Cassian's Recap: What's the difference between the four gospels?

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Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. I'm your host, Cassie Ann Bolino, and today

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I'm going to be giving you a very quick recap to the episode that was released this week on Tuesday.

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I interviewed Dr. Darrell Bock, who is a professor at the Hendricks Center. He's also a co -host and co -founder of the

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Table podcast, and that's basically a group of scholars that get to talk about biblical topics at a much depth than we will on this podcast.

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However, our conversation was just as deep. It was amazing. It was an opportunity for me to understand truly what's the difference between the four gospels.

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Today, I'm just going to give you a quick recap. It's going to be about 20 minutes long or less. We'll see how long it is once I get into the editing, but really what were the thoughts?

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I'm going to give it to you here, summarized, shortened, and with my own thoughts. There were a couple questions we wanted to answer in this episode.

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One is, how did the gospels come to be, and why was there a need for four of them if they're all telling the same story of Jesus?

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When I started this podcast about a year ago, in one of the conversations, you can go back and listen, my guest pointed out to me like, hey, the gospels are the same story written by four different people, which

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I was pretty baffled by. For some reason, I just didn't know that. Going to church my entire life, I still didn't know that, and I was so confused that that's the...

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I know Jesus is the crux of the Bible, but even in Moses and the important role that he plays in the

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Old Testament, we don't get him and then Aaron's take on the same situation of the Exodus. We just get

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Moses's. Why four? Why those four? How did it come to be? What are the differences between those four, and how can that help us learn new things about Jesus?

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Dr. Bach is the person that we should chat with on this subject. He's been teaching it for 43 years, as of this year, in 2025, depending on when you're listening to this, and he states quite simply that the four gospels provide alternative but complementary views on the significance of Jesus's life, each one of them, though, highlighting a different aspect, but all together building something wonderful when they're considered as a whole.

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So today, we're going to just kind of jump into what are we considering when we look at them all together versus separate. One thing that we need to understand is that the life of Jesus is basically a autobiography, but it's lacking a lot of personal information that a typical biography would contain, like knowing specifics of his childhood.

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You know, we don't know a lot of things about Jesus's childhood, the way he was brought up, we don't know any physical details about him, it seems like chunks of his life are missing, and really two of the four contain information about his birth.

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So, as a whole, the gospels are a biography, but really only focusing on his ministry, and we'll get into how long that is, which is a huge, huge mic drop moment for me.

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So getting into the differences of the Bibles, Matthew, Mark, and Luke are considered the synoptic gospels because they are told from the earth up as its details about Jesus and his personal life and what he did as a person, whereas John, the fourth book, is going to tell the story of Jesus heaven down, written as he is

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God. So what was the focal point of each? Well, first, let's get into like who they were. So I always like to jump into this and kind of say like, okay, who is

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Mark? Is Mark, you know, a lay person? Is Mark a poor person? Is Mark a worker? Is Mark, like, known in the churches? I have no idea.

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But Mark was essentially tight with Peter, the apostle. Mark was not in the core twelve, and the gospel was written the earliest, but it's the shortest version.

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So Mark came first, and it's very short, and it's not written by an apostle, it's written by a guy who knew an apostle.

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So we can look at Mark as like a soundbite version. It just highlights the key moments of Jesus's life.

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It doesn't really get into the spoken words of Jesus or like his teachings, you know, it doesn't get into every single word said at Sermon on the

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Mount. It really just focuses on Jesus as a man. Next, we have

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Matthew and Luke. Those came next. We'll get into timelines in a second, but Matthew and Luke, they saw

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Mark's version, and they were like, whoa, not enough. We need to expand this. So we can look at Matthew and Luke as more like a footnote rather than a soundbite, because they give the whole background.

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However, Matthew was one of the twelve. He was in the inner circle, and he was a Jew. So when he talks about Jesus's life, he wants to show how

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Jesus is the king of the Jews. He wants to show that, hey, the Jews are rejecting him, but this is why the gospel is written, to show why it shouldn't be rejected, how he is the father of them.

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And the easiest way for you to remember this is when you open the book of Matthew, it starts with the lineage back to Abraham, because why?

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It's going to show that Jesus relates to the nation of Israel. He is the Messiah for the Jews. This is to battle any of those thoughts at that time.

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So Matthew said, Mark, this isn't long enough. I'm going to expand specifically on Jesus's Jewishness and how he is the

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Messiah for the Jewish nation. Luke, however, also very long, expanding on what Mark was saying, he was not one of the apostles.

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He was more of like a globally known high up guy who was just friends with some of the apostles.

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He's a friend of Paul, and he's quite well connected, and he was a doctor. So very, very educated, not in the inner circle, but still going to expand on what

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Mark wrote. And he's not going to focus on the Jewishness. He's instead going to focus on how Jesus was the king of all people.

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So this is inclusive of not just the Jews, but all the Gentiles. So that's why his gospel begins with the lineage back to Adam.

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Okay, so we've got Mark, the short one, the soundbite, and then Matthew and Luke came in, Matthew being one of the apostles,

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Luke being a friend of Paul, but one highlighting how Jesus is the king of all, and one is how

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Jesus is the king of the Jews. Then we get to the fourth one, which is John. John is the beloved apostle.

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Remember that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are all the synoptics. They talk about Jesus earth up.

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John is going to be the one talking about Jesus heaven down, talking about how Jesus is God. So it was the last one written, and it focuses entirely on how

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Jesus is God. All of his work is pointing back to him being God. Whereas the apostles are experiencing

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God. John's going to say, we're not going to talk about him as a person. We're not going to talk about his Jewishness. We're going to talk about how he is

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God. I like to think of as a confessional booth that you get in a reality TV show. It's like when an event happens, and then it cuts to the confession booth, and John's like, yeah, that was crazy that that was happening.

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We didn't know at the time, but he was referencing a prophecy. So each one of these gospels, it's going to clearly highlight the concerns that that author had for the world and how they wanted to share the specific things that Jesus taught and talked about.

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Mark with his actions, Matthew with his Jewishness, Luke with his global personhood and king of all, and then

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John as God. We can really look to that when we see what are the focusing on when they tell the same story,

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Jesus's life moving forward on timelines and logistics. How did these gospels come to be logistically?

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When were they written? Okay. It's really important for me to know how things developed. Um, and when

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I understand the gospels, you know, before I was educated on any level about this, I had no idea, like, were they following around Jesus?

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Jesus heals the sick, raises someone from the dead. And then Jesus is like, okay, you guys should probably write this down.

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I'm going to give everyone 10 minutes to, you know, record it in their journal time. Like truly how did this get written down?

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Did they just have to like, look back 30 years ago after Jesus died and be like, okay, well it all started.

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Was it Bethlehem or was it Jerusalem? Okay. I really had no idea. And I think that's because I'm living in 2025.

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And that's how we remember things. Cause everything's already automatically recorded. It's on our phones and we don't have to have a what?

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Oral society. So the timeline is zero to 38 AD. Jesus lived.

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That was the period at which Jesus was alive. Zero to 30 AD. I know some people are like 27 years, 33 years.

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Let's just say 30. So it's a clean math. So Jesus born on zero died at 30. And then between the years of 30

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AD and 60 AD, the 30 years following Jesus' death, people are orally sharing his ministry.

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They're talking about it by just passing it on. And this was just what they did. They didn't have a written society.

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So they were just sharing all of these. So about 30 years after Jesus has died, people for the last 30 years have been talking about orally, but now it's 60 years.

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So Jesus and his homies are probably around the same age, but you know, 60 AD people start dying out.

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So this is when Mark, he started writing everything down first. The eyewitnesses are dying. He's like scrambling to write it all down.

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After that, plus or minus 10 to 20 years after Mark writes his, that's when

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Matthew and Luke start writing their version. 10 to 20 years after Mark. So now we're about at about 40 to 50 years after Jesus died.

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They're now writing their stories, which again is just like Mark's, but a little bit more expanded. One focusing on the

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Jewishness, one focusing on the global kingship, focusing more on what he was talking about and his sermons rather than what he did.

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And then around 90 AD. So now this is 60 years after Jesus died, John comes through with his final version.

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And this is to not just finish the stories told by all the others, but to expand. If you think about it, you're always able to tell a better story.

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When you get all of your thoughts down, you look at it, you absorb it, you feel what is missing. And then you can fill in the gaps.

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That is what John is doing. He's looking at what Mark wrote, what Matthew and Luke wrote. And he's like, okay, let me fill in the final gaps because I think we're missing the fact that Jesus is

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God. And I need to lean into the thing that none of you guys are focusing on here. So I'm going to tell my version.

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Okay. This is the big mic drop moment. Did you guys know that Jesus's ministry only lasted about three and a half years?

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Like, I don't know what it was in my brain. I just honestly didn't think it through. But if Jesus, his whole life is told in the 30 year span and that's the entire gospels.

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You know, you're thinking like, oh yeah, Jesus was, he was talking about ministry as like a little baby.

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He did 30 years of ministry. And that has changed the course of the world. All of us as Christians serve

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Jesus for 30 years. No, no, no, no. Three and a half years.

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Okay. So Jesus was just like kicking out wisdom when he just around hit his thirties, which like me about to hit my thirties.

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This is very inspiring. However, I just like, cannot wrap my head around the fact that like Jesus only went around for three and a half years.

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And this is how globally impactful it has been. Whether you believe in Jesus Christ or not, you cannot deny the global impact that his teachings have had.

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The fact that we know his name globally after just a man who if you're just going to call him a man and you just say he was spreading the word of God for three years, that kind of message doesn't like think about the work that some people have done their whole life.

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And then they're forgot they're forgotten. We think about actors and actresses, people in history that they were in great movies and they had a 30, 30 year career that, you know, they were actors their whole lives.

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And yet we can't remember their work, maybe a few references, you know, and maybe we can watch their movie.

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Jesus didn't have any recorded society, any cultural aspect that was recording what he was saying other than oral.

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I'm just like trying to emphasize the impact and power that this man had that he was only speaking on ministry for about three and a half years and none of it was recorded on film or paper.

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It had to be later be referenced. It was just spread orally. And yet we know his name today in 2025 and people who don't even believe in him know his name.

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I just I like you cannot emphasize like this is unfathomable.

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The power of the word, how it has lasted throughout time, throughout media, throughout all odds against it.

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You know his name, whether you want to or not, you know who Jesus is, whether you believe that he's God, that's neither here nor there right now.

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The fact that you know his name and he was only in ministry for three and a half years. I can't get over how powerful his word is.

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You cannot deny that. Gosh, that one just like really hit me hard.

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So what is the most important gospel for the I wanted to ask Dr. Bach, which one should I be focusing on? Because I remember, you know, asking my mom back when

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I wasn't reading my Bible like, okay, which book of the Bible should I start with? And she always said John. And so that's kind of something

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I brought up in the call. And he said that we should focus on Luke because he's going to say most people are going to focus on Matthew and John.

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They're going to disregard the shortest text, which is Mark. But Matthew and John were directly from the apostles.

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So if they're going to listen to the story of Jesus' life, I'm going to talk to the two guys that were hanging out with him, Matthew and John. And then

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I'm going to skip over Mark because it's the shortest. However, Mark then became very popular after Matthew and John because it was realized that it came out first.

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So that was like the purest, most recent, or purest, oldest, most trustworthy text.

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So people stopped reading Matthew and John from the apostles and they were just going straight to Mark. So because they recognized that it was the first gospel written.

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So Luke, again, it's like the orphan gospel. It's continually ignored because basically it was seen as a duplicate of Matthew.

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People were ignoring Luke because he's not an apostle and who wasn't written first. And he's basically the same thing as Matthew.

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However, we're missing over the globalization fact that he's saying that Jesus is the king of all. Whereas Matthew is saying that Jesus is the king of the

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Jews. So all that to be said, it makes sense why you would maybe ignore Luke if you're like, well, if I read

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Matthew, I basically read Luke and I don't really need to because it's not really saying anything different. Did you guys know that Luke is the longest gospel?

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Luke was known to write most of the New Testament because he wrote all of Luke and then he wrote all of Acts, which is about 30 % of the

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New Testament. So if I'm a Gentile and I'm going to read any one of the gospels,

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Matthew is for the Jews, Mark is the shortest, John is one of the apostles, but Luke, he's for us.

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He's talking about the globalization, the global kingship of Jesus over everybody. And it's the longest and it's the most encompassing and it's the most ethical and practical and applicable.

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So if I'm a Gentile and I'm going to read any one of the gospels, Luke. So that's some great guidance from Dr. Bach.

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The last thing that we do talk about within this call is going to be the manuscript base.

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So think about the availability that we have of ancient texts. It's actually quite astounding when you get into it because how many handwritten copies that we do have currently in different languages?

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Handwritten copies in different languages. The reason that we have the Bibles today that we take for granted that are passed out for free at church because people hand written, hand copied them.

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And right now the base of manuscripts of copies that were handwritten in different languages is the largest manuscript rate is the largest manuscript base for ancient texts.

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It's about 18 ,000. So what I like to say is like, I think about the,

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I have a dream speech. You know, we know it, we watched it in school. We know what it looks like because of the recordings that have been copied and widely available for people to watch like us.

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Cause I saw it in school. We know what that P we know that that speech happened because of the copy that we had access to, whether you watched it on online, on YouTube at school and what that was like in the sixties.

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So at this point it was going to be 60 years ago, right? Yeah. That'd be 60, 65 years ago.

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We have copies of the gospels of the same accuracy and similarly dated to 2000 years ago.

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So the earliest sliver of a manuscript is going to be the gospel of John.

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It's a sliver of it. And it's dated from around 125 AD. There's no original manuscripts, but copies of the original with accuracy and reliability.

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If you haven't listened to my episode on the reliability of the new Testament with Dr. Ben Shaw, go back and listen to it.

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He argues how we can, how and why we should trust these manuscripts and how they're copied, that there is no claim for any doctrinal changes between these manuscripts, maybe just spelling mistakes.

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And that's the only variance that we see. It is the most well -attested ancient document ever to have been studied. And that is quoted by Bert Ehrman, unknown agnostic.

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So all that to say, I needed this to be spelled out to me. I needed this to be spelled out to me, but the manuscripts that we see for the

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Old Testament are different than the Dead Sea Scrolls. That is a collection of Old Testament texts that were found, that were basically showing a collection of a

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Jewish community that were living out in the desert that have basically said that Jerusalem got it wrong. This is the separation of texts for Jewish literature and of a people wandering in the desert, and they're waiting for their

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Redeemer. Think about Exodus. Think about Numbers. Think about Genesis and people that spent 40 years wandering in the desert.

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The New Testament texts that we're talking about today, those are well preserved texts. Those were established. Those were copied.

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Those were shared. They were preserved. They were preserved in ancient libraries over time. They weren't found in caves.

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These were texts that were preserved because this piece of paper are going to crumble.

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They're going to fall apart. So those were proactively preserved in the years following Jesus' death, whereas the

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Dead Sea Scrolls were ancient, ancient, showing a society living out in the desert, verifying what we're seeing in the

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Old Testament. So all that to say, you're able to read your Bible today because thousands of people sat down at one time, word for word, copied certain portions of the

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Bible so it could get passed on. Closing thoughts though, this conversation really, this conversation should really repair the doubt that anybody might have on the reliability on the

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Gospels, because now we can understand the when, the how, the context, how we should read it.

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I really opened up my Bible and I had just like a better navigation about it. You know, it's kind of like when you spend a week in a city, that first day of vacation, you're so lost.

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You don't know where you are. You don't know what this cafe is, but then you spend a week and you get to know it. You learn about this corner.

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You're having a moment in this restaurant. You like this street name. And by the end of the week, you know that city. And I feel like I'm exiting the

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Gospels knowing my way around and what I can expect when I open Luke versus when I open Matthew to see the

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Jewishness of Matthew, but to see the shorter, you know, soundbite version of Mark. I just kind of know my way around now.

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So I'm so grateful for it because I can't really emphasize it enough. I'm a curious but confused Christian. I need it to be spelled out to me.

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And I'm so grateful for Dr. Bach who could really show my way around it. It wasn't like, because like there's nothing here that you couldn't

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Google. I have looked this up. What is the difference between the Gospels? And I even have a couple guides on it that you can access through the

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Biblically Heard community is what is the difference so you can feel prepared. And I think for a lot of people, it helps them.

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A lot of people though are smart and I can't emphasize it enough. I just need someone to teach me things.

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And so, A, very grateful for Dr. Bach and B, so overjoyed with how our word is being developed.

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You know, I think the deeper we go and the more I learn about my faith, and by no means have I even scratched the surface, it just gets more and more interesting.

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And I think maybe I prolonged this because I thought it would get more and more confusing. But the deeper we go, the more things click into place.

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And I have a long road ahead of me of clicking into place. So if you enjoyed this, go listen to the longer episode with Dr.

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Bach on Live Air. It was released on Tuesday. It's available on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, anywhere playlists, anywhere podcasts are played.

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And I hope you enjoy it. But if you want a more practical application of your faith and you don't just want to listen, you want to learn from others, you want to access guides,

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Bible studies, join the Biblically Heard community. That is through the link in my bio on Instagram.

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Follow me. This is Biblically Speaking. That is where you can DM me personally. That's where I create fun content.

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And that's where you can access more guides, more Bible studies and events. Every single month, we have a live

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Q &A with a scholar who is then available to you to ask any questions I hadn't asked. This is the best way that I think that I can offer more understanding of the

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Word of God so we can endlessly be curious and a little bit less confused. But that's all today.