The Case for a Proto-Gospel: Recovering the Common Written Source Behind Mark and John

by Gary Greenberg

In this landmark study of the literary relationship between the gospel of John and the synoptic gospels, Gary Greenberg presents compelling evidence for the existence of a written pre-canonical Alpha gospel that contained almost all of the main episodes in the adult life of Jesus (excluding major speeches, such as discourses, parables, and "I Am" sayings) and which became the written source for the core biography of Jesus in Mark, Luke, John, and Matthew. While Mark used the Alpha gospel with only slight variations, John had profound theological disagreements with it, objecting to its theological message about how to obtain eternal life, the depiction of Jesus, and other matters. This induced him to rewrite the Alpha gospel so that it conformed to his own very different theological agenda. Consequently, John’s gospel functions as a thorough theological critique of Mark, but the changes he introduced made it difficult to see how he and Mark worked from the same written source. By using John’s theological concerns as a filter for reading and understanding what objections John would have with Mark’s Jesus stories, The Case for a Proto-Gospel reverse-engineers the editorial path taken by John and reconstructs the content of the Alpha gospel. Finally, the author discusses the relationship of the other two synoptic gospels to the Alpha gospel, asserting that Luke also knew the Alpha gospel but used Mark as his primary source, and that while Matthew did not know the Alpha gospel, his use of Mark as a primary source ensured that his core biography of Jesus also derived from this earlier source.

736 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 1, 2020

About the author

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Gary Greenberg is the author of several highly-praised books on biblical history, including the popular biblical classic "101 Myths of the Bible: How Ancient Scribes Invented Biblical History." His works have been translated into many languages. His most recent book, "Who Wrote the Gospels? Why New Testament Scholars Challenge Church Traditions", will be released by Pereset Press in June 2011.

He is President of the Biblical Archaeology Society of New York and a Fellow of the Jesus Project, an organization of biblical scholars concerned with issues related to the "historical" Jesus. National Geographic Television's Science of the Bible series retained Greenberg as a consultant to the series and featured him in a documentary on the story of Cain and Abel. He has also been a guest on numerous radio and television shows, including Tony Brown's Journal on PBS, and proved to be a provocative and entertaining speaker and skilled debater.

He is a member of several scholarly organizations, including the Society of Biblical Literature, the Archaeological Institute of America, the Historical Society, and the American Research Center in Egypt. He has published articles in several scholarly journals, including the Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, KMT, and Discussions in Egyptology and has presented papers at several scholarly conferences, including the annual meetings of the International Society of Biblical Literature and the American Research Center in Egypt. His essay, "Did Pre-Gospel Christians Believe Judas Betrayed Jesus?" has been posted on the "Bible and Interpretation" web site at http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/j....