Some biblical scholars are too quick to say that, because a particular Gospel doesn’t include a given story or saying of Jesus, the Evangelist who wrote it must not have known about it.
Really?
What would cause a person to think this?
The Infodump Hypothesis
One thing that might motivate such a view is the idea that the Gospels represent total infodumps of everything that a particular Evangelist knew about Jesus.
But if that were the case then they wouldn’t ready the way that they do.
They hang together as narratives and display too much literary artistry for that.
If they were frantic attempts to record everything the author knew about Jesus, there would be too many stray, half-formed things that don’t fit into their literary structures.
They also would be much longer than they are.
TMI
There would have simply been Too Much Information about Jesus for the Evangelists to put in the Gospels.
They had to make choices.
This would particularly be the case if Matthew and John were, indeed, eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry. They would have known lots about Jesus—far more than could be fit into a small book like a Gospel. Such authors would be forced to omit things they know about Jesus.
Even non-eyewitness authors (like Luke and, at least for the most part, Mark) were in contact with eyewitnesses and had access to lots of information about him.
The oral preaching of Jesus that preceded the writing of the Gospels was extensive, and the original eyewitnesses were still there and able to be implored: “Tell me more about Jesus!”
It is inescapable that the Evangelists would have known things about Jesus, either from their own experience of his ministry, from speaking with eyewitnesses, or from information that was in common circulation about him, that they did not put in the Gospels.
The Agrapha of Jesus
We even have examples of what may be authentic sayings of Jesus that weren’t recorded in the Gospels. They are known as “agrapha” (Greek, “unwritten ones”), and they are for the most part found in the writings of the Church Fathers, who attributed them to Jesus despite their not being in the Gospels.
