Contents The four
canonical gospels share the same basic outline of the
life of Jesus: he begins his
public ministry in conjunction with that of
John the Baptist, calls
disciples, teaches and heals and confronts the
Pharisees,
dies on the cross, and is
raised from the dead. Each has its own distinctive understanding of him and his
divine role and modern scholars recognize their differences over attempts at
harmonization. The patterns of parallels and differences found in the gospels are typical of ancient biographies about actual people and history, and are thus unproblematic if not read anachronistically. The gospels according to
Matthew,
Mark and
Luke are termed the "
synoptic gospels" (from , "seeing all together") because they present very similar accounts of the life of Jesus. Mark begins with the
baptism of the adult Jesus and the heavenly declaration that he is the
son of God; he gathers followers and begins his ministry, and tells his disciples that he must die in
Jerusalem but that he will rise from the dead; in Jerusalem, he is at first acclaimed but then rejected, betrayed, and crucified, and when
the women who have followed him come to his
tomb, they
find it empty. Whilst not as overt as
John's Gospel (the fourth and non-synoptic gospel) scholars have found that the synoptic gospels portray Jesus as divine in various ways. Mark apparently believes that he had a normal human parentage and birth, and makes no attempt to trace his ancestry back to King
David or
Adam; it originally ended at Mark and had no
post-resurrection appearances, although Mark , in which the young man discovered in the tomb instructs the women to tell "the disciples and Peter" that Jesus will see them again in Galilee, hints that the author knew of the tradition. The authors of Matthew and Luke added different infancy and resurrection narratives to the story they found in Mark. Barker suggests that Luke supplemented Matthew's nativity by adding
Mary's perspective to Matthew's
Joseph. Each also makes subtle theological changes to Mark, though James Barker argues this is exaggerated, with ancient rhetorical practices explaining many differences in the gospels instead. The Markan miracle stories, for example, confirm Jesus' status as an emissary of God (which was Mark's understanding of the Messiah), but in Matthew they demonstrate his divinity, and the "young man" who appears at Jesus' tomb in Mark becomes a radiant angel in Matthew. Luke is not especially critical of the content of Mark but mainly corrects his source's grammatical syntax, lection, and style instead. John, the most overtly
theological, is the first to make
Christological judgements outside the context of the narrative of Jesus's life. He presents a significantly different picture of Jesus's career, omitting any mention of his early life, baptism, and
temptation. John knows and presupposes synoptic stories and thusly emphasizes other narratives rather than recounting every passage. The chronology is also different, describing the passage of three years in Jesus's ministry in contrast to the single year of the synoptics, placing the
cleansing of the Temple at the beginning, and the
Last Supper on the day before
Passover. However, there are also verses such as Mark and Matthew viewed as hints of a longer ministry in the synoptic gospels. Ancient writing practices involved such chronological displacement and changes, with even reliable biographers including
Plutarch displaying them. According to Delbert Burkett, the Gospel of John is the only gospel to call Jesus God, though other scholars including
Larry Hurtado and Michael Barber view a possible divine Christology in the synoptics. In contrast to Mark, where Jesus
hides his identity as messiah, in John he openly proclaims it.
Composition Like the rest of the New Testament, the four canonical gospels were written in
Koine Greek. The Gospel of Mark probably dates from around AD 70, Matthew and Luke around AD 80–90, and John AD 90–100, which puts their composition likely within the lifetimes of various eyewitnesses, including Jesus's own family. They are generally agreed not to represent eyewitness accounts, though this may partly be the result of dubious
form-critical assumptions. However, Paul never met Jesus. Before the gospels were written, he claimed to have had a
vision of Jesus after his death, and later met his brother
James. The form-critics largely viewed the gospels as compilers of transmitted traditions, but the gospels are now seen as biographers engaging in literarily creative and imaginative form of art (which did involve claiming consulting eyewitnesses). The
form critics of the 20th century viewed the gospels as compilers of tradition analogous to other collections of
folktales by primitive communities steeped in
eschatology, but today scholars recognize the gospels as Greco-Roman biographies by conscious authors with their own theological agendas. Burkett argues the emergence of the gospels can be summarized by oral traditions passed on as unordered units, written collections of miracle stories and sayings, and
proto-gospels preceding and serving as sources for the gospels, which combined proto-gospels, written collections, and oral tradition. The
dedicatory preface of Luke testifies to the existence of previous accounts of the life of Jesus. According to Chris Keith, there is no incontrovertible evidence the gospel traditions circulated as written narratives, testimonia, or notes prior to Mark. Mark is generally agreed to be the first gospel.
Source criticism has largely fallen out of favor in recent gospels scholarship, though some elements remain. Although most scholars believe Matthew and Luke independently used Mark and a hypothesized
Q source, alternative hypotheses that posit the direct use of Matthew by Luke or vice versa without Q are increasing in popularity within scholarship. Modern scholarship emphasizes the evangelists' authorial activity over positing hypothetical sources. Honore offers a statistical classification of the number of words in the single, double, and triple traditions. The synoptic gospels adapt their sources more conservatively than other ancient historians, though the parallels and variations of the Synoptic gospels are typical of ancient historical biographies. The canonical gospels represent a Jesus tradition and were enveloped by oral storytelling and performances during the early years of Christianity, rather than being redactions or literary responses to each other. Mark, Matthew, and Luke are called the "synoptic gospels" because of their close similarities of content, arrangement, and language. Alan Kirk praises Matthew in particular for his "scribal memory competence" and "his high esteem for and careful handling of both Mark and Q", which makes claims the latter two works are significantly theologically or historically different dubious. The author of John may have known the synoptics, but did not use them in the way that Matthew and Luke used Mark. The increase in support for or the view that the author of the Gospel of John knew the synoptic gospels is correlated with the decline of the signs source hypothesis, and there is currently considerable debate over the gospel's social, religious and historical context. All four also use the Jewish scriptures, by quoting or referencing passages, interpreting texts, or alluding to or echoing biblical themes. Such use can be extensive: Mark's description of the
Parousia (second coming) is made up almost entirely of quotations from scripture. Matthew is full of quotations and
allusions, and although John uses scripture in a far less explicit manner, its influence is still pervasive. According to Wesley Allen, their source was the Greek version of the scriptures, called the
Septuagint and they do not seem familiar with the original Hebrew, though other scholars point out that Matthew in particular has quotations closer to the
Masoretic and could understand
Hebrew.
Genre and historical reliability Richard Burridge's comparison of the Gospels with writings from the
Graeco-Roman world has led to a broad scholarly consensus that the Gospels are a subset of the genre of
ancient biography (
bios), changing how researchers view their
literary form and historical intent. Burridge demonstrated this through detailed comparison that the Gospels share features, such as focus on one central person, anecdotes, and accounts of deeds and death, which made them recognizable as serious life narratives to people in the first and second centuries. Ancient biographies were concerned with providing examples for readers to emulate while preserving and promoting the subject's reputation and memory; the gospels were
propaganda and
preaching meant to convince that Jesus was a miracle-working holy man. As such, they present the Christian message of the second half of the first century, and
biblical scholars are cautious of relying on the gospels uncritically as historical documents, though they provide a good idea of the career of Jesus. Bond states that many
chreia found in the gospels are literary creations rather than reservoirs of oral tradition; while many are rooted in actual history, they have been reshaped to emphasize aspects of Jesus. Scholars since the 19th century have viewed the gospel of John as less reliable than the Synoptic gospels. Since the third quest, however, John's gospel is seen as having more reliability than previously thought or sometimes even more reliable than the synoptics. The John, Jesus, and History Seminar has contributed to the overthrow of the previous consensus that John was of no historical value, and many scholars now see it as a source for the
Historical Jesus. While there are numerous variants present in Biblical manuscripts and changes by scribes, there is a "macrolevel stability", and scholars study the relations between the gospels with the view that the texts published in the late first and second centuries did not significantly differ from 21st century reconstructions. Some of these are considered significant, an example being Matthew 1:18, altered to imply the pre-existence of Jesus. For these reasons, modern scholars are cautious of relying on the gospels uncritically, and critical study can attempt to distinguish the original ideas of Jesus from those of later authors. Scholars generally agree that John has historical value.
Mark Allan Powell has observed that scholars now recognize primitive material in the
Gospel of John that can contribute authentic historical information alongside the Synoptic Gospels, thereby supporting the overall reliability of the canonical Gospel accounts. John provides additional support for various facts about the
Historical Jesus also found in the Synoptics, such as his association with John the Baptist, choosing of twelve disciples, conflicts with religious authorities, emphasis on love, a high self-conception, and usage of aphoristic formulations. John's claims that Jesus visited Bethany and Ephraim, had a follower named Nathaniel, and that Peter was from
Bethsaida may also be historical. Commentators debate whether the beloved disciple is presented as the author or an authority behind the gospel. Scholars tend to reject the attribution to John the Apostle, though they view the beloved disciple as the source of much of John's content. The Synoptic Gospels are the primary sources for Christ's ministry. Assessments of the reliability of the Gospels involve not just the texts but also the long oral and written transmission behind them, using methods such as memory studies and
form criticism, with scholars reaching different conclusions. There have been different views on the transmission of material that led to the Synoptic Gospels, with various scholars arguing that memory and/or orality reliably preserved traditions ultimately traceable to the historical Jesus.
James Dunn believed: Anthony Le Donne, a leading memory researcher in Jesus studies, elaborated on Dunn's thesis, basing "his historiography squarely on Dunn's thesis that the historical Jesus is the memory of Jesus recalled by the earliest disciples." According to Le Donne, as explained by his reviewer, Benjamin Simpson, memories are fractured and not exact recalls of the past. Le Donne further argues that the remembrance of events is facilitated by relating them to a common story, or "type." This means the Jesus-tradition is not a theological invention of the early Church, but rather a tradition shaped and refracted through such memory "type." Le Donne too supports a conservative view on typology compared to some other scholars, transmissions involving eyewitnesses, and ultimately a stable tradition resulting in little invention in the Gospels. Reviewing his work, Rafael Rodriguez largely agrees with Allison's methodology and conclusions while arguing that Allison's discussion on memory is too one-sided, noting that memory "is nevertheless sufficiently stable to authentically bring the past to bear on the present" and that people are beholden to memory's successes in everyday life.
Craig S. Keener, drawing on previous studies by Dunn, Alan Kirk,
Kenneth E. Bailey, and Robert McIver, among many others, uses memory theory and oral tradition to argue that the Gospels are, in many ways, historically accurate. His work has been endorsed by
Markus Bockmuehl,
James H. Charlesworth, and
David Aune, among others. According to Chris Keith, a historical Jesus is "ultimately unattainable, but can be hypothesized on the basis of the interpretations of the
early Christians, and as part of a larger process of accounting for how and why early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did." According to Keith, "these two models are methodologically and epistemologically incompatible," calling into question the methods and aim of the first model. Keith argues that criticism of the criteria of authenticity does not mean scholars cannot research the
Historical Jesus, but rather that scholarship should seek to understand the Gospels rather than trying to sift through them for nuggets of history. Regardless of the methodological challenges
historical Jesus studies have flourished in recent years; Dale Allison laments, "The publication of academic books about the historical Jesus continues apace, so much so that no one can any longer keep up; we are all overwhelmed." Robert H. Stein has written that the correct approach to Gospel traditions is to treat them as reliable until proven otherwise, because multiple lines of evidence (such as eyewitness presence, careful community transmission, and the preservation of difficult sayings) support their overall authenticity.
Textual history and canonisation The oldest known gospel text is , a fragment of John dating to the first half of the second century. The creation of a Christian canon was probably a response to the career of the heretic
Marcion of Sinope (–160), who established a canon of his own with just one gospel, the
Gospel of Marcion, similar to the Gospel of Luke. The
Muratorian fragment, the earliest surviving list of books considered (by its own author at least) to form Christian scripture, included Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Irenaeus went further, stating that there must be four gospels and only four because there were
four corners of the world and thus the Church should have four pillars. He referred to the four collectively as the "fourfold gospel" (
euangelion tetramorphon). ==Non-canonical (apocryphal) gospels==