The authors of the gospels, who were not (contra Google) actually apostles.
Apparently the four gospels that recount the life of Jesus (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) disagree about some important events in Jesus’ life. Those of us born after the Enlightenment, and who are not believers, can readily question the gospels’ accounts of miracles and Jesus’ resurrection. Believers, on the other hand, are expected to accept miracles and the resurrection “on faith.”
But the gospels differ about simple matters of fact as well. Why, for example, were Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth? Did they live there, and later move to Nazareth, as Matthew would have it? Or did they stop there on their way to Jerusalem in order to be counted in a census, as Luke records the story? (This explanation doesn’t hold historical water, because there is no record of such a census occurring during Herod’s reign).
And when was Jesus born? Historians can appeal to known facts to determine this, sort of. For example, Herod died in 4 BCE. So Jesus has to have been born sometime prior to that date if the gospels are internally consistent. It is also difficult to tell from the extant gospels in what year Jesus died. If he was put to death by Pontius Pilate, that had to have occurred between 26 and 36 CE when Pilate was procurator in Judea. If Jesus was “about thirty” when he began his ministry, as Luke says, and if the ministry lasted for only a year, as three of the gospels claim, he could have died as early as 26 or 27 CE. Needles to say, whoever set up our calendar to distinguish between BC and AD was misled about the actual dates of these events, to say the least. Perhaps that’s why contemporary historians substituted “before the common era” and “common era” for those designations.
The easiest way for me to think about the historicity of the gospels is to assume that they were composed in exactly the same way that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed. That is, they began as stories told by one or several persons (in Jesus’ case, the Apostles and others of his followers, such as Mary Magdalen and his mother, are candidates for this role). Like any good narrative, memories of Jesus’ life were embellished or diminished as time passed. People who heard the stories from the people who knew Jesus would have made small changes as they passed them on, as well. (We all know how stories can get better in the retelling). And because the stories later circulated within a relatively sophisticated milieu–the hellenistic culture sustained by the Roman empire all around the Mediterranean sea–they were adapted again and again to meet the needs of new and different audiences.
Eventually the stories were written down by one or more people. According to most historians, the earliest written text of the gospels was composed at least forty years after the death of Jesus, by which time the Apostles had themselves died. The authors of the written gospels continued to add, change, or remove details in keeping with their current situations and locations. The texts would have undergone numerous translations in and out of the many languages spoken in the area, as well. This process continued until a Christian church was well enough established to certify canonical versions of each gospel–probably sometime during the late second century CE. All of which is to say that “Matthew” or “Luke” is to authorship of the gospels we now read as “Homer” is to the Iliad we now read. In short, we have no more assurance that the facts presented in the gospel are any more, or less, historically true that those recounted in the Iliad.
Now all of this might seem like secular nitpicking to a believer. What is important to believers, after all, is the inspiration they take from reading stories about Jesus’ life, his works, and his teachings. However: if the gospels are mythic, rather than historical, this fact makes a big difference to unbelievers. Particularly to those who paid with their lives for their unbelief (inquisition, anyone?)
There are some big differences between the way Christians believe the gospels and the way the Greeks believed in the gods and heroes who populate the Homeric poems. The Greeks knew that the tales could be embellished by any given poet; in fact they held contests in order to encourage creative new ways to tell the old tales. They enjoyed their retelling because they are spanking good stories, and not because anyone was expected to emulate, much less worship, Achilles or Odysseus (although these heroes are hard to resist when they are played by Brad Pitt and Sean Bean, I admit). And there’s one more difference: Achilles is a flawed hero (among other things, he is too proud to sacrifice his reputation for the good of his king) and singers of the Iliad are careful to point this out.
The hero of the gospels, on the other hand, was soon elevated into a god in whose divinity all had to believe in order to be called a Christian. Some historians doubt that Jesus wanted this–if we can trust his words as reported in the gospels, he may have conceived of himself in the traditional Jewish role of a messiah, or messenger. Nonetheless there were big arguments during the second and third centuries about Jesus’ nature and his relation to the omnipotent God-figure that Christians adopted from Judaism. The argument was eventually resolved by the notion of the Trinity, but this resolution was not achieved without much suffering and even death on the part of those who lost the argument.
Now, as contemporary Americans know, very serious consequences can accrue when a powerful group of people take a text so seriously. Especially if they disregard the actual method of its composition and insist instead that the text represents historical rather than mythic truth. Take, for example, one very early instance of this error. Who actually ordered Jesus’ death? Historians are pretty sure that it was Pilate, given the contemporary pecking order between the Romans and the Jews. The Sanhedrin would certainly have had to ask the Romans to carry out any political assassination. Furthermore, tensions between the Jewish leadership and the Roman military governor were always strained, which argues against collaboration between them in this case. So it makes historical sense to assume that Pilate thought of Jesus as just another Jewish rabblerouser who was disturbing the peace. The fact that he was crucified along with two others who were condemned for the same crime (from the Roman military point of view) reinforces this suspicion. But it didn’t take long before the gospel tradition began to blame the Jews for his death. This has had enormous historical implications that extend even into our own times. But details about that belong in another post.
My ma used to read the ‘holiday’ section of one of the gospels to us at christmas when we were young. I remember way back then asking why the story was different in each one. I can’t remember her answer. Maybe she didn’t have one. I think my mind was functioning in a methodical bookkeeperly way even then, because I thought the inconsistencies were sloppy to say the least.