Gospels

What these books are

Four accounts of Jesus of Nazareth — his teaching, his works, and above all his death and resurrection. Gospel means good news, and the word described the message before it described the books.

Matthew, Mark, and Luke overlap heavily and are called the Synoptics, from a Greek word meaning “seen together”. John covers much of the same ground by a different route, with long discourses in place of short parables.

How to read them

Read one all the way through before comparing them. Each was written to a particular audience with particular emphases, and the differences between them are deliberate rather than accidental. Reading them as four portraits of one person, rather than four attempts at one transcript, is the approach Christians have taken from the earliest centuries.