Comparative Study Final Paper
It is from the differences between the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Matthew that one can understand why the Gospel of John is not included in the Synoptic gospels. While there are many similarities between them, there are also numerous differences as well.
In the next few pages, I would like to share some of those differences. Right away when one looks at Chapter One of each of these gospels, it is most noticeable from the start a difference in their opening prologues. Matthew begins with Jesus’ genealogy which leads up to His birth while John begins where all things, all creation began and that is in the beginning.
As one would come to notice from the two gospels, the timelines, the time in which they
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Apostle John uses the Old Testament to portray Jesus as God in the Old Testament. Matthew quotes the Old Testament and John uses the seven “I Am” statements of Jesus to show He is the “I Am” in the Old Testament.
As we continue to look for differences between the Gospel of Matthew and John, we would not find the record of the Sermon on the Mount, Sermon on the Plain or many of the parables written in Matthew in the Gospel of John. You will however find in John 10:6 Jesus’ parable which does not have or take on the same form as the parables in the Synoptic Gospels.
In the Gospel of John, we see in the beginning chapters John’s record of Jesus early public ministry that is not revealed in the Synoptic Gospels. John records “the call of the first disciples (John 1:35-51), the marriage at Cana (John 2:1-11), the beginning of miracles in Cana (John 2:12), the first journey to Jerusalem (John 2:13), the discourse with Nicodemus (John 3:1-21), John the Baptist testimony of Christ (John 3:23-36, and Jesus’ ministry in Judea (John 3:22) in his
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It is clearly a decisive act of God in human history. This explains his use of ‘supernatural’, apocalyptic images such as earthquakes, splitting rocks, opening tombs and the rising of the dead. John’s gospel account put particular emphasis on the theological and Christological significance of Jesus’ life, as V Taylor suggests: “His [John’s] attitude to the narrative tradition is that of one whose main interest is not the details as they actually happened, but the abiding significance of the Gospel story.” Jesus’ death is portrayed as a glorious event, leading CH Dodd to make the claim that through John’s account it can be seen that it is the manifestation of God’s glory”
Of course the most prominent part of the Gospel are the miracles. A number of the miracles that are described in John are not mentioned at all in the other three Gospels. For example, the aforementioned raising of Lazarus. In this miracle, Jesus goes to the tomb of one of his followers who was stoned to death. Once he sees that Lazarus has been entombed for four days, he has the stone removed from the entrance to the cave and commands "Lazarus, come out!" (John 11:43). This is one of the most famous miracles, but it only appears in the one Gospel. Another example of a very well known miracle that is only present in John is his ability to turn water into wine at the wedding at Cana. This is a story that tells how Jesus was able to take not only water, but also inferior wine and turn them into quality wine. This is also a very interesting passage because in it, Jesus is promoting alcohol use and bein...
All the gospels have one thing in common. Mary Magdalene was the one person that arrived the first day of the week also known as Easter Sunday to visit the tomb after Jesus’ cruxifixction. In class we mentioned how each gospel describes what was seen at the site. Mary went to the tomb to anoint Jesus with spices and discovered that the body was nowhere to be found. She rushes back to the city to announce to everyone that Jesus rose from the
The Gospel of Matthew is an eyewitness story written for an audience of believers, under great stress, and persecution. Matthew develops a theological plot incorporating genealogy, speeches, parables, inter and intra textual references, common vocabulary, and fulfillment quotations, with a tension that builds as we are invited into the story. The crucifixion and resurrection bring us to a Christological climax that symbolically points beyond its conclusion to God’s Kingdom, bringing atonement, salvation and the ushering in the Eschaton. The extraordinary events surrounding the crucifixion act as commentary, adding important details concerning the death of Jesus.1
The study of the Gospel of John can be viewed as distinct and separate from the study of any of the previous three synoptic gospels. The Fourth Gospel contains language and conceptions so distinct from the synoptics that scholars are often faced with the question of its historical origins. Originally, scholars believed the main source for the Gospel of John to be Jewish wisdom literature, Philo, the Hermetic books and the Mandaean writings, leading to the idea that John was the most Greek of the Gospels. However, with the discovery of the scrolls, scholars were now faced with source materials, remarkably similar to the concepts and language found in John, illuminating the literature as not only Jewish but Palestinian in origin. The discovery of the manuscripts opened up an entirely new interpretation of the gospel of John and a progressive understanding of its proper place within biblical scripture.
As we read John, we see that the stories center around the concept of belief. In the second chapter of John, we are told of the miracle that Jesus did at a wedding: turning water into wine. This miracle was told so that we may believe. “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11). Through these miracles we are able to see signs of Jesus’s power and glory and how God’s presence is in him, leading many to believe in him. After this, Jesus went to Capernum, then Jerusalem to the temple, where he found people selling things
Mark’s gospel and John’s gospel contain many differences from the beginning, but both end with Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. The gospels of John and Mark represent Jesus as two different people. The disparity is that Mark represents Jesus as a servant while John portrays Jesus as a divine being. However, one must realize the two texts are meant to read by different audiences during different time periods. Each description presents a particular aspect of the life of Historical Jesus.
Compare and contrast the birth narratives in the Gospel of Matthew and that of the Gospel of Luke.
The reason that the Gospel of Matthew is in the first place among the four Gospels is due to the early church tradition that Matthew was the earliest one who recorded Lord’s word and Jesus stories. In the fifth century, Augustine of Hippo claimed that "the canonical order of the four Gospels was the chronological order." In the late-eighteenth century, J. J. Griesbach stated that The Gospel of Mark was a short version of the combination of the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. In the nineteenth century, German scholars concluded that the Gospel of Matthew was preceded by the Gospel of Mark and Matthew used the Gospel of Mark as his primary source. No matter which theory that most New Testament scholars accept, Matthew did not simply copy sources from other Gospels, but also included his own ideas and quoted verses from the Old Testament. So the question of readers should rise is "How strong relationship did the Gospel of Matthew have with the Old Testament?" or "How accurately did Matthew use the Old Testament?
John’s Gospel is unspeakably mission oriented. John the Baptist come out and go to the community and tell them what it means to get rid off their sin, enjoy freedom, and being justified. John the Baptist did not present the one to come (the Son) as a humble and ordinary human rather he presents him as powerful, mighty (John 1:27). But later in John Chapter 13 we see a humble and feet washer Son of God. Does Jesus came as a mighty and powerful who human being is even unworthy to untie His sandals straps (John 1: 27 NIV) or humble feet washer and fish cooker (John 13 and 21:7), came to create incredible relationship with humanity? How do we see both John the Baptist and Jesus mission to community, how much the humanity (becoming flesh) favor the mutuality between the messiah and human being. There no time when Jesus’ Divinity overshadow his humanity. Our justification is based on...
For example, John begins by introducing Jesus as the Word made flesh, who existed in heaven beside God until coming down to earth (John 1:1,14), immediately making this gospel stand aside from the synoptic gospels, which portray Jesus as a human figure who begins his life the moment he is born. The absence of the nativity scene in John supports the claim of Jesus being the divine Son of God who was sent down from heaven and transformed into the Word incarnate. Birth wouldn’t be important to someone who had previously existed (Harris, 253). The Gospel of Matthew does in fact include the nativity scene, because according to Matthew this is the very beginning of Jesus’ existence. Before the birth, Matthew maps out the genealogy of Jesus, all to support the claim that, “Jesus the Messiah, son of David, the son of Abraham,” (Matt. 1:1) is heir to the Davidic throne, and in fact the Jewish Messiah, King of the Jews. Right off the bat it is evident that John disregards the birth scene because it really isn’t relative to the divine being, and Matthew accentuates Jesus’ lineage, which would make Jesus appear to the audience very human, and rightful to the throne, something many Jews disagreed with during that time. Matthew does, however, also refer to Jesus as the Son of God multiple times similar to John. It is still true that John uses that title to express Jesus as being, “a father’s
God’s written law is something that is and should be continuously turned, to not only when Christians find themselves in need, but also throughout in one’s daily life. The four gospels tell to story of Jesus’ life and his teachings he gave while on the earth making it possible for there to be a true example of Christ-like faith. The proposition that there are differences in the story of Jesus and in his teachings seems to question the basis upon which the Christian faith is found upon. Rather than proclaiming the gospels as falsehoods because on the differences they possess, by analyzing the differences in the context of the particular gospel it can be understood that the differences are not made by mistake, rather as a literary device. While
Mark wrote the original version of the story and Matthew and Luke followed his outline. The story was featured at different times in each of the gospels. Matthew redacted parts of the story out to better fit his idea of the new Torah and making his people better than the Jews, as well as accounting for the genealogy of Jesus being the son of David. Luke added several parts of his gospel from his outside source to write an accurate and orderly gospel and shows that people should follow the leadership of Jesus as the suffering messiah and give up their possessions to achieve salvation. Overall, each is written for their own agenda but are a part of the synoptic gospels. The synoptic gospels are three of the four gospels in the New Testament literature along with the gospel of John, making up four of the twenty- seven books of the New
The first three gospels are sometimes called the 'synoptic' (same view) gospels. This is because they each cover teaching and miracles by Jesus that are also covered in another account. John, writing later, recounts Jesus' other words and miracles that have a particular spiritual meaning.
One of the major differences we can see in both of the text is the idea of Jesus. Who he was, how he died and how he severed his purpose here on earth. The
The New Testament teaches about who Jesus is and what he did on the earth. John wrote the last of the four gospels which recount Jesus’ life and what is to come. The gospel of John is somewhat different from the other three gospels, in that it is more symbolic and less concrete. For example, John expresses Jesus as the Passover Lamb when Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not. This gospel is showing that Christianity is moving away from the long-practiced Jewish traditions. John’s gospel can be laid out into four parts: the prologue or the incarnate word, signs of the Messiah with teachings about life in him, the farewell teaching and the passion narrative, and the epilogue or the roles of Peter and of the disciple whom Jesus loved. The Gospel of John is arguably the most