There are four Gospels or accounts focusing on the life of Jesus. John stands distinct from the other three with Matthew, Mark and Luke being referred to as The Synoptic Gosels meaning that they can be read together. This is due to the fact that there appears to be a significant overlap of source material (more on which later).
From the 19th Century onwards, there was a tendency amongst scholarship, particularly but not exclusively liberal scholarship, to assume late dating of all the Gospels, in other words that the final accounts were only written down at least a 100 years after the events. Alongside this, there was a strong presumption that if there was a historical figure called Jesus with most but not all commentators assuming that there was, that the Gospel accounts significantly embellish on the events of his life and so we can in fact say very little about his actual historical life. This led to what was known as “The Quest for the Historical Jesus.”
Our presumption is quite different. There is good reason to assume that the Gospel accounts were all written within the life time of Jesus’ immediate followers, prior to AD70. This is due partly to the fact that the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple was such a significant event that if the accounts were written after, we would expect the destruction of the Temple to create a greater shadow over the narratives. There are other reasons for presuming an early dating as well.[1]
Whilst traditionally, it was assumed that Matthew was the first Gospel, so that the order in our bibles is linked to the date of writing, it is now generally agreed that Mark was most likely written first with Matthew and Luke following later.
We will be looking at the life of Jesus as told in the Gospels with a particular focus on Luke’s Gospel.
[1] On the dating of the Synoptic Gospels, see Bernier, Rethinking the dates of the New Testament: The evidence for early composition (Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Academic, 2022), 35-86.
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