The Gospel and the Gospels: Christian Proclamation and Early Jesus Books

by Simon Gathercole

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2022

Overview

A robust scholarly defense of the distinctiveness of the canonical Gospels.

Is there anything that makes the four New Testament Gospels different from other early Christian Gospels? The tendency among biblical scholars of late has been to declare the answer to this question no—that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were grouped together by happenstance and are defended as canonical today despite there being no essential commonalities between them.

Simon Gathercole challenges this prevailing view and argues that there are in fact substantial differences of theological content between the New Testament Gospels and noncanonical Gospels. Gathercole shows how the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each include four key points that also formed the core of early Christian preaching and teaching: Jesus’s identity as messiah, the saving death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus, and Scripture’s foretelling of the Christ event. In contrast, most noncanonical Gospels—like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Truth, and Marcion’s Gospel—only selectively appropriated these central concerns of early Christian proclamation.

Key Features

• Argues that there are substantial differences of theological content between the New Testament Gospels and noncanonical Gospels
• Shows how the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John each include four key points that also formed the core of early Christian preaching and teaching

Contents

• Introduction

Part One: Topics of Comparison

• The Comparanda: A Selection of Early Christian Gospels
• The Comparator: The Early Kerygma and Its Components
• Justifying the Kerygma as a Comparator

Part Two: Description

• The Gospel of Mark
• The Gospel of Matthew
• The Gospel of Luke
• The Gospel of John
• The Gospel of Peter
• Marcion’s Gospel
• The Gospel of Thomas
• The Gospel of Truth
• The Gospel of Philip
• The Gospel of Judas
• The Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians

Part Three: Comparison and Conclusion

• A Comparison of Early Christian Gospels (Thesis 1)
• The Emergence of Early Christian Gospels (Thesis 2)

Product Details

• Title: The Gospel and the Gospels: Christian Proclamation and Early Jesus Books
• Author: Simon Gathercole
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Print Publication Date: 2022
• Logos Release Date: 2022
• Pages: 576
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Bible. N.T. Gospels › Criticism, interpretation, etc
• ISBNs: 9780802877598, 0802877591
• Resource ID: LLS:GSPLGSPLS
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:24:48Z

About Simon Gathercole

Simon Gathercole is senior lecturer in New Testament studies in the faculty of divinity of the University of Cambridge and fellow and director of studies in theology at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. A leading British New Testament scholar, he has written hundreds of articles and several groundbreaking volumes, including The Preexistent Son: Recovering the Christologies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, The Gospel of Judas: Rewriting Early Christianity, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas, and The Gospel of Thomas: Introduction and Commentary. He is also coauthor of How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Nature—A Response and Heaven on Earth. He also coedited Divine and Human Agency in Paul and His Cultural Environment.