Do the Synoptic Gospels Portray Jesus as God? Rethinking Jesus Walking on the Water
If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. It’s the idea that John presents Jesus as divine and the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) present Jesus as a mere man. And when you combine all the Gospels together, only then do you end up with a vision of Jesus as both God and man.
In fact, it is precisely this characterization of the matter that makes people doubt the historicity of John. It makes it seem like folks originally viewed Jesus as just a normal guy, but then, over time, their views evolved more and more until you end up with something like the Gospel of … Continue reading...
7 Reasons Why the Gospel of John is So Special
“One of these things is not like the others.” That was a classic segment on Sesame Street, as well as the title of a popular children’s book. It proves again that everything you need to know in life you probably learned in Kindergarten.
After all, when it comes to the four gospels, it has been long recognized that “one of these things is not like the others.” There are three Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—with very similar content, tone, and pacing. And then there’s the gospel of John.
From the very beginning, the church fathers even recognized that John was notably different than the others. In fact, Clement of Alexandria … Continue reading...
All Gospels Are Not Created Equal: My Wall Street Journal Review of “The Apocryphal Gospels”
Most people have never read one of the “apocryphal” Gospels—that is, a gospel that was not included in our Bibles. For that matter, most people have never read one of the canonical Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Perhaps they’ve read snippets here and there, but very few have read them straight through.
Even so, there seems to be no shortage of opinions about the nature of ancient Gospels and how they functioned in the early church. Dramatic claims—typically filtered through blog articles and internet lore—are the order of the day. There were hundreds of “other” Gospels in the early church, we are told. No one knew which Gospels they … Continue reading...
What About the “Lost” Books of the Bible?
In modern studies of the NT canon, there is a lot of discussion (maybe even obsession!) with so-called ‘lost’ books of the Bible. So, we have recent book titles like Lost Scriptures, Forgotten Scriptures, and The Lost Bible.
In fact, scholar Philip Jenkins even wrote a whole book documenting (and critiquing) the academic community’s fascination with this theme: Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way.
So what do we with these other books of the New Testament? A few quick thoughts.
First, most of these books weren’t really ‘lost.’ The early church fathers were very much aware of these other books. Indeed, they … Continue reading...
What is a “Gospel” Anyway? A Few Thoughts on Gospel Genre and Why it Matters
When it comes to reading (and interpreting ) the Gospels, one of the fundamental questions pertains to the kind of document we are reading. What exactly is a “Gospel”? And did the earliest readers of these books know what they were reading?
Such questions may seem pedantic to the average reader, but they matter more than we think. Right interpretation is built on (among other things) correctly assessing the literary genre. We don’t read parables like historical narrative, nor do we read poetry (Psalms) like apocalyptic literature.
An example of confusion over “genre” in our modern world (though in a different medium) pertains to the growing practice of making internet … Continue reading...