Compare And Contrast The Four Gospels

The New Testament Cannon contains twenty-seven books of which four are pronounced Gospels. The four gospels are Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, which are all assumed to be written at different times by separate people. Mark, Matthew and Luke are all said to have very similar messages and therefore are grouped together to be called the Synoptic Gospels. Each of these gospels contains stories that are transferred from one to the next. There are some stories that have major differences, or may not even exist in other gospels. This synoptic problem has several possible explanations for this differences, but can be best explained by the four-source hypothesis. This explanation states that Mark was written first, then Matthew and Luke used Mark as their source of information. Matthew and Luke also contain similar information that is not found in Mark, which is said to be found in Q (a lost source but is proven to exist from this common material). The last two

Mark wrote the original version of the story and Matthew and Luke followed his outline. The story was featured at different times in each of the gospels. Matthew redacted parts of the story out to better fit his idea of the new Torah and making his people better than the Jews, as well as accounting for the genealogy of Jesus being the son of David. Luke added several parts of his gospel from his outside source to write an accurate and orderly gospel and shows that people should follow the leadership of Jesus as the suffering messiah and give up their possessions to achieve salvation. Overall, each is written for their own agenda but are a part of the synoptic gospels. The synoptic gospels are three of the four gospels in the New Testament literature along with the gospel of John, making up four of the twenty- seven books of the New