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The traditional Christian explanation for the many differences among the gospels is that each evangelist was reporting what he knew and also that he was writing to a different audience. On this view, what to one evangelist seemed not significant enough to report was to another evangelist very important.

In fact, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke are moderately similar to the original gospel that their authors relied on as a source - Mark's Gospel. Most of what is contained in Mark is to be found in both Matthew and Luke, although often with embellishments. The major exception is the "Missing Block" in Luke, clearly the result of this author working from an incomplete copy of Mark. It has been shown that whenever Matthew and Luke agree with Mark, the wording in the Greek language is almost identical. Matthew and Luke also contain additional, identical sayings from the hypothetical 'Q' document but, because Q does not explain when or to whom Jesus would have spoken these sayings, each of the two authors had to write his own context for those sayings.

Matthew was written before Luke, but the author of Luke was unaware of that Gospel. Each of them wanted to write about the birth of Jesus and provide a genealogy that showed Jesus to be descended from King David, as required by Jewish tradition for the hoped-for Messiah. The author of Matthewdescribed Bethlehem as the home town of Joseph and Mary, and had them flee to Egypt so that he could show parallels between Jesus and Moses. He said that the father of Joseph was called Jacob, just as the father of the Old Testament Joseph was called Jacob. The author of Luke described Nazareth as the home town of Joseph and Mary, and had them travel to Bethlehem for an otherwise unknown census, then return peacefully to Nazareth. He said that the father of Joseph was called Heli.

Similarly, because Mark's Gospel provided no guidance on the resurrection appearances of Jesus, the authors of Matthewand Luke had to improvise, creating two quite different and incompatible accounts. A "Long Ending" (verses 16:9-25) was added to Mark much later, to more or less harmonise that Gospel with those of Matthew and Luke.

John's Gospel is the most different of the four New Testament gospels. It is believed by some scholars that it was written in a moderately Gnostic Christian community and subsequently modified to make it more acceptable for a centrist Christian tradition. This Gospel was inspired by Luke's Gospel, but has some material taken direct from Mark. The author felt much freer than the authors of Matthew and Luke in changing his source material, but was usually careful not to directly contradict Luke.

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