Which Gospel Was Written First?

All early Christian writers affirmed that Matthew was the first to write a biography of Jesus.

Today, most Bible scholars say claim that Mark wrote the first biography of Jesus, and that Matthew and Luke copied most of their biographies from Mark, and a lost collection of Jesus’s teachings which they call “Q.”

There is no proof that this document called Q every existed. It was imagined by German scholars in the 19th century who were trying to explain the similarities between the biographies written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

The reason these scholars invented the imaginary document Q was to support their claim that Mark was wrote his biography first. If Mark wrote first, then it is difficult to explain the similarities between the longer biographies written by Matthew and Luke.

But if you recognize that Matthew wrote the first biography of Jesus—just like every early Christian writer claimed—then there isn’t any problem to be explained. Mark and Luke were both familiar with the biography of Matthew, which explains most of the similarities between the three biographies.

Mark’s biography is similar to Matthew’s biography, but Mark focuses on what Jesus did and leaves out the longer sections of Jesus’s teachings. Almost every story mentioned by Mark is also found in Matthew, but Mark often includes details that Matthew didn’t mention. Mark was probably written second.

Luke sometimes follows the order of stories in Matthew and sometimes he follows the order given in Mark, which is evidence that he was familiar with the accounts written by Matthew and Mark. Luke also reports a lot of stories that are not found in Matthew or Mark. If Mark had written after Luke, it would be quite strange that he often followed the order of events given by Luke, but ignored all of the extra stories that Luke recorded.

A simple examination of the three books shows that Matthew was written first, Mark second, and Luke third. This explains all of the similarities between the three books, without inventing an imaginary document that never existed. It also matches the order the books were placed in the Bible by those who knew when the books were written.

Just because most scholars believe a theory without good evidence (like the Q hypothesis) doesn’t mean you should too. Every field of study has its own set of “accepted wisdom,” which is constantly changing as one popular theory is replaced by another. Scholars in every field of study usually just assume that the theories they learned in school are true, without checking the evidence for themselves. But popularity of an idea is rarely a good indicator that it is true.

The truth is often much simpler than the complex theories of scholars. All credible evidence points to the fact that Matthew was the first to write a biography of Jesus.