The Gospel and the Gospels: Christian Proclamation and Early Jesus Books
Digital Verbum Edition
Overview
A robust scholarly defense of the distinctiveness of the canonical Gospels.
Is there anything that makes the four New Testament Gospels different from other early Christian Gospels? The tendency among biblical scholars of late has been to declare the answer to this question no—that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were grouped together by happenstance and are defended as canonical today despite there being no essential commonalities between them.
Simon Gathercole challenges this prevailing view and argues that there are in fact substantial differences of theological content between the New Testament Gospels and noncanonical Gospels. Gathercole shows how the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each include four key points that also formed the core of early Christian preaching and teaching: Jesus’s identity as messiah, the saving death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, and Scripture’s foretelling of the Christ event. In contrast, most noncanonical Gospels—like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, and Marcion’s Gospel—only selectively appropriated these central concerns of early Christian proclamation.
- Argues that there are substantial differences of theological content between the New Testament Gospels and noncanonical Gospels
- Shows how the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each include four key points that also formed the core of early Christian preaching and teaching
- Introduction
Part One: Topics of Comparison
- The Comparanda: A Selection of Early Christian Gospels
- The Comparator: The Early Kerygma and Its Components
- Justifying the Kerygma as a Comparator
Part Two: Description
- The Gospel of Mark
- The Gospel of Matthew
- The Gospel of Luke
- The Gospel of John
- The Gospel of Peter
- Marcion’s Gospel
- The Gospel of Thomas
- The Gospel of Truth
- The Gospel of Philip
- The Gospel of Judas
- The Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians
Part Three: Comparison and Conclusion
- A Comparison of Early Christian Gospels (Thesis 1)
- The Emergence of Early Christian Gospels (Thesis 2)
Reviews
1 rating
GregW
12/30/2023
This is a wonderful book, and my most enjoyable read this year. Simon Gathercole takes the early Christian gospel as set out by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 as his benchmark, giving a thorough explanation and justification for this. He then evaluates the four canonical Gospels and a number of others against the extent to which they match the kerygma. The depth and breadth of the scholarship are remarkable, and whilst it is a really good book academically, the insights on the canonical gospels are also rich and edifying in themselves. It is worth reading as a rebuttal of scholars like Ehrman, as an apologetic for the Gospel accounts, and for the insights on the canonical gospels.
