Conclusion
Conclusion
The Gospels that we can best test for their use of sources, Matthew and Luke, seem to have employed them at least as conservatively as other ancient historical and biographic writers. Some of these sources presumably represent written sources belonging to the first generation following Jesus’ ministry. Most scholars date Mark within four decades, and many date “Q” to roughly two decades, after the bulk of events and sayings they report. By the standards we use for determining events in antiquity, such written sources are remarkably early. (Scholars who date the Gospels earlier than I do could assert this claim still more strongly.)
When we think in terms of these few decades, we should recognize a point that some more skeptical scholars often neglect: during most of this period, Jesus’ closest disciples remained the Jesus movement’s leading teachers.143 Were we trying to reconstruct the public activity and teachings of another teacher from the period, and had sources from the first generation of his followers, we would be relatively confident that these sources preserved much reliable material (this is the case, for example, with regard to Musonius Rufus). If the teacher founded a school, we would normally assume that those interested in and trusted for writing about the teacher in the first generation either were disciples or would have derived information preserved by the disciples. Some scholars treat the Gospels and their sources in ways far more skeptical than classicists would treat other sources. We shall address the issue of oral traditions and disciples in the next chapter.