Good Shepherd Church Seminary; Module 11 The Four Gospels Part 1

Yeshu'a Bar-Yosef - Jesus Son of Joseph

GOOD SHEPHERD CHURCH SEMINARY

MODULE 11

THE FOUR GOSPELS PART 1

Objectives; 
By the end of this module you should;
1. Know what the gospel means
2. Know who the four evangelists (gospel writers) are in the New Testament of the Bible
3. Know there are links between the gospels in the New Testament and the prophecies in the Old Testament
4. Have read the four Gospels of the New Testament and know the names of the gospels  
5. Know how the gospels came to be written
6. Be able to witness to others about your belief in Jesus Christ as Son of God
7. Know that Jesus was fully human in his Incarnation in this world
8. Know the names of other gospels and writings witnessing to Jesus Christ dating from the earliest times
9. Know that Jesus' name is a transliteration from his real name Yeshu'a Bar-Yosef from Aramaic
10. Know how the transliteration of Jesus' name came about
11. Know that Joseph's real name is Yosef, and Mary's real name is Miriam
12. Be able to prepare a short sermon on Jesus Christ, Son of God

CONTENTS;
1. Gospel - Good News
2. The History behind the Gospels
3. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
4. How did the Gospels get written?
5. Yeshu'a Bar-Yosef - going back in history

1. GOSPEL - GOOD NEWS

The word 'gospel' means good news.

Four people gave accounts of the good news of the life of Jesus Christ on this earth, and the hope He offers us as the Son of God of eternal life in Heaven. These accounts were written down from the earliest times of Christianity, and have been faithfully preserved and translated down the centuries in the Holy Bible of Christianity. The names of the four writers of the Gospels are
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The first three gospels are sometimes called the 'synoptic' gospels - this means the 'same view' gospels. 
This is because they all cover teachings and miracles of Jesus which are also described in another account. 
John's account views Jesus' other words and miracles in a different way entirely, bringing out a different perspective and a particular spiritual meaning. 
There are many links between the gospels and the prophecies in the Old Testament, showing that Jesus Christ as Son of God came to fulfil the prophecies in the Scriptures. 
The gospels are thus a powerful teaching tool and an aid to finding out the truth of the road which we must walk in order to access eternal life with God and Jesus in the state of happiness known as Heaven.

What we need to do is to follow the Ten Commandments brought to humanity from God by the great prophet Moses; and to follow the golden rule 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you', (words of Jesus Christ in Matthew Chapter 7, verse 12);  in other words, have empathy. Be kind, fair, considerate, truthful and just.

The gospels explain that Jesus is both the Son of God (divine) as well as son of man (human). They faithfully record His humble baptism - although He was Son of God - at the hands of John the Baptist. 
They recount His great miracle of the feeding of 5000 men as well as additional women and children, from a mere five loaves of bread and two fish.

Also recorded are the major events in Jesus' earthly life when Mary anointed Him, His prayer and suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, His experience of betrayal, His trial, death by crucifixion, death, burial and ultimate miraculous resurrection in which He returned from death to living once again. 
Each writer presents the same story from a different personal perspective. 
This ties in with the fact that although many of us may be at a particular event, each of us experience it differently.

2. THE HISTORY BEHIND THE GOSPELS

Jesus is an amazing man; he changed human history. 
The origins of the gospel stories are rooted in his doings and sayings so many years ago. 
But can any reliance be placed on the gospels? Is the New Testament fabrication or fact?
 In order to examine this question, we need to deal with the origins of the gospel stories about Jesus; how they got to us today; and evidence for Jesus from outside the Bible context.

History is important for Christianity because the Christian faith is not just a collection of ideas about the world, or a philosophy on how to live life; it is a real claim about what happened in the past to a real man named Jesus.

Christians believe that the world is different because of who Jesus really was, because of his actions, and because of what happened to him after his death. 
Why does the truth of the events of Jesus' life matter? 
If it is not true that Jesus performed miracles of healing, changed people's lives, and rose from the dead, then Christianity is useless and obsolete.
 Yet if it is true that Jesus did all these things, and that his claim to be the Son of God was and is indeed true, then it matters for every single human being on this planet.

If Jesus indeed rose from the dead and spoke the truth as recorded in the gospels, then in the light of what he claimed about himself he is the ultimate ruler of the world and of eternity.

The history of the gospels is that there are four of them. They are named after four authors; Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

MATTHEW
A disciple called to follow by Jesus Christ

MARK
A companion of Peter

LUKE

A travelling companion of the apostle Paul

JOHN

Either the apostle John or another disciple of Jesus named John.

The four gospel writers are also known as the evangelists.

In the early church, Jesus' disciples witnessed to the words and actions of Jesus to those whom they met. 
The disciples had heard Jesus teach many times, and Jesus was indeed a master at adapting his stories and sayings to suit different audiences. 
He often spoke in parables, or types of folk stories, which had a moral and hidden meaning in many instances.

Also, Jesus was excellent at sayings which were easy to remember, and contained a core truth which had direct relevance in all of our lives. 
The sayings were often directives as to how to behave. 
Jesus believed that godly behaviour was to treat others with goodness, kindness and forgiveness. 

Jesus also attested to the fact that he was the Messiah long awaited in the Jewish tradition, the Son of God. 
He affirmed Simon when Simon declared that Jesus was the Son of God, 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, a because it was no human agency b that revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.' (The Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16, verses 17 to 18.)

3. MATTHEW, MARK, LUKE AND JOHN

If you open your Bible, you will find the first four books of the New Testament are stories testifying to Jesus' life. 
They are titled Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - the four Gospels. 
If we study where they came from, we need to delve into the issues of how the Gospels were passed onto us and into our Bibles; the history of how they were originally written; and what we know about the authors of the Gospels.

The modern day Gospels in modern Bibles are translations of a text which was originally written in the ancient language of Greek. 
The Greek text from which the translation comes from was constructed by comparing hundreds of ancient copies of the Gospel text with each other. 
These ancient copies have varying dates from between AD 120 and the Middle Ages. 
These copies are all copies of earlier Gospels, which were in turn copied from earlier versions. 
All these go back eventually to an original Greek version. 
All of the original versions are no longer extant, that means, they have been lost.

The names of the authors of the Gospels have been linked to the Gospels since the earliest times. Christians have believed from the very first that the authors' names meant the apostle Matthew, Mark who was a companion of Peter, Luke who was a travelling companion of the missionary apostle Paul, and either the apostle John or another disciple of Jesus named John.
These suppositions may be correct, but there is no complete certainty at this stage as to who actually historically wrote the Gospels. 
What is important is that the witness accounts of the Gospels give us a good understanding of what the authors believed they were doing in writing their stories about Jesus.

Luke explains in his Gospel that he decided to write the Gospel (addressing a friend Theophilus), in order to give an orderly account so that Theophilus would know the truth concerning the things about which he had been instructed in Christianity (Luke Chapter 1; verses 1 to 4).
Luke spoke about the events of Jesus' life, and used sources. 
He affirmed that his information came from people who were eyewitnesses to the events surrounding Jesus.

John also affirmed in Chapter 21, verse 24, that he himself was an eyewitness and a true one at that, to the things he spoke of about Jesus' life, actions, death and resurrection in his gospel. 
Thus we conclude from their own relayed sayings that the Gospel authors were adamant that they were writing accurately about the history of what actually happened.

4. HOW DID THE GOSPELS GET WRITTEN?
The gospel writers were inspired by Jesus' life, death and resurrection to pass the good news to others that He was the Son of God Who promised salvation and eternal life to each human ever conceived. 
What better way to document the happenings of Jesus' Life in a rapidly growing church of believers in early Christian times than by a church newspaper and letters. 
Different witnesses to the events of Jesus' life gave their personal testimonies as experienced by themselves.
 Four of the main newspaper journalists/witnesses were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John whose words have survived over many centuries to inspire us today that the historical Figure of Yeshua Bar-Yosef  (Jesus) was in fact also the Son of God.

Other eyewitnesses came forward and there are a plethora of other discovered gospels and writings such as the Nag Hammadi Library; a collection of early Christian texts discovered by Mohammed Ali Samman near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. c
This collection includes The Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel of Philip. 

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene was discovered in 1896 in a 5th-century papyrus codex. The codex Papyrus Berolinensis 8502 was purchased in Cairo by German scholar Karl Reinhardt. 
Two other fragments of the Gospel of Mary have been discovered since, both written in Greek
(Papyrus Oxyrhynchus L 3525 and Papyrus Rylands 463.) 
Most scholars date this gospel to the second century.

5. YESHU'A BAR-YOSEF - GOING BACK IN HISTORY
Jesus' real name is not, in fact, the way we say it today. It is Yeshu'a.

Jews in the first century had only one name, plus 'son of his father' - bar in Aramaic and -ben in Hebrew. 
Jesus would have used the name Yeshu'a Bar-Yosef, which means Yeshu'a Son of Yosef in Aramaic. Yosef is the Aramaic of Joseph.
The standard spoken language in First Century Galilee and Judaea was Aramaic. 
In Aramaic Jesus could also have used the name Yeshu'a Bar-Miriam, which would have signified that He is Yeshu'a Son of Miriam - as He was conceived as God in the womb of the virgin Miriam, or our English version Mary.
In Hebrew He would have used Yeshu'a Ben-Yosef. 
He could have used Yeshu'a Ben-Miriam; however in the culture of the day it is almost certain He would have used Yeshu'a Bar-Yosef or Yeshu'a Ben-Yosef.

Jesus used his self-referent of 'Son of Man' which would have been bar enash in Aramaic.
In Hebrew he would have used ben adam or ben enosh. 
The term is used in Old Testament (OT) Hebrew to mean a mortal human being. 
By using this term so clearly on numerous occasions, Jesus constantly emphasised his complete humanity to us. Jesus thus witnessed that he had mystically left his Divinity totally behind and chosen to incarnate WHOLLY as a human; not as a split God/man but as a totally human person, exactly the same as any of us. 
How did he do it? What were the ramifications of His Godhood incarnating as fully human?
It is - in essence - deepest mystery.

In Greek, the lingua franca of the time, Jesus' name would have translated as 
Iesous Iosefides.  Ο Ιησούς γιος του Ιωσήφ

The original Hebrew-Aramaic name of Jesus is Yeshu'a (תשווע), which is a post-Exilic modification of the Hebrew Yehōshu'a (Joshua) יהושע.
Hellenization of Yeshu'a (תשווע) occurred. 
This led to the Greek Ιησούς (Iesous).
Then this led to the Latin Iesus.
Eventually the word 'Jesus' was transliterated.

The changes to Jesus' name Yeshu'a (phonetically pronounced 'Yay-shoo'-ah' occurred through translations from the original Aramaic to non-Semitic languages; first to Greek, then Latin.
In the Vulgate the name was then established as 'Iesus'. 
The Latin spelling differed from the Greek because the two alphabets are not identical.

As time wore on, and the pronunciation of the European languages and the manner of writing the various letters changed, the letter 'I' gradually became the letter 'J' with the current 'J' sound.
The long 'u' sound was lost, and led to a short 'u'.
The newly invented printing press printed out bibles and the Latin version of the name gradually became the name 'Jesus'. 
Eventually the English pronunciation as we know it today was gradually adopted.

So; Yeshu'a's real name תשווע became Jesus. 

a Simon son of Jonah
b Literally, 'flesh and blood'
c With thanks to Wikipedia.org and the Nag Hammadi Library
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library

*Photograph taken by Rev Catherine Nicolette. With thanks to the sculptor