In Matthew, Mark and Luke, (often called the
Synoptic Gospels), we have the narrative of events from the Upper Room, the institution of the Lord's Supper, Gethsemane, and finally Jesus' arrest.
Yet he is the same Jesus we find in the
synoptic gospels. Brown concludes that John offers us valuable historical insights about Jesus' life and, even if it seems more abstract, John is no less necessary than any other gospel.
The
Synoptic Gospels present him as the "messenger," and his message is the "Kingdom of God" that enters the lives of human beings with his presence.
From that gathering, 12 papers (four in German) consider such aspects as Greek New Testament papyri and their text in the second-third centuries, conflated citations of the
Synoptic Gospels: the beginnings of Christian doxography tradition, Marcion's Gospel and the Synoptics: proposals and problems, the Gospel of Phillip's mystagogical reception of the Gospel of John, and principles of Gnostic exegesis.
The Dominican biblical scholar did not elaborate, but it must be pointed out that the Lord's Prayer as we recite it now is a synthesis of the two major accounts of the classic prayer from the
Synoptic gospels of Matthew and Luke.
Early twentieth-century Form Criticism (structural study of literary units) raised questions about the nature, origin, and transmission of the
Synoptic Gospels. It dismissed outright any kernel of historicity in the Gospels and suggested that many of the traditions about Jesus in the Scriptures were created later than this historical period to fulfill the liturgical, preaching, and teaching needs of nascent church communities.
Markus Vinzent, Marcion and the Dating of the
Synoptic Gospels, Leuven, Paris, Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2014, 353 pp., 16 x 24, ISBN 978-90-429-3027-8.
Especially in the
synoptic Gospels, Jesus says they're just for those willing to "repent:" to change their value systems.
There are detailed introductions to the three
synoptic gospels, interspersed by the other epistles.
All three
Synoptic Gospels proclaim blasphemy against the Holy Spirit as the unforgivable sin.
No where else in the
Synoptic Gospels do such hymns occur.
That is why when one looks at parallel texts from the
Synoptic Gospels, for example, one is struck with how free the tradents (those who preserved the oral traditions) were to manipulate and alter the settings and the very traditions they were passing on.