7 ms·

Not a Bible scholar, so I am wondering why John is not considered a synoptic gospel. What does his gospel cover? The same ground but not as similar to the other

• david927 2y ago
  > Curious too when the various disciples lived, wrote My understanding is that in spite of the names, the disciples didn't write them.
  • PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    Indeed, I believe most of the disciples (except Matthew, I think) were illiterate. I don't believe he's generally held to be the author of The Gospel of Matthew, though. However, this doesn't preclude the idea of their evangelism being recorded by someone else. Paul—while not an Apostle himself—is generally held to be the true author of at least some of his letters and is likely the closest we'll find to identifying the earliest authors of the new testament with real, historical figures.
    • vineyardlabs 2y ago
      Luke would have been literate. Paul states elsewhere that Luke is a physician, and in the book Luke states he was contracted by a third party to write the book.
  • vineyardlabs 2y ago
    Questions about authorship aside, note that only Matthew and John claim to be disciples/people who directly interacted with Jesus. Luke is purported to be a physician/associate of Paul who was paid by an unnamed benefactor to document the life of Jesus based on interviews with eyewitnesses and research from earlier sources, and Mark is purported to be writing down an account of the life Jesus based on Peter's eyewitness testimony in Rome several decades after the fact.
    • Detrytus 2y ago
      The benefactor is named, and his name is Theophilus, Luke actually dedicates his second book, "Acts of the Apostoles" to him.
      • mionhe 2y ago
        Some would argue that because the name Theophilus means "friend of God" that it's more likely that it's a pseudonym. We can't know that that's the case, but I can see the argument.
      • vineyardlabs 2y ago
        Yeah you're correct. I mistakenly said unnamed due to the theory some people have that Theophilus was not a real person but is some kind of metaphor/personification of the church.
• dragontamer 2y ago
  Johns writing style is extremely different. It's clearly unrelated to the other three and written in its own way. All the gospels have differences. None of them are historical work as different events are taking different orderings (or are missing from the other gospels). But in terms of differences, John is the most overtly different.
  • gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
    >>> None of them are historical work as different events are taking different orderings (or are missing from the other gospels). Watch out for using that standard. You have to throw out Pompeii and Josephus. Both replay events and move them around in time to make a point. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVR0jXxJDn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVR0jXxJDn0
    • dragontamer 2y ago
      I'm a Catholic so trust me, I believe the events happened. But I'm also somewhat studied in history. The gospels are the best historical records available for Jesus but they have their flaws (and that's why all four gospels are used, to help us figure out the truth between the writings). It's actually somewhat uncomfortable to discuss the differences of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John with regards to important events like the first Easter. Did Peter come to the tomb first? Or did the women? When exactly did the angel appear to declare that Jesus is risen? In the tomb? Outside the tomb? Etc. etc. Who rolled back the stone? The core, historical truth, is muddy. The four gospels have slightly different stories even if the important events are mostly there (Peter checking the tomb. The women checking the tomb. The appearance of the angel and the declaration that Jesus is risen) Even Mark itself isn't a single work either. The earliest versions of Mark don't have the events of Easter detailed like the later versions of Mark. (IE longer Mark 16 vs Shorter Mark 16 issue). And Mark is the earliest written gospel, the one we should defacto trust the most. That Jesus arose from the tomb is in no doubt for any of these gospels. But when we dig into the specific order of events, we realize it's a story and reconstruction of the history with different nuances. And alas, that is the nature of the Gospel Truth. Anyone who studies the Bible must contend with this and accept it.
• mikepurvis 2y ago
  John is much more philosophical in nature rather than narrative. It’s also written later so the author is explicitly trying to emphasize elements that aren’t a priority to the others, for example about the nature of God and Jesus and the relationship between them and the people/church. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gospel-According-to-John https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gospel-According-to-John
  • moomin 2y ago
    A good way of illustrating this is that John doesn’t even attempt a nativity story. He starts “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
    • mikepurvis 2y ago
      Yeah exactly, it was already covered twice before, by Matthew (where the wisemen visit) and Luke (where the shepherds visit). John’s emphasis is on Jesus as God rather than a son of young Jewish parents.
      • KK7NIL 2y ago
        > John’s emphasis is on Jesus as God rather than a son of young Jewish parents. Yep, but more specifically Jesus as the Logos, which is a core concept in Platonism and Stoicism. John very clearly meant his gospel to be read by gentiles from a Greek background.
      • lebuffon 2y ago
        John to me as the youngest gospel, is an attempt to solidify what Christianity was becoming as it separated from the remains of Judaism after the destruction of the temple in year 70. It could have been written as late as 200 CE from what I have read. In my opinion that is why it diverges from the synoptic books. It had to address the new religion's theology more overtly as it had developed by then. Christianity was becoming popular quickly, once it became clear that pork chops were on the menu and surgery was no longer needed to join.
    • 2y ago
• bonzini 2y ago
  Apart from the passion there are very limited points of contact between John and the others. Most of the "more famous" miracles or parables are in either John or the others (either all of them, or some of them), but almost never in both. While Matthew and Luke have "unique" episodes, they also have a lot of shared content between themselves and Mark. Plus, when they talk about the same topic, the synoptic gospels have entire sentences that are basically the same, word by word. For a comparison table see https://www.ammannato.it/vangelo-di-vangeli/appendice/cronologia-degli-episodi.html https://www.ammannato.it/vangelo-di-vangeli/appendice/cronol.... (Just someone who had a very good religion teacher in middle school).
• jemfinch 2y ago
  "Synoptic" is simply the adjectival form of "synopsis": Matthew, Mark, and Luke all strive to give a synopsis of Jesus' life, organized primarily around a chronological retelling of his approximately three-year ministry. Matthew and Luke include details of his birth and genealogy. John, on the other hand, is organized around theological and moral themes, rather than the totality of Jesus' ministry and teachings. That's why it's not considered a synoptic gospel.
  • Suppafly 2y ago
    So the reason it's not synoptic, is because it literally isn't synoptic. I love when the definition of a word explains what it means. No offense to the parent commenter but it's great when the answer to "why isn't x this thing with a definite meaning" answered by "because that definite meaning doesn't apply to x". I suspect most people have never considered that Synoptic might have a real definition and not just some hand-wavy religious one.
    • sheepdestroyer 2y ago
      "The vast majority of people" would use words without thinking they have etymology and meaning? Maybe you're only thinking about religious people who would have encountered this one in such a context? I don't frequent any so I am clueless, but if true I would suspect there could be more than correlation to the aptitude to use words without meaning and religiosity.
      • Suppafly 2y ago
        >"The vast majority of people" would use words without thinking they have etymology and meaning? That mostly seems to be true whenever you talk to people who don't specifically have some interest in linguistics. >Maybe you're only thinking about religious people who would have encountered this one in such a context? Yeah, presumably the original questioner (and myself because it's not something I've ever given much thought towards) didn't realize synoptic had a definition outside of religion, because knowing the definition would have answered their question.
• bluGill 2y ago
  John is mostly very different - it covers only a small number of events that are in the other gospel. John is thought to have been with Jesus (one of the disciples) and likely took his own notes so we can't say he didn't know what Jesus did, but the events he wrote about are almost entirely different. It is possible (but this is speculation) that John had some of the other gospel's and choose not to cover anything already in them unless it was really important, but it is just as possible he didn't know of (or maybe had heard of but never had access to?) the other gospels and wrote things all on his own.
  • 5555624 2y ago
    Matthew was one of the disciples, as well.
    • bluGill 2y ago
      Mark is thought to be Peter's son, and the gospel does read like Father telling his son the stories. (We know Peter had a son Mark, I don't know how sure we are that this is the same Mark though) Luke was not a disciple, but the rest of his works read like a scholar doing careful interviews of eye witnesses to find the truth.
      • sramsay 2y ago
        I'm pretty well read in this area, and I have never come across the theory that the Gospel of Mark was written by Peter's son (or even that Peter had a son, never mind his name). Where are you getting all of this? Most of the associations between Mark and Peter come from Papias (whom we possess only in fragments). He makes no suggestion of a filial relationship between the author of the second gospel and Peter.
        • bluGill 2y ago
          I Peter 5:13 identifies Mark as his son. It might just be a metaphor, but the text is clear enough that you should be aware of it.
• chasil 2y ago
  The Beloved Disciple is not mentioned in any of the others. That's the big thing.
• panick21_ 2y ago
  > Curious too when the various disciples lived, wrote. First, you can't just assume that 'the disciples' wrote those text. There is no evidence for that and lots of evidence against that. Basically no series scholars believe this anymore. These text came into being later without titles. They circulated without titles. Its later church fathers who just assigned names to them based on tradition. John is just to different. Especially in terms of 'Christology', meaning Jesus and his relationship to god. In Mark for example, Jesus basically doesn't say that he is the son of god. Mark Jesus is basically just a middle eastern wizard. In John Jesus is basically fully god doing some performance art in a human body. But many people still believe that John had access to some of the likely earlier gospels (and not necessary just those in the bible). While they are quite different, there is no way they can be fully different. Some apologist want you to believe that John is an independent oral tradition but that is not accepted by most secular scholars.
  • mrandish 2y ago
    > These text came into being later without titles. They circulated without titles. Its later church fathers who just assigned names to them based on tradition. As someone who was raised in the christian faith, learned the sunday school version of the bible and only later seriously studied the texts (first in theological seminary and later from a purely historical perspective after becoming an atheist) - it's remarkable how different the consensus of serious historians is from what most people learned in sunday school. As you've said, we don't even know who wrote the synoptic gospels, where or when (closer than estimated decades). Due to the lack of original documents, reliable contemporaneous accounts and other supporting evidence, we know shockingly little with any certainty. It's extremely unlikely the authors of the gospels were eyewitnesses to any of the events they describe. I was most surprised when I learned from later study just how much the canonical bible I'd learned as a child was retconned hundreds of years later through an opaque process of curation and editing by fractious groups of church leaders at events like the Council of Nicea. > In Mark for example, Jesus basically doesn't say that he is the son of god. Which is why the many inconsistencies in today's canonical new testament are even more remarkable. This is the most consistent version they could assemble from a far larger group of even more divergent, inconsistent texts. Ultimately, the bible we know today is descended from a pastiche of copies of copies, written over decades by unknown authors in different places and languages and then survived several 'negotiated settlements' between opposing factions arguing over arcane theological points under an overarching power dynamic trying to unite some semblance of a unified "church" (and even what we know of these councils is only the sanitized version written by the 'winners'). Applying an adult's experience of how large groups work and how ad hoc organizations adapt orthodoxies over time and distance (ie 'telephone game'), the only way to not see the synoptic gospels as randomized fan fiction largely unrelated to any actual historical events is to believe that god miraculously intervened dozens of times over hundreds of years to force an historically "correct" bible to be the surviving version we know today.
• jfengel 2y ago
  The synoptic gospels have a huge amount of overlapping text between them. Over three-quarters of Mark's content is found in both Matthew and Luke, and 97% of Mark is found in at least one of the other two synoptic gospels. Much of that is word-for-word quoting. Either they were copying off each other, or were copying from some other source. That's the sense in which they were "synoptic". John is a separate document. It does tell different stories, but more importantly, it has completely different text even when the stories do overlap. It is widely thought that the writer of John had access to some of the other gospels. But he wrote his text from scratch.
• EdwardDiego 2y ago
  Well, it contains things not found in the other three - the wedding at Cana with the water into wine bit etc.
• secretmark 2y ago
  John has a higher Christology in addition to what other people said