#gospels

[emperornorton47]

[lionofchaeronea]

Christ Walking on Water, Julius von Klever, ca. 1880

[a-queer-seminarian]

I made these charts to provide an easy reference guide for comparing the four Gospels! Feel free to share around wherever.

I think tumblr's crunching up these images so visit here for crisper versions (plus they're table format instead of png format).

Alt text version is under the readmore, necessarily formatted slightly differently but with all the same info.

TEXT ONLY / NON CHART VERSION:

Images show two charts, each credited to Avery Arden with a note that the material largely derives from the abridged version of Raymond E. Brown's An Introduction to the New Testament.

Chart 1: Comparing the Gospels, Part 1 – historical context

Mark

When: 

Late 60s/early 70s

Who:

Jewish

Multi-lingual — peppers Aramaic into the Greek

Where:

Rome or Syria (clearly unfamiliar with Palestinian geography)

To whom:

Mainly to Gentiles new to Christianity who were experiencing persecution

Priorities:

Encourage audience and show them how their suffering fit into Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God

Matthew:

When: 

Late 70s/80s

Who: 

Jewish 

Also multi-lingual, with Aramaic phrases;

Greek more polished than Mark’s

Where:

Probably in or near Antioch (in Syria); possibly Galilee

To Whom: 

Mainly to well-educated Jews who were debating internally about how Jewish tradition fit into following Jesus

Priorities: 

Promote Messiah Jesus who fulfills audience’s Jewish scriptures

inform church life and structure

Luke

When:

mid-to-late-80s

Who:

Gentile (possibly Jewish convert)

Educated Greek “historian” familiar with Septuagint; no use of Aramaic; expert use of Greek

Where:

Probably Greece; possibly Syria; also unfamiliar with Palestine

To whom:

Mainly to wealthy Gentiles influenced by Paul’s mission; living in an urban setting

Priorities:

Promote Isaiah-like Jesus; challenge audience to live out faith more actively (e.g., by redistributing wealth)

John

When: 

90s / as late as 110

Who:

Jewish 

Student(s) of “the Beloved Disciple” (the “Johannine school”)

Where:

Traditionally Ephesus; possibly Syria

To whom:

To a mixed crowd of Jews & Gentiles, at a time when tensions between Jews who did & didn’t follow Jesus had reached an all-time high

Priorities:

Promote Jesus’s divinity; strengthen unity in a group increasingly defining itself as separate from Jewish ones

Chart 2: Comparing the Gospels, Part 2 — Thematic Content

Mark

Emphasizes Jesus as:

Jesus as miracle-worker / healer; human being 

Unafraid to depict human limitations & emotions in Jesus

Other defining attributes / content:

Focuses on Jesus’s actions, e.g., his miracles; as well as on his suffering and death

Originally ended with the empty tomb & fear; no resurrection relief

The disciples often fail to understand Jesus; Jesus is frequently secretive about his identity

Matthew

Emphasizes Jesus as:

A Moses figure, Messiah, Son of God; teacher

Removes descriptions that make Jesus seem limited, naïve

Other defining attributes / content:

Beatitudes (ch. 5); judgment of the “sheep and goats” (ch. 25); 

Instructions for intracommunal relationships; forgiveness; “Great Commission” (ch. 28)

Polishes Mark’s depiction of the disciples to present them more favorably (esp. Peter as the “rock” of the church)

Luke

Emphasizes Jesus as:

Self-aware Son of God; prophet of the poor

Removes descriptions that make Jesus seem emotional, harsh, or weak

Other defining attributes / content:

Beatitudes (ch. 6) — with added “woes”; frequent warnings about risks of wealth

Also depicts disciples more favorably

Favorable depictions of tax collectors as sinners on the way to redemption; 

negative views of Pharisees as rejectors of Jesus, juxtaposed with stories of Gentiles who express faith

John

Emphasizes Jesus as:

Divine, the Word / “I Am” made flesh; lamb of God

Often misunderstood by disciples & crowds due to his use of figurative language

Other defining attributes / content:

Poetic format, full of symbolism; similarities to Gnostic texts that arose in the same era

Lots of “testimony” and “signs”

Despite Jesus & his disciples being Jewish, John depicts “the Jews” as being against Jesus; his Jesus says things like “It is written in your law…”

[illustratus]

Bishop Wulfila explains the Gospels to the Goths

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Hey, this is going to be long and wordy but I’m kinda desperate. Lately I’ve been having doubts about whether Jesus actually said what’s recorded in the gospels and whether those accounts are true, and the uncertainty there scares me, especially since I know the gospel writers almost certainly had their own agendas and that’s why accounts of the same event can sound different, why the birth narrative was skipped over or not, etc. On top of that I’ve seen posts from Jewish users outlining why Judaism typically doesn’t accept Jesus as Messiah/why you can’t be Jewish if you believe that, and their arguments seem pretty sound. So it all boils down to this big scary question of “What if this whole Jesus-as-Messiah thing was just the result of projection onto some random guy who seemed to be the real deal because the writers were so desperate to be rescued from the Roman occupation?” It sucks cuz I’ve been enjoying my renewed interest in church (for the most part) and while I’ve tried my best to learn not to take the Bible literally all the time (yay for growing up in an inerrantist doctrinal tradition 🙄), I still want to take it seriously and I still want to believe in Jesus as savior/Lord/etc. I don’t want to just be like, “Yeah I don’t buy the whole Messiah thing but I can still follow his example!” I want there to be meat behind why I follow, if that makes sense. So inasmuch as this could be my OCD being bored and trying to take hold of whatever it thinks would bug me the most (wouldn’t be the first time!), I would really appreciate any advice you have. I know there may not be any certainty or reassurance to be found here, but I still want to hear from someone who’s been there before so I can chart a path forward, and I think this is an important question to wrestle with. Plus I remember from one of your posts you said you have seminary notes on this exact topic so I’m curious lol.

"Gospel Truth": how do we know what Jesus really said and did?

Hey again! Sorry for the long delay on this one but I wanted to do some research before responding! You're right that these are important questions, and you're absolutely not the only one to feel doubt and anxiety over them. You're also right that I can't offer you certainty, but I do hope you'll find encouragement here, and places to go as you continue your journey.

This got super long (as always lol), so let's start with aTL;DR:

In this post, you'll find that there's a lot that we can surmise is very probable about Jesus' life story, but that ultimately we can't know much for certain — and that's okay. In Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions), Rachel Held Evans gets to the heart of the matter:

"I don’t know which Bible stories ought to be treated as historically accurate, scientifically provable accounts of facts and which stories are meant to be metaphorical. I don’t know if it really matters so long as those stories transform my life."

This is a time where scholarship & faith go hand-in-hand: using the minds God gifted us, we study and learn what we can; and we cultivate faith in the things we can't — a faith that doesn't deny doubt, but makes room for it, and calls us into community so that we can wrestle out meaning together.

A couple other notes before we kick off:

Please know that you don't Have To Study All The Things if you decide it's healthier for you not to go chasing those rabbit holes. You don't need to be an expert in Biblical studies to be a "good Christian" or to take scripture seriously or to get to know God deeply.

I trust you know yourself and how your OCD works better than I could. So I'm going to share the information I have, and leave it to you to determine for yourself how much information you need in order to feel reassured, without giving your mind new problems to ruminate over.

So here's a link to a Google doc that has A Lot of information — like, too much lol. But save it for after you read this post; I'm putting the most relevant & important info here! If you finish this post and feel satisfied, you never even have to look in the doc.

However deep you go, if you find yourself getting overwhelmed, know that whatever you are feeling is valid and probably pretty common, and take a break! Do a calming meditation or an activity you enjoy to help regulate your mind and body. If possible, have someone you can unpack this stuff with — or have a notebook ready to journal in. <3

Okay, all that outta the way, let's dig in!

Who wrote the Gospels?

Tradition goes that the authors of the four canonical Gospels are three of Jesus' closest disciples — Matthew, Mark, and John — plus a disciple of Paul — Luke. But academics have determine that this tradition is very improbable; it's much more likely that none of the four authors knew Jesus personally, and that the earliest of them (Mark) wasn't recorded till the 60s — decades after Jesus lived and died!

When people learn this, it often leads to something of a crisis of faith. If these writers didn't even know Jesus firsthand, where the heck did they get their information?? And come to think of it, why do their accounts differ? Is some of it made up? Is all of it made up??

The anxiety and fear that wells up is normal, and it's healthy to acknowledge that you're feeling it. But once that first shock abates, it's possible to discover a sort of freedom in the knowledge that the Gospel writers (and all the authors of the biblical texts) were human, with human biases and specific goals fitting their unique context; and that they didn't have all the answers!

This realization can free us to approach scripture without certain expectations (that it's all inerrant and prescriptive, etc.), and allows us to bring our doubts to the table with us. If something in the text seems questionable — particularly if it seems to promote bigotry and injustice rather than God's love — we can consider whether something in its author's cultural context might be responsible for that part of scripture.

So taking some time to learn the unique contexts of each writer can be quite enriching to how we engage the Gospels. For a chart that sums up the Gospel writers' unique contexts, audiences, and priorities, see this post.

For even more, you'll want a book that digs into that stuff — I recommend Raymond Brown's An Introduction to the New Testament (the abridged version!!). As you learn about the Gospel writers, I hope several things become evident:

First, that they weren't just making things up whole cloth, or relying on a game of "he said she said" telephone for their information! Each one drew from different primary or secondary sources, eyewitness testimonies or written texts (many of which no longer exist, but scholars have pieced together evidence of, like the famous "Q source" that both Matthew and Luke drew from).

Yes, each author does have an agenda in writing about Jesus, and in how they tell his story. But that's not a nefarious thing; it's true of any text, whether biography, poetry, novel, song — you don't take the time to write something without a purpose in mind! With variation between their specific goals, overall each Gospel writer's agenda was to persuade their audience that Jesus is worth following, and/or to offer encouragement to those who already believed.

Another thing that modern readers sometimes interpret as intentionally deceptive is that, yeah, the Gospels contain things that aren't strictly factual, and that the writers knew weren't strictly factual. This is because ancient ideas about history & biography are very different from our own. When we read a biography, we expect it to be all facts, with citations proving those facts. But the ancients were much less concerned with making sure every detail was accurate; instead, they were focused on making their specific point about whatever thing or person they were writing/reading about. So yes, they might embellish one detail or leave out another in order to fortify their desired message. They cared more about the Truth as they interpreted it than a purely factual account.

On a similar note, each Gospel writer understands Jesus and the meaning behind his story a little differently — hence why they all tell things in slightly different orders, and characterize Jesus differently, etc. This is also understandable — we all interpret stories differently; we all come to different conclusions even when we have the same or similar information. See the section in the google doc titled "each Gospel's essence" to learn more about the different ways each writer characterizes Jesus, and why they may have interpreted him the way they did.

On that topic, let's get to your question about...

Jesus — Messiah, or no?

If you read the Gospel of Matthew and take it as pure fact, you'll determine that Jesus is the Messiah his people were waiting for — that he did indeed fulfill various scriptures. But if you read Mark, you won't find that argument at all! To the author of Mark, Jesus clearly did not match the stipulations of the awaited-for Messiah — and for Mark, that's kinda the point: that Jesus is something new and surprising, unlike anything human beings expected, upturning our ideas of power and salvation.

...So how did they come to these vastly different views??

Well, Matthew was a Jew writing to persuade his fellow Jews that the Jesus movement was worth joining; to do so, he felt he had to "prove" that it fit into Jewish tradition. So he prioritizes showing how Jesus is a righteous Jew who abides by Torah, and that he is indeed the Messiah they've been waiting for.

(It's also worth noting that when Matthew writes, over and over, about Jesus "fulfilling" various bits of Hebrew scripture, that verb "fulfilling" doesn't mean what it might sound like to us — that a given text was always and only about Jesus, with the prophet having Jesus in mind when they wrote it. Rather, to Matthew "fulfilling" the text meant "filling it up" with more meaning — adding to its meaning, not replacing the old meaning. More on that, with citations, in the Google doc.)

Meanwhile, Mark's author was a Jew writing mostly to gentile members of the early Jesus movement. He knew they wouldn't care whether or not Jesus fit the Jewish expectations for a Messiah! (In fact, giving Jesus a bit more of a "Greek" flair would appeal to them more.) So Mark doesn't perform the mental and rhetorical gymnastics that Matthew does to try to make Jesus fit the Messiah requirements.

So which Gospel got it right?

For many matters of scripture, I say "it's open to interpretation!" or "Maybe both are right in different ways, conveying different truths!" But for this particular case, it is very important as Christians to accept that Jesus absolutely does not fit the Jewish requirements for their Messiah. To argue otherwise is antisemitic — it's supersessionist, meaning it claims that Christianity supersedes or replaces Judaism.

We might understand, as the author of Mark did, Jesus to be a messiah — which just means "anointed one" in Hebrew (the Greek counterpart is "Christ") — without making antisemitic claims that Jews "failed to recognize their own Messiah." (In fact, there are multiple messiahs in scripture, e.g. in Isaiah 45, the foreign king Cyrus is referred to as God's messiah; though later scriptures like Daniel do start talking about a specific Messiah who will usher in redemption & a new age for the Jewish people.)

We can understand why some of the biblical authors, like Matthew, interpreted Jesus as this specific Messiah as a result of their own specific context, without agreeing with their view. See this post about “Anti-Jewish Content in the New Testament: Why it’s there and what we should do about it” for more on this important topic.  (You can also find even further resources on supersessionism in this post.)

...Okay, so we've looked at the authors of the Gospels a good bit. We've learned that their idea of a "biography" is very different from ours — that they didn't consider it bad to rearrange, leave out, or embellish accounts — but what does that leave us with when it comes to knowing who Jesus "really" was?

What can we know for sure about Jesus?

Let's look at the facts. The first one is: we don't have any. Not any 100% certain ones, anyway. The guy lived before audio recorders and cameras; we're relying on written and oral accounts, which can be fabricated.

However, there are points about the Jesus story that are regarded as almost certainly historical by the vast majority of historians today, so let's look at those first:

Jesus almost 100% certainly existed. There is enough historical evidence (both inside and outside the Bible) to confirm this — even non-Christian historians almost unanimously agree that there was a historical Jesus. (Phew, am I right?)

Almost all historians also agree that several parts of Jesus' story almost definitely happened: that he was baptized in the Jordan; that he traveled around teaching and offering miracles (whether or not they agree he actually had the power to perform real miracles, of course); and that he was arrested and crucified by the occupying Roman Empire.

Some of these almost-irrefutable claims lend plausibility to others: if he traveled around teaching, what was he teaching? Why not the sermons, the parables recorded in the Gospels? And if he was crucified — the death of a criminal, an insurrectionist — what did he do to get himself crucified? He must have done something to cause Rome to see him as a threat to their Empire — why not some of the sayings and actions that are recorded in the Gospels, like his claim to be "Son of God" (a title used for Caesar); his protest march into Jerusalem satirizing Caesar; and his disruption at the Temple?

The attempt to determine which parts of scripture are "authentic," i.e. things that really happened / things Jesus really said," is often called "The Quest for the Historical Jesus."

Over the decades, scholars interested in this pursuit have developed various "criteria of authenticity," which they use to try to determine how probable any given bit of the Gospels is. In the google doc, I summarize the history of this "quest" and describe some of the most popular criteria. But what's important to understand is that these criteria have major limitations — they're often applied somewhat arbitrarily, for one thing, and ultimately they can't "prove" for sure whether something in the text is definitely historical or definitely not. So honestly, this is not a field of study that I recommend everyone go immerse themselves in! When I do, I have fun for a while, then kinda end up more overwhelmed by how much we can't know.

Still, sometimes these criteria of authenticity do yield some interesting points. For instance, the "Criteria of Embarrassment" (yes, that's what it's called lol) asserts that anything in the text that would have been embarrassing to its author is more likely to be historical fact — because why would the author have made something up that puts them in an unflattering light, or might be used to argue against their message?

For example, a lot of Gospel stories depict Jesus' disciples being kinda clueless, or saying petty things, or failing miserably (e.g. the denial of Peter). Why would the Gospel authors have wanted to make these earliest believers, who are meant to be role models for their audience, look so bad? This criterion says that wouldn't — that they must include those stories because they really happened, rather than being things the author made up to make their point.

Or take the Criterion of Multiple Attestation, which determines how many sources include a certain saying or event. The more sources contain a specific story, the more plausibly "authentic" that story is, since it means that different unconnected communities knew that story. Logical enough.

So yes, there are ways to consider the historicity of the Gospels — but not definitively. So the question becomes: is the historical knowledge we do have enough for me to feel some level of, I don't know, peace? stability in my faith?

And, at the end of the day, how important to me is it that every single thing the Gospels say is completely factual?

Back to what matters: the Good News

Facts are great — God gifted us our minds, and various scripture stories show God encourages us to wrestle with the text! — but we are called to faith as well.

Furthermore, taking the Bible seriously means accepting it for what it is — a collection of ancient texts compiled by humans, even if guided by Divinity — rather than insisting it be what it is not. For the Gospels, that means accepting that they are not biography, but story, and prioritize Truth over fact.

My pastor friend Roger puts it like this:

“For me, it isn’t about deciding which things Jesus really said or didn’t say. That’s a road that goes nowhere. As a pastoral response, I take scripture at face value and work to empathize with the people in and behind the text. Through that empathy, I can find some meaning that connects with what we’re facing here and now.”

When we acknowledge that the Bible includes human interpretations of the Divine, and that we bring our own human interpretations to our reading of it, where does that leave us?

It leaves us in need of conversation, of an expansion of our perspectives by talking through scripture in community. We do that conversing with friends, or attending Bible studies at church, or reading a variety of theological texts — getting as many unique understandings of Jesus as we can, joining our ideas together to get an ever broader glimpse of the Divine.

There's a reason Jesus taught in parables: he didn't want there to be one definitive answer to matters of life and faith! He wanted to ignite conversation, to draw us into community — because it's in community that we are the image of God, the Body of Christ.

So keep on wrestling, wondering, talking it through (taking time to rest when needed — there's no rush!). We discover scripture's meaning for us in our own place and time through the wrestling, together.

[artandthebible]

The Arrest of Christ

Artist: Hans Holbein the Elder (German, 1460-1524)

Date: 1501

Medium: Oil on Spruce Wood

Collection: Städel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany

The Arrest of Christ

The arrest of Jesus is described in multiple Bible passages, including: Matthew 26:47-56: An armed crowd sent by the chief priests and elders arrests Jesus. Judas, one of Jesus's disciples, betrays him by kissing him.

John 18:1-12: Jewish police and Roman soldiers arrest Jesus in a garden. Jesus overpowers the forces with the name of God.

Luke 22:39-53: Jesus is arrested in Gethsemane. The arrest of Jesus is described in all four Gospels, but only Matthew and Mark name the location as Gethsemane

[vulturesouls]

Pages from an Armenian gospel book, 1583 AD, by Ghoukas (Armenian), illuminator.

The Annunciation

The Annunciation to the Shepherds

The Presentation in the Temple

Getty Museum Ms. 119 (2020.3), fol. 2v

[gayleviticus]

jesus rebuke of peter with 'get behind me satan' when he tries to convince Jesus he's not going to die can read a bit harsh, but i wonder the uncharacteristic harshness speaks to how far peter's words cut to the core.

wouldn't it be nice if peter was right? wouldn't it be nice if all this talk of a rejected and suffering messiah was wrong? wouldn't it be nice if this cup of suffering that Jesus will so earnestly beg his Father to remove was nothing more than a bad dream?

But Jesus knows that's not how this works. He knows that to be the Christ is to immerse himself in the pain of the world, to die with his brethren, and only then rise in glory. Peter's rebuke isn't just misguided and wrong; it's a dangerous temptation. And it hurts all the more coming not from the mouths of devils or Satan in the wilderness, but from his best friend.

And so i feel like Jesus' words are as much a rebuke to Peter as to the temptations running through his head. He needs to stand firm. He can't afford to waver.

[suformyhearts]

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.”

[renegade-hierophant]

Collection of Old Church Slavonic texts in PDFs

I've been collecting Old Church Slavonic texts that have been dated to the 9th and 10th century Great Moravia and the First Bulgarian Empire, and reconstructed to as close to the original as possible with restored orthography, since most surviving copies are from much younger manuscripts and some details might have been lost in transmission and changes to the orthography.

LINK (Google Drive folder)

All files with (g) at the end also contain text in the Glagolitic alphabet.

PLEASE SHARE!!!

[quantumfrail]

Once the 2016 election happened, we decided our gift-giving approach for adults would be to donate to a charity that meaningfully reflected their values. So for the artists in the family, we donate to arts education groups that are local to them, for the outdoorsy people, we donate to the park foundations supporting the state or national parks they love to visit ...

... And for these particular now-radicalized righties, we figured donating to a food bank and wiping out school lunch debt in their school district would be a lovely, nonpolitical reflection of Christian values, especially since we had heard so often how God had personally chosen Trump to lead the nation back to Christianity. So why not give a gift in their name to the Christian value of feeding the hungry?

These relatives were so angry at us. And in intervening years, they've called in early December to say, "I'm telling you what to get me for Christmas, it should be [entertainment option] or [personal item]."

Like the petty bitch I can be, I upped the donation dollar value for their gift.

They now literally think feeding the hungry is an evil thing only the libs do.

It is bizarre to me how people who made "I'm a Good Christian" their whole identity, including a giant oil painting of Jesus hanging in the dining room and religious statuary in every other room along with the footprints story plaque, etc. have turned their back so thoroughly on the values in the gospels.

[internetcatholicism]

Be the "dog" that impresses Jesus

[lionofchaeronea]

Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, Pietro Lorenzetti, ca. 1320

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

“All four gospels witness to Mary Magdalene as the premier witness to the resurrection - alone or in a group, but in all cases named by name. . . All four gospels insist that when the other disciples are fleeing, Mary Magdalene stands firm. She does not run, she does not betray or lie about her commitment, she witnesses. But why, one wonders, do the Holy Week liturgies tell and re-tell Peter's threefold denial of Jesus, while the steady, unwavering witness of Magdalene is not even noticed? How would our understanding of the Paschal Mystery change if [the role of Magdalene was acknowledged?] What if, instead of emphasizing that Jesus died alone and rejected, we reinforced that one stood by him and did not leave? For surely this other story is as deeply and truly there in the scripture as is the first. How would this change the emotional timbre of the day? How would it affect our feelings about ourselves? About the place of women in the church? About the nature of redemptive love?”

~ Cynthia Bourgeault, 'The Meaning of Mary Magdalene'

(Ian Sanders)

[illustratus]

Christ and the Blind Man by Henri Mauperché