The gospel writers, historically

[TheAnachronism]

I have been trying to read up on New Testament history, and while I have learned a great deal so far, there is still so much information to wade through. I was wanting to start a discussion on the subject of the gospel writers, based on what we know historically and through tradition, starting off with some questions I have:

1) The writers of the gospel were obviously well-educated Greeks. What else can we know about them historically? That's about all the information I've been able to uncover so far, except for discussions on the particular views of each gospel writer.

-In the beginning of Luke, he says, "It seemed good to me also...to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed." To whom is this referring, and can it help us know who wrote Luke?​

2) Speaking of well-educated Greeks, why were the [canonical] gospels (and Acts, and the Epistles of Paul, and Revelations, and a lot of the apocryphal texts, etc.) originally written by Greeks in the Greek language? The Jews had a very bookish religion, dissimilar in this point from many others. Why weren't there any Christian texts coming from the Jews? From Acts, it seems that evangelism and conversion to Christianity began with the Jews and later worked its way to the Gentiles (non-Jews, aka pagans). I would expect, then, that the Jewish-to-Christianity numbers were stronger in the beginning.

-On this last point, is there any data about the makeup of early Christianity with regards to the numbers of Jews vs Gentiles?​

Any discussion is welcome!

 

[Trakar]

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/index.html
Seems to be a pretty good online exegesis reference source, if nothing else, in its links and listings to offline and hardcopy materials.

 

[TheAnachronism]

Thanks for the link! There is a wealth of information there.

I am somewhat surprised, however, that no one wants to discuss this subject.

 

[Hokulele]

Part of it may be that early Christianity was a synthesis of Jewish tradition and Greek philosophy. The gospel of John particularly relies heavily on Greek concepts (such as logos). You may want to scan through the lsat dozen or so pages of the Scriptural Literacy thread in here as there was quite a bit of discussion on this very topic.


ETA: This is a pretty good place to start. The bickering is dying down by this point.

 

[Bikewer]

Bart Ehrman goes into the early Gospels, including the large number that didn't make the canonical cut, in Lost Christianities. Ehrman is a decent authority on all this....

 

[TimCallahan]

Mark, the earliest of the gospels to be written, was penned by someone rather ignorant of both Jewish marriage laws of the time and the geography of Galilee. He wrote in Koine Greek, the Greek of everyday life and the form of the language prevelent after the time of Alexander the Great. What must be remembered is that most of the Jews of the Diaspora didn't understand Hebrew, which by that time seems to have been mainly a liturgical language. The Jews of Judea and Galilee spoke Aramaic.

The earliest (pre-Pauline) followers of Jesus were essentially excluded from the Christianity created by Paul. They seem to have become the Ebionites, a group relegated to the status of heretics.