Who were the intended audiences of the four evangelists?

Answer 1

A:

To understand what the four evangelists wrote and to whom they wrote it, we must put aside traditions about who wrote the gospels, which were actually written anonymously. We also need to recognise that Mark's Gospel was the first New Testament gospel to be written, and that the other gospels were based, directly (Matthew and Luke) or indirectly (John) on that original gospel. From evidence internal to the gospel itself, scholars have determined that Mark was written approximately 70 CE, followed by Matthew in the 80s and then Luke in the 90s. John was written early in the second century, as also was Acts of the Apostles.

The evangelist who wrote Mark's Gospel does not say why he wrote the Gospel or who his intended audience was, but the coincidence of its authorship with the end of the First Roman-Jewish War in 70 CE can provide some clues. The author might have wanted to show the Roman authorities that Christianity would be no threat to the Roman peace. He might also have wanted to take advantage of the end of Second-Temple Judaism to win converts from among Jews of the diaspora or others who were sympathetic to Jewish beliefs. It is less probable that he was writing to Palestinian Jews.

Partly because the second-century Church Fathers eventually attributed Matthew to the disciple name Matthew, this gospel has been assumed to have been written for Jews, and it is even traditionally assumed it must have been written in Hebrew or Aramaic. However, its development from Mark's Gospel establishes clearly that it was first written in Greek. Apart from the use of Greek, it could not have been written for Palestinian Jews, who would have recognised that its many Old Testament references did not come from the Hebrew texts that they used; it relied on the Septuagint, a Greek translation that differed in places from the Hebrew original. This evangelist saw a need to rewrite Mark's Gospel, in large part to place it more firmly in the context of the Jewish scriptures. He could have been writing for Jews of the diaspora or those already sympathetic to the Jewish faith. Whereas Mark seems to have been quite widely circulated and was known to the three later evangelists, Matthew seems not to have become widely known during the remainder of the first century, since the evangelists who wrote Luke and John apparently knew nothing of it.

It can be shown that the author of Luke's Gospel was also aware of Mark's Gospel, since he drew much of his material from it. However, it is also clear that 'Luke' was actually quite unfamiliar with the material in Mark's Gospel. He not only omitted the "Missing Block", but concatenated the verse that preceded it in Mark with the verse that followed it, without seeming to notice that this did not make much sense. If the author himself knew little or nothing about Jesus of Nazareth, it is likely that he was writing for a community that, while essentially Christian, also knew nothing about the gospel story portrayed in Mark's Gospel. Steve Mason ('Josephus and the New Testament') says that Luke may also have been writing an apology for a wider audience than converts and potential converts. To suit the times, this would require him to demonstrate antiquity and virtue. In this context, virtue was high communal ethic, political respectability and cooperation with the Roman peace.

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Scholars say that John's Gospel was originally written for a specific Gnostic community, now known as the Johannine community because the Gospel is traditionally associated with John. John was subsequently amended to remove some of the more overt Gnostic content, to make it more acceptable to a broader Christian audience.

Answer 2

Mark wrote for the Gentiles in Rome, Matthew preached to the Palestinians, luke wrote to the Asian Christians, and John wrote to the Jews