What did the Gospel writers think about Jesus?

Answer 1

Mark

Mark, the author of the very first Gospel, thought of Jesus as:

• Racist. In chapter 7, he called Gentiles 'dogs' and only agreed to help a Gentile woman when she humbly accepted that description.

  (Mark 7:27) But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.

• Less than divine. He had some extraordinary powers and God called him his son, but Mark did not believe him to be one with God. For example:

  (Mark 6:5) And he (Jesus) could there do no mighty work.

  (Mark 10:18) Why call me good. There is none good but God.

• Jesus told his followers to love their neighbours, an injunction taken from the Old Testament. In modern times, 'neighbours' is seen as having a broad scope because of Luke, but in Mark, as in the Hebrew Bible, it still had a narrow meaning.

MatthewMatthew thought of Jesus as:

• A mortal, born of a virgin and with divine powers, but that he had not pre-existed.

• Whereas Mark had John baptise Jesus as a matter of course, Matthew established a clear sense of precedence by having John argue that it should be Jesus who baptised him. Matthew was also reluctant to call Jesus a village carpenter.

• More than any other Gospel writer, Matthew thought of Jesus as fulfilling scriptural prophecies.

LukeLuke thought of Jesus as:

• A mortal with divine powers, but had not pre-existed. Acts 2:32-33 sums up his view, "This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses ... and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear."

• Jesus told his followers to love their enemies. This is unique to Luke.

• More than in any other Gospel, Luke had Jesus show compassion for the poor.

JohnJohn thought

• Jesus was God. There are pericopes where Jesus actually claimed this to be the case. Jesus had existed from the beginning of creation.

• Many of the friends of Jesus were rich. Some of the best miracles that John presented involved helping his own rich friends. John did not portray Jesus as particularly interested in helping the poor.

• Jesus told his followers to love one another, so that others would know that they were his followers. In other words, there is no longer an admonition to love your enemies, or even your neighbours. Overt displays of affection for other Christians was to be a sign to strangers that you are a Christian.

It should be recognized that any human failings are failings intrinsic to the Gospel authors, not the person Jesus, whom they were attempting to portray.

Answer 2

AnswerAll four New Testament gospels were originally written anonymously in Greek Koine and only attributed to the disciples whose name they now bear later in the second century. Biblical scholars say that Mark's Gospel was the first to be written and that Matthewand Luke were based on Mark and on a hypothetical sayings document called the 'Q' document. John was inspired by Luke, but has some material taken direct from Mark. So, the variety of depictions of Jesus is understandable, since none of the gospel authors was really a disciple of Jesus, or even knew a disciple of Jesus.

Mark's Gospel depicts Jesus as a human, adopted by God as his son, at the time of his baptism. This is why the following story portrays Satan as testing Jesus, a notion that would not make sense if Jesus had been divine and Satan knew him to be divine. When Jesus died, he expressed disappointment with God, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me." This cry of anguish was actually taken from a Psalm. To Mark, Jesus was very human, with human failings. He could be racist, he could be irrational and he could get angry.

Both Matthew's Gospel and Luke's Gospel add details of the virgin birth of Jesus, so that Jesus was now the son of God from the time of his birth. Luke's author could not accept Jesus expressing disappointment with God, even at the time of his death, so replaced his last words with, "Father, into thy hands I deliver my spirit."

The author of John's Gospel depicts Jesus as both divine and pre-existing. The Gospel opens with the author describing Jesus as the Logos ('Word'), originally a pagan concept, that entered Christianity late in the first century from Philo of Alexandria. Since, to this author, Jesus was pre-existing, he was sent to earth for a mission. Therefore, even the Luke's last words of Jesus would not be appropriate when Jesus' mission on earth was finished, and John has him say simply, "It is finished." John subtly reverses some of the themes of Luke's Gospel. So, where Luke shows concern for the poor, John has many of Jesus' close friends among the rich and powerful, and he performed some of his best miracles for his rich friends.