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Gospel originally meant the Christianity message ("the gospel"), but in the second century Anno domino the term (, from which the English word originated as a calque) came to be used also for the books in which the message was reported. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus, culminating in his trial and death, and concluding with various reports of his post-resurrection appearances.
The Gospels are commonly seen as literature that is based on oral traditions, Christian preaching, and Old Testament exegesis with the consensus being that they are a variation of Greco-Roman biography; similar to other ancient works such as Xenophon's Memoirs of Socrates. (2025). 9781108437707, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108437707 They are meant to convince people that Jesus was a charismatic miracle-working holy man, providing examples for readers to emulate. As such, they present the Christian message of the second half of the first century AD, Modern Biblical studies are therefore cautious of relying on the gospels uncritically as historical documents, and although they afford a good idea of Jesus' public career, critical study has largely failed to distinguish his original ideas from those of the later Christian authors, and the focus of research has therefore shifted to Jesus as remembered by his followers, and understanding the Gospels themselves.
The biblical canon gospels are the four which appear in the New Testament of the Bible. They were probably written between AD 66 and 110, which puts their composition likely within the lifetimes of various eyewitnesses, including Jesus's own family. Most scholars hold that all four were anonymous (with the modern names of the "Four Evangelists" added in the 2nd century), almost certainly none were by eyewitnesses, and all are the end-products of long oral tradition and written transmission (which did involve claiming consulting eyewitnesses).Rafael Rodriguez9781501839115, Abingdon Press. ISBN 9781501839115 According to the majority of scholars, Mark was the first to be written, using a variety of sources, followed by Matthew and Luke, which both independently used Mark for their narrative of Jesus's career, supplementing it with a collection of sayings called "the Q source", and additional material unique to each, though alternative hypotheses that posit the direct use of Matthew by Luke or vice versa without Q are increasing in popularity. (2025). 9789042950344, Peeters Pub and Booksellers. ISBN 9789042950344 There have been different views on the transmission of material that led to the synoptic gospels, with various scholars arguing memory and orality reliably preserved traditions that ultimately go back to the historical Jesus. Other scholars have been more skeptical and see more changes in the traditions prior to the written Gospels. There is near-consensus that John had its origins as the hypothetical Signs Gospel thought to have been circulated within a Johannine community. In modern scholarship, the synoptic gospels are the primary sources for reconstructing Christ's ministry while John is used less since it differs from the synoptics. However, according to the manuscript evidence and citation frequency by the early Church Fathers, Matthew and John were the most popular gospels while Luke and Mark were less popular in the early centuries of the church. (2025). 9780199566365, Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199566365
Many non-canonical gospels were also written, all later than the four canonical gospels, and like them advocating the particular theological views of their various authors. Important examples include the gospels of Thomas, Peter, Judas, and Mary; infancy gospels such as that of James (the first to introduce the perpetual virginity of Mary); and gospel harmony such as the Diatessaron.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke are termed the synoptic gospels because they present very similar accounts of the life of Jesus. Mark begins with the baptism of the adult Jesus and the heavenly declaration that he is the son of God; he gathers followers and begins his ministry, and tells his disciples that he must die in Jerusalem but that he will rise; in Jerusalem, he is at first acclaimed but then rejected, betrayed, and crucified, and when the women who have followed him come to his tomb, they find it empty. Mark never calls Jesus "God" or claims that he existed prior to his earthly life, apparently believes that he had a normal human parentage and birth, and makes no attempt to trace his ancestry back to King David or Adam; it originally ended at Mark 16:8 and had no post-resurrection appearances, although Mark 16:7, in which the young man discovered in the tomb instructs the women to tell "the disciples and Peter" that Jesus will see them again in Galilee, hints that the author knew of the tradition.
The authors of Matthew and Luke added infancy and resurrection narratives to the story they found in Mark, although the two differ markedly. Each also makes subtle theological changes to Mark, though James Barker argues this is exaggerated, with ancient rhetorical practices explaining many differences in the gospels instead. The Markan miracle stories, for example, confirm Jesus' status as an emissary of God (which was Mark's understanding of the Messiah), but in Matthew they demonstrate his divinity, and the "young man" who appears at Jesus' tomb in Mark becomes a radiant angel in Matthew. Luke, while following Mark's plot more faithfully than Matthew, has expanded on the source, corrected Mark's grammar and syntax, and eliminated some passages entirely, notably most of chapters 6 and 7.
John, the most overtly theological, is the first to make Christological judgements outside the context of the narrative of Jesus's life. He presents a significantly different picture of Jesus's career, omitting any mention of his ancestry, birth and childhood, his baptism, temptation and transfiguration; his chronology and arrangement of incidents is also distinctly different, clearly describing the passage of three years in Jesus's ministry in contrast to the single year of the synoptics, placing the cleansing of the Temple at the beginning rather than at the end, and the Last Supper on the day before Passover instead of being a Passover meal. However, there are also verses such as Mark 14:49 and Matthew 23:37 often viewed as hints of a longer ministry in the Synoptics. Ancient writing practices involved such chronological displacement and changes, with even reliable biographers including Plutarch displaying them. According to Delbert Burkett, the Gospel of John is the only gospel to call Jesus God, though other scholars including Larry Hurtado and Michael Barber view a possible divine Christology in the synoptics. In contrast to Mark, where Jesus hides his identity as messiah, in John he openly proclaims it.
In the immediate aftermath of Jesus' death, his followers expected Second Coming within their own lifetimes, and in consequence there was little motivation to write anything down for future generations, but as eyewitnesses began to die, and as the missionary needs of the church grew, there was an increasing need for written versions of the founder's life and teachings. According to Allison and Hays, the gospels present the timing of the Parousia as imminent but not fixed, being dependent on the repentance of Israel. Burkett argues the emergence of the gospels can be summarized by oral traditions passed on as unordered units, written collections of miracle stories and sayings, and proto-gospels preceding and serving as sources for the gospels, which combined proto-gospels, written collections, and oral tradition. The dedicatory preface of Luke testifies to the existence of previous accounts of the life of Jesus. According to Chris Keith, there is no incontrovertible evidence the gospel traditions circulated as written narratives, testimonia, or notes prior to Mark.
Mark is generally agreed to be the first gospel. According to Boring, Mark uses a variety of sources, including conflict stories (Mark 2:1–3:6), apocalyptic discourse (4:1–35), and collections of sayings, although not the sayings gospel known as the Gospel of Thomas, and probably not the hypothesized Q source used by Matthew and Luke. However, Helen Bond writes that source criticism largely fallen out of favor in gospels scholarship, though some elements remain. Most scholars believe the authors of Matthew and Luke, acting independently, used Mark for their narrative of Jesus' career, supplementing it with the hypothesized collection of sayings called the Q source and additional material unique to each called the M source (Matthew) and the L source (Luke), though alternative hypotheses that posit the direct use of Matthew by Luke or vice versa without Q are increasing in popularity within scholarship. (2025). 9789042950344, Peeters Pub and Booksellers. ISBN 9789042950344 The Gospels represent a Jesus tradition and were enveloped by oral storytelling and performances during the early years of Christianity, rather than being redactions or literary responses to each other. Mark, Matthew, and Luke are called the synoptic gospels because of their close similarities of content, arrangement, and language. Alan Kirk praises Matthew in particular for his "scribal memory competence" and "his high esteem for and careful handling of both Mark and Q", which makes claims the latter two works are significantly theologically or historically different dubious. The authors and editors of John may have known the synoptics, but did not use them in the way that Matthew and Luke used Mark. There is a near-consensus that this gospel had its origins as a "signs" source (or gospel) that circulated within the Johannine community (which produced John and the three epistles associated with the name) and later expanded with a Passion narrative as well as a series of discourses.
All four also use the Jewish scriptures, by quoting or referencing passages, interpreting texts, or alluding to or echoing biblical themes. Such use can be extensive: Mark's description of the Parousia (second coming) is made up almost entirely of quotations from scripture. Matthew is full of quotations and , and although John uses scripture in a far less explicit manner, its influence is still pervasive. According to Wesley Allen, their source was the Greek version of the scriptures, called the Septuagint and they do not seem familiar with the original Hebrew, though other scholars point out that Matthew in particular has quotations closer to the Masoretic and could understand Hebrew.
The majority view among critical scholars is that the authors of Matthew and Luke based their narratives on Mark's gospel, editing him to suit their own ends, and the contradictions and discrepancies among these three versions and John make it impossible to accept both traditions as equally reliable with regard to the historical Jesus. In addition, the gospels read today have been edited and corrupted over time, leading Origen to complain in the 3rd century that "the differences among manuscripts have become great ... because either neglect to check over what they have transcribed, or, in the process of checking, they make additions or deletions as they please." Most of these are insignificant, but some are significant, an example being Matthew 1:18, altered to imply the pre-existence of Jesus. For these reasons, modern scholars are cautious of relying on the gospels uncritically, and critical study can attempt to distinguish the original ideas of Jesus from those of later authors.
Scholars usually agree that John is not without historical value: certain of its sayings are as old or older than their synoptic counterparts, and its representation of the topography around Jerusalem is often superior to that of the synoptics. Its testimony that Jesus was executed before, rather than on, Passover, might well be more accurate, and its presentation of Jesus in the garden and the prior meeting held by the Jewish authorities are possibly more historically plausible than their synoptic parallels. Nevertheless, it is highly unlikely that the author had direct knowledge of events, or that his mentions of the Beloved Disciple as his source should be taken as a guarantee of his reliability, and the Synoptic Gospels are the primary sources for Christ's ministry.
Assessments of the reliability of the Gospels involve not just the texts but studying the long oral and written transmission behind them using methods like memory studies and form criticism, with different scholars coming to different conclusions. There have been different views on the transmission of material that lead to the synoptic gospels, with various scholars arguing memory and orality reliably preserved traditions that ultimately go back to the historical Jesus. Other scholars have been more skeptical and see more changes in the traditions prior to the written Gospels. Jeffrey Tripp observes a scholarly trend advocating for the reliability of memory and the oral gospel traditions.
James D.G. Dunn believed that
Anthony Le Donne, a leading memory researcher in Jesus studies, elaborated on Dunn's thesis, basing "his historiography squarely on Dunn’s thesis that the historical Jesus is the memory of Jesus recalled by the earliest disciples." According to Le Donne as explained by his reviewer, Benjamin Simpson, memories are fractured, and not exact recalls of the past. Le Donne further argues that the remembrance of events is facilitated by relating it to a common story, or "type." This means the Jesus-tradition is not a theological invention of the early Church, but rather a tradition shaped and refracted through such memory "type." Le Donne too supports a conservative view on typology compared to some other scholars, transmissions involving eyewitnesses, and ultimately a stable tradition resulting in little invention in the Gospels. Le Donne expressed himself thusly vis-a-vis more skeptical scholars, "He (Dale Allison) does not read the gospels as fiction, but even if these early stories derive from memory, memory can be frail and often misleading. While I do not share Allison's point of departure (i.e. I am more optimistic), I am compelled by the method that came from it."
Dale Allison emphasizes the weakness of human memory, referring to its 'many sins' and how it frequently misguides people. He expresses skepticism at other scholars' endeavors to identify authentic sayings of Jesus. Instead of isolating and authenticating individual pericopae, Allison advocates for a methodology focused on identifying patterns and finding what he calls 'recurrent attestation'. Allison argues that the general impressions left by the Gospels should be trusted, though he is more skeptical on the details; if they are broadly unreliable, then our sources almost certainly cannot have preserved any of the particulars. Opposing preceding approaches where the Gospels are historically questionable and must be rigorously sifted through by competent scholars for nuggets of information, Allison argues that the Gospels are generally accurate and often 'got Jesus right'. Dale Allison finds apocalypticism to be recurrently attested, among various other themes. Reviewing his work, Rafael Rodriguez largely agrees with Allison's methodology and conclusions while arguing that Allison's discussion on memory is too one-sided, noting that memory "is nevertheless sufficiently stable to authentically bring the past to bear on the present" and that people are beholden to memory's successes in everyday life.
Craig Keener, drawing on the works of previous studies by Dunn, Alan Kirk, Kenneth Bailey, and Robert McIver, among many others, utilizes memory theory and oral tradition to argue that the Gospels are in many ways historically accurate. His work has been endorsed by Markus Bockmuehl, James Charlesworth, and David Aune, among others.
According to Bruce Chilton and Craig Evans, "...the Judaism of the period treated such traditions very carefully, and the New Testament writers in numerous passages applied to apostolic traditions the same technical terminology found elsewhere in Judaism ... In this way they both identified their traditions as 'holy word' and showed their concern for a careful and ordered transmission of it." (1998). 9789004113022, Brill. ISBN 9789004113022 NT Wright also argued for a stable oral tradition, stating "Communities that live in an oral culture tend to be story-telling communities ... Such stories ... acquire a fairly fixed form, down to precise phraseology ... they retain that form, and phraseology, as long as they are told ... The storyteller in such a culture has no license to invent or adapt at will. The less important the story, the more the entire community, in a process that is informal but very effective, will keep a close watch on the precise form and wording with which the story is told.
Other scholars are less sanguine about oral tradition, and Valantasis, Bleyle, and Hough argue that the early traditions were fluid and subject to alteration, sometimes transmitted by those who had known Jesus personally, but more often by wandering prophets and teachers like the Apostle Paul, who did not know him personally. Ehrman explains how the tradition developed as it was transmitted:
While multiple quests have been undertaken to reconstruct the historical Jesus, since the late 1990s concerns have been growing about the possibility to reconstruct a historical Jesus from the Gospel-texts. According to Dunn, "What we actually have in the earliest retellings of what is now the Synoptic tradition...are the memories of the first disciples-not Jesus himself, but the remembered Jesus. The idea that we can get back to an objective historical reality, which we can wholly separate and disentangle from the disciples' memories...is simply unrealistic." These memories can contradict and are not always historically correct, as the Gospels display. Chris Keith argues that the Historical Jesus was the one who could create these memories, both true or not. For instance, Mark and Luke disagree on how Jesus came back to the synagogue, with the likely more accurate Mark arguing he was rejected for being an artisan, while Luke portrays Jesus as literate and his refusal to heal in Nazareth as cause of his dismissal. Keith does not view Luke's account as a fabrication since different eyewitnesses would have perceived and remembered differently. According to Chris Keith, a historical Jesus is "ultimately unattainable, but can be hypothesized on the basis of the interpretations of the early Christians, and as part of a larger process of accounting for how and why early Christians came to view Jesus in the ways that they did." According to Keith, "these two models are methodologically and epistemologically incompatible," calling into question the methods and aim of the first model. Keith argues that criticism of the criteria of authenticity does not mean scholars cannot research the Historical Jesus, but rather that scholarship should seek to understand the Gospels rather than trying to sift through them for nuggets of history. Regardless of the methodological challenges historical Jesus studies have flowered in recent years; Dale Allison laments, "The publication of academic books about the historical Jesus continues apace, so much so that no one can any longer keep up; we are all overwhelmed."
The apocryphal gospels can also be seen in terms of the communities which produced them:
| + The major apocryphal gospels (after Bart Ehrman, "Lost Christianities" – comments on content are by Ehrman unless otherwise noted) |
| Anti-gnostic dialogue between Jesus and the disciples after the resurrection, emphasising the reality of the flesh and of Jesus' fleshly resurrection |
| Events in the life of Jesus; Jewish-Christian, with possible gnostic overtones |
| Jewish-Christian, embodying anti-sacrificial concerns |
| "Salome" figures prominently; Jewish-Christian stressing asceticism |
| Dialogue of Mary Magdalene with the apostles, and her vision of Jesus' secret teachings. It was originally written in Greek and is often interpreted as a Gnostic text. It is typically not considered a gospel by scholars since it does not focus on the life of Jesus. |
| Aramaic version of Matthew, possibly lacking the first two chapters; Jewish-Christian |
| Jesus' trial, crucifixion and descent into Hell |
| Fragmentary narrative of Jesus' trial, death and emergence from the tomb. It seems to be hostile toward Jews and includes docetic elements. It is a narrative gospel and is notable for asserting that Herod Antipas, not Pontius Pilate, ordered the crucifixion of Jesus. It had been lost but was rediscovered in the 19th century. |
| Mystical reflections of the disciple Philip |
| Fragmentary account of Jesus' last hours |
| The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church says that the original may date from c. 150. Some scholars believe that it may represent a tradition independent from the canonical gospels, but that developed over a long time and was influenced by Matthew and Luke; other scholars believe it is a later text, dependent from the canonical gospels. While it can be understood in Gnostic terms, it lacks the characteristic features of Gnostic doctrine. It includes two unique parables, the parable of the empty jar and the parable of the assassin. It had been lost but was discovered, in a Coptic version dating from c. 350, at Nag Hammadi in 1945–46, and three papyri, dated to c. 200, which contain fragments of a Greek text similar to but not identical with that in the Coptic language, have also been found. |
| Miraculous deeds of Jesus between the ages of five and twelve |
| Joys of Salvation |
| Fragmentary, four episodes from the life of Jesus |
| Gospel harmony (and the first such gospel harmony) composed by Tatian; may have been intended to replace the separate gospels as an authoritative text. It was accepted for liturgical purposes for as much as two centuries in Syria, but was eventually suppressed. |
| Birth and early life of Mary, and birth of Jesus |
| Marcion of Sinope, c. 150, had a much shorter version of the gospel of Luke, differing substantially from what has now become the standard text of the gospel and far less oriented towards the Jewish scriptures. Marcion's critics said that he had edited out the portions of Luke he did not like, though Marcion argued that his was the more genuinely original text. He is said to have rejected all other gospels, including those of Matthew, Mark and especially John, which he alleged had been forged by Irenaeus. |
| Allegedly a longer version of Mark written for an elect audience |
| Purports to tell the story of the gospel from the perspective of Judas, the disciple who is usually said to have betrayed Jesus. It paints an unusual picture of the relationship between Jesus and Judas, in that it appears to interpret Judas's act not as betrayal, but rather as an act of obedience to the instructions of Jesus. The text was recovered from a cave in Egypt by a thief and thereafter sold on the black market until it was finally discovered by a collector who, with the help of academics from Yale and Princeton, was able to verify its authenticity. The document itself does not claim to have been authored by Judas (it is, rather, a gospel about Judas), and is known to date to at least 180 AD. |
| Contradicts the ministry of Jesus in canonical New Testament and strongly denies Pauline doctrine, but has clear parallels with Islam, mentioning Muhammad as Messenger of God. Jesus identifies himself as a prophet, not the son of God. |
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