INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPELS

INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPELS

The first four books in the NT are the gospels that tell of the life and ministry of Jesus. One contains a very clear statement of the writer’s purpose: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). The writers of the other three gospels probably had a similar purpose.

The gospels record what Jesus did and the teaching he gave during his public ministry. These stories were not written down immediately because Jesus’ disciples did not need to resort to writing to remember what he did. They were with him as he travelled about Israel, and they heard him teach, asked him questions, and saw him heal the sick and deliver others from evil spirits. Later they told others about the things they had seen and heard. The gospels are thus based ultimately on eyewitness testimony.

As the stories of Jesus and his teachings were repeated over and over, they gradually fell into formal patterns. For example, one of the most familiar forms in the gospels is the miracle story. These all follow a similar basic pattern: a problematic situation is described, Jesus is made aware of it, there is often some reference to faith, Jesus responds to the situation and solves the problem, and his actions have an effect on the bystanders. Many of the miracle stories involve either healing or exorcism, but there are also nature miracles like the feeding of crowds and the calming of the storm on the Sea of Galilee.

Another popular form of story is the pronouncement story. These involve a problem that is resolved by some appropriate words or pronouncement by Jesus. For example, when the Jewish authorities criticise Jesus for going to the home of Levi, a tax collector, for a meal, he defends himself with this statement: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). Many other such pronouncements are preserved in the gospels.

However, the bulk of the teaching of Jesus recorded in the gospels is in the form of direct teaching given to crowds or, in the latter part of his ministry, to his disciples. This teaching is recorded in different forms. Of these, the most familiar is the parable. Parables range from very short, crisp statements of comparison to brief stories about one or more characters. Jesus uses these parables to engage his hearers by using routine, everyday situations and events to communicate or illustrate divine truth. For example, when he is criticised for his friendship with tax collectors and sinners, he tells the story of the shepherd who searched until he found his sheep that had gone astray.

His point is that God is like that shepherd and rejoices over every lost person who is found (Luke 15:3-7). At other times, Jesus used parables to teach about the kingdom of God (Mark 4:1-34) or about the future (Matt 25).

Jesus’ sayings often take the form of rules or instructions about the life of discipleship. These often appear in the gospels as collections around a theme like prayer, light or salt. There is good reason to believe that at a very early stage a collection of the parables, sayings and other teachings of Jesus existed, and that this collection is a source that two of the gospel writers, Matthew and Luke, drew on when they were writing their gospels. Scholars call this source Q (short for Quelle, the German word for “source”).

Although all four of the gospels present the life and ministry of Jesus and are written with an evangelistic purpose, the last of the gospels, John, is very different from the others. The first three all bear some resemblance to each other, not just in their overall presentation but also in their selection of material and even in their wording. For this reason, scholars refer to them as the Synoptic Gospels, a term which indicates that they ought to be read alongside each other.

Mark, the briefest of the Synoptic Gospels, was probably the first to be written. Apart from two blocks of teaching (chs 4 and 13), this gospel is largely narrative. It falls into two major sections. The first begins with Jesus’ baptism by John and the start of his public ministry and ends with him about to enter Jerusalem for the last time (10:52).

The second begins with his entry into Jerusalem and covers the passion and resurrection narratives (11:1-16:20).

Matthew and Luke largely follow Mark’s narrative from Jesus’ baptism (Matt 3:1; Luke 3:1) to his entry into Jerusalem for the last time (Matt 20:34; Luke 19:27). However, both of them introduce their gospels with collections of stories about the circumstances of Jesus’ birth (Matt 1–2; Luke 1–2). The birth stories in each gospel differ in terms of content and thrust. Both Matthew and Luke also include information about Jesus’ teaching, some of it common to all three gospels, some common to both of them, and some unique to each of them. Likewise, their stories of the events surrounding Christ’s death and resurrection cover common ground but also reflect their individual interests and emphases.

In the Synoptics we thus have three individual but similar accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus. Each of the three writers wants to bring out particular themes, sometimes to suit the particular audience for which he was writing, and so each collects, selects, arranges and shapes the material to emphasise these themes. Readers who recognise the nature of these accounts and try to appreciate the individual nuances of the different gospels will get the most out of them.

The fourth gospel, John, presents a noticeably different portrait of Jesus from that presented in the Synoptics. The author seems to assume that his readers will be familiar with some of the details of the life and ministry of Jesus mentioned in the other gospels. This is especially true of the account of John the Baptist and his disciples in John 1:19-51.

Instead of beginning with an account of Jesus’ birth or baptism, John begins his gospel with a prologue in which Jesus is presented as the divine Word coming to humanity (1:1-18). He is rejected by those who ought to have received him, but there is no other way to know God than the Word that has come to humans in Jesus (1:14, 18).

There are also some fundamental differences in perspective between John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels. For example, in the Synoptics, up until six months before the end of Jesus’ life, people are still speculating about his true identity (Mark 6:14-15; 8:27-28). But in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, we hear Andrew testifying to his brother Peter, “We have found the Messiah”. Even when John tells us about the same events or reports the same teaching as the Synoptics, he presents it differently.

John does not include Jesus’ short parables and sayings about things like the kingdom of God. Instead he gives us long discourses in which Jesus speaks about himself and his mission. Yet John and the Synoptics do have some things in common. For example, in all the gospels, the same titles are ascribed to Jesus or used by Jesus to refer to himself. Like the authors of the Synoptic Gospels, John has a distinctive portrait of Jesus in mind, and it is up to the reader to appreciate the distinctive features of that portrait.

After the prologue (1:1-18), John’s Gospel divides into two sections. The first section (1:19-12:50) deals with Jesus’ public ministry up to the final rejection of his message in Jerusalem. It contains a series of signs or miracles that are either followed or preceded by a related discourse. Each sign and the explanatory discourse that accompanies it point to the identity of Jesus as the one who reveals the Father. Then in the second section of the gospel (13:1-20:31), Jesus completes the mission that he has been sent for and returns to the Father. The final chapter (21:1-25) is a sort of epilogue.

Although the gospels were not the first books in the NT to be written, it is appropriate that they are placed first. This is because their subject, the Lord Jesus, is the very heart and centre of the entire NT. In other words, the gospels lay the foundation for the NT, and the rest of the books build on them. It is also important to remember that these stories and traditions regarding Jesus were formulated and used in the early church long before they were put down in writing. Jesus of Nazareth was not a mythical figure from the distant past. He was someone who was known and loved by many in the church of that period.

Brian Wintle