Gospels Take the Central Part Term Paper

Total Length: 1341 words ( 4 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: -5

Page 1 of 4

Gospel of John was written already after the disciple's death in the first century CE. It was time when there was coming a vivid schism in Christianity teaching, as Christian philosophy was influencing changes caused by the impact of Gnosticism of Greeks, and it was time when some Christian religious leaders rejected the Devine mission of Christ. In gospel, John comes to the original language used by Jesus Christ, He used when speaking to disciples, language close to original one of Palestine and to the events of that epoch. John tried to deliver the message to reader that was preached by Jesus Christ to his disciples explaining main moral and ethical aspects of Christianity, the core teaching one has to follow in order to receive salvation. The gospel of John is something more than a simple story about Christ's miracles, and simple faith in his all-mighty Devine nature, it's moral, its ethics and it's philosophy of the right way of life in Christ.

These features make gospel of John to stand apart from other gospels. The words of Jesus about himself are different from those we find in other gospels, as they show the essence of Jesus. To prove it George Ladd uses the following quotes: "Jesus said unto them. I am the bread of life (6:35) I am the door of the sheep (10:7) I am the good shepherd (10:11) I am the light of the world (8:12) I am the resurrection, and the life (11:25)" and what is most important: "Before Abraham was born, I am (8:58)," which is the central point of Christian theology that Jesus Christ is not a prophet like Moses was, but is God.

Besides, the vocabulary of John is different from that used in other gospels. On the hand with such words as "eternal life," "light and darkens" he uses those which are not typical for texts of other disciples' gospels: "love" "to love," "truth," "witness" and especially "to believe in." Besides John doesn't use the following words that we observe in texts of other gospels: "power," "miracle," "pray," "parable.
" (according to Ladd's Theology of New Testament) As we can see the specific vocabulary witnesses the spiritual meaning of John's gospel and its orientation on the salvation of the human soul, not a simple believe as Luke says: "Blessed is the one who believes..."(Luke 1:41-45)

It would be really difficult to disagree that John has more comments than authors of other gospels, especially in the questions concerning theological accents. Gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke are written more like a history, than like theology, while John had covered clearly the facts, which were slightly mentioned by other disciples.

As we can find the role of gospels expands over the limits of simple informing us about "supplementary words" of Jesus Christ or telling his bibliography, as gospels not only draw the image of Jesus but sum up His teaching. Matthew and Luke seem to freely use the material they had borrowed from Mark and interpret the teaching of Jesus in quite a free manner. From the historical perspective the main reason of such interpretation was the historical atmosphere that took place on the territories of Roman Empire, where the disciples preached and they had to "adjust" the teaching according to the local and ethnical particularities of every specific location. Theological narration of John's gospel may seem to be free as well, but this "freedom" is the result of John's attempt to create the most realistic and true-like image of Christ (Ladd, G. Theology of New Testament p.311). And because of that, historical or "objective" narration had so tightly interwoven John's comments that it appears impossible to separate facts from discourses.

Bibliography

New Testament: Gospel of John, Gospel of Mark

Helms, R. Who wrote the gospels? Penguin 1997

Kirby, Peter Gospel of John, Article available on web: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/john.html

Kirby, Peter Gospel of Mark, Article available on web: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/mark.html

Ladd, G.E. Hagner, D. A Theology of the New Testament Eerdmans Publishing Company; Revised edition, 1993.....

Need Help Writing Your Essay?