Why does each gospel writer write differently?

Answer 1

There are differences in style and, to a certain extent, content among the four New Testament gospels. No doubt some of the differences in style, and perhaps of content, come form the personal styles and preferences of the various authors. The gospels were all originally written anonymously and only attributed to one or the other of the apostles later in the second century.

The first gospel to be written was that of Mark, written around 70 CE. The author appears to have been a brilliant writer, but chose to write in a humble, almost ungrammatical style, perhaps to hide his identity. The Gospel contains a chiastic structure within a chiastic structure, a circular sequence in which an opening set of events is contrasted with another set of events that mirrors the first.

The major structure of Mark:

• The opening set begins with John explaining the coming of Jesus, followed by the baptism and the voice of God from heaven, and ends with Jesus predicting his death.
• The contrasting structure begins with the Transfiguration of Jesus and the voice of God from heaven, and ends with the crucifixion, followed by the young man explaining the departure of Jesus.

The last twenty four hours of the life of Jesus is broken up into eight segments, each of exactly three hours, with the opening set of the chiastic structure beginning on the evening of the Last Supper and ending with the trial before the high priest and other senior priests and elders. The second set begins with the trial before Pontius Pilate and ends on the evening of the crucifixion.

• Mark begins the story "when it was evening" (14:17). In this ancient world without electricity, that would mean when the sun went down, or approximately 6 pm.
• Mark knew that the duration of the Passover meal was three hours and that it concluded with the singing of a hymn. So at the end of his segment he noted, "And when they had sung a hymn they went out to the Mount of Olives". It was obviously about 9 p.m.
• Mark then has Jesus and the disciples go 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 high priest and other senior priests and elders. 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 am.
• "As soon as it was morning", which would be 6 am, Jesus was led by the chief priests, scribes and elders to Pontius Pilate for judgement.
• Mark told his readers once again that this drama has been shaped liturgically, saying, " It was the third hour," or 9 am "when they crucified him".
• When "the sixth hour had come" (12 noon), darkness covered the whole earth, reflecting the betrayal at 12 midnight.
• After three hours of darkness, Jesus said "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" At 3 pm, Jesus gave up the ghost. Jesus was buried in the final period from 3 to 6 pm, before the sun went down. That brings us to 6 pm on Friday evening, reflecting the beginning of the passion on 6 pm on Thursday evening.

This Gospel was a literary masterpiece that the other gospel authors could never hope to replicate. However, scholars now realise the authors of Matthew and Luke did copy much of the content, with Matthew having some 600 of the 666 verses in Mark. A parallel reading in the Greek language shows that not only the content and sequence of passages but even the exact words of Mark are to be found in the other two gospels. They also copied sayings material from another source common to both gospels, now known as the 'Q' document. However, Q does not generally provide the context in which Jesus would have spoken those sayings, so the two authors had to create their own context for what became known as parables. Matthew and Luke also contain material, most notably the nativity and resurrection stories, that is entirely unique to each. This is because Mark's Gospel contained no information about the birth of Jesus or his resurrection (Mark oringinally ended at verse 16:8, with the 'Long Ending' - verses 16:9-25 - added much later). Whereas Mark's Gospel seems course and ungrammatical in the Greek language, Luke's Gospel was elegant and very well written. Matthew's Gospel style is fairly mundane and the author makes frequent references to the Septuagint, an early Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures.

John's Gospel was inspired by Luke's Gospel and is thus one generation removed from Mark; moreover the author chose not to follow his source as closely as the other two authors had done. It is John that first tells us that Jesus is divine and pre-existing, and the author altered a lot of material to establish consistency with that theme. This was a much more political document than the other three andseems in part intended to counter beliefs spreading elsewhere in Christian communities.