What Is The Purpose Of The Four Gospels In The Bible

Joseph Yang
May 25, 2016
2220 Biblical Literature II
The New Testament in the Bible has many distinctions because of the four Gospels. The Gospels consists of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The Synoptic Gospels comprise of first three Gospels in the New Testament. Those Gospels entail Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These three meticulous Gospels spur up the theory of the Synoptic Problem, that all of them share similarities in content and expression. This is where source criticism is applied because this is discerning the use of sources and of source relations. Mark is the central source that is being used by both Matthew and Luke. Scholars have gathered information and thoughts that Matthew and Luke both got their accounts from Mark as their principal
Theories and apologetics arise when dissecting the Synoptic Gospels throughout the scriptures of the New Testament. The resurrection of Jesus is a story most people do not see as historical or even true to this very day. The story of the empty tomb has been a forbidden ancient occurrence for most people to believe. Did Jesus really rise from the dead in three days? Much less, did he even rise from the dead? Seeing that this event happened about 2,000 years ago, we still do not know if that day really came about. Was it a historical fact or was it just a made up story? Would it have made since for all four of the Gospels to write about it when they proclaimed that they were eyewitnesses themselves?
We saw that in Mark, there were three women in the beginning; Mary Magdalene and James’ mother Mary (Matthew describes her as the other Mary without specific detail). Matthew begins with the Sabbath being over, but what is vey different between his and Mark’s is the time of day. In Matthew, he says after the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week. Mark states his very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise. This may be a redacted script that Matthew may have put to maybe set a part from Mark, however, these differences are distinct because one says it is in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Some other differences we see in Matthew that an earthquake ruptured out of nowhere when an angel came down from heaven. The angel went and rolled back the stone and sat on it. Matthew gives much more descriptive adjectives of what the angel is wearing and his appearance, a lightning with clothes white as snow. Matthew also mentions guards being afraid when Mark does not mention guards at all. Matthew does not mention Peter like what Mark does when he says that Peter has gone ahead of the women to Galilee. He says that the angel tells them to go into Galilee and tell his disciples since Jesus is where they will meet him. Matthew concludes his chapter that the women hurried away, afraid, but excited to tell the disciples and to