What are the four most important sources of information about the life of Jesus?

A:

For most Christians, the four most important sources of information on the life of Jesus would be the four New Testament gospels. However, this would not be the case for scholars, who now know that three of the gospels were not written independently, but were substantially based on the first.

The four gospels were originally anonymous and were only attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John later in the second century. Scholars have also established that none of them could really have been written by an eyewitness to the events portrayed, which means that we have no first hand account.

The first Gospel to be written was Mark, approximately 70 CE, and this was followed over subsequent decades by Matthew, Luke and then John. By placing the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke in parallel and reading them synoptically ('with the same eye') in the original Greek language, it becomes obvious that there is a literary dependency among them, with Mark being the original. John's Gospel was, in turn, loosely based on Luke. Matthew and Lukedo contain detailed reports on the birth of Jesus, which Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament) says are "massively different" and virtually irreconcilable, and which John Shelby Spong (Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus) says contain no historical truth. Matthew, Luke and John are derivative and really add nothing to our knowledge of Jesus, so Mark's Gospel is the only gospel account that might be an important source of information about the life of Jesus.

The only other canonical material that touches on the life of Jesus are Hebrews and the epistles that Paul wrote. However, the hypothetical 'Q' document, used by the authors of Mathew and Luke as sources of further sayings material attributed to Jesus, should provide some useful information about what Jesus said. Although no copy of Q has survived to the present time, scholars have been able to reconstruct it.

Hebrews speaks of Jesus crucified, but makes no mention of the circumstances of the crucifixion. It briefly mentions Jesus as having been a high priest, but also says that if he had been on earth he would not have been a high priest. The book otherwise talks of Jesus as the high priest in heaven.

Paul's most significant mentions of Jesus are about the crucifixion and resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, he says that Jesus was seen by Cephas (Peter), then the twelve, then by more than 500, most of whom were still alive, then by James and all the apostles, and finally by himself. One concern here is mention of the "twelve" - on the gospel accounts, there should have only been eleven at this stage.

It thus appears that for most New Testament scholars the most important sources of information on the life of Jesus are Mark's Gospel, Q, the Epistle to the Hebrews and Paul's Epistles.