Introduction: Three Gospels, One Subject
Three of the four gospels can be laid out in parallel columns and read across. Where one has a story, the others often have the same story — sometimes in the same words, sometimes in different words, sometimes in a different place in the narrative, sometimes with a detail added or missing. That fact is the reason this course exists. It is also the reason the study of Matthew, Mark and Luke has its own name: the Synoptic Gospels, from a Greek expression meaning "seen together."
The differences are not a problem to be tidied away. They are the primary evidence for what each writer was doing. A student who harmonises the three into one smooth account has not solved anything; they have destroyed the data. This course asks you instead to look at the differences closely, to ask what each gospel is arguing, and to hold the three together without collapsing them.
You should know what this course does not attempt. It is not a study of John, which differs from these three in chronology, geography, vocabulary and style deeply enough to require separate treatment; John appears here only for comparison. It is not a history of first-century Judaism, though chapter 3 supplies what is needed to follow the scenes. It is not a Greek course, though Greek words appear where the English cannot carry the point, always transliterated and always explained where they first appear. And it does not settle what scholarship has not settled — the literary relationship among the three gospels, whether Jesus announced a kingdom already present or still coming, what the temple action meant, how the historian should handle the miracle accounts. On those questions this course tells you who holds what, and why, and leaves the judgment with you.
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- Describe what kind of writing a gospel is, and how the material reached its written form
- State the main proposed solutions to the Synoptic Problem and the evidence each rests on
- Read each of the three gospels for its own structure, emphases and theology, rather than as a version of a single composite story
- Explain the main disputes about the kingdom of God, the parables, the miracle accounts, and Jesus' conflicts over law and temple, naming representative scholars on each side
- Compare the passion and resurrection narratives accurately, without harmonising away the differences
- Describe the history and method of historical Jesus research, and say what historical argument can and cannot establish
Since many have undertaken to set in order a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write to you in order, most excellent Theophilus; that you might know the certainty concerning the things in which you were instructed. — Luke 1:1-4
World English Bible
Now after John was taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Good News of the Kingdom of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand! Repent, and believe in the Good News." — Mark 1:14-15
WEB
The first passage is a gospel writer describing his own work: others had written before him, eyewitnesses had handed material on, and he had investigated and arranged it. Almost every question in this course is contained in those four verses. The second passage is the announcement that the three gospels agree in placing at the head of Jesus' public work. What that announcement meant is the subject of chapter 7.
The word "synoptic," and where it came from
The term entered scholarship through a printed book. In 1776 Johann Jakob Griesbach published an edition that set Matthew, Mark and Luke in parallel columns so that a reader could compare them at a glance. A book arranged that way is a synopsis; the three gospels that can be arranged that way became the Synoptic Gospels. The name is therefore not a claim about their theology or their authors. It is a claim about what happens when you put them side by side, and it is a claim anyone can check in an afternoon.
What you see when you check it is roughly this. Almost all of Mark's content appears in Matthew, and most of it in Luke. Matthew and Luke share a further substantial body of material, largely sayings, that Mark does not have. Each of the three also has material found nowhere else. And the order of episodes follows a pattern strange enough to require explanation: where Matthew departs from Mark's order, Luke usually keeps it, and where Luke departs, Matthew usually keeps it. Explaining that pattern is the Synoptic Problem, and chapter 2 is given to it.
The order of the course
The course has twelve chapters and thirty-six lectures.
Chapters 1 to 3 set the frame: what a gospel is as a piece of writing, how the traditions reached written form, the Synoptic Problem itself, and the Galilean, Judean and Roman world in which the scenes take place.
Chapters 4 to 6 read each gospel on its own — Mark first, since most scholars regard it as the earliest, then Matthew, then Luke. Reading them separately before reading across them is deliberate. It is much easier to notice what Matthew is doing with a scene once you know what Matthew is doing in general.
Chapters 7 to 10 work across all three on the subjects that define the ministry: the kingdom of God and the long dispute over its timing; the parables; the miracles and exorcisms; and the conflicts over sabbath, purity, temple and the restoration of Israel that led to the arrest.
Chapter 11 compares the three passion and resurrection narratives directly. Chapter 12 covers the quests for the historical Jesus, the methods used in them, and the practical question of how to teach and preach these three books.
Two habits to bring
The first is to read the passages in parallel before reading the lecture about them. Much of this course consists of claims about what one gospel does that another does not, and those claims are checkable. Check them. Scripture here is quoted from the World English Bible, a public-domain translation.
The second is to be careful with the word "difference." Redaction criticism — the study of what each writer did with the material they received — has been enormously productive, and it can also become a machine for finding intention everywhere. Some differences between the gospels carry theological weight. Some are the ordinary variation of retold stories. Telling these apart is a matter of judgment, and this course will try to say when a reading is secure and when it is a proposal.
A note on Judaism, and on disagreement
Jesus was a Jew, his first followers were Jews, and the disputes recorded in these gospels are disputes within first-century Judaism, not between Judaism and something else. This matters practically. The gospels' polemical passages — the woes against the scribes and Pharisees, the trial narratives, some of the parables — have a long and destructive history of being read as attacks on Jewish people as such. That history is part of what this course has to teach, and it will be named where it belongs rather than left as an afterthought.
This is a point where readers will not agree — and on many other points besides. The students in this course are Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant of various kinds, and Pentecostal. On the ending of Mark, on the authority given to Peter in Matthew 16, on the words of institution at the Last Supper, on whether exorcism is a present practice, these traditions differ, and the differences are serious. Where they do, the lecture names the positions and the people who hold them, presents each in its strongest form, and does not set a quiz question whose correct answer requires one tradition's conclusion. What the assessments test is whether you can state the positions accurately and say what stands behind them.
The upper band shows why the three are studied together at all. The lower panels show the course's movement: frame, then each gospel alone, then the subjects read across all three, then the passion, then the historical question.
6. Further Reading
- Mark Allan Powell, Fortress Introduction to the Gospels (2nd ed., 2018) — a clear, even-handed entry point.
- Graham N. Stanton, The Gospels and Jesus (2nd ed., 2002) — pairs literary study of the gospels with historical Jesus questions.
- Mark Goodacre, The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze (2001) — argues a position, and states the alternatives fairly enough to be used by those who reject it.
- and Margaret Davies, Studying the Synoptic Gospels (1989) — still the most useful methodological handbook.
- Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., The Jewish Annotated New Testament (2nd ed., 2017) — indispensable for reading these texts inside their Jewish setting.
- Craig A. Evans, ed., The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus (2008) — a reference volume for chapters 9 and 12.
핵심 요약
- "Synoptic" comes from Johann Jakob Griesbach's 1776 parallel-column edition of Matthew, Mark and Luke; the name describes what happens when the three are laid side by side, not a claim about their theology or authorship.
- Checking the synopsis shows almost all of Mark's content in Matthew and most of it in Luke, plus a further body of shared sayings material in Matthew and Luke that Mark lacks, plus material unique to each — and an order of episodes where Matthew and Luke never both depart from Mark's sequence at the same point, a pattern chapter 2 exists to explain.
- Luke 1:1-4 is the gospel writer's own account of his method — others had written before him, eyewitnesses had delivered material, and he investigated and arranged it in order — and the lecture treats almost every question in the course as contained in those four verses.
- Mark 1:14-15's announcement of the kingdom of God "at hand" is the shared starting point of all three gospels' account of Jesus' public ministry, and what that announcement meant is reserved for chapter 7.
- The course commits in advance to naming rather than resolving live disagreements — the Synoptic Problem, the timing of the kingdom, the ending of Mark, the authority of Matthew 16, the words of institution, present-day exorcism — because its students are Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant and Pentecostal, and no quiz question will require one tradition's conclusion as the correct answer.
If you remember nothing else from this lecture: "Synoptic" names a fact you can check yourself in an afternoon — lay Matthew, Mark and Luke in parallel columns, as Griesbach first did in 1776, and most of Mark reappears in the other two, Matthew and Luke share further sayings material Mark lacks, and each has material found nowhere else, all following an order where Matthew and Luke never both abandon Mark's sequence together. Luke 1:1-4 already announces the whole method: written sources, eyewitness testimony, and an investigated order. The course reads each gospel separately before comparing them, treats differences as evidence rather than a problem to smooth over, and on the questions Christian traditions still divide over — the ending of Mark, Matthew 16, the Last Supper, exorcism — it states positions and their grounds rather than declaring a winner.
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묵상 및 토론
- Before starting this course, had you read the three gospels as three books or as one story told three times? What difference might that habit have made to what you noticed?
- Luke says others had written before him and that eyewitnesses handed material on. What does that preface claim, and what does it leave unstated?
- Why might the early church have kept several gospels side by side rather than combining them into one?
- Which of the disputed questions listed in this introduction do you expect to find hardest, and why?
- What would it look like, practically, to read the gospels' polemical passages without reading them as attacks on Jewish people?