What do the four gospels have in common?

Answer 1

All the New Testament gospels were written in Greek Koine and were originally anonymous, only being attributed to the apostles whose names they now bear, later in the second century.

Scholars say that Matthew and Luke were largely based on Mark's Gospel. For example, Matthew contains 600 of the 666 verses in Mark, following the same order and with almost exactly the same wording in the Greek language. So, it is natural that most of what is in Mark is also in Matthew. Luke's Gospel contains a "Missing Block" that seems to have comprised about thirteen pages of Greek text, resulting in an incongruous passage in Luke, where it joins the verse preceding the Missing Block to the verse that followed it. Otherwise, Luke also follows Mark quite closely.

John's Gospel was inspired by Luke, but also has a few passages taken directly from Mark. The author followed his sources less closely, but was usually careful not to directly contradict Luke.

There is material that Matthew and Luke have in common, but which does not come from Mark. These are sayings attributed to Jesus, which are believed to have come from the hypothetical sayings document called 'Q'. As Q did not provide any context for the sayings, each author had to create his own context of time and place, for Jesus to tell us those sayings.

Some material in John is loosely common to Luke, although it does not appear in the other two gospels. For example, Luke and John are the only gospels that mention the sisters Mary and Martha, as well as Lazarus. Lazarus appears in Luke in a parable about his hypothetical death. In John's Gospel, Lazarus is the brother of the wealthy sisters, Mary and Martha, and really does die, but Jesus raises him from the dead. In Luke, Jesus tells the fishermen to cast their nets on the other side before his crucifixion, and they caught a huge number of fish. In John, Jesus tells the fishermen to cast their nets on the other side after his crucifixion and resurrection, and they caught a huge number of fish.

The author of John appears to have wanted to reduce the significance of Peter in the gospel story. Whereas Luke has Peter first among the disciples to go to the tomb and find it empty, John has the "disciple whom Jesus loved" outrun Peter, arrive there first and, looking in, realise that it was empty. However, the author manages to agree with Luke by having Peter the first disciple who actually went into the tomb to see that it was empty. John has two angels in the tomb when Peter went in, although the 'disciple' had not seen them. This author also seems unwilling to let the women have the honour of first discovering that the tomb was empty, so John says they ran back to the disciples as soon as they saw the stone moved. To harmonise somewhat with Luke's Gospel, John has Mary Magdalene return after the disciples had left and look into the empty tomb.