Theopedia

Synoptic Gospels

Definition

The Synoptic Gospels are the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, “commonly called the synoptical gospels” for how closely their content, wording, and order run together, set apart from the Gospel of John, which covers different ground in a different plan.1 The three overlap with one another far more than any one overlaps with John: only a small fraction of Mark’s Gospel has no parallel in Matthew or Luke, while most of John’s is unique to it.2 How the three came to share so much material is examined as the Synoptic Problem.

Characteristics

The three Synoptic Gospels follow substantially the same plan and cover much of the same ground: apart from the passion narrative and Luke’s account of the final journey to Jerusalem, all three are occupied mainly with Jesus’s ministry in Galilee, and their selection of incidents largely overlaps.3 Even so, none of the three claims to give a complete or strictly chronological account; each follows its own order under the Spirit’s guidance, at points including material the others omit and omitting material they include.4

A statistical comparison, quoted by Elijah Porter Barrows from B. F. Westcott, sets the proportions precisely. Treating each Gospel’s total content as 100, the share of material peculiar to that Gospel alone, against the share it holds in common with the others, runs: Mark, 7 percent peculiar to 93 percent shared; Matthew, 42 to 58; Luke, 59 to 41; John, 92 to 8. Mark and John sit at opposite extremes, and of all the material shared among the Synoptics, over half (53 percent) is held by all three together, with the remaining triple and double combinations accounting for the rest.2

John, by contrast, was written years after the three Synoptics appeared and covers mostly different territory: where the Synoptics center on Galilee, John’s narrative centers on Judea and Jerusalem, and where the Synoptics recount Jesus’s public ministry, John unfolds his person more fully, in his prologue and in his private discourses with the Twelve.5 As Barrows puts it, “It is not in the three synoptic gospels, nor in the gospel of John taken separately, that we find the complete evangelical armor, but in the perfect whole of the four.”6

Historical Development

The three Synoptics were already being read and cited as a distinct, identifiable group by the early second century. Papias, bishop of Hierapolis (writing around AD 125 but drawing on testimony reaching back to the end of the first century), is the earliest witness to name two of them individually and describe their apostolic origin:

“Mark became Peter’s interpreter and wrote accurately all that he remembered… Matthew collected the oracles in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as best he could.”7

A generation later, Justin Martyr (writing around AD 150 to 160) “cites from all three Synoptic Gospels, and even refers to Mark’s Gospel as ‘[Peter’s] Memoirs,’ showing that he was not only familiar with these three Gospels but also the earlier church tradition about their origins.”8

How the three came to agree so closely, whether by one Gospel’s direct literary dependence on another, a shared underlying source, or some combination, remains debated; the two most-discussed proposals disagree even over the direction of dependence: “the two-source hypothesis and the Griesbach hypothesis… both agree that there was literary dependence between the authors of the earliest gospels; either Matthew and Luke copied Mark and Q (two-source), or Mark copied from Matthew and Luke (Griesbach).”9 The full range of proposed solutions is treated at the Synoptic Problem.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Elijah Porter Barrows, Companion to the Bible (New York: American Tract Society, 1867), 412. ↩

  2. Barrows, 434-35, quoting B. F. Westcott, after Stroud and Norton: “If the total contents of the several gospels be represented by 100… St. Mark, 7 [peculiar] / 93 [concordant]; St. Matthew, 42 / 58; St. Luke, 59 / 41; St. John, 92 / 8… St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke [in agreement together], 53[%].” ↩ ↩2

  3. Barrows, 412. ↩

  4. Barrows, 417: “no one of them professes to give a complete history of our Lord’s life, or to arrange all the incidents which he relates in the exact order of time… each one pursues his own course, independently of the others, here inserting what one or more of the rest have omitted, or omitting what one or more of them have inserted.” ↩

  5. Barrows, 418: John’s Gospel “constitutes, in the plan of revelation, a true complement to the other three,” covering largely different ground and unfolding “the nature of our Lord’s person, and his peculiar relation to the Father and to his church… more especially, in his prologue (chap. 1:1-18)… and in that of his discourses addressed in private to the circle of the apostles, chaps. 13-17.” ↩

  6. Barrows, 419. ↩

  7. Michael J. Kruger, The Question of Canon: Challenging the Status Quo in the New Testament Debate (Nottingham: Apollos, 2013), 183, quoting Papias apud Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica 3.39. ↩

  8. Kruger, 170. ↩

  9. Kruger, 179. ↩