet they are not the same story.John's account of the appearances of the risen Jesus in the room in Jerusalem are close to Luke's, but splits one appearance into two.John narrated an episode in which the risen Jesus appeared to the fishermen beside the Sea of Tiberias and, casting their nets on the other side, they caught so many fish that they could not bring them all in. This is really a repetition of the miracle catch of fish described by Luke as an event which took place at the same spot during Jesus' life. Once again, the similarities are too great to be mere coincidences - the author of John copied material from Luke and was therefore not a disciple of Jesus.

Finally, the Gospel According to St Mark, which was, directly or indirectly, the main source for all other gospels. It does not appear that the author was really a disciple of Jesus, as once supposed, but scholars are uncertain as to what sources he used. A reasonable is that he relied on oral traditions, or perhaps an earlier document now lost to us.