5. Toward a Canonical Reading of the Gospels

Primer on a Canonical Approach

The NT begins with the story of Jesus. In dramatic fashion, the Gospel writers identify Jesus and then narrate his life, ministry, death, and resurrection. Readers are immediately forced to reckon alongside various characters in these narratives with the question, “Who is this man?”

The Formation and Function of a Fourfold Gospel

A canonical reading of the Gospels deals directly with both the formation of the distinct collection of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and also the function of this fourfold Gospel at the head of the NT collection. The fourfold Gospel sub-collection also establishes a theologically rich pattern of unity and diversity. The story told in each of these narratives is coherent enough to be understood as a unity (“The Gospel”) but distinct enough to require differentiation (“according to”).

The Gospels were composed, quickly gathered together, and circulated as a fourfold grouping. The most well-established order of these four books is Matthew–Mark–Luke–John, although a few later manuscript groupings order them Matthew–John–Luke–Mark, perhaps to keep Matthew and John together at the front as apostles and Luke and Mark afterwards as “servants of the word” (cf. Luke 1:2). Collectively, these four books shape the way the story and identity of Jesus the Messiah is understood. 

As the first major part of the NT, the fourfold Gospel collection represents both a continuation of the story of redemptive history as well as a story of new beginnings. Mark announces “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ” (Mark 1:1). Luke compiles his account of “the things accomplished among us” by drawing on “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word” (Luke 1:2). Reaching back to eternity past, John reveals what took place “in the beginning” (John 1:1). As the Gospel writers present and interpret Jesus as the Messiah, they intentionally situate their accounts in line with the contours and storyline of the OT.

Even in the way they shape their narratives, the Gospel writers exhibit canon-consciousness regarding their location in the narrative world generated by the shape of Old Testament texts. In this sense, the Gospels are “like theologies of the Hebrew Scriptures in story form” (Shepherd). As multifaceted and introductory narratives firmly grounded in a well-established textual plotline, the Gospels are uniquely suited and well-situated to be the first word readers experience as they open the New Testament collection.

The Master Teacher’s Lesson About Himself

After considering this brief profile of these distinctive Gospels, we can also ponder the multifaceted manner in which the Gospel writers portray Jesus as a master teacher. Among the Gospels, one of the strong lines of textual and theological continuity is the central place of Jesus’s words and the strategic function of his teachings in each narrative. 

“In the beginning was the Word,” John begins, and the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14). The Word also spoke among us! In the Gospels we behold his glory by reading and hearing his words.

Matthew incorporates large blocks of Jesus’s discourse at strategic locations in his writing (e.g., Matthew 5–7). While Mark typically focuses on Jesus’s actions, he also highlights a series of Jesus’s parables on the kingdom (Mark 4) and Jesus’s discussion of the end of days (Mark 13). Luke’s extensive account of Jesus’s final journey to Jerusalem is dominated by teaching, parables, and proclamations (Luke 9–19). John also provides a lengthy account of Jesus’s theological conversations and prayers (John 14–17). In these ways, all the Gospel writers strategically showcase the fact that Jesus is a master teacher whose words embody divine wisdom and carry unparalleled weight.

The characterization of Jesus as a master teacher, then, represents both a common theological theme in the Gospels as well as a clear facet of each writer’s compositional strategy. Jesus brings out of the storehouses words old and new (Matt. 13:52) as he fulfills and fills out messianic expectations.

Jesus speaks both his own words and the words of the Old Testament scriptures. His opening gospel declaration is, “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). In the vein of the prophets, Jesus’s message about the kingdom includes pronouncements of both salvation and judgment. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus begins his ministry by unrolling the scroll of Isaiah and declaring its fulfillment (Luke 4:16–30; Isa. 61:1–2). He then continues to “preach the good news of the kingdom of God” because as Luke states, Jesus “was sent for this purpose” (Luke 4:43). 

Though we might develop this theme in many directions, an important aspect to highlight is that one of the distinct patterns in Jesus’s teaching concerns himself. Common refrains in the Gospels include, “Whose son is he?” and, “Who is this man?” Many answers are given to these questions, but the burden of the Gospel writers is to show that Jesus provides the definitive answer to these queries.

As he journeys toward Jerusalem just before the crucifixion, Jesus explains, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22). As he journeys away from Jerusalem after the resurrection, Jesus once again explains that “these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (24:44).

In other words, the first one to produce a post-resurrection “biblical theology of the messiah” is the resurrected Christ himself.

Jesus and his Books

The fourfold Gospel collection begins and ends with the mention of a “book” about Jesus, the Christ (Matt. 1:1; John 20:30–31). Each Gospel writer paints a portrait of Jesus’s life, ministry, death, and resurrection that reveals distinct but complementary angles for us to behold as we seek to understand the depth and beauty of the gospel message.

Part of the purpose of these books is to continue and culminate a larger story, as well as anticipate a new chapter in this story.

While reflecting on how each Gospel bears its own distinctive shape, situates itself within a fourfold Gospel collection, and captures a strategic selection of Jesus’s words and deeds, it is difficult to improve upon the sentiment expressed in the last words of John’s Gospel:

“Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25).

Annotated Walking Tour

Greg Lanier, “The Four-Fold Gospel Collection,” in Canon Formation, 230–50. An excellent up-to-date discussion of the historical, textual, and theological issues at stake in the collection and function of the canonical Gospels. This would be a great place to start a study of the four Gospel unit.  

Mike Bird, The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus (Eerdmans, 2014). Interacts with the spectrum of scholarly approaches to the Gospels. Along with tracing the general contours of the canon formation narrative, Bird also includes several “excursus” discussions within the NT/Hist guild that respond to objections to the the account he develops.

Charles Hill, Who Chose the Gospels? Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy (Oxford, 2012). Many scholars of early Christianity argue that the early church was “drowning in a sea of Gospels” and that “Christianity’s early centuries were something of a free-for-all with regard to Gospel literature” (1). If there were a multitude of competing accounts of Jesus’s life and every instance of “Jesus tradition” is created equal, then the narrow selection of the canonical Gospels must have been a matter of coercion, with a particular faction of the church choosing which Gospels would belong in the church’s authoritative Bible. Accordingly, many agree that the selection of the Gospels was a late, controversial, and arbitrary development that was only achieved through the methodical suppression of rival voices. With ample attention to the relevant historical evidence, Hill gives a compelling argument against this historical-critical consensus. He also traces this process of Gospel reception into the first century. This is one of the most readable & careful discussions of the recognition and reception of the canonical Gospels.

Simon Gathercole, The Gospel and the Gospels: Christian Proclamation and Early Jesus Books (Eerdmans, 2022). In this volume, Gathercole makes a careful and detailed case that there was indeed something about the canonical Gospels that allowed early readers to differentiate them from other gospel-like texts. His thesis is twofold. He first argues that the four canonical Gospels “share key elements of theological content that mark them out from most of the noncanonical Gospels” (15). He argues further that the reason why these four Gospels “are theologically similar to one another is that they—unlike most others—follow a preexisting apostolic ‘creed’ or preached gospel” (15). Accordingly, the theological coherence of the four New Testament Gospels was not an arbitrary element of their reception history but rather a foundational feature of their initial composition. Along the way, Gathercole introduces many of the most important “apocryphal gospels” that also contain elements of the “Jesus tradition” in early Christianity. 

Francis Watson, The Fourfold Gospel: A Theological Reading of the New Testament Portraits of Jesus (Baker, 2016). Reflects on the unity and diversity of the four Gospels with a special focus on the openings of each narrative. Watson briefly discusses the formation of the fourfold Gospel corpus but quickly moves to discuss the theological implications of this collection and its subsequent reception among early readers. This is a supplementary companion of sorts to Watson’s larger works like Gospel Writing and What is a Gospel? In these works, Watson highlights the diversity of the Gospel narratives and argues that the canonical Gospels should be understood as products of a larger category of “gospel writing” in the early church (these books also provide a contrasting dialogue partner with Gathercole’s central claim in Gospel and the Gospels). In Fourfold Gospel, then, Watson considers the effect that the fourfold Gospel has when taken as a coherent collection (though Watson himself does not privilege this perspective in the history of early Christianity). 

The Gospel for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences, edited by Richard Bauckham (Eerdmans, 1998). This is an important work challenging the “community hypothesis” that argues that each Gospel was written to a discrete community (like the Matthean community vs. the Johannine community). The foundation of the community hypothesis is still active in strands of NT scholarship, so Bacuckham’s pushback is still very useful. As a whole, the essays here demonstrate that early Christianity was much more closely connected than is sometimes supposed in accounts that emphasize historical distance and theological diversity among the earliest churches. 

Work on the Eusebian Canon Tables: An interesting development in the study of “early Gospel scholarship” is a renewed focus on the early cross-reference system that Eusebius constructed. This paratextual invention was designed to enable the close study of Gospel parallels (“horizontal reading”) while maintaining the narrative coherence of each individual account (“vertical reading”). In past generations, the significance of Eusebius’s reading aid would have been relegated to studies of historical theology. However, several helpful works have recently been published that provide a thorough orientation to the significance and reception of Eusebius’s canon tables. My suggestion would be to start with Watson’s section on Eusebius in Fourfold Gospel, to next read Crawford’s historical investigation and analysis, and then Coogan’s discussion of the hermeneutical effect of Eusebius’s work (and its significance as “gospel writing” itself): 

• Watson, “Four Gospels, One Book,” in Fourfold Gospel, 103–44.

• Matthew Crawford, The Eusebian Canon Tables: Ordering Textual Knowledge in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2019). 

• Jeremiah Coogan, Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2022). 

A few more helpful resources: 

• Childs, “Jesus Christ the Lord and the Scriptures of the Church,” “The One Gospel in Four Witnesses,” and “The Nature of the Christian Bible: One Book, Two Testaments” in The Rule of Faith: Scripture, Canon, and Creed in a Critical Age.

• Jens Schröter, “Jesus and Canon: The Early Jesus Tradition in the Context of the Emergence of the New Testament Canon,” in From Jesus to the New Testament, 249–71. 

• Charles Hill, “A Four-Gospel Canon in the Second Century? Artifact and Arti-Fiction,” Early Christianity 4 (2013): 310–34; and “Why are there Just Four Gospels in the Bible?”

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