The Gospels and Acts

D. A. Carson

The first four books of the NT are commonly called Gospels. The fifth book, the Acts of the Apostles, is tied to Luke by common authorship: the same man wrote both Luke’s Gospel and Acts. Although these five books convey great theological truths, they are also historical books: they aim to give readers a historical and theological account of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and of the early decades of the Christian church. The other 22 books of the NT disclose many historical details, but unlike these first five books, they do not set out to tell a story.

What Does “Gospel” Mean?

The word gospel reflects the Greek word for “good news” or “momentous news” (see “The Gospel”). The good news is what God has done in Jesus Christ, supremely in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. This God did in fulfillment of all that he had promised to do (Luke 24:44) to reconcile lost and guilty human beings to himself, powerfully transforming them by his Spirit in anticipation of their resurrection existence in the new heaven and the new earth.

When Christians used the word “gospel” in the first century AD, it always referred to this message about Jesus; it did not refer to the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John—books that tell the story about Jesus. At that time, Christians spoke of the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, or the others. In other words, there was one gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Only in the second century and beyond did Christians start talking about these books themselves as Gospels—Matthew’s Gospel (or the Gospel of Matthew), Mark’s Gospel, and so on. In the first century, “gospel” referred to the message, not the book that conveyed it.

Two things follow. (1) This way of speaking emphasizes that there is only one gospel, only one message. The individual writers doubtless bear witness to Jesus in somewhat different and complementary ways, but there is only one gospel. (2) If Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all tell about the one gospel, we gain a clearer idea of what this gospel is by observing what these four books have in common. In all four books (we may refer to them as four Gospels provided we recognize that doing so is to use the word “Gospel” in its second-century sense), we learn that the one gospel, the one message, focuses on Jesus and emphasizes that his coming and mission fulfill what God promised in the past. These books say something about Jesus’ origin, his teaching and preaching, his miracles, and his interactions with very diverse people—and always the story moves inexorably to Jesus’ death and resurrection. Always there is some explanation of what these stupendous events mean, of what God is doing through Jesus to save his people, to bring in the kingdom, to move history toward its consummation at the end of the age. Without this amalgam of elements, there is no gospel.

That is why certain second-century documents should not be considered Gospels at all. For example, the pseudepigraphical Gospel of Thomas, published in the second century, is a collection of 114 statements ascribed to Jesus and two very small historical snippets. The document says nothing of Jesus’ origin, miracles, death, or resurrection. In short, it does not tell the good news, the gospel, at all. It cannot claim to relate the one gospel of Jesus Christ according to Thomas—not only because Thomas did not write the document but also because what it relates is not the gospel.

The Relationships Among These Five Books

In this study Bible, the book introductions on these five books provide information on the individual writers, when each book was written, and each book’s structure and themes. Here it is enough to say something about how these books relate to one another.

The first four NT books are the Gospels (we shall continue to call them that). They are historical narratives that tell the story of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In style they are not completely different from other biographies (called “lives”) written about that time. However, because they relate the story of Jesus, collectively they are utterly unique: Jesus is the Son of God in a unique sense, the Messiah who is crucified and rises from the dead.

Even a casual reading discloses that John differs considerably from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These three (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are often referred to as the Synoptic Gospels (syn, “together with”; optic, “seeing”; hence, synoptic is “seeing together”). That is because Matthew, Mark, and Luke present Jesus in a similar way: they often choose to include the same material; they share much common vocabulary; and they frequently relate incidents in Jesus’ life in the same order (which is sometimes a topical order rather than a chronological one). For example, they relate quite a few of Jesus’ parables, tell of occasions when Jesus casts out demons, and with minor variations describe the death of Jesus in very similar ways. From the Synoptics it is difficult to draw conclusions about the length of Jesus’ ministry, but Jesus’ emphasis on the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven is unmistakable.

By contrast, the Gospel according to John is rather different in its use of words and in some of the material covered. Its vocabulary is much more limited. John relates no narrative parables or exorcisms. He says relatively little about the kingdom of God (though admittedly the three instances when he talks of the kingdom are highly significant; see John 3:3, 5; 18:36), preferring to speak of eternal life. The first five chapters of John’s book, about one quarter of its length, describe Jesus’ ministry in the south of the country, in Jerusalem and Judea, before Jesus’ ministry in Galilee begins—the Galilean ministry with which the Synoptics begin. John’s structured references to specific Jewish festival days enable us to infer that Jesus’ public ministry was either two and a half or three and a half years long. John lays great emphasis on Jesus’ sonship to God (e.g., 5:16–30; 20:30–31). Obviously there are points in common among all four books (e.g., all four relate the feeding of the 5,000). But John records several discourses not found elsewhere, including John 14–17, a long passage that comprises Jesus’ words to his disciples on the evening he was betrayed and his own remarkable prayer on that same evening.

If of the four Gospels John stands out in these ways, the Gospel of Luke stands out in another way: it alone is tied to a second book, the Acts of the Apostles. Luke and Acts comprise about one quarter of the NT. Acts picks up where Luke ends. Acts provides a selective narrative of the first decades of the church, focusing especially on the ministries of the apostles Peter and Paul. It says little about what the other apostles were doing, though from other sources we can glimpse their extensive ministries. Acts shows how the gospel crosses one boundary after another: from Jerusalem to far corners of the Roman Empire, from Jew to Samaritan to Gentile, from the old covenant to the new, from the eastern end of the Mediterranean to Rome, the capital city.

Acts is tied to Luke not only by much common vocabulary and many common themes (e.g., an emphasis on prayer and on the work of the Holy Spirit) but also by common reference to Theophilus in the opening verses of each book (Luke 1:3; Acts 1:1). More dramatically, while Luke tells of Jesus’ earthly life, ministry, death, and resurrection—it is, after all, telling the one gospel and will itself later be called a Gospel—Acts insists that Luke relates but what Jesus began to do (Acts 1:1), giving the impression that what Acts relates is what Jesus continues to do. Acts extends the story beyond Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. This is a powerful way of reminding readers that the Jesus of history continues to reign as the Lord of the church, the Ruler over history, bringing about his sovereign, gracious purposes in the wake of his triumphant resurrection.

The Relationships Among the Synoptics

Although the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) display many similarities, they are certainly not identical: careful reading shows how each differs from the other two. Matthew appears to be written in a dominantly Jewish context. Matthew quotes extensively from the OT, and he is eager to show that Jesus is the promised Messiah (or Christ). Matthew’s work is carefully structured, with speeches and narratives alternating. Mark carries the story forward with breathless speed: Mark’s book is characterized by urgent drama as he demonstrates that Jesus is the suffering Son of God. Luke is measured and polished. Luke repeatedly shows that the good news is that Jesus is the Savior not only for Jews but for all people, especially the poor and oppressed.

One should not think that each of these respective historical and theological emphases in the Synoptic Gospels is restricted to its own Gospel. All three themes—Jesus is the Messiah (Matthew), Jesus is the suffering Son of God (Mark), Jesus is the Savior of Jews and Gentiles alike (Luke)—are found in all three Gospels. Differences in emphasis should not be confused with mutual exclusiveness.

The degree of overlap in these three Gospels invites readers to try to work out how, in God’s providence, they came to be written. About 91 percent of Mark is found in Matthew; about 53 percent of Mark is found in Luke. Matthew and Luke contain some common material that is not found in Mark. Did one or more of the writers have access to the work of the other(s), borrowing freely? After all, before the invention of the printing press, free borrowing was not viewed as plagiarism (which is why, for example, some kind of borrowing is going on between 2 Peter and Jude). In fact, Luke tells us that he carefully studied other sources when he composed his book (Luke 1:1–3). There is no particular reason to think that Matthew and Mark refrained from the same practice. Apparently both oral and written accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds circulated freely before the NT Gospels came to be written. And what explains the fact that sometimes one of the Synoptic Gospels uses exactly the same Greek words as another (e.g., “hate[d]” in Matt 10:22a; Mark 13:13a; Luke 21:17), sometimes there is close agreement in content but not in exact wording (e.g., Matt 9:2–8; Mark 2:3–12; Luke 5:18–26), and sometimes the order of events is quite different (e.g., miracles that are grouped thematically in Matt 8–9 are distributed throughout Mark’s book)?

Questions of this sort, called forth by the tight but highly variable relationships among the Synoptics, constitute what is today called the Synoptic Problem. Scholars have proposed many solutions. The most important ones are these:

1. The priority and use of Matthew. This was the most common view in the first centuries of the early church. This view held that the Gospel according to Matthew was written first and that Mark and Luke used Matthew. Though most of Mark was drawn from Matthew, Mark added some independent material. Luke drew on Matthew and Mark and supplemented this material with other sources.

2. Two-source theory. This is the most popular view today. It argues that Mark was written first. At roughly the same time, another source, designated Q (from the German word Quelle, “source”), was circulating. Q is comprised of sayings of Jesus, and much of its material is found in Matthew and Luke, but little of its material is found in Mark. (Thus to refer to it as the Q Gospel, as some do, is highly misleading.) Q is hypothetical: no written manuscript has been found. It is an inference drawn from the many parallels between Matthew and Luke. It is quite possible that there was no one Q. Instead, there may have been several documents that reported miscellaneous sayings of Jesus on which both Matthew and Luke drew, and these documents can for convenience be jointly labeled Q. In the two-source theory, Mark and Q were the sources used by Matthew and Luke, who used them in somewhat different ways.

This two-source theory is sometimes also called the four-source theory because in addition to Mark and Q, Matthew has some material found only in Matthew (designated M), and Luke has some material found only in Luke (designated L).

3. The Griesbach hypothesis. This theory, named after the man who first articulated it in detail, again argues that Matthew was written first, but it holds that Luke drew on Matthew, and Mark drew on Matthew and Luke.

Several other theories have circulated. For example, a handful of people argue that the three Synoptic Gospels were independently written. Others have advocated modifications and revisions of the theories already indicated. The complexity of the issues is compounded by such additional factors as the following:

1. Date of composition. If the second theory (the “two-source theory”) is right, Mark was written first; but if we assume the priority of Matthew (the first theory), then clearly Matthew was written first. Questions surrounding the dating of these documents are themselves rather tricky, and these dating questions are addressed in the book introductions of each book.

2. Language. There is at least some evidence that Matthew first wrote his book in Aramaic and then later produced it in Greek. Some have speculated that Mark or Luke may have relied on Aramaic Matthew. But by the time Matthew produced his Greek version, Mark and Luke were already circulating, so the lines of dependence then went the other way. If anything like this happened, clearly the lines of dependence become so complex that people living in the twenty-first century cannot possibly retrieve them.

3. Eyewitnesses. It appears that Matthew and John were eyewitnesses; Mark, for the most part, was not (though he depended on the testimony of the eyewitness Peter), and Luke was not. How much did personal memory play into the writing of these books?

4. Readers. At one time many commentators held that Matthew was written for a rather narrow collection of churches associated with Matthew, Mark was written for another collection of churches, and so forth. If this is correct, then it might have taken a while in the nondigital world of the first century for any one Gospel book to circulate and be used in diverse circles. Increasingly, however, students of the first century have shown that the four NT Gospels were designed from the first to be widely disseminated and read. If that is the case, the possibility of borrowing, in one direction or another, would take very little time because the books were circulated rapidly and extensively.

Even if we do not have enough information to finally resolve the Synoptic Problem, the subtle differences we find among the Gospels testify to something important. In giving us these accounts of his Son through the hands of four different men, God ensured two things: (1) multiple witnesses and (2) the richness of slightly different portraits. That suggests that when we teach and preach these four Gospels, we ought to study them with such reverent attention to details that we preserve their individual flavors. It is not wrong, of course, to try to put their details together into one organic whole—that is, to create a “harmony” of the Gospels. Christian thinkers have been constructing harmonies of the Gospels since at least the second century: the first one we know about was prepared by a man called Tatian. Such harmonies tend to focus on the historical cohesion of the four books. Nevertheless, these four books originally circulated separately, and it is important that we not lose the distinctive theological flavor of each work.

John and Other Writings by John

Just as Luke is tied by common authorship to another book of the NT, i.e., Acts (see The Relationships Among These Five Books), so the Gospel according to John is tied by common authorship to other NT books: 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation. 1, 2, and 3 John are letters sent to churches several decades after Jesus had risen from the dead; they deal with pastoral issues arising from rejection of the gospel. Revelation, mostly written in the highly symbol-laden language of apocalyptic literature (see Introduction to Revelation), describes the conflict of the ages between God and the devil. Jesus achieves unqualified victory over death and the devil by his death and resurrection, and the rest of history is nothing other than the remaining conflict that continues until the church arrives at the end of the age and the consummation of all things. In other words, all the NT books refer to the gospel, the momentous news of what God has done in Jesus Christ, but only the four books we call Gospels concentrate all their attention on the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of the Savior.

From this we must infer two things, one of them obvious and the other important.

1. The obvious thing is that at least some of the writers whom God used to give us the NT were capable of writing books of quite different sorts—in John’s case, a Gospel, three short letters, and an apocalyptic work.

2. The important thing is to recognize that the crucial issue is what kind of book was written, not when it was written. Matthew and John, for example, were written after most of the letters of the NT were written. This has led some scholars to argue that the theology found in Matthew and John is necessarily later theology than, say, the theology found in Paul’s early letters. But when they are writing is not as important as what they are writing. Paul is clearly writing to churches that have been established in the wake of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and part of his purpose is to add understanding to the significance of those momentous events. By contrast, the Gospel writers describe the events that lead up to and are climaxed by Jesus’ death and resurrection. Although they (especially Matthew and John) write long after the events they describe, they have a deep understanding of the significance of those events and take great pains to portray the confusion, partial understanding, and even misunderstanding of the apostles themselves as the events unfolded in history.

During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, the apostles confront a Messiah very different from the one they expected—a Messiah who is not only descended from David but is one with God, a Messiah who is not only sovereign king but suffering servant, a Messiah who demands full submission and allegiance but who came not “to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45). The four NT Gospel writers bear witness to that story with a God-given combination of historical faithfulness and theological nuance as the full impact of the gospel is fully understood only after the events themselves.