Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 20, 2025
The first three of these Gospels exhibit many striking similarities; they appear to give, from somewhat different standpoints, a condensed and complete synopsis of the events of our Lord's life; therefore they are called the Synoptic Gospels. The fourth Gospel differs widely from them in matter and form.
The first declares itself most clearly, though not exclusively, in the three so-called Synoptic Gospels, the second in the so-called Gospel of John. But it is worthy of note how often these apparently remote ideas are found combined in the Gospels.
In Greek I read the Iliad and Odyssey through; one or two plays of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, though by these I profited little; all Thucydides; the Hellenics of Xenophon; a great part of Demosthenes, Aeschines, and Lysias; Theocritus; Anacreon; part of the Anthology; a little of Dionysius; several books of Polybius; and lastly Aristotle's Rhetoric, which, as the first expressly scientific treatise on any moral or psychological subject which I had read, and containing many of the best observations of the ancients on human nature and life, my father made me study with peculiar care, and throw the matter of it into synoptic tables.
Certain books of the New Testament also present the problem of the discrimination of elements of different ages, which have been wrought together into the documents as we now have them, in a way that almost defies our skill to disengage. The synoptic Gospels are, of course, the great example. The book of the Acts presents a problem of the same kind.
But there is not a trace of any other document that contained such a remark upon the character of Zacharias. This instance of a Synoptic quotation may, I think, safely be depended upon.
We shall next pass to a brief study of the Jesus of the synoptic gospels, the figure which has become endeared to humanity and with which the Western world has associated its noblest sentiments. But even the present study of some of the more mystical elements in Christianity must have persuaded the reader that we have in this movement the focussing of the complex life of ancient times.
They were not composed until the latter part of the second century, and the synoptic gospels are compilations from unknown writers, while the fourth gospel is a much later work. And how colourless, imitative, is the New when compared to the Old Testament, echoing with the antiphonal thunders of Jehovah and his stern-mouthed Prophets!
But to the early Christians the synoptic gospels were the record of all that Jesus began to do and to say, while the highest development of Christian experience and reflection in the New Testament, the gospel of John, contemplates the greater things which the followers of Jesus shall accomplish and the fuller revelations which shall come as the disciples are able to bear them.
All becomes intelligible, clear, and free from contradiction, if we see in the Synoptic Gospels that which they profess to be—narratives of what had long been told and believed in certain circles about the teaching and person of Christ.
Then, wherever the patristic statements give us the opportunity of comparing Marcion's text with the Synoptic and this they do very largely indeed the two are found to coincide with no greater variation than would be found between any two not directly related manuscripts of the same text.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking