Introduction
The most crucial goal in the life of any believer is to know whom he has believed, to know his Savior, Jesus Christ, and to understand Him and what He wants from each believer. However, to understand Jesus Christ’s life and ministry, one needs to consult some early records and eyewitness accounts. Therefore, the study of the gospels is relevant and vital for today’s church. Of the four canonical Gospels, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John are the first three commonly considered synoptic.
Overview of Gospels
The Gospels were written by believers, prominent figures in Jesus’s new religious movement (Dinkler, 2021). They aimed to provide confidence and direction to those already committed to serving the church more effectively. Therefore, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John purposefully selected and presented material rather than constructing their narrative according to the laws of scholarly telling. This paper will examine the differences between the four gospels regarding Christology and language. Each evangelist has their own way of presenting the material, which becomes evident in a detailed analysis.
Christology Differences Among Gospels
Gospel of Mark
To begin with, it is interesting to compare the differences in the Christology of the Gospels written by different authors. In the New Testament, the Gospel of Mark ranks second. John Mark, the companion and secretary of the apostle Peter, who recorded his reminiscences, is considered the author. For Mark, the time of Jesus and the time in which the evangelist himself and his readers live are the same.
All will be complete only at the parousia, the second coming of Jesus. The near future, the parousia, is the center of Mark’s kerygma. Moreover, the resurrection is only an intermediate stage, a pledge of hope. This makes Mark fundamentally different from the other evangelists, for whom the fulfillment is already in the past, and the center is not the parousia but the resurrection. For others, Jesus is already in the world through the church, but for Mark, “now” is a brief pause, a time of Jesus’ “absence” from the world, a time of suffering (Dinkler, 2021).
Gospel of Matthew
The Second Gospel was written by the apostle Levi Matthew in Aramaic and is the first among the canonical Gospels. One of Matthew’s primary tasks is to demonstrate that Jesus is the Messiah, as prophesied by the Hebrew prophets. All his actions are consistent with these predictions. To accomplish this task, the evangelist quotes extensively from the various books of the Old Testament, often interpreting the original text extensively to suit his concept and to gloss over what contradicts it.
As the Jewish Messiah, Jesus of Matthew acknowledges the authority of the teachers of the Law and the Pharisees, the successors of the Mosaic tradition. He recommends that the disciples and people observe everything they say. While Mark was a staunch opponent of the “Divine Man” theology, Matthew sympathized with it (Dinkler, 2021).
Matthew’s Jesus is different from Mark’s, who was harsh and angry. Matthew exalts the image of Jesus by presenting him as a messiah, perfect in his power and goodness. Similar revisions are made to the portraits of the apostles. While Mark portrays them as petty, callous, and not up to Jesus’ level, Matthew portrays the apostles as much more dignified.
Gospel of Luke
The next evangelist is Luke, a Syrian from Antioch and Paul’s companion in medicine. Suppose Mark’s Jesus is a flawed man who has shouldered the burden of messianism, and Matthew’s Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, perfect in his goodness. In that case, Luke’s Jesus is the universal savior of all humankind. Even more than Matthew’s Jesus, Luke’s Jesus takes on the Hellenic divine man, whose concept was challenged by the first evangelist, Mark.
Gospel of John
The last author, John, completes this metamorphosis. He introduces the concept of Jesus as the incarnate Word, the Logos. This is an entirely new element in Christology, unfamiliar to the Synoptics and utterly foreign to their concepts and understandings (Farrugia, 2020). Apart from John’s text, the concept of the Logos does not appear in any other book of the New or the Old Testament.
Concept of Logos in Philosophy
Logos is a traditional philosophical term introduced into Greek philosophy by Heraclitus. It refers to a specific rational principle underlying the structure of the world and ensuring the harmony of the fundamental laws of nature. Plato and Aristotle used the term, but the Stoics used it most widely.
The next step was taken by Philo, a Hellenistic Jew from Alexandria, an interpreter of the Torah, a proponent of combining Judaism with Hellenic philosophy. He began to see the Logos as Yahweh’s rational and creative aspect, God the Father. In this sense, Philo began to refer to the Logos as “the Image of God” or “the Son of God” (Farrugia, 2020).
John’s Unique Application of Logos
Taking Philo’s concept, John introduced the thesis of the bodily incarnation of the Logos, applying it to the then-well-known figure of Jesus of Nazareth. This Christological revolution of John conditioned his theology. The next logical step was the pre-existence thesis, according to which Jesus was with God from the beginning of time and took part in creation. This is why the church has not recognized John’s Gospel for so long, since this thesis is in sharp contradiction to both the Synoptics and the entire corpus of the Old Testament.
Linguistic Differences Among Gospels
Gospel of Mark
In addition to the differences in Christology, the differences in the language of the four Gospels are also interesting. As was proven as early as the 19th century, the Gospel of Mark predates the other canonical Gospels and is the oldest (Gathercole, 2020). The language of this work is not literary Greek but a vernacular koine with a poor vocabulary and elements of Aramaic grammatical structures.
The Gospel text characterizes the author as simple, naive, and inconsistent. The Gospel of Mark is the least literary or fantastic of the four. The author writes nothing about the miracles that accompanied the birth of Jesus, which are described in later gospels, such as the Immaculate Conception. Mark mentions Jesus’ mother only once, without knowing her name or considering it necessary.
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel of Matthew is written differently, though with some borrowings. Its text is not written in literary Greek but in good Koine and is not a translation from Aramaic. The author is an educated Jew who introduces Pharisaic concepts into Greek and uses some terms of Greek philosophy, such as the Stoic term “Revival” (Litwa, 2019).
The text has a symmetrical composition, full of stylistic devices and a variety of figures of speech. The main characteristic of Matthew’s Gospel is that it is not an eyewitness account but a careful compilation. Matthew took Mark’s Gospel as his basis and replaced its editorial cords with logical statements, distributing them throughout the text.
Gospel of Luke
The third gospel is written in good Greek and is influenced by many literary styles. Luke is a true writer with a high culture of words and literary skills. Luke replaces all the Aramaic and Hebrew words in the sources with Greek words. He also throws out all the Jewish rules of piety. Anti-Jewish statements unthinkable to Mark or Matthew also appear in this gospel.
Gospel of John
The last Gospel, John’s, was written very late, around 100 A.D., for a community that was already Christian and involved in theological debates (Litwa, 2019). John’s text is refined and spiritual. However, for all the elegance of style, John’s text has more internal contradictions than Mark’s.
John is an original theologian, but like the Synoptics, he introduces foreign material into his text, which differs stylistically from John’s text and creates contradictions with the corpus of the work. Whereas for the Synoptics, the familiar sources were the material of Mark and Logos, John deliberately ignores them and uses material that modern scholars have called “the book of signs” (Litwa, 2019). This material is easily distinguished from John’s Gospel because it differs stylistically from the main body and reflects a different point of view.
Conclusion
To summarize, each of the authors of the four gospels has their own style and thoughts on the nature of Jesus. Each author brought their own ideas about the Lord’s character and purpose. The most significant difference is between the synoptic texts and the later Gospel of John (Norouzi & Jalali). He uses his original theological theory and literary style. Nevertheless, there are many differences between the synoptic works, including different Christologies and writing styles. The differences among the four gospels are interesting research subjects and can tell a lot about the historical tradition of church writing.
References
Dinkler, M. B. (2021). The Gospels. In Bakker, M., & Jong, I. J. F. (Eds.), Speech in Ancient Greek literature (pp. 609-631). Brill. Web.
Farrugia, A. (2020). The pericopes of the miraculous catch of fish in Luke 5 and John 21: Contrast and functions [Bachelor’s dissertation, University of Malta]. Dissertations-FacThe-2020. Web.
Gathercole, S. (2020). Resemblance and relation: Comparing the Gospels of Mark, John, and Thomas. Comparing Traditions. Web.
Litwa, D. M. (2019). How the Gospels became history. Yale University Press. Web.
Norouzi, M., & Jalali, M. (2020). A metatextual approach in the transformation of narratives on Christ’s birth and death. Comparative Theology, 11(23), 19-34. Web.