The Gospel according to Luke, also called the Gospel of Luke, or simply Luke, tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Together with the Acts of the Apostles, it makes up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts; together they account for 27.5% of the New Testament.
Gospel originally meant the Christian message, but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out; in this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth, culminating in his trial and death and concluding with various reports of his post-resurrection appearances. The four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John share the same basic outline: Jesus begins his public ministry in conjunction with that of John the Baptist, calls disciples, teaches and heals and confronts the Pharisees, dies on the cross, and is raised from the dead. Each has its own distinctive understanding of Jesus and his divine role: Mark never calls him "God", Luke follows Mark's plot more faithfully than does Matthew but expands on him while eliminating some passages entirely, and John, the most overtly theological, is the first to make Christological judgements outside the context of the narrative of Jesus's life. They contain details which are irreconcilable, and attempts to harmonize them would be disruptive to their distinct theological messages.
Marcan priority, the hypothesis that the Gospel of Mark was the first-written of the three synoptic gospels and was used as a source by the other two is a central element in discussion of the synoptic problem – the question of the documentary relationship among these three gospels.
The two-source hypothesis is an explanation for the synoptic problem, the pattern of similarities and differences between the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It posits that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke were based on the Gospel of Mark and a hypothetical sayings collection from the Christian oral tradition called Q.
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are referred to as the synoptic Gospels because they include many of the same stories, often in a similar sequence and in similar or sometimes identical wording. They stand in contrast to John, whose content is largely distinct. The term synoptic comes via Latin from the Greek σύνοψις, synopsis, i.e. "(a) seeing all together, synopsis"; the sense of the word in English, the one specifically applied to these three gospels, of "giving an account of the events from the same point of view or under the same general aspect" is a modern one.
The empty tomb is the Christian tradition that on the morning of the first day of the week women followers of Jesus went to the place where he had been buried, where they found the body gone and the tomb occupied by angels. Beyond this the four gospels agree on very little. Mark, the earliest, ends with the women fleeing and telling no one what they have seen ; Matthew introduces guards and a curious doublet whereby the women are told twice, by the angels and then by Jesus, that he will meet the disciples in Galilee; Luke changes Mark's one "young man" to two, adds Peter's inspection of the tomb, and deletes the promise that Jesus would meet his disciples in Galilee; John introduces the "beloved disciple" who visits the tomb with Peter and understands its significance before Peter, and reduces the women to the solitary Mary Magdalene.
The Farrer hypothesis is a possible solution to the synoptic problem. The theory is that the Gospel of Mark was written first, followed by the Gospel of Matthew and then by the Gospel of Luke.
M source, which is sometimes referred to as M document, or simply M, comes from the M in "Matthean material". It is a hypothetical textual source for the Gospel of Matthew. M Source is defined as that 'special material' of the Gospel of Matthew that is neither Q source nor Mark.
William Sanday (1843–1920) was an English Anglican theologian and priest. He was the Dean Ireland's Professor of Exegesis of Holy Scripture from 1883 to 1895 and the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity from 1895 to 1919; both chairs were at the University of Oxford. He had previously been Master of Bishop Hatfield's Hall, University of Durham.
John S. (Seargeant) Kloppenborg is a Canadian professor of Religious Studies with expertise in Greco-Roman culture, Judean culture and Christian Origins, particularly the synoptic gospels and Q. He is presently at the University of Toronto, where he holds the distinguished title of "University Professor." He was elected a member of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in 1990, and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2014. In 2019-2020 he served as the president of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. He is also a member of The Context Group, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. He was awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Lethbridge (2011) and the University of Pretoria (2018)
Michael Douglas Goulder was a British biblical scholar who spent most of his academic life at the University of Birmingham where he retired as Professor of Biblical Studies in 1994. He was perhaps best known for his contributions to the Synoptic Problem, and specifically the Farrer hypothesis, which postulates Markan priority but dispenses with the Q document, suggesting instead that Luke knew the contents of Matthew. Goulder was also associated with the theory that the evangelists were highly creative authors, and that Matthew and Luke had only minimal source material. In recent years, he wrote widely on a theory of Christian origins that sees a fundamental opposition between Paul the Apostle on one side and the Jerusalem Christians Peter and James, Jesus' brother, on the other. This has been seen as reviving a hypothesis proposed by Ferdinand Christian Baur of the Tübingen school.
Robert Lisle Lindsey, also known as Bob Lindsey (1917–1995), founded together with David Flusser the Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research.
A four-document hypothesis or four-source hypothesis is an explanation for the relationship between the three Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It posits that there were at least four sources to the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke: the Gospel of Mark and three lost sources. It was proposed by B. H. Streeter in 1925, who refined the two-source hypothesis into a four-source hypothesis.
David Laird Dungan was Distinguished Professor of the Humanities and Emeritus Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a major scholar of the synoptic problem. As a founding member of the International Institute for the Renewal of Gospel Studies and a member of the Research Team of the International Institute for Gospel Studies, he was a proponent of the Two-Gospel Hypothesis, also known as the Griesbach hypothesis, which argues that the Gospel of Mark is derived from the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, thereby arguing against both Markan priority and the necessity of the conjectural Q document proposed in the two-source hypothesis. He authored numerous articles and books on the subject, including A History of the Synoptic Problem.
Dennis Ronald MacDonald is the John Wesley Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Claremont School of Theology in California. MacDonald proposes a theory wherein the earliest books of the New Testament were responses to the Homeric Epics, including the Gospel of Mark and the Acts of the Apostles. The methodology he pioneered is called Mimesis Criticism. If his theories are correct then "nearly everything written on [the] early Christian narrative is flawed." According to him, modern biblical scholarship has failed to recognize the impact of Homeric Poetry.
The historical reliability of the Gospels refers to the reliability and historic character of the four New Testament gospels as historical documents. While all four canonical gospels contain some sayings and events which may meet one or more of the five criteria for historical reliability used in biblical studies, the assessment and evaluation of these elements is a matter of ongoing debate. Almost all scholars of antiquity agree that a human Jesus existed, but scholars differ on the historicity of specific episodes described in the Biblical accounts of Jesus, and the only two events subject to "almost universal assent" are that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified by the order of the Roman Prefect Pontius Pilate. Elements whose historical authenticity is disputed include the two accounts of the Nativity of Jesus, the miraculous events including the resurrection, and certain details about the crucifixion.
Christopher M. Tuckett is a British biblical scholar and Anglican priest. He holds the Title of Distinction of Professor of New Testament Studies at the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford.
The Q source is a hypothetical written collection of primarily Jesus' sayings (logia). Q is part of the common material found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke but not in the Gospel of Mark. According to this hypothesis, this material was drawn from the early Church's oral tradition.
Advanced by Dennis R. MacDonald, the Q+/Papias hypothesis (Q+/PapH) offers an alternative solution to the synoptic problem. MacDonald prefers to call this expanded version of Q Logoi of Jesus, which is supposed to have been its original title.
The Marcion hypothesis or Marcionite priority is a possible solution to the synoptic problem. This hypothesis claims that the first produced or compiled gospel was that of Marcion and that this gospel of Marcion was used as inspiration either for some of the canonical gospels, or for all the canonical gospels. The major supporter of this hypothesis is at present Matthias Klinghardt.
