What does the church teach us about the gospels?

Answer 1

The word "gospel" in Greek means "good news," and the good news of Jesus Christ was depicted by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in their various accounts of the life and work of the Messiah. Each story takes a different perspective. Mark wrote of the persecution of Christ; Matthew explained that Jesus was the Messiah and was here to fulfil Jewish prophecies as indicated in the Old Testament. The gospel according to Luke expressed the good news that Jesus, the Savior, does not discriminate against any group of people---especially race and class; and John's gospel explained the divinity of Jesus---perhaps the hardest concept for people to grasp.

Matthew is the first of four New Testament books about Jesus. Like any collection of stories about one person, each version is different. And there's something unique enough about Matthew's story to inspire Christian leaders long ago to put his ahead of all others in the New Testament. Like the other three books about Jesus, Matthew is called a Gospel, meaning "good news." More than any other Gospel Matthew zeroes in on exactly what that good news represents, for he concentrates on the words Jesus spoke. He records accusing words (23:24), comforting words (28:20), and motivating words (5:9).

Answer 2

A:Some scholars believe that at in the early years of the first century, there were two distinct traditions. One was a sayings tradition, with no suggestion of a crucifixion narrative, while the other tradition told of the crucifixion and destiny of Jesus, but knew nothing of the moral teachings. On this view, these traditions were merged by the author of Mark's Gospel, creating one syncretic religion from two earlier and quite distinct faiths. If so, Mark, and the gospels that followed, established Christianity as we know it today.

Answer 3

The Gospels were extremely important and still are today. In them is the answer to salvation. When we belive that Jesus Christ is God, and came down from Heaven to Earth to save mankind; then we have salvation. The Gospels are what Jesus did, has done, and is still doing for EVERYONE so that we may come to live with Him, forever.

Answer 4

The Gospels teach us about the compassion and examples that Jesus showed us how to live our life and respect each other. Following the Old Testament and God's chosen prophets to reach out to man, it was foretold that his holy messinger (Jesus) would be born and die on the earth to save us from our sins. Jesus is the pathway to God himself. It is his salvation that bridges the gap between us and God. This partnership was broken in the Garden of Eden when Eve discovered sin and God no longer walked with man. Jesus brings man back to God when man accepts God into his life so he is not lost.

Answer 5

The Christian churches usually always teach that the gospels are literally true accounts of the life and mission of Jesus and that they were actually written by the persons whose names they now bear, with two of the authors, Matthew and John, being actual eyewitnesses. Occasionally, one or other of the churches acknowledges that these things are not really true.

For example, the Catholic Church's New American Bible states about John's Gospel in its introduction, "To a much greater degree, it is the product of a developed theological reflection and grows out of a different circle and tradition." This is a recognition that the gospel represented the development of Christian doctrine over the decades since the crucifixion, rather than a historical record of actual events.

The former Anglican Primate of Australia, Archbishop Peter Carnley wrote of the differing stories of the empty tomb:
"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."