Why is the birth narrative left out of the Gospels of Mark and John?

Answer 1

A:Mark's Gospel was the first New Testament gospel to be written. If we look closely at the nativity accounts in Matthew and Luke we find differences that Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament) says are "massively different" and virtually irreconcilable. Clearly, they were literary creations of the two evangelists concerned, meaning tat the nativity stories did not even exist at the time Mark was written. The author of John's Gospel based his entire gospel loosely on Luke, so was aware of the birth story in Luke but presumably chose not to believe it to be true, or at least not relevant to his own gospel. Unlike the synoptic gospels, John describes Jesus as divine and pre-existing, perhaps making a birth story seem anomalous in that context.

Answer 2

A:It is not so much that the author of Mark left the birth narrative out, but that, writing some years before Matthewand Luke were written, he simply knew nothing about the nativity traditions. John Shelby Spong (Born of a Woman: A Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus) says that in his view, neither birth story, in Matthew and Luke, contains any historical truth.

In the case of John's Gospel, which was loosely based on Luke's Gospel, it appears that the author omitted Luke's birth story simply because he did not accept it to be factual.