By Kieran Sean Pierce
Scholars have studied the sources in great depth and generally accept them to be reasonably reliable for a variety of reasons. It was actually took a surprisingly short amount of time for them to be written down. Some pieces have undoubtedly been changed over time, but the overall ideas and main points remain intact.
This is an excellent question and will take some length to answer. It is a question that has been studied in depth by historians for hundreds of years as the gospels are our main sources on Jesus, and their reliability is very important. I will try to give a good summary, but please know that I cannot possibly include every detail.
Lets start with a historical timeline of how these 4 gospels came to be the ones canonized into our modern bible (credit to my college professor for this timeline):
This is to say, the Gospels were kept via oral tradition from roughly Jesus’ death to the 50s CE. They began to be written down in various pieces starting in the 40s CE until around the 70s CE (the Gospels were not the first time anything was written down. They got their sources from somewhere, explained more later). The Gospels were then written down as full complete narratives of Jesus’ life in the 60s CE to about 95CE. By about 150CE, the four gospels we read today were agreed to be included as the canon, but it was not until about 370CE that the full New Testament we read today was finally canonized.
So lets go stage by stage:
Stage 1: Oral traditions
It is important to remember that literacy in the first century was nothing like it is today. Very few people could read or write, so writing something down was usually reserved for important documents or for a very specific purpose. Putting something in writing did very little for being able to spread it around— aside from it being extremely costly (no printing press, so everything written and copied by hand), the common masses could never read it. If you wanted to spread a story or idea, it was passed around orally. As such, passing a story orally was the standard, and people in this time period were absurdly good at it. For example, it was common for the entire Iliad to memorized and recited— this was how this work was given to the masses. Now i’m not saying there is concrete evidence that things Jesus said or his actions were memorized to this extent, but this is the general culture in which they occurred. This being said, 10–20 years of oral tradition before anything was written down is actually a very short amount of time. There was undoubtedly some “telephone” where bits and pieces were changed, but in general, the overall themes and meanings were left intact.
Stage 2: Written Traditions
A little while after Jesus’ death, his followers started to realize that when he said he would return, maybe he didn’t mean that he would return that year… or that decade. In order to preserve Jesus’ teachings and to avoid the issue of oral telephone described above, bits and pieces of Jesus’ teachings were informally written down. It is very difficult to say exactly what and when was written down because these have not been found. However, it is possible to reverse engineer what must have been written down on them by studying the gospels (describe below).
Stage 3: Written Narratives
For various different reasons, the entire narrative of Jesus life/ ministry was written down in the mid to late first century a few times. Here is the timeline of what was written down when:
Mark ~60–65CE
Matthew ~70–75CE
Luke ~75–85CE
John ~90CE
Mark, Matthew, and Luke are referred to as the “synoptic” Gospels because they are the most similar. John is very different than the other 3, discussed more below.
The Gospels show that there are multiple sources which tell the same narrative. This is so incredibly unlikely to be just coincidence that we can reasonably rely on these as sources for these events. However, the different authors did share some of the same sources. This Wikipedia page can give more details supporting this (Historical reliability of the Gospels - Wikipedia). Now let me explain how it was determined the Gospels were written:
It is called the Four Source Hypothesis. Wikipedia claims the Two Source Hypothesis is the most generally accepted hypothesis. I was taught by professors with Ph.Ds that the Four Source Hypothesis was the most generally accepted by scholars. Either way, they present a similar hypothesis, they just differ on the original number of sources. I will discuss the Four Source Hypothesis here, but the Two Source Hypothesis can be found here if you’re interested (Two-source hypothesis - Wikipedia).
I am going to present a simplified version of the Four Source Hypothesis as it is a little easier to explain, but the version with more of the details can be found here (Four-document hypothesis - Wikipedia). Here is a visual representation of the Four Source Hypothesis:
What this is saying is that Matthew and Luke both used Mark as a source because they both have a lot in common with Mark. Additionally, Mark was written in extremely awkward Greek— as if the author knew how to write maybe receipts or brief messages, but not an entire narrative. This led to Mark being a very lengthy and detailed awkward narrative. Matthew and Luke took the liberty of shortening and cleaning up Mark’s version of events. Logically, if Matthew or Luke had been written first, it would be difficult for Mark to make up additional details to add in and also it wouldn’t make sense for him to take normal Greek and make it awkward. Therefore, scholars generally agree Mark came first and Matthew and Luke used Mark as a common source. (see this page for the events the three Gospels all have in common as there are many: Synoptic Gospels - Wikipedia).
However, both Matthew and Luke also have some events in common which are not in Mark. This means there was very likely another source they both used to write their narratives. Scholars call this source “Q”. This source is commonly believed to have been written down during the “Written Traditions” phase, but it has never been found. Only by reverse engineering what is common between Matthew and Luke, but not in Mark can scholars determine what was likely in this “Q” source (credit to my college professor for this list).
To further add to the sources, both Matthew and Luke have some things which are not found in Mark and are also unique to only their own Gospel. This then means there was very likely 2 more sources, which scholars call “M” and “L” (very creative right). Basically saying Matthew and Luke both had a unique source where they pulled information from. (chart below of things unique to Matthew and Luke— AKA “M” and “L” (credit to my college professor for this list))
In summary, this is how the Gospels overlap (this one pulled from Wikipedia):
Wikipedia claims the Two Source Hypothesis is the most generally accepted as it doesn’t make logical sense. If there are clearly things unique to only Luke and only Matthew, then there must be unique sources supplying that information; unless you want to claim that “Q” had all of the information and Luke and Matthew just decided to pick and choose what to include. But following that logic, Luke and Matthew both included the vast majority of Mark, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to then be choosy about “Q”. Anyhow, you get the point.
Now, the reason John is not considered a synoptic Gospel is because it is so different in so many ways. Rather than trying to tell a historical account, John reads like the author is trying to evangelize the world. It likely used Matthew, Mark, and Luke as sources but heavily edited them to fit its message. Also, John reads as if somebody accidentally dropped it and couldn’t figure out what order the pages were supposed to go. The timeline is confusing and drastically different from the Synoptics and the geography of where Jesus went in any given amount of time also makes no sense or is impossible. Here are some of the many reasons John is so different (credit to my college professor for this list):
There were a multitude of Gospels written in the first and second centuries, so how did the 4 we have today wind up as our canon? Basically, as the New Testament was developing, what got included as the canon came down to these 5 criteria: 1) the narratives had to culminate in the death and resurrection of Jesus, 2) the narratives had to engage the Hebrew Bible (this was because at the time, Christianity was considered a new sect of Judaism— it wasn’t until later that the Gentiles (non-Jews) took over Christianity and Jews rejected it) 3) the narratives had to avoid theological extremes, 4) the narrative had to have a credible origins story (who wrote it/ where it came from), 5) the narrative had to be generally accepted by the people. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were the 4 which hit all 5 of these criteria, so they were included.
Now, this probably makes you wonder, are there other gospels which we could read today which would give us more details on Jesus? Short answer is not really. Long answer is maybe. The Gospel of Thomas is the only other gospel which could also be a credible source on Jesus. However, there is a lot of debate around this. The Gospel of Thomas is also not really a narrative, it is more of a collection of short verses which are not really connected or related. There is another chart below with the names of many of the other gospels which have been found. However, these gospels are not credible sources of Jesus’ life. Usually they have a very strong agenda and no historical basis for their stories, or are literally just myths and stories made up for a variety of reasons. For example, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas is about Jesus’ life as a child. According to this gospel, Jesus would throw tantrums and kill his neighborhood friends with his powers. It is rejected by scholars as being reliable, but can be studied to understand ideas, feelings, or developments around Jesus and his followers.
Stage 5: Final Full Canon
This stage is a little outside the scope of your question as it doesn’t deal with the Gospels. So lets just say that after the Gospels were canonized, it took several hundred years for various groups to finally decide what the final full version of the New Testament should look like. This means, when someone asks when the New Testament Bible was written, the answer can vary from “it was written down by ~65 CE” to “it was not finalized until the 4th century CE”.
Other miscellaneous things to note:
The question also asks about Jesus speaking Aramaic and the Gospels written in Greek. This is true and adds another element to take with a grain of salt when reading. However, these Gospels have been studied and debated by experts in such depth for so long that every possible translation from Greek to English has pretty much been exhausted. This being said though, the Gospels were actually written originally in Koine Greek, which is a version of Greek written in all caps with no spaces or punctuation. This should give some insight into the difficulty of trying to translate it. An example used in one of my classes is the following sentence: LASTNIGHTATDINNERWESAWABUNDANCEONTHETABLE. Now this is English, but you can break it up to say “Last night at dinner we saw abundance on the table” or “Last night at dinner we saw a bun dance on the table”. Now imagine how much more difficult it can get when the language is Greek. Here is a link for more info on Koine Greek (Koine Greek - Wikipedia). And here is a picture of how it looks written down (this is a picture of one of the earliest know fragments of the New Testament).
It is also worth noting each gospel has its own agenda for being written. This is really an answer for another question, but it should be noted that just because they have an agenda does not make them untrue— you should just understand the point of view while reading.
This answer has gotten really long, but it is a really good question which does not have an easy or quick answer. -Quora
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