My question is in regards to the four Gospels. Who were the original intended audiences for each of the Gospels?
Most of us are aware that many Christian churches today follow the lectionary. That is, the scripture readings, Sunday by Sunday, are determined in advance for the entire year. This was also the case in first century Judaism. The entire Torah had to be read in the course of one year. The great holy days of the Jewish year fell on those days on which the corresponding passages of the Torah were read. This two thousand year old lectionary has now been reconstructed with a high degree of certainty. A typical synagogue service at the time would have consisted of the required Torah reading plus optional readings from the Prophets. The sophar or rabbi would also preach a sermon usually based on the Torah reading. Part of that sermon would frequently have consisted of pointing out and explaining the midrashic connections found in the readings. The service would also have been interspersed with various prayers and hymns. Remember that the psalms were simply hymns in the Hebrew language. Such a service would probably feel very familiar to us. We are following the same basic pattern right now in most Christian churches.
For almost 60 years after the death of Jesus, Christians and Jews worshipped together. In most synagogues Christians were in a minority position and the tradition developed that the Christians would worship with their fellow Jews on Shabat and on the following day they would meet together for their own service. This is the origin of the Christian practice of services on the first day of the week rather than the last. In at least some synagogues, Christians constituted the majority of the congregation and would quite naturally have wished to have Christian scripture readings to complement the Torah readings from the Jewish lectionary.
It is only recently becoming apparent that this is exactly the need that the gospel writers were attempting to meet. One of the earliest manuscripts of the Bible is known as the Codex Alexandrinus. Unlike our modern Bible translations, which are organized by chapter and verse, this manuscript has the gospels organized into lections. Mark, in particular, is organized into 49 lections. Incidentally the chapter-verse organization did not come into use until the mid 16th century. These 49 lections of Mark correspond exactly, Shabat by Shabat, to the Jewish lectionary. It would seem that we have found the organizing principle behind Mark's gospel.
What does this mean to our modern day interpretation to the life of Jesus? It would appear that Mark selected stories from the life of Jesus and wrote them into his gospel in those places where they would best suit the existing Jewish lectionary. This means that we cannot read Mark with the preconceived notion that we are reading about the life of Jesus in any kind of a sequential order. However, we are still able to infer some information as to order. We can be reasonably sure that the baptism of Jesus by John was an early event and that the cleansing of the Temple was a late event.
Let me illustrate this situation with just one of many possible examples. The feast of Hanukkah occurs between the third and fourth Shabats of the month of Kislev. It is also called the Feast of the Dedication and is sometimes also called the Festival of Light. It celebrates the 164 BC victory of the Maccabees over the Syrians and the rededication of the Temple. The return of the light of God to the Temple became the primary theme, but in typical midrashic style the Jews wove into the festival other similar themes from their scriptures where the light of God had manifested itself. In Mark's gospel, the Christian story chosen to correspond to this celebration is the Feast of the Transfiguration. In this story the themes are preserved. The Temple is on a mountaintop, so is the Transfiguration. Jesus appears with Moses who was also transfigured by the light of God on a mountaintop in Sinai. Jesus is the new Temple being dedicated by the light of God to replace the old Temple. Both Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus and, in Jewish tradition, neither of them experienced death. Jesus did experience death but defeated it. The midrashic idea of presenting the new in the light of the old is preserved by serving up the Feast of the Transfiguration in conjunction with Hanukkah.
