Four Portraits, One Jesus Laminated Sheet

By Mark L. Strauss

This laminated sheet accompanies Mark L. Strauss's Four Portraits, One Jesus. Following the textbook's structure, this quick-study tool offers summaries, important definitions, dates, and concepts designed to support the students' learning experience and enhance their comprehension of what can be known from the Gospels about the central defining subject of Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth.

Four Portraits, One Jesus is a thorough yet accessible introduction to the four biblical Gospels and their subject, the life and person of Jesus. Like different artists rendering the same subject using different styles and points of view, the Gospels paint four highly distinctive portraits of the same remarkable Jesus. With clarity and insight, Mark Strauss illuminates these four books, first addressing their nature, origin, methods for study, and historical, religious, and cultural backgrounds. He then moves on to closer study of each narrative and its contribution to our understanding of Jesus, investigating things such as plot, characters, and theme. Finally, he pulls it all together with a detailed examination of what the Gospels teach about Jesus’ ministry, message, death, and resurrection, with excursions into the quest for the historical Jesus and the historical reliability of the Gospels.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Release date: Apr 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9780310109365

Mark L. Strauss

Mark L. Strauss (PhD, Aberdeen) is university professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary, where he has served since 1993. His books include Four Portraits, One Jesus; How to Read the Bible in Changing Times; The Essential Bible Companion; and commentaries on Mark and Luke. He also serves as vice chair of the Committee on Bible Translation for the New International Version translation.  

Book preview

PART 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE FOUR GOSPELS

1. W

HAT

A

RE THE

G

OSPELS?

■ The four Gospels were written to provide four unique portraits of Jesus Christ.

■ The Synoptic Gospels — Matthew, Mark, and Luke — have many common stories and similar language. The Gospel of John is written in a very different style and provides much unique material.

■ The Gospel genre may be classified as historical narrative motivated by theological concerns.

■ The Gospels are best read vertically, following each theological narrative through the plot from beginning to end.

■ Reading the Gospels horizontally — comparing their accounts with one another — enables the reader to see more clearly each Gospel’s particular themes and theology.

■ Harmonizing the Gospels into a single story risks distorting each Gospel writer’s unique contribution.

■ Greco-Roman sources outside the New Testament provide very little additional information concerning the historical Jesus.

■ The apocryphal gospels are generally late and unreliable accounts, far removed from the historical events.

2. E

XPLORING THE

O

RIGIN AND

N

ATURE OF THE

G

OSPELS

■ The message of Jesus was originally passed down primarily by word of mouth and then gradually written down to produce our Gospels. Historical criticism examines this process.

■ Source criticism seeks to identify and evaluate the written sources used by the Gospel writers.

■ The most widely held solution to the synoptic problem is that Mark wrote first (Markan priority) and that Matthew and Luke used Mark and other sources.

■ The designation Q refers to the common source or sources used by Matthew and Luke in addition to Mark. The designations M (= Matthew’s