Synoptic Review of the 4 Gospels in the New Testament

Between the death of Jesus and the writing of the first gospel there was a period of forty years. Historically it is next to impossible to find any concrete and direct evidence for the events, which took place during period. It is known that the early Christians supported one of the basic human activities- story-telling. Thus the events, which were taking place, were retold and passed orally from one individual to the other, from one generation to the other. This process had certainly its impact upon the actual presentation of the facts. The shared memories about those times included stories about miracles and healings, conducted by Jesus and his own teachings and parables. There were also such stories, which were written down. The written documents informed about the death of Jesus and some of his sayings.  The first gospel about Jesus was written by Mark about the year 70. The word “gospel” could be translated as “good news”. There is little information about the authors of the written works of ancient world available; in addition it is known that there was a tradition to attribute written works to well–known individuals of those times. “The gospels are very peculiar types of literature. They’re not biographies,” says Prof. Paula Fredriksen, “they are a kind of religious advertisement. What they do is proclaim their individual author’s interpretation of the Christian message through the device of using Jesus of Nazareth as a spokesperson for the evangelists’ position.”[1] In total there were four basic gospels written, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Like, the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of John. The first three are often called “synoptic gospels”, because they represent the things in similar ways. The last one- the Gospel of John – received the name “spiritual gospel”, because the overall style of writing and presentation of the events is different from the previous three gospels. There are a lot of accounts of Jesus, but the four gospels from Mark, Matthew, Luke and John are accepted and recognized by orthodox Christians as the primary gospels.

All four gospels offer different depictions of Jesus. This could be explained by the authors’ belonging to different communities with various experiences and environments. Historical sources state that Mark wrote his works for the community, which was under the profound impact of the failure of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome. Thus the Jewish community was in strong conflict with the Pharisaic Judaism, which occupied its dominant position in the Jewish world after the war. Luke’s work was produced for mostly Gentile readers, who wanted to underline that Christian beliefs should not have been treated as opposing the chance to become good citizens of their Empire. Even having these differences, all four gospels could be characterized as having “passion narrative” – in other words these are the basic stories about sufferings and death of Jesus. The gospels are not simply stories, they are the reflections of the reinforcement of the tensions between Jews and Christians. When Luke was producing his gospel, these tensions passed into severe stage and this fact had certainly its impact upon Luke’s gospel. John was writing his gospel, when the conflict had already become open. “In the words of Prof. Eric Meyers, Most of the gospels reflect a period of disagreement, of theological disagreement. And the New Testament tells a story of a broken relationship, and that’s part of the sad story that evolves between Jews and Christians, because it is a story that has such awful repercussions in later times.”[2]

Most of the modern researchers assume that the gospel by Mark was the first one and then followed the gospels of Matthew and Luke. This could be proved with the help of some passages, which were borrowed by Matthew and Luke from the Mark’s writing. Also they used one more source, which was lost. This theory received the name two-source hypothesis and it was developed in the 19th century. Due to the presence of these similar passages and ideas in the three gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke they are also considered to be synoptic gospels. For a relatively long time the gospel by John was rejected by Christians, but now it is accepted by the most conservative representatives.

The gospel of John is the only gospel, which is considered to be written by Jesus’ follower. The other three were produced by his apostles, and it is not known for sure, whether they had ever met him in reality. This explains the fact that there is personal account in the gospel by John and his basic purpose of writing to show all people that there is evidence of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. John is often focused upon underlining of the divine status of Jesus, for example his use of Jesus’ statements “I am”. The message of divinity could be traced from the very beginning of the gospel “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” and till its end. The main message of his writing is formulated in the following lines: “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name”[3]

It was already mentioned that the differences in the gospels could be explained by the different historical circumstances and the gospel by Matthew was written for the Jews and thus the central idea of it was that Jesus is the King of Jews – “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.”[4]  Matthew had important reasons to produce his writing. First of all it was necessary to encourage the Jewish Christians. Jesus was killed by the Jews and Jewish Christians needed to know that Jesus was the Messiah. In order to find the corresponding proofs, Matthew provides a lot of quotes from the Old Testament. To prove that Jesus was really the Messiah, Matthew used the Jesus’ geneology from the Old Testament: “A record of the geneology of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:”[5] Mark did not use geneology in his gospel at all in order to underline the idea that Jesus was a servant. Mark had the aim to support Christians in Rome, who suffered from persecutions for their faith. Thus he insisted that persecution could be considered the price for the Christians to pay for their support of Jesus: “Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.”[6]

Luke was considered by most researchers to be a devoted to details and accurate historian and this is the reason, why he contributed a lot of effort into research. Luke writes that Jesus was the Son of man. He depicts him as a real personality, describing his childhood and his human features: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry”[7]

Overall, the four basic gospels by Mark, Matthew, Luke and John have both similarities and different features, which could be explained by the historical peculiarities of the period and concrete social environments of the authors.

Bibliography

Burge, Gary M. “Gospel of John”. In Evans, Craig A. Routledge Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus. Routledge, 2014.

Donahue, John. The Gospel of Mark. Liturgical Press, 2005.

Duling, Dennis C. “The Gospel of Matthew”. In Aune, David E. The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Ellis, E. Earl. The Gospel of Luke. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003.

Mellowes,  Marilyn. An Introduction to the Gospels. Frontline, 2014.


[1] Mellowes,  Marilyn. (An Introduction to the Gospels. Frontline, 2014), 3

[2] Ibid, 4

[3] Burge, Gary M. “Gospel of John”. In Evans, Craig A. (Routledge Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus. Routledge, 2014), 117

[4] Duling, Dennis C. “The Gospel of Matthew”. In Aune, David E. The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 33

[5] Ibid, 35

[6] Donahue, John. The Gospel of Mark. (Liturgical Press, 2005), 35

[7] Ellis, E. Earl. The Gospel of Luke. (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003), 13

The terms offer and acceptance. (2016, May 17). Retrieved from

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"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]

"The terms offer and acceptance." freeessays.club, 17 May 2016

[Accessed: March 29, 2024]
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