The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Investigation of the Collection and Origin of the Canonical Gospels

Rating:
Summary: Why four gospels instead of one?
Review: Martin Hengel attempts to cover a great deal of ground in this relatively small book (200 pages excluding a huge number of endnotes). He discusses the four canonical gospels and the issues related to their authorship and recognition by the early church. Most of his time is spent on the three synoptic gospels while John is either neglected or only briefly mentioned.

One of Hengel's main points is that the gospels were written with titles already attached to them. "The gospel according to X" is how they were known from the very time of their composition. This view is in contrast to the view of some scholars who claim the gospels circulated as completely anonymous works until the mid to late 2nd century. Hengel's arguments on this topic are very persuasive. If the gospels were anonymous until the middle of the 2nd century, then we would not have expected such authors as Mark and Luke to be attributed to two of the gospels instead of the more respected Peter and Paul. There is also no known deviation in the naming of the gospels. This would seemingly be impossible if the titles were not attached to the gospels until 50-100 years after they began circulating because there was no centralized church government to impose such an edict in the second century. There is also no hint of any dispute in the early church regarding the titles of the four gospels.

Hengel frequently discusses the testimony of the early church Fathers such as Papias, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus in order to reach his conclusions. Before assuming Hengel is another Christian apologist it should be mentioned that he does not believe Matthew or John were written by those two disciples. However, he does believe they were originally written with the titles "gospel according to Matthew/John". He dates Matthew to 90-100 C.E. and John to 100-110 C.E, while dating Luke to 75-80 C.E. He also believes Matthew used Luke as a source.

This is the type of book in which the reader will not agree with everything the author claims, but will most likely find some areas of agreement. Hengel's arguments are always his own and he isn't one to follow the "party line" on any particular issue. He is to be commended for his originality and willingness to think for himself rather than relying on constant appeals to previous scholars to support his views.

Rating:
Summary: Why four gospels instead of one?
Review: Martin Hengel attempts to cover a great deal of ground in this relatively small book (200 pages excluding a huge number of endnotes). He discusses the four canonical gospels and the issues related to their authorship and recognition by the early church. Most of his time is spent on the three synoptic gospels while John is either neglected or only briefly mentioned.

One of Hengel's main points is that the gospels were written with titles already attached to them. "The gospel according to X" is how they were known from the very time of their composition. This view is in contrast to the view of some scholars who claim the gospels circulated as completely anonymous works until the mid to late 2nd century. Hengel's arguments on this topic are very persuasive. If the gospels were anonymous until the middle of the 2nd century, then we would not have expected such authors as Mark and Luke to be attributed to two of the gospels instead of the more respected Peter and Paul. There is also no known deviation in the naming of the gospels. This would seemingly be impossible if the titles were not attached to the gospels until 50-100 years after they began circulating because there was no centralized church government to impose such an edict in the second century. There is also no hint of any dispute in the early church regarding the titles of the four gospels.

Hengel frequently discusses the testimony of the early church Fathers such as Papias, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus in order to reach his conclusions. Before assuming Hengel is another Christian apologist it should be mentioned that he does not believe Matthew or John were written by those two disciples. However, he does believe they were originally written with the titles "gospel according to Matthew/John". He dates Matthew to 90-100 C.E. and John to 100-110 C.E, while dating Luke to 75-80 C.E. He also believes Matthew used Luke as a source.

This is the type of book in which the reader will not agree with everything the author claims, but will most likely find some areas of agreement. Hengel's arguments are always his own and he isn't one to follow the "party line" on any particular issue. He is to be commended for his originality and willingness to think for himself rather than relying on constant appeals to previous scholars to support his views.

Rating:
Summary: Deft, inviting, brilliant scholarship.
Review: Martin Hengel is one of the giants of modern Biblical scholarship. And this, one of his latest books, does away with some of the most destructive assumptions that have haunted a century of New Testament Studies. He makes the case effortlessly that the gospels were never circulated anonymously. That Mark and Luke came earlier than Matthew and John may be true as well. Hengel sees through alot of scholarly confusion as he seeks for what really happened. And he writes so that outsiders and novices like me can understand him, as well as for the most firmly entrenched in the field. I love his detailed examination of the primary source materials of the first two centuries; and his brilliant logic. His output is really immense, and I'm studying as much of it as I can. In my studies so far he ranks with N.T.Wright, John P. Meier, Raymond Brown and John A.T. Robinson. If I suffered any disappointment here, it was that Hengel did not go into greater detail in his response to David Trobisch whose book on the New Testament I very much admire. I think we'll see a lot of refreshing break throughs in New Testament scholarship in the years to come, and some of them are going to be purely matters of perspective: focusing on the obvious which generations of supposedly enlightened thinkers have rather madly ignored. Hengel makes those kinds of break throughs. So does Richard Bauckham. Marvelous teachers!