Titles of the gospels

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Stuart
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Re: Titles of the gospels

Post by Stuart »

Most likely the first Gospel (or I should say proto-Gospels) had no name or rather title.

When we look at early manuscripts we find the book titles are simple and placed in the white space margin at the beginning or end of the book (or both) often in another hand. Codex Sinaiticus for example has no title for Matthew, has a second hand (notice the tiny omicrons, and the spacing between words rather than scripta continua) white area title for Mark with ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ before the text and at the end of the book ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑΜΑΡΚΟΝ (this time ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ is scripta continua ... he caught himself not following the form and does ΚΑΤΑΛΟΥΚΟΝ scripta continua, but still tiny omicron). And so on. This is pretty much what we see in the earliest manuscripts, well into the middle ages.

(to see the text go here http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/manuscrip ... omSlider=0)
(note: I wish SPDoric showed in this forum, that font is closer to the early Greek manuscripts than SPIonic or the extended TNR I use here)

This suggests the titles are secondary, short crib note fashion, and primarily for distinguishing books from one another and for indexing purposes. As all the books were likely stand alone originally, and the titles only later.

Even if one doesn't subscribes to Marcionite priority, then following the logic of Clabeaux on the impact of titles, one can easily understand the Ephesians versus Laodiceans controversy on the basis of secondary title names. On collection, the Marcionite (pre-Marcionite in Clabeaux's model) had Πρὸς Λαοδικέας for a title, while a later collection, the Catholic had Πρὸς Ἐφεσίους. Ephesians migrated into the text (verse 1:1) to reinforce this preference. Clabeaux makes a strong argument in favor of Laodiceans as original following the Latin "Marcionite Prologues" for the original collection, as well as cross evidence in Colossians 4:16 which seems to have come about in an early collection and editorial phase. Similar albeit localized (some Western texts) controversy also exist with Romans title (and opening verses from which Ephesians opening seems to have been derived). I would simply summarize the evidence as indicating some flux in titles, and this came about because they were not there originally, because there were not collections at first composition.

So I am postulating here that titles are related to collection and the need for indexing, which eventually lent itself to a table of contents. But I do think the titles are pretty early, and the evidence is to be found in Mark 1:1 as to what that form originally was. But we have to backtrack for a moment before we look at that.

First, we have to shed ourselves of the notion of an "oral Gospel" which is to be frank a scholarly invention. It is based on the concept of the eye witness account theory of the Gospels. It is a solution to shut down other possibilities to explain multiple Gospels, and to give first person to Matthew and John, then second person with Mark (from Peter) and Luke (from Paul) reinforcing the eyewitness account memoir theory. But I think we have long since moved away from this suggestion to see these as more products of a later era (even late first century) with theological needs rather than pendantic accounts, as many of the episodes appear to be retelling episodes and themes from the Jewish scriptures, even when recast or the results flipped, while others come from popular fables. Whatever, the point is let's set aside the oral Gospel theory and work instead on the premise that the Gospels derive from some written source, or proto-Gospel (I have my own theory what the proto-Gospel was used for pre-evangelism, but that is neither here nor there, simply that I can imagine reasonable models where a proto-Gospel evolves and develops independent of evangelism and public use).

From that assumption of a proto-Gospel existing before the Gospels were published, and circulating within proto-Christian (already Christian IMO) communities (IMO these were monastic cults similar to the Ophite and Theraputae), evangelism erupted. And evangelism found a tool in the Gospel. Having already dispensed with the notion of an oral Gospel, one can read anew Paul in Galatians 2:2 "I went up by revelation; and I laid before them (but privately before those who were of repute) the gospel which I preach among the Gentiles." This is not an "oral Gospel" but a written document. It is uniquely his (the author of the letter that is) Gospel, and those he brings it to are logically heads of the community he may have at one time sprung from and thus respected, or possibly from the mother community, as Jerusalem reference seems to imply. In fact he says in verses 2:6-7 "hose, I say, who were of repute added nothing to me; but on the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel." He is saying:
1) those of repute whom he showed his Gospel accepted his version
2) this implies they ALREADY KNEW the Gospel, even though his was the first one used to Evangelize!

So if the legend told in Galatians has any relationship to reality (maybe it does, maybe it doesn't) then it tells us a Gospel (i.e., some proto-Gospel) was known to community leaders, and that Paul personifies the first evangelists who carried a public version of the Gospel to teach and gain converts outside the community (that is normal people, rather than those committing to the monastic life). But Galatians also tells a tale of a 2nd Gospel, similar yet different, that perverts the first Gospel's message, or so Paul complains throughout the letter.

I am not of the opinion that Mark's Gospel was first, and in fact I think started from a section common with Matthew, that began originally with the phrase "in those days", which is preserved in Matthew 3:1 about John, but was moved by Mark to verse 1:9 for the introduction of Jesus. Mark instead opens with the versification of the title, "The Gospel of Christ" (ΤΟΥΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝΤΟΥΧΥ) which could also have been called the Gospel of the Lord, and that is simply a one letter change of Χ to Κ. No doubt Jesus or ΙΥ was an early pious scribal addition and could well have been in the text before Mark when he simply added the word "(this is) the beginning" (ΑΡΧΗ) and you get "Thus begins the Gospel of Jesus Christ" ΑΡΧΗΤΟΥΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝΤΟΥΙΥΧΥ or verse 1:1 of Mark, effectively versifying the title he found with a mere four letters. ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ is a product of the collection of the Gospels.

So I guess in conclusion I am agreeing that Mark versified the original title, which may have preceded all of the ΚΑΤΑ titles. And the ΚΑΤΑ titles came about because of the need to distinguish each, and beginning the myth of eyewitness and second hand accounts.
Last edited by Stuart on Thu Jun 14, 2018 5:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Stefan Kristensen
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Re: Titles of the gospels

Post by Stefan Kristensen »

I speculate that they had no titles, because as much as they were meant in some way to be understood as a continuation of the literature of Scripture, they were first and foremost meant to be understood as a recounting of historical events, as we can see explicitly from Luke (1:1-4) and John (20:30-31). A continuation of the biblical narrative of events (world history), not a continuation of the biblical literature.

The gospels were meant to relate God's message, not God's written work, and God's message had been revealed in the events surrounding Jesus' earthly ministry. It was exclusively those events that were important, not the written record itself. God had revealed some speciel knowledge that would lead to faith and to the spirit, but it had been revealed in historical events with Jesus. That knowledge or message had a technical term, as we can see with Paul: "the gospel". Therefore it was understood as one message presented in four ways. Through the earthly ministry of Jesus God had only sent one version of his gospel message, but it had been experienced with different eyes. I think it's Irenaeus who uses the image, that the gospel is like a clover: one flower but four leaves. There can only be one appropriate title for these works that relate God's revelation through Jesus' historical deed: The gospel. It is merely preaching in written form, i.e. "the gospel" in written form.


The message communicated in the four gospels was not the message of the authors, it was the message of God, as they understood it. That's why they were anonymous, I think. If the author of gMark had put his own name on it, it would have defeated the purpose in some ways, distancing the work from its true author, God, and instead connecting it closely with this human author and his intentions, a needless distraction from the saving power of God's gospel. Mark only wished to be the neutral channel of the message revealed in the 'historical' events, a plan that worked perfectly up until some 100 years ago, when we realized that he was in fact controlling the events and characters of his narrative very consciously.

Alternatively the gospel writers could have put an authoritative name on them making them pseudonymous, the name of a known and respected righteous person, thereby connecting the content to God in this way, but since the events were not of a distant past, like Daniel or 4 Ezra or the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs etc., there really were no people whose names could be attatched. John 21 tries to do it, though, connecting the content of his work to God by connecting it to the "beloved disciple". And it's actually also the same thing that happens, when the Christians went on and attatched the names of certain persons who were traditionally close to the events, either as disciples of Jesus or their co-workers.
Last edited by Stefan Kristensen on Thu Jun 14, 2018 2:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Secret Alias
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Re: Titles of the gospels

Post by Secret Alias »

Isn't a gospel without a name, by its very nature, a μυστικὸν εὐαγγέλιον?
Wood gave birth to me and iron reformed me, and I am the mystic receptacle of the Muses. When shut I am silent, but I speak when you unfold me.

Ὕλη μέν με τέκεν, καινούργησεν δὲ σίδηρος· εἰμὶ δὲ Μουσάων μυστικὸν ἐκδοχίον· κλειομένη σιγῶ· λαλέω δ᾿, ὅταν ἐκπετάσῃς με
The epistle is thus envisioned as simultaneously silent and speaking, a duality played upon in two riddle-epigrams from the Anthologia Palatina. But surely 'mystery/secret' - i.e. a blank title - is similarly conceived. The identity of the person is blank/secret same with the rolled up scroll.

The same is true with the Marcionite gospel as both Tertullian and Adamantius agree:
Marcion, on the other hand, attaches to his gospel no author's name,—as though he to whom it was no crime to overturn the whole body, might not assume permission to invent a title for it as well. At this point I might have made a stand, arguing that no recognition is due to a work which cannot lift up its head, which makes no show of courage, which gives no promise of credibility by having a fully descriptive title and the requisite indication of the author's name.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Titles of the gospels

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Stefan Kristensen wrote: Thu Jun 14, 2018 2:49 pmThe message communicated in the four gospels was not the message of the authors, it was the message of God, as they understood it. That's why they were anonymous, I think.
Agreed. Armin D. Baum makes the following observations:

Armin D. Baum, The Anonymity of the New Testament History Books: A Stylistic Device in the Context of Greco-Roman and Ancient near Eastern Literature (Novum Testamentum volume 50, fascicle 2, 2008, pages 120-142), pages 135-136: In the formation of Old Testament historical works not only the scribes and secretaries remained anonymous but also the historians (and epitomisers). Even historians who had taken great pains in order to collect and arrange (and adorn) their material abstained from publishing their narratives under their names. The anonymity of the Hebrew historians corresponds to the observation that within Old Testament historiography auctorial reflections in the first person are almost entirely missing and that the narrators present their speech material almost completely in oratio recta.

This stands in stark contrast to Greek historiography. Herodotus used the first person hundreds of times in order to reflect on the reliability of his sources and his own reports. Thucydides provided information about his historical method, his temporal relationship to the events of the war and his narrative technique in his prologue and did so in the first person (I 20-22). The Greco-Roman historians acted as open narrators. In contrast, the Hebrew historians from Genesis to Kings totally abstained from statements in the first person in which they would reflect on the purpose and method of their work. The Old Testament narrators consciously remained virtually invisible.

A similar effect was achieved by reproducing the speeches consistently (with only a few exceptions) in direct speech. Thus the statements of the agents were presented much more directly and vividly. At the same time the narrators remained entirely in the background. In contrast, Greek historiography detached itself from the example of Homer, who also used to present his figures' words in direct speech. Greco-Roman historians delivered large parts of their discourses in indirect speech. Through their narrative techniques they moved themselves somewhat more into focus of their readers. In Greco-Roman historiography the gap between the speaker and the narrator is more visible than in Hebrew history writing.

These observations even bring the direct speech of the gospels into account; direct speech replicates the original scene, as if the reader were standing there, listening. Indirect speech, which the author rewords, inserts the author, visibly, in between the subject matter and the reader. The evangelists, like the Jewish historians (but very much unlike Greco-Roman historical and biographical authors), recede into the background as far as possible. Baum continues:

Baum, pages 138-140: ...the authority of Wisdom literature was generally deduced from the authority of the Wisdom teachers. Their names were therefore mentioned. With regard to prophetic literature, the authority of prophetic messages depended even more on the identity of the particular prophet who claimed to have been appointed by God and to be authorized to act as a mediator of divine revelation. For this reason an anonymous prophetical book was considered unacceptable in the world of the Ancient Near East (and the Old Testament). With historical works there was no comparable concern with the identity of the writer. The attention was focused entirely on the subject matter.

....

By writing their works without mentioning their names, the New Testament narrators deliberately placed themselves in the tradition of Old Testament historiography. Like their Old Testament models, they wanted to use the anonymity of their works to give priority to their subject matter, the narratives about the life of Jesus (and the spread of the early Jesus movement). As authors they wanted, for the most part, to disappear behind their subject matter. In order to move the subject matter to the foreground as much as possible they let their actors talk mostly in direct speech and abstained from any reflections in the first person. Even in this respect they took over the stylistic devices with which the Old Testament historians had already tried to disappear as far as possible into the background of their narratives. Since they were mainly concerned with their subject matter and not with displaying their literary skill, the narrators of the New Testament also largely abstained from elevating the colloquial Hellenistic prose of their sources to a more sophisticated literary level. All of these literary idiosyncrasies of the Gospels and Acts were designed to make the authors as invisible as possible and to highlight the priority of their subject matter.

The Greco-Roman authors operated with a different set of values:

Baum, page 133: The fact that almost all Greek and Roman historians published their works under their names is probably due to their distinctive longing for fame. Every Greco-Roman author, not just the historians, wanted to receive recognition for his literary accomplishments.

Last edited by Ben C. Smith on Thu Jun 14, 2018 3:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Ken Olson
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Re: Titles of the gospels

Post by Ken Olson »

Ben C. Smith wrote: Thu Jun 14, 2018 8:58 am By "follow this pattern" I was not even really claiming that the gospel titles were deliberately modeled upon the Greek version titles, though that phrase can certainly be read that way. Rather, the point of view in using κατά strikes me as similar, since there are far more common ways to express the relationship of author/editor to text (including the genitive, as you pointed out).
Thanks for the clarification. Yes, I agree your examples shed light on how we might interpret "KATA (author's name)."
Ben: The scriptures are being treated here as one work with different versions. That the gospel titles follow this pattern suggests to me that the gospel narrative was considered to be one story presented in different versions.
Agreed, or, at least, I consider that less improbable than other theories of which I'm aware.
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Re: Titles of the gospels

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As a novel side note. Every Church Father in the second century (and early third century) wrote a book against Marcion. The most famous of course is Tertullian (Τερτυλλιανός). Interestingly the Greek title of Justin's 'original' work is κατὰ Μαρκίωνος. In modern Greek it is rendered "κατά Μαρκίων." The two titles of books one the orthodox gospel with a blank ascription (cf. Clement to Theodore) the other directed against the sect with a blank gospel are remarkably similar. They were both introduced at about the same time; one to criticize what I consider to be the sect associated with the other.

* Now of the things they keep saying about the divinely inspired Gospel according to Mark (κατὰ Μάρκον εὐαγγελίου)
Last edited by Secret Alias on Thu Jun 14, 2018 4:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Titles of the gospels

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I know that there are out there pseudonymous letters purporting to be written by famous philosophers like Plato & Aristotle, or by famous orators like Cicero, etc. Sometimes, anonymous works were composed to imitate the style of those philosophers & orators, but are 100% the composition of the anonymous writers or at best paraphrases of the writers, and readers or booksellers associate the letters with the writers they imitated in style or substance.

I was kind of surprised to learn a while ago that Plato actually wrote several actual letters in addition to the dialogue stories we usually think of. There are quite a few fragments, mostly buried in other peoples writings in the form of attributed quotes and paraphrases. But because Plato was said to have held secret certain doctrines, which he never published, some folks tried to figure out what some of these might be and wrote up a letter to expound them as if Plato's words. Some are so bad that they had long been suspected of being pseudepigrapha, while others were rather good and folks felt that they were reasonably likely to be genuine.

So, my suggestion was that the four gospels were published to serve as anonymous apologies for the founder of Christianity to prove that he was not a revolutionary, but an unjustly accused prophet of God. The peculiar Christ doctrine developed by Christians (as we know them) was not emphasized in the synoptic, but I think is clearly assumed. They served to explain away the unfortunate circumstance of Jesus' death on a cross. The author of the Gospel of John was, alternatively, preaching to the choir, so his gospel was intended to be inspirational. Think of all the anonymous tracts that circulated in Renaissance Europe. The authors did not want to draw attention to themselves, but emphasize the message. So too, I suppose, in antiquity.

It was only later that folks categorized them, and had to better identify them, so I agree with whoever suggested that in an earlier post. "Wasn't this the one we got from Alexandria/Rome (depending on tradition)?" Then it must be by Mark, the interpreter of Peter (or whatever)!" "Is that one in a better style then the others? Then it must be by Luke, Paul's beloved physician!" "Is this the one that uses a lot of Judean style language? Then it must be by Levi the tax collector! Certainly he could write." It is all speculative.

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Re: Titles of the gospels

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Secret Alias wrote: Thu Jun 14, 2018 4:05 pm As a novel side note. Every Church Father in the second century (and early third century) wrote a book against Marcion. The most famous of course is Tertullian (Τερτυλλιανός). Interestingly the Greek title of Justin's 'original' work is κατὰ Μαρκίωνος. In modern Greek it is rendered "κατά Μαρκίων." The two titles of books one the orthodox gospel with a blank ascription (cf. Clement to Theodore) the other directed against the sect with a blank gospel are remarkably similar. They were both introduced at about the same time; one to criticize what I consider to be the sect associated with the other.

* Now of the things they keep saying about the divinely inspired Gospel according to Mark (κατὰ Μάρκον εὐαγγελίου)
As you are well aware, but just to make sure nobody gets confused, the huge difference is the case of the object of the preposition κατά. When that preposition takes the genitive case (like Μαρκίωνος), it can mean "against." When it takes the accusative case (like Μάρκον), it means "according to."
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Re: Titles of the gospels

Post by Secret Alias »

Of course but the texts were produced or named likely at the same time or in the same age. Curious coincidences. Curious parallel.
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Re: Titles of the gospels

Post by Joseph D. L. »

My own opinion on the matter is evangelion was used as a replacement for torah. This was before characters like Matthew or Luke or Peter had been dreamt up. Even Memoirs of the Apostles is anachronistic. Evangelion said it all. The Good News; the Great Proclamation. And the reason for attributing this text to a single person likewise comes from tradition: to replace The Torah of Moses replete throughout the Bible, as The Evangelion of Jesus Christ. It was only much, much later, when the Catholic Church had emerged, the such diminutive titles like The Gospel of Matthew and Gospel according to Luke also came about, perhaps to make cataloging various other scriptures throughout the empire easier. To distinguish between orthodox and heresy. It's also why the heretics never called themselves or their texts by what their opponents called them.
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