Last updated The prologue to Mark in the Drogo Gospels[fr], a manuscript from around 850
The Monarchian Prologues are a set of Latin introductions to the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They were long thought to have been written in the second or third century from a Monarchian perspective, hence their name. Today they are generally regarded as Priscillianist compositions from the late fourth or early fifth century.[1] They appear to be the work of a single author.[2]John Chapman even concluded that they were the work of Priscillian himself, who died in 386.[3]
The Latin style of the prologues is convoluted and difficult to understand. The prologues provide background on the traditional authors (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and their theological purposes.[1][2] Since Luke and John were also credited with the Acts of the Apostles and the Book of Revelation, respectively, information contained in their prologues was eventually spun out into separate prologues to Acts and Revelation. The earliest manuscript with these separate prologues is the Codex Fuldensis of 541–546.[4]
The author was working with the Old Latin Bible, since he took the order of the gospels to be Matthew, John, Luke and Mark.[2][5] The prologue to Mark states that Mark used both Matthew and Luke, a theory now known as the Griesbach hypothesis.[2] Nevertheless, the prologues were often copied into Vulgate manuscripts with the now current order of the gospels.[1] They are in fact a standard feature in the earliest Vulgate manuscripts.[5]
The prologues are, however, of no value as a historical source for the evangelists' backgrounds. They rely on the biblical text itself and various unreliable traditions as sources.[6] The earlier anti-Marcionite prologue to Luke was a source, but not the other two anti-Marcionite prologues.[7] The prologue to John appears to rely on the apocryphal Acts of John.[8] The theology of the Monarchian Prologues is heretical by the standards of the Latin Church.[5] Chapman argues that they spread from the Abbey of Lérins, being brought by Patrick to Ireland, by Eugippius to Italy and also to Spain.[9] They had been brought from Italy to England by the time of Bede.[10]
Chapman printed the Latin text with translations and commentary, acknowledging that they were "masterpieces of the art of concealing one's meaning and of not basely betraying it to the scorner".[11] Matthew is said to have written first and in Judea.[12] John is said to have written last and in Asia Minor. He had been the groom at the wedding at Cana who was supposedly called away by Jesus to a life of virginity.[13] Luke was "a Syrian of Antioch by nation" who wrote in Achaia.[14] Mark, who wrote in Italy, is said to have been a Levite who was baptised by Simon Peter. He cut off his thumb to make himself ineligible for the priesthood.[15] The incipits (first words) of the four prologues, by which they are commonly identified are:
Mattheus ex Iudaeis[16] ('Matthew, who was of the Jews')[12]
Hic est Iohannes euangelista unus[17] ('This is John the evangelist, one')[18]
Lucas Syrus natione Antiochensis[19] ('Luke, a Syrian of Antioch by nation')[14]
Marcus euangelista dei[20] ('Mark, the evangelist of God')[21]
Gallery
The beginning of the prologue to Matthew in the Codex Amiatinus
Heard, R. G. (1955). "The Old Gospel Prologues". The Journal of Theological Studies. 6 (1): 1–16. doi:10.1093/jts/VI.1.1.
Orchard, Bernard; Riley, Harold (1987). The Order of the Synoptics: Why Three Synoptic Gospels?. Mercer University Press.
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The Diatessaron is the most prominent early gospel harmony, and was created in the Syriac language by Tatian, an Assyrian early Christian apologist and ascetic. Tatian sought to combine all the textual material he found in the four gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - into a single coherent narrative of Jesus's life and death. However, and in contradistinction to most later gospel harmonists, Tatian appears not to have been motivated by any aspiration to validate the four separate canonical gospel accounts; or to demonstrate that, as they stood, they could each be shown as being without inconsistency or error.
The Gospel of Luke tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Together with the Acts of the Apostles, it makes up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts, accounting for 27.5% of the New Testament. The combined work divides the history of first-century Christianity into three stages, with the gospel making up the first two of these – the life of Jesus the Messiah from his birth to the beginning of his mission in the meeting with John the Baptist, followed by his ministry with events such as the Sermon on the Plain and its Beatitudes, and his Passion, death, and resurrection.
The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity. The New Testament's background, the first division of the Christian Bible, is called the Old Testament, which is based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible; together they are regarded as sacred scripture by Christians.
The Vulgate, sometimes referred to as the Latin Vulgate, is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible.
The Codex Vaticanus, designated by siglum B or 03, δ 1, is a Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old Testament and the majority of the Greek New Testament. It is one of the four great uncial codices. Along with Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Sinaiticus, it is one of the earliest and most complete manuscripts of the Bible. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the 4th century.
In Christian tradition, the Four Evangelists are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the authors attributed with the creation of the four canonical Gospel accounts. In the New Testament, they bear the following titles: the Gospel of Matthew; the Gospel of Mark; the Gospel of Luke; and the Gospel of John. These names were assigned to the works by the early church fathers in the 2nd century AD; none of the writers signed their work.
The seventy disciples or seventy-two disciples, known in the Eastern Christian traditions as the seventy apostles or seventy-twoapostles, were early emissaries of Jesus mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. The correct Greek terminology is evdomikonta (ἑβδομήκοντα) apostoli or evdomikonta mathetes.
The Gospel of Marcion, called by its adherents the Gospel of the Lord, or more commonly the Gospel, was a text used by the mid-2nd-century Christian teacher Marcion of Sinope to the exclusion of the other gospels. The majority of scholars agree that this gospel was a later revised version of the Gospel of Luke, though some involved arguments for Marcion priority have been put forward in recent years.
British Library, Royal MS 1. B. VII, also called the Royal Athelstan Gospels, is an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon illuminated gospel book. It is closely related to the Lindisfarne Gospels, being either copied from it or from a common model. It is not as lavishly illuminated, and the decoration shows Merovingian influence. The manuscript contains the four Gospels in the Latin Vulgate translation, along with prefatory and explanatory matter. It was presented to Christ Church, Canterbury in the 920s by King Athelstan, who had recorded in a note in Old English (f.15v) that upon his accession to the throne in 925 he had freed one Eadelm and his family from slavery, the earliest recorded manumission in (post-Roman) England.
The Augustinian hypothesis is a solution to the synoptic problem, which concerns the origin of the Gospels of the New Testament. The hypothesis holds that Matthew was written first, by Matthew the Evangelist. Mark the Evangelist wrote the Gospel of Mark second and used Matthew and the preaching of Peter as sources. Luke the Evangelist wrote the Gospel of Luke and was aware of the two Gospels that preceded him. Unlike some competing hypotheses, this hypothesis does not rely on, nor does it argue for, the existence of any document that is not explicitly mentioned in historical testimony. Instead, the hypothesis draws primarily upon historical testimony, rather than textual criticism, as the central line of evidence. The foundation of evidence for the hypothesis is the writings of the Church Fathers: historical sources dating back to as early as the first half of the 2nd century, which have been held as authoritative by most Christians for nearly two millennia. Adherents to the Augustinian hypothesis view it as a simple, coherent solution to the synoptic problem.
British Library, Egerton MS 609 is a Breton Gospel Book from the late or third quarter of the ninth century. It was created in France, though the exact location is unknown. The large decorative letters which form the beginning of each Gospel are similar to the letters found in Carolingian manuscripts, but the decoration of these letters is closer to that found in insular manuscripts, such as the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels. However, the decoration in the Breton Gospel Book is simpler and more geometric in form than that found in the Insular manuscripts. The manuscript contains the Latin text of St Jerome's letter to Pope Damasus, St. Jerome's commentary on Matthew, and the four Gospels, along with prefatory material and canon tables. This manuscript is part of the Egerton Collection in the British Library.
The Codex Fuldensis, also known as the Victor Codex, designated by F, is a New Testament manuscript based on the Latin Vulgate made between 541 and 546. The codex is considered the second most important witness to the Vulgate text; and is also the oldest complete manuscript witness to the order of the Diatessaron. It is an important witness in any discussion about the authenticity of 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 and the Comma Johanneum. It is one of the earliest dated manuscripts of the New Testament. It was corrected until 2 May, 546 AD.
Luke 9 is the ninth chapter of the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the sending of the twelve disciples, several great miracles performed by Jesus, the story of his transfiguration, Peter's confession and the final departure from Galilee towards Jerusalem. Scottish minister William Robertson Nicoll describes this chapter as unfolding "sundry particulars which together form the closing scenes of the Galilean ministry". The book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke the Evangelist composed this Gospel as well as the Acts of the Apostles.
The Gospels of Máel Brigte is an illuminated Gospel Book, with glosses.
A gospel harmony is an attempt to compile the canonical gospels of the Christian New Testament into a single account. This may take the form either of a single, merged narrative, or a tabular format with one column for each gospel, technically known as a synopsis, although the word harmony is often used for both.
The four-document hypothesis or four-source hypothesis is an explanation for the relationship between the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It posits that there were at least four sources to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke: the Gospel of Mark and three lost sources. It was proposed by B. H. Streeter in 1925, who refined the two-source hypothesis into a four-source hypothesis.
Minuscule 76, δ 298, known as Codex Caesar-Vindobonensis, is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on parchment leaves. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 14th century. Formerly it was assigned by 49p. It has complex contents, and full marginalia. It was adapted for liturgical use
The canon of the New Testament is the set of books many modern Christians regard as divinely inspired and constituting the New Testament of the Christian Bible. For historical Christians, canonicalization was based on whether the material was from authors socially approximate to the apostles and not based solely on divine inspiration. Scholars from the 19th century onwards have disputed this. Many liberal scholars believe that the New Testament texts were not written by apostles, while many conservative continue to defend apostolic authorship. For most, the canon is an agreed-upon list of 27 books that includes the canonical Gospels, Acts, letters attributed to various apostles, and Revelation. Although there are many textual variations, most scholars believe that the original text of the New Testament can be known with a high level of probability. The books of the canon of the New Testament were written before 120 AD. Although the list of what books constituted the canon differed among the hundreds of churches in antiquity, according to ancient church historian Eusebius there was a consensus that the same 27 books constituting the canon today were the same 27 books generally recognized in the first century. For the Orthodox, the recognition of these writings as authoritative was formalized in the Second Council of Trullan of 692. The Catholic Church provided a conciliar definition of its biblical canon in 382 at the (local) Council of Rome as well as at the Council of Trent of 1545, reaffirming the Canons of Florence of 1442 and North African Councils of 393–419. For the Church of England, it was made dogmatic on the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563; for Calvinism, on the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647.
The Oxford Vulgate is a critical edition of the Vulgate version of the New Testament produced by scholars of the University of Oxford, and published progressively between 1889 and 1954 in 3 volumes.
The anti-Marcionite prologues are three short prefaces to the gospels of Mark, Luke and John. No prologue to Matthew is known. They were originally written in Greek, but only that to Luke survives in the original language. All three were translated into Latin and are preserved in some 40 manuscripts of the Vulgate Bible. They are not always found together. All three Latin prologues are found together in at least six manuscripts, those to Mark and Luke alone in one manuscript and those to Luke and John alone in another. That to Luke was the most popular and is found independent of the others in 22 manuscripts, while those to Mark and John are found independently in five and three manuscripts, respectively.
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![The prologue to Mark in the Drogo Gospels [fr], a manuscript from around 850 Paris, BnF Lat. 9388, fol. 65r.png](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/ca/Paris%2C_BnF_Lat._9388%2C_fol._65r.png/220px-Paris%2C_BnF_Lat._9388%2C_fol._65r.png)
