John Mark and Some Others Get to Work

The thing that got the writing started was a great fire in Rome about A.D. 64. Much of the city was destroyed. Nero, the emperor, needed a scapegoat, so he blamed the Christians. As a result many of them were killed. A man named John Mark escaped. He was a companion of Paul and a friend of Peter, and he decided that before this kind of thing happened
again, he would write down all the information he could gather about Jesus. Shortly afterward his little book appeared, "The Gospel of Jesus Christ." It was not a "biography" or "thumbnail sketch" of Jesus; it was an attempt to show that he was indeed the promised Messiah. John Mark shared with his readers a collection of more or less disconnected incidents, all of which underlined and proclaimed the "good news" of God's activity in Jesus Christ.

This may have been as early as A.D. 65. Within the next twenty or thirty years a number of other accounts of the "good news" appeared, two of which have survived. One of these was by a Gentile convert, Dr. Lukas, apparently the physician who took care of Paul. Dr. Lukas not only wrote the volume to which we referred in the last chapter, The Acts of the Apostles, but also an earlier volume in which he too collected important things that should be remembered about Jesus. As we have seen, he made free use of Mark, "Q," and his own special source of information. He put particular stress on the fact that Jesus is "good news" for all men, of whatever race, nationality, or station in economic life.

About the same time, another book appeared, this one by a Jew named Matthew, who made a strong appeal to his fellow Jews to embrace Christian faith. He took special pains to show how Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, and he also included much material from Jesus' teachings. He too made copious use of Mark, "Q," and his own private source of information.

Probably a little later than the "Synoptic Gospels," a fourth Gospel appeared. Rather than using the crisp narrative style of the Synoptics, the author of the Fourth Gospel lingered over a few events and examined their inner meaning. In a few places he made important changes (probably for the better) in the chronology of Jesus' life. Who wrote this Fourth Gospel is not clear. Nowhere did the author identify himself. Many people claim that he was the apostle John, but others feel it more likely that he was another "John," perhaps John the Elder, who lived at Ephesus. At all events, he was a man who had meditated very deeply upon the meaning of Jesus' life, and he put the fruits of these reflections into a masterpiece of devotional meditation.