How are the Gospels of John and Matthew different?

Answer 1

See the link below for a great way to compare the gospels on your own.

AnswerMark: Jesus was the son of man.

Matthew and Luke: Jesus was the Son of God.

John: Jesus was God himself.

In the Four Gospels are presented three entirely different conceptions of the Christ. In Mark he is represented as the son of human parents -- the Messiah -- but simply a man. In Matthew and Luke we have the story of the miraculous conception -- he is represented as the Son of God. In John he is declared to be God himself. "In the beginning was the Word [Christ], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (i, 1).

According to Mark Christ is a man; according to Matthew and Luke, a demi-god; according to John, a God

It's worth noting that Matthew was writing to Jews, Matthew to Romans, and Luke to other Gentiles. That's why Matthew uses "Kingdom of Heaven" rather than "Kingdom of God" (so as to not use God's name, a practice that would appeal to Jews) and he also uses lots of elements common in Hebrew writings, such as repetitions of twelves and threes. Also, Matthew points out several times "and thus was fufilled the words of the prophet..." to tie in Jesus' life with what we now call the Old Testament. Mark wrote a shorter, more action-packed Gospel that could appeal to Romans who liked men of action. Luke, as a Gentile himself, targets other Gentiles and he did a lot of research in putting together his Gospel (read the first few verses of chapter one.)

Answer 2

The Gospel According to St Matthew is one of the Synoptic Gospels, so called because they are substantially similar in content. The Gospel According to St John differs to such an extent that Origen, in defending the Gospel, said "although he does not always tell the truth literally, he always tells it spiritually" (Origen, Commentary on John).

Whereas Matthew is considered not have regarded Jesus as pre-existing and divine, John is quite clear, from verse 1, that Jesus was with God in the beginning. Matthew says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, whereas John appears to say that he was not. Like the other Synoptics, Matthew has Jesus overturn the moneychanger's tables at the end of his ministry, as a prelude to his arrest, but John places this event at the beginning of his ministry.

Answer 3

A:Mark's Gospel was written approximately 70 CE, at the end of the first Roman-Jewish War, and reflects some of the issues at that time. John's Gospel was written early in the second century and it too reflects issues faced by the Christian community at the time of writing. It has been well established that Mark was the first New Testament gospel and that Matthew and Lukewere largely based on this original gospel. The majority of New Testament scholars also agree that John was loosely based on Luke, with some material taken direct from Mark.

Although written in a rough, almost ungrammatical style, Mark's Gospel was actually the work of a literary genius, well versed in the most advanced techniques of Greek rhetoric. This gospel, in its entirety, is based around a chiastic structure, as well as containing several smaller chiastic structures that can be identified. The author used an advanced form of intercalation that John Dominic Crossan (The Birth of Christianity) termed 'Markan intercalation', as a secondary literary device to achieve emphasis and develop hidden narratives with a theological purpose. The author of John was certainly a competent author, but not as gifted as the author of Mark. Crossan has identified content that ordinarily could have come from either Mark or Luke, but the retention in John of intercalations, inadvertently or otherwise, means they were sourced from Mark.

Only the general outline of Jesus' mission survives from Mark into John and even the chronology changes. For example, Mark places the Cleansing of the Temple at the very end of Jesus' mission as the trigger for his arrest. For John, the trigger for Jesus arrest is the resurrection of Lazarus and the attention this gained for Jesus, so the Cleansing of the Temple episode is moved to the beginning of the mission of Jesus.

There are two quite significant timing discrepancies in the story of the crucifixion, between the synoptic gospels and John's Gospel. Mark says that Jesus was crucified on the day after the Passover feast, at 9 o'clock in the morning, while Johnsays that he was crucified on the sixth hour (12 noon) on the day of the Passover feast. As the first to be written, Mark's version ought to be more historically accurate, but an examination shows it to be a literary creation, too well-structured to be a record of facts as they happened. Mark organised the first narrative account of the death of Jesus in a twenty-four hour cycle, neatly divided into eight three-hour segments:

• "When it was evening" (14:17), or approximately 6 pm, Jesus and the disciples began the Last Supper.
• The duration of the Passover meal was three hours and it concluded with the singing of a hymn. So at the end of his segment Mark noted, "And when they had sung a hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives". It was about 9 p.m.
• Jesus and the disciples went to the Garden of Gethsemane, where his closest disciples, Peter, James and John, were not able to remain awake. "Could you not watch one hour?" Jesus asked. The process was repeated two more times. The disciples could not watch one, two or three hours. It was now midnight.
• The act of betrayal, the darkest deed in human history, came next, occurring at the stroke of midnight.
• Jesus was led away for a trial before the Sanhedrin. This governing body then judged him, on the basis of his messianic claim, to be worthy of death. It was 3:00 a.m.
• The watch of the night between 3 am and 6 am was called cockcrow. Mark now inserted his account of Peter's threefold denial of Jesus, once each hour until the cock crowed, marking the end of that phase of the night. That makes it 6 a.m.
• "As soon as it was morning", which would be 6 o'clock, Jesus was led by the chief priests, scribes and elders to Pontius Pilate for judgement.
• "It was the third hour", or 9 o'clock "when they crucified him".
• When "the sixth hour had come" (12 noon), as if on cue, darkness covered the whole earth for three hours, a counterpoint to the midnight betrayal.
• At the end of the three hours, at 3 p.m., Jesus said "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
• Jesus was buried in the final period from 3 to 6 p.m., before the sun went down and the holy sabbath arrived.

Mark's Gospel originally ended at verse 16:8, with the young man telling the women that Jesus was risen and they fled, telling no one, and therefore with no resurrection appearance of Jesus. Mark 16:9-25 form what is now known as the "Long Ending" (there was also, at one stage, a "Short Ending") and were added to the Gospel at a later stage, to provide two brief resurrection appearances. John has the longest and most elaborate account in any of the New Testament gospels of the appearances of the risen Jesus.

Answer 4

There are many differences. First, Luke is one of the Synoptic gospels, which mean that the events and order of events in Luke is similar to that in Matthew and Mark. John's events and order of events is very different. For example, John starts Jesus ministry with the wedding at Cana, but this is not in the Synoptic gospels. In addition, John places Jesus arrest and crucifixion on a different day than the Synoptic's do. In the Synoptics, Jesus typically speaks in short, memorable sayings and parables. In John, Jesus speaks in long passages.

AnswerThere are many differences between the two gospel, just three of which follow.

For theological reasons, John changes both the day and time of day of the crucifixion from the daty and time in all the synoptic gospels, Luke has the crucifixion of Jesus take place on the day after the Passover feast, but John 19:14 says that the crucifixion was on the day of preparation for the Passover. Mark's Gospel tells us that Jesus was crucified at the third hour, 9 o'clock, and that a great darkness came over the land at the sixth hour, 12 noon; Luke omits the exact time of the crucifixion, but tells of the darkness at noon. John 19:14 does not even have Jesus sent for crucifixion until the sixth hour.

Luke chapter 24 says that Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James and a number of other women brought spices to anoint Jesus. Finding the stone already rolled away, they went in and found the body of Jesus missing. Two men in shining gamrents told them that Jesus had risen. John chapter 20 has Mary Magdalene going to the tomb alone and, seeing the stone rolled away, she ran back to tell the disciples without first looking inside. In Luke, Peter ran back to see the empty tomb, but in John, we have both Peter and the 'disciple whom Jesus loved' run back, and it was the beloved disciple who believed.

In Luke, the risen Jesus appeared just once to all eleven disciples and this was on the evening of his resurrection, then he took them out towards Bethany where he was taken bodily up into heaven. In John, Jesus first appeared to ten of the disciples, with Thomas absent, then a few days later to all eleven disciples. Afterwards, he went to Galilee, where once again he saw the disciples.

Answer 5

A:To understand the reason for the differences among the three synoptic gospels, it is first necessary to understand the reasons for their similarities. Many are surprised to discover that the New Testament gospels were actually written anonymously and only attributed to Matthew, Mark and Luke later in the second century. We do not know who wrote any of the gospels, but New Testament scholars say that none of them could have been written by an eyewitness to the events portrayed.

Scholars have demonstrated that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were largely based on the Gospel of Mark. They also say that Matthew and Luke copied further sayings material from the hypothetical 'Q' document. This explains the similarities.

One of the most obvious and also the most easily explained difference is a total of 74.5 verses missing from Luke and corresponding to Mark 6:47 to Mark 8:27a, a long sequence of miracles and events. This is known as the 'Missing Block' and probably amounted to exactly thirteen pages missing from the copy of Mark that its author used. This resulted in the curious conjunction found in Luke 9:18 "And it came to pass as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him: and he asked them ..." These clauses are more meaningful when found in Mark at the start and end of Luke's Missing Block.

Of course, Mark does not contain a nativity account, but the authors of Matthew and Luke each provided a nativity account. And because each of these evangelists knew nothing of the other's work, each wrote a different account. Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament) says are not only massively different, but also in details virtually irreconcilable: about Joseph and Mary's home (in Bethlehem in Matthew 2:11 [house]: in Nazareth in Luke 2:4-7, with no home in Bethlehem) and about their travels after the birth of Jesus (to Egypt in Matthew 2:14; to Jerusalem and Nazareth in Luke 2:22,39). Uta Ranke-Heinemann (Putting Away Childish Things) simply says the nativity accounts are both, with respect to time, place, and circumstances, a collection of legends.

The differences in the various accounts of the empty tomb prompted Archbishop Peter Carnley to write:

"The presence of discrepancies might be a sign of historicity if we had four clearly independent but slightly different versions of the story, if only for the reason that four witnesses are better than one. But, of course, it is now impossible to argue that what we have in the four gospel accounts of the empty tomb are four contemporaneous but independent accounts of the one event. Modern redactional studies of the traditions account for the discrepancies as literary developments at the hand of later redactors of what was originally one report of the empty tomb...

There is no suggestion that the tomb was discovered by different witnesses on four different occasions, so it is in fact impossible to argue that the discrepancies were introduced by different witnesses of the one event; rather, they can be explained as four different redactions for apologetic and kerygmatic reasons of a single story originating from one source."

Mark's Gospel originally ended at verse 16:8, with the young man telling the women that Jesus was risen and they told no one. This means there was no evidence of the risen Jesus, and no guidance to the other evangelists as to what happened next. The "Long Ending" (verses 16:9-20) was added to Mark's Gospel long afterwards, but the version known to the authors of Matthew and Luke would certainly have ended at 16:8, with no mention of any resurrection appearances.

Each of them wanted to prove that Jesus really had risen from the dead, but each had to devise his own story of the resurrection and the subsequent appearances of the risen Jesus. And each of them wrote a different story. The Long Ending added to Mark does straddle the middle ground between the two, creating some appearance of harmony.

Answer 6

Another answer from our community:

Very generally, Matthew was one of the disciples of Jesus - the tax collector, and wrote his gospel especially for the Jewish people. To this end, he included many quotes from the Jewish scriptures (what call the Old Testament), and especially quotes from the prophets where the prophesies concerned the identity of Jesus as the long awaited Messiah. Matthew was concerned with the Birth stories, Jesus' ministry and healing and his teaching - especially his teaching on the end times. As Matthew was a tax collector, he would have been trained by the Roman authorities in a form of shorthand, and so in his account he uses a large amount of the sayings of Jesus - likely to have been recorded verbatim using shorthand. Part of Matthew's account uses material from Mark and another source sometimes referred to as 'Q'. Luke, on the other hand, never met Jesus but was a friend of Paul the evangelist who accompanied Paul on his journeys across the Mediterranean area. Luke was a doctor, and therefore in his account he included a great deal about healing miracles and forgiveness. Luke was likely to have known, through Paul, the apostle Peter, and therefore the apostle John, and therefore, as John took Mary into his home to look after her after the crucifixion, Mary the mother of Jesus. Therefore, Luke also includes birth stories, but, as he was a Gentile (non-Jew) and wrote presumably for other Gentiles, he was not so much interested in Jesus' Jewishness (as was Matthew), but more in his divinity. Luke was commissioned to write his account by someone called Theophilus (meaning God-lover). Whether Theophilus existed or the opening sentence refers to any God-lover is unknown. But what is known is that Luke, being an intelligent physician, was commissioned to write his account (and his second book 'The Acts of the Apostles') to commit to the printed word what happened during Jesus' ministry in a logical, systematic and complete manner. As Luke also used parts of Mark and 'Q' it seems evident that Mark was the first gospel account to be written followed by Matthew and Luke. John was written much later when John was very elderly.

Answer 7

A:Matthew's Gospel and John's Gospels are the most different of the four New Testament gospels, simply because of the way they were developed. All the New Testament gospels were originally anonymous, but were attributed to the apostles whose names they now bear later in the second century. In the second century, when the Church Fathers realised that there was a literary dependency among the synoptic gospels, they decided that Matthew's Gospel was the original and that Mark and Luke were copied from it. Modern biblical scholars agree that there is a literary dependency, but say that Mark's Gospel was the original and that Matthewand Luke were copied from it. They also say that John's Gospel was loosely based on Luke, with some material taken direct from Mark. So there was a chain of development from Mark to Luke and then John, with a different path from Mark to Matthew. Matthew's Gospel is moderately similar to Mark and to still reasonably similar to Luke, and all three are therefore termed the synoptic gospels. John is in many ways quite different to any of the other three gospels.

More than any other gospel, Matthew takes every opportunity to show Jesus as having been prefigured or prophesied in the Old Testament. Matthew promotes Peter as the leader who will lead the Church, even having Peter walk on the water like Jesus (Matthew 14:29). In contrast, John frequently compares Peter with the 'disciple whom Jesus loved', each time demonstrating that the unknown disciple (traditionally thought to be John) was a more worthy disciple.

Matthew has one of the two nativity stories, with Jesus born in Bethlehem, but the author of John seems not to have even believed that Jesus was born in Bethlehem: (John 7:41-2) "Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the scripture said, That Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?"

Matthew says that the two Mary's went to the tomb early on Sunday, and behold there was an earthquake and the angel came down and rolled back the stone and sat upon it. He told the women that Jesus was risen and that they were to go into Galilee and meet him. Jesus appeared to the women as they went to see the disciples, then appeared to the disciples just once, in a mountain in Galilee. John says that only Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, but seeing the stone already rolled away, went back and told Peter and the other disciple. Jesus later appeared to Mary Magdalene at the tomb, but she thought he was the gardener. Jesus appeared twice to the disciples at a meal in Jerusalem and then by the Sea of Galilee.

Answer 8

Another answer from our community:

Personally, Luke was a doctor probably a Greek, while Matthew was a Jew and a tax collector. Colossians 4:14 refers to Luke as a doctor.

The audience of the gospels reflect this distinction. The intended audience for the Gospel of Luke was non-Jews and in particular the Greek-speaking populations of the region.

On the other hand, Matthew's gospel is traditionally accepted to being addressed to Jews with greater emphasis on prophesies and promises of the Old Testament including the genealogy of Jesus and the line of King David. To the non-Jews at the time, the genealogies and Old Testament prophesies would have no special meaning but the healings and miracles would speak volumes.

Answer 9

A:

A key difference is that the Gospel of Matthew was actually based on the Gospel of Mark, as now recognised by a majority of New Testament scholars - although Matthew's Gospel was once thought to have been the primary synoptic gospel. Mark's Gospel is shorter, because Matthew's Gospel contains additional sayings material believed to have been copied from the hypothetical 'Q' document, as well as material unique to Matthew, such as the nativity of Jesus and Matthew's version of the empty sepulchre and the appearances of the risen Jesus. Mark's Gospel does contain allusions to the Old Testament, but this is considerably more apparent in Matthew.

Answer 10

The authors of both gospels relied on Mark's Gospel for everything they knew about the life and mission of Jesus. Matthew contains 600 of the 666 verses in Mark, generally in the same words in the original Greek language. However, Lukeas a 'Missing Block', believed to correspond to some 13 pages of Greek text, that was incongruously omitted. Both Matthew and Luke also relied on the hypothetical 'Q' document for further sayings attributed to Jesus, but each author places them in a different context in the mission of Jesus.

Only Luke's Gospel contains the story of the birth of John the Baptist, who he says was a second cousin of Jesus. The other gospels suggest that John did not actually know Jesus.

Matthew and Luke provide two completely different stories of the birth of Jesus. For Matthew, Bethelehem was the home town of Mary and Joseph, but they fled to Egypt shortly after the birth of Jesus, while forLuke was the home town of Mary and Joseph, but they travelled to Bethlehem for a census and returned home peacefully to Nazareth shortly after the birth of Jesus. Matthew has the wise men visit the baby Jesus, while Luke has poor shepherds visit the baby Jesus. Matthewhas the angel appear to Joseph, whileLuke has has the angel appear to Mary.

In Matthew, Jospeh's father was called Jacob, but in Luke, his father is called Heli. There are many incompatibilities in the two genealogies, but they share the use of numerology to 'prove' that Jesus was destined for greatness.

Other material that is unique to Matthew includes many references to the Old Testament, and the saints rising up out of their graves and walking into Jerusalem, where they were seen by many. Only Matthewpre-empts claims that the disciples removed the body of Jesus from the tomb, by saying that the priests paid members of the guard to say that this is what happened.

Material that is unique to Luke includes the story of Jesus in the temple at the age of twelve, the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan, the story of Mary, Martha and Lazarus (the story in John is entirely different to the parable in Luke), Jesus telling the disciples to cast their nets on the other side, and the ascension of Jesus to heaven.

Matthew has the risen Jesus only meet the disciples in a mountain in Galilee, while Luke has the risen Jesus only meet the disciples at a meal in Jerusalem on the evening of his resurrection.