The Gospels

by Sarah Ruden

  Translation, introduction, and notes copyright © 2021 by Sarah Ruden

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Modern Library and the Torchbearer colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ruden, Sarah, translator.

  Title: The Gospels / translated by Sarah Ruden.

  Other titles: Bible. Gospels. English. Ruden. 2021.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Modern Library, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020032892 (print) | LCCN 2020032893 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399592942 (acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780399592959 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC BS2553 .R83 2021 (print) | LCC BS2553 (ebook) | DDC 226/.05209—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020032892

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2020032893

  Ebook ISBN 9780399592959

  modernlibrary.com

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Simon Sullivan, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Lucas Heinrich

  Cover image: Codex 047 (Gregory-Aland), manuscript of the Greek New Testament, 8th century, with the text from the Gospel of Mark 2:4–15

  ep_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  A Discursive Glossary of Unfamiliar Word Choices in English

  Unfamiliar Transliterations of Important Proper Names in the Greek Text

  The Good News According to Markos

  The Good News According to Maththaios

  The Good News According to Loukas

  The Good News According to Iōannēs

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Sarah Ruden

  About the Translator

  It seemed now as if, touched by human penitence and all its toil, divine goodness had parted the curtain and displayed behind it, single, distinct, the hare erect; the wave falling; the boat rocking, which, did we deserve them, should be ours always. But alas, divine goodness, twitching the cord, draws the curtain; it does not please him; he covers his treasures in a drench of hail, and so breaks them, so confuses them that it seems impossible that their calm should ever return or that we should ever compose from their fragments a perfect whole or read in the littered pieces the clear words of truth. For our penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only.

  Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

  Introduction

  As a Quaker—a member of perhaps the least theological, most practical religious movement in the world—I’m supposed to be open to looking first at a thing in itself, whether it’s a head of Swiss chard, money, a gun, a book, a belief, or anything else. As a Quaker translator, I would like to deal with the Gospels more straightforwardly than is customary, to help people respond to the books on their own terms. Yet never before, in nearly forty years of translating, have I found texts so resistant to this purpose.

  But first of all, what are the Gospels? Scholars of ancient literature (I’m one of those too), who are used to classifying works within well-defined categories (known as genres), tend to feel that the Gospels are not quite like anything else. This is signaled by their shared name. In the original Koinē (“Common”) dialect of these Greek texts, the title that emerged is euaggelion (the double g is pronounced ng), meaning “good news.” Our word “Gospel” comes from an Old English word for that, and “Gospels” is used in the title of this book and in all parts of the book outside the translations themselves, in order to avoid confusion.

  The title is unusual in being so general. Ancient books normally got their permanent names (a process that might take some time) from the author’s (or purported author’s) name or other designation, or from the subject matter or the form of the writing. Ezekiel, Kings, and Proverbs are biblical examples. In contrast to all this, “good news” is extremely broad and confident, as if four short narratives carry a revelation sweeping aside all others.

  The four texts are differentiated up front by authorial names, as “the good news according to” Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but that is not the usual way of ascribing authorship in antiquity. People were normally considered to have composed works, with far-reaching originality, even if they happened to credit the Muses, another deity, or the literary tradition itself, and even if the name of the author is a prestigious pseudonym. But the four “evangelists,” or good-news-ists, are presented right away, by that “according to” wording in the Gospel titles, more as four witnesses to the same events, or as four messengers bringing different reports on these.

  Their role in this is startlingly impersonal by comparison. Perhaps the most similar of the major fields of pagan literature, historiography and biography, saw authors regularly vouching for their own reliability: “I was there,” or “I reported in this way, for these reasons,” or just “These are the principles I bring to this task.” (The comic writer Lucian, of the second century C.E., was so sick of these conventions that in the preface to his True History he boasts, in the conventional style, of writing pure lies out of empty-headed conceit.) Long stretches of the Hebrew Bible can seem rather detached, but Hebrew prophets and other scriptural authors and speakers are preoccupied by their qualifications to purvey divine messages, or perhaps this preoccupation was written into the text by others.

  In contrast, with the exception of the four-verse introduction to Luke and the last two verses of John, the Gospels’ writerly point of view is omniscient with a vengeance. In fact, as far as we know, none of the texts was even attributed to a specific writer until around the end of the second century—that is, about a century after the latest Gospel, John’s, appeared: for all the time intervening, apparently, all four works could do without the normal clear signal of a controlling human “voice” in the background. Mark and Luke the persons are so obscure as to appear only in the titles of “their” Gospels.

  Of course, eyewitness testimony, at whatever remove, was vital to the existence of the Gospels; strong oral traditions helped to form them. Two of the versions, “Matthew” and “John,” carry names of Jesus’ followers who appear (in flashes) as actors in the narrative; but claims that they were the actual authors are far-fetched, serving mainly to promote these texts as direct, if reverently passive, testimonies to Jesus’ mission. Mark and Luke, particularly because of their association with the spread of proto-Christianity, are better candidates for having had styluses in hand. A John Mark is named in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles (covering about thirty years after Jesus’ death) in connection to another original follower of Jesus, Simon or Peter. Luke, an associate of the early missionary Paul, was quite probably the author of the Gospel credited to him as well as of Acts. (The Pauline letters, or Epistles—some genuine, some pseudonymous—are discursive works that counterbalance in the New Testament the mainly narrative Gospels and Acts.)

  In the Gospels’ content, the contrast is even sharper. In these new works, there is really only one figure, and only one voice. Just to consider the realm of scripture, the Hebrew Bible contains a variety of compelling personalities, sometimes shown in intricate counterpoint to one another. But in the Gospels no one is essential but Jesus. (The name is a later form of Joshua, the Hebrew Bible hero of the conquest of Canaan.) Very nearly everyone else who speaks and moves in the t
exts does so only in relation to him and is defined by the degree of either fervor for or opposition to him. Until the crucifixion, he is largely above opinions and events, choosing purposes, companions, and destinations for no stated reason and performing a widely varying set of miracles with an odd mix of publicity and (mostly ignored) requests for secrecy, most of the time without the traditional prophetic crediting of God; the most frequent basis cited is that the beneficiary had faith in himself, Jesus. He enjoys hospitality without asking for it and eludes violence without effort. He appropriates even expensive conveyances—on several occasions a boat, and one day a beast that is probably a donkey in all four Gospels—without consequence.

  He also hovers outside an author’s responsibility, though he discourses very often. He can be almost whimsical in his assertions. He answers many questions analogically, cryptically, not at all, or with a joke or a scolding. He preaches about the fate of the world and of individuals through stories that sometimes baffle even his own followers, and he occasionally states that the obscurity is deliberate. What is clearly set out in one Gospel may be contradicted in another, or even in another passage of the same Gospel.

  Judaism of course had its established modes of public discourse, but they appear to have been circumscribed by clear purposes. Jews learned from experts how to conduct their lives by the scriptures’ precepts; in the early first century C.E., the Pharisee sect was active and influential in this domain. There were also intellectual debates and metaphysical tenets arising from the scriptures; the elite Sadducees seem to have been more at home here, but it was far from an exclusive magisterium within Judaism. Near at hand to Judea, the Jewish community in Egyptian Alexandria had long been enthusiasts for pagan literature and philosophy, and for syncretic innovation. For comfort and inspiration during these harrowing times for the Jews, there were visions of the end of the present world and the triumph of God’s kingdom, a strain of thought called apocalyptic and associated particularly with the Essenes, who formed purist devotional communities to prepare themselves to face the final judgment. Jesus’ words in the Gospels reflect influences from all over this religious world around him but never allow him to be pinned down. The composite Jesus can in fact appear ambivalent on a subject as important as the applicability of Jewish law: he tends to advocate for a more moralistic development of it, but also to denounce the religious authorities responsible for enforcement. If his own person is somehow an alternative for enforcement, then it is problematic that this person himself is so elusive.

  As to this very elusiveness, a possible pagan contributor was the Cynic diatribe, which was a contrarian and countercultural performance (the rough ancient equivalent of stand-up comedy); popular Stoic and Epicurean discourse can also partake of the contrarian, and in this can sound a little like Jesus. In the Gospel of John, his rhetoric can on occasion sound positively Sophistic, with rapid one-upmanship on the verbal level. Who is this speaking?

  But with a crash, Jesus’ arrest, trial, flogging, and brutal execution break the impression of arrogance and mercurial impenetrability resembling God’s. The resurrection restores the impression; in fact, the mystery is redoubled. This was the purpose all along—but why? Since he does not answer, there is no real answer—because the Gospels are not about Jesus; they are Jesus. A normal kind of explication is in himself or nowhere, so it is nowhere.

  * * *

  —

  Behind the Gospels’ challenging character are arcane origins and complex interrelationships, so that scholars who do not take the texts for granted are hard put to describe them generally—which would suggest the need for clearer criteria for translating them. The following is only an outline of the (rough) consensus description.

  The first text was the Gospels of Mark, likely completed around 70 C.E., more than thirty years after Jesus’ death. Mark might have been based mainly or only on oral narratives. It is also the shortest Gospel. It begins with Jesus’ baptism as an adult, sets out a number of his miracles (mostly healings), gives a detailed and continuous account of the last few days of his life and some events immediately after his resurrection, and then offers two alternative concluding passages: neither looks decisively more authentic according to the manuscript evidence, so both are left in the standard edited Greek text. My translation of Mark, for historical reasons, comes first in this book, though it comes second, after Matthew, in the canonical arrangement of the New Testament.

  The second Gospel to appear, probably after 80 but before 90 C.E., was Matthew. Like Mark, it deals at length with the Last Supper, the trial, the crucifixion, and the resurrection. It also includes not only many incidents from Mark, similarly worded, but material from a hypothetical collection of Jesus’ sayings that modern scholars call Q (for Quelle, German for “source”). Matthew also contains the long “Sermon on the Mount,” which in part affirms and in part disputes contemporary Jewish law, morality, and outlook toward the future. Matthew is the Gospel most concerned with Jewish religion and culture.

  Matthew, unlike Mark, offers details on where Jesus came from. The book opens with a genealogy going back to Abraham through the male line—which is odd, as Joseph is, here and in the birth story or nativity that follows, plainly shown as only Jesus’ publicly supposed father: the true father is God, through the “Holy Spirit” (traditional translation) at work in the young girl Mary. This nativity connects Jesus, who was known to contemporaries as a native of the village Nazareth in the remote region of Galilee, to the town not far from Jerusalem where David was born and grew up, Bethlehem; the Hebrew Bible (Micah 5:2) indicates that David’s heir the Messiah is to come from Bethlehem. In Matthew, Jesus is born in Bethlehem to a couple living there, taken to Egypt to escape the jealous King Herod (a client ruler on behalf of the Romans), then taken to Nazareth to be safe from one of Herod’s successors.

  Luke, apparently later than Matthew, is most similar to that book. Luke’s Gospel encompasses many shorter incidents found in Mark and Matthew and substantial Q material (some for a “Sermon on the Plain”) but greatly expands the account of Jesus’ origins. There is not only a genealogy—varying from Matthew’s yet making the same point about the inheritance of David’s kingdom—but also a story of John the Baptist’s own divinely appointed birth, as extended background to the scene of Jesus’ baptism shared by all four Gospels. In Luke, John is a relative of Jesus, and Mary makes a visit to John’s pregnant mother during her own pregnancy. Trailing hymns in the style of Hebrew scriptural poetry celebrate God’s providence. Jesus is now connected to Bethlehem by being born there during a journey Joseph and Mary make from Nazareth, where they live, to the town from which Joseph originated. Luke includes an incident when Jesus is twelve years old, part of the biographical tradition that expanded into the noncanonical (that is, not accepted by the church establishment) “Infancy Gospels,” about Jesus’ childhood, including the important Protoevangelium of James.

  Luke seems to have a stronger connection than Mark and Matthew, the other two Synoptic (“Seen Together”) Gospels that inhabit the same basic tradition, to an array of noncanonical Gospels, many of them serving the populous Gnostic (“Knowing”) sector of early Christianity. The narrative problem that apparently worsened over time to incite more and more explanation in the Gnostic direction (as well as in other directions) was the contrast between Jesus’ humble status and his mission among ordinary people on the one hand, and the astonishing events reported at his life’s end on the other. The tendency over time was therefore to depict him more and more insistently as self-conscious in his true identity and power, and superior and withholding in his attitude—hence all the events could be shown to serve one momentous but secret plan, known best to the favored followers closest to him. The Gnostics tended to identify with these followers.

  Among the four canonical Gospels, John evinces the strongest of such mystical impulses, and apparently the strongest links with Gnosticism. This text is generally c
onsidered to have been completed before 110 C.E. It is not Synoptic, because of the amount of unique material it contains, but it deals with the same historical conundrum in the same fundamental way, by distancing and heightening the person of Jesus—a process by then strikingly advanced from its known beginnings. In Mark, for example, though early in his mission Jesus is already a miracle worker, he is shown as unable to perform any miracle except a few healings among the people of his hometown—who have rather humiliatingly (and with impunity) rejected him (6:3–5). Mark shows signs that Jesus’ own family was baffled and embarrassed by his calling. In John, Jesus’ siblings or brothers actually urge him to travel to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover to gain a wider audience; after hanging back for a while, he goes in secret to avoid the religious leaders threatened by his existing fame (7:3–13).

  In John, interest in Jesus’ mundane life and his role in the Jewish nation’s destiny greatly diminishes, no doubt in part because the cataclysmic destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (70 C.E.) was now at least a generation in the past. Judaism was remaking itself out of the ashes, and Christians were going their separate ways. On the evidence of John (and innumerable documents that followed), the new religion tended toward a much more superhuman Jesus, much less confined by the roles of preacher, healer, prophet of the kind known through the scriptures, and even kingly Messiah, God’s anointed savior of his chosen people, the Jews.

  John is an account deeply occupied with abstractions. There is no nativity, and little practical morality, but instead a great striving to frame the mystery of Jesus’ existence and destiny symbolically and idealistically. Themes to move the reader’s imagination in this direction are the rejection of spiritual distinctions between the sexes and among nationalities; the forgiveness of even criminal offenses; the love and duty between a father and son; trust and loyalty among friends; and sincerity and truth in thoughts and words. All of these are ideas in previous Gospels; in John, there is a fever pitch of exhortation to accept them, without argument or reservation, as shorthand for the inconceivable and the all-sufficient. The mystery therefore remains in the center of the frame.