The Synoptic Gospels

Etymology: to see with the same eye

The term “synoptic” is derived from the Greek synopsis (σύνοψις), composed of syn (σύν, “with, together”) and opsis (ὄψις, “view, sight”). A synopsis is literally something that can be seen at a single glance. Applied to the gospels, the adjective designates the three narratives that can be placed side by side, in three columns, to compare, short passage by short passage — what exegetes call a “pericope” —, their content, order, and wording.

This arrangement is not a mere scholarly fancy: it becomes obvious as soon as one tries it. Where John follows Jesus to Jerusalem for several Passovers and delivers long discourses on the bread of life or the good Shepherd, the synoptics organize almost everything around a Galilean ministry followed by a single journey to Jerusalem culminating in the Passion. The same skeleton is found from one gospel to another: baptism, temptations, healings and exorcisms, parables of the Kingdom, Peter’s confession, Transfiguration, entry into Jerusalem, last supper, cross, and empty tomb.

Griesbach and the birth of the synopses (1776)

The tool that gave its name to the category is an invention of the late 18th century. In 1776, the German exegete Johann Jakob Griesbach published in Halle a Synopsis Evangeliorum Matthaei, Marci et Lucae: he printed the three texts in parallel columns to facilitate systematic comparison^[3]. It is from this work that the use of the term “synoptic gospels” comes.

In short, where John soars, the other three walk side by side on the same path.

Griesbach did not merely create a tool: by arranging the columns, he made the enigma visible. Once the texts are aligned, agreements and disagreements become measurable — and the “synoptic problem” became, for two centuries, one of the great tasks of exegesis.

Why John is not a synoptic gospel

Setting John apart is not to disparage it: it is to recognize its uniqueness. Four major differences separate it from the synoptic trio.

First, the chronology: John mentions at least three Passovers, suggesting a public ministry of two to three years, whereas the synoptics could be read as covering a single liturgical year. Then the geography: John makes repeated journeys to Jerusalem and Judea, while the synoptics concentrate the action in Galilee. Next, the style of teaching: John reports long meditative discourses and solemn “I am” statements (the bread, the light, the vine), whereas the synoptics favor brief parables and sayings. Finally, the choice of episodes: John omits the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper but recounts the washing of the feet; he omits exorcisms but includes seven spectacular “signs” such as the wedding at Cana or the raising of Lazarus.

Tradition very early perceived this complementarity. According to Clement of Alexandria, as reported by Eusebius, John wrote last, “seeing that the external facts had been made plain in the Gospel,” to compose “a spiritual gospel”^[4]. Far from opposing one another, the four complement each other: three converging views on the humanity of the Savior, and one contemplative view on his divinity.

The Synoptics are not interchangeable. Each has a traditional author, an audience, a theological tone, and a unique way of presenting Jesus. Reading them as a single block would erase what the Spirit intended to give through four pens.

The Gospel According to Saint Matthew

The unanimous tradition of the Church attributes this first gospel to Saint Matthew, the tax collector turned apostle — with the testimonies of Papias and Saint Irenaeus as guarantors (see the § on tradition) — and it is directed toward a Jewish-Christian audience. Everything shows that Jesus fulfills the Scriptures of Israel: the genealogy goes back to Abraham, quotations from the Old Testament punctuate the narrative (“so that what was spoken by the prophet might be fulfilled”), and Jesus appears as the new Moses who climbs the mountain to give the new Law. Matthew organizes the teaching into five major discourses, including the Sermon on the Mount and its Beatitudes.

It is the most “ecclesial” of the gospels: only Matthew uses the word Church (ekklēsia) and reports the promise made to Peter: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church” (Mt 16:18). It opens with Emmanuel, “God with us,” and closes with the sending on mission and the promise: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt 28:20).

The Gospel According to Saint Mark

The shortest and probably the oldest according to contemporary exegesis, the gospel of Mark is also the most vivid. The narrative is fast-paced, punctuated by the adverb “immediately,” which appears dozens of times. There is no infancy narrative: Mark begins with the baptism and immediately launches Jesus into action, multiplying healings and exorcisms.

Its theology centers on the cross and what exegetes call the “messianic secret”: Jesus often imposes silence on his true identity, which only fully bursts forth at the foot of the cross, from the mouth of a pagan centurion: “Truly this man was the Son of God” (Mk 15:39). Tradition makes Mark the interpreter of Peter in Rome, writing for Christians who came from paganism, to whom he explains Jewish customs.

The Gospel According to Saint Luke

A physician and companion of Saint Paul, Luke writes the longest of the gospels and the only one to receive a sequel, the Acts of the Apostles. He addresses a Greek-cultured audience, carefully crafts his style, and opens his work with a historian’s prologue:

“Many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that were accomplished among us… That is why I too decided, after gathering precise information concerning all that happened from the beginning, to write for you, excellent Theophilus, an orderly account, so that you may know the certainty of the teachings you have heard.” — Gospel According to Saint Luke 1:1-4^[5]

Luke is the gospel of mercy and the poor: he alone gives us the parables of the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, and the lost sheep, as well as special attention to women, the sick, and the outcasts. It is also the gospel of prayer and joy, and the one that transmitted to us the Nativity narrative, Mary’s Magnificat, and the canticles of Zechariah and Simeon.

The Four Living Creatures: Man, Lion, Ox, Eagle

Very early, Christian tradition associated each evangelist with one of the four living creatures seen by the prophet Ezekiel (Ez 1:10) and the author of Revelation (Rev 4:7): a human face, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, at the end of the 2nd century, proposed a first distribution^[6]. But it is the attribution of Saint Jerome that became established in Western Christian art^[7].

This symbolism, carved on cathedral tympana and painted in gospel books, is not a decorative fancy: it expresses that the four accounts, diverse in their starting points, converge toward the one Christ, “king, priest, man, and God.”

Striking Similarities, Real Differences

The "synoptic problem" is the question of the literary relationships between Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It arises from a twofold observation. On one hand, the similarities are so strong that they cannot be explained by mere coincidence of independent witnesses: the order of episodes is identical over long sequences, the same words, the same parenthetical remarks, sometimes even shared editorial parentheses. On the other hand, the differences are real: episodes unique to a single Gospel, variations in the words of Jesus, divergences in order or detail.

Numbers, handled cautiously, give an idea of the entanglement. The Gospel of Mark contains about 661 verses. The vast majority of its content—around 90%—is found in Matthew, and more than half in Luke^[8]. Conversely, about 230 verses are common to Matthew and Luke but not found in Mark: these are mostly sayings of Jesus (Beatitudes, Our Father, temptations in the desert), which scholars group under the label "Q."

Understanding the Issue Through a Simple Image

To grasp the problem without jargon, imagine three friends who write down the same journey they experienced together. If they spontaneously use the same rare words, quote the same phrases in the same order, and even reproduce the same asides, one can guess that they did not simply each remember on their own: one probably read the text of another, or all drew from common notes. This is exactly what we observe among the synoptics.

The image has its limits: it is not slavish copying, but a living transmission where each evangelist reworks, shortens, rearranges, and illuminates according to his audience. The synoptic problem consists precisely in reconstructing this network of dependencies—who wrote first, who used whom, and whether one or more now-lost sources must be assumed.

No solution is imposed by the Church, and none has definitively prevailed among scholars. Four major families of hypotheses compete.

The Augustinian Hypothesis: Priority of Matthew

The oldest is that of Saint Augustine. In his treatise De consensu evangelistarum (The Harmony of the Evangelists), he holds the traditional order—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John—as the order of composition, and describes Mark as an abridger of Matthew:

"Mark follows closely and appears as his servant and abridger." — Saint Augustine, The Harmony of the Evangelists, Book I^[9]

This hypothesis has the weight of the oldest tradition, which always places Matthew first, and the testimony of the Church Fathers. It prevailed for a long time and still has defenders.

The Griesbach Hypothesis: The Two Gospels

In the 18th century, Griesbach proposed a variant: Matthew first, then Luke who uses Matthew, and finally Mark who summarizes and combines the two. Revived and defended in the 20th century by the American William R. Farmer^[10], this "two-gospel" hypothesis retains the priority of Matthew and does without any lost source: there is no need for "Q," since all the common material is explained by direct dependence among the three known texts.

The Two-Source Hypothesis: Mark and "Q"

This is today the majority solution in academic exegesis. It rests on two pillars: the priority of Mark (Mark, the shortest, was written first and used by the other two) and the existence of a sayings source "Q" (from the German Quelle, "source") to explain the 230 verses common to Matthew and Luke but absent from Mark.

Outlined by Christian Hermann Weisse in 1838, systematized by Heinrich Julius Holtzmann in 1863, it received its classic form with Burnett Hillman Streeter in 1924, in The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins^[11]. Its arguments are serious: the brevity of Mark, its Greek less polished than that of Matthew and Luke (hard to imagine that Matthew and Luke "degraded" a more polished text), and the fact that Matthew and Luke almost never agree against Mark in the order of episodes.

The Farrer Hypothesis: Mark Without "Q"

A fourth, more recent approach accepts the priority of Mark but eliminates "Q." Formulated by the Englishman Austin Farrer in a 1955 essay titled On Dispensing with Q, it is defended today by Michael Goulder and Mark Goodacre^[12]. The idea: Matthew used Mark, then Luke used both Mark and Matthew. There is no need to postulate a lost document of which no manuscript has ever been found.

What Is the "Q" Source—and Should We Believe in It?

The "Q" source is a working hypothesis, not a discovered document. It is postulated to account for the sayings common to Matthew and Luke. But it must be said clearly: no manuscript of "Q" has ever been found, no Church Father mentions it, and its contours remain a scholarly reconstruction. Some researchers have even attributed to it successive "layers" and a community that produced it—fragile extrapolations built on a text that exists only by deduction.

A Catholic reader can therefore accept "Q" as a possible explanatory convenience, without making it a dogma or a prerequisite. The Farrer hypothesis proves, moreover, that the same data can be explained without "Q." Prudence is especially necessary when authors transform a hypothetical source into a machine to dissolve the historicity of the Gospels: that leap is not science, it is a presupposition.

Modern exegesis discusses literary dependencies; tradition, however, is remarkably consistent and ancient regarding the apostolic origin of the Gospels. These testimonies from the early centuries are not late legends: they go back to men who still touched the apostolic generation.

Papias: Mark as Peter’s interpreter, Matthew and the logia

The earliest testimony comes from Papias of Hierapolis (first half of the 2nd century), cited by the historian Eusebius of Caesarea. About Mark, Papias reports what he heard from a “presbyter”:

“Mark, having become Peter’s interpreter, wrote accurately, though not in order, all that he remembered of the Lord’s words and deeds. For he had neither heard nor followed the Lord; but later, as I said, he followed Peter, who gave his teaching as needed, without making an ordered composition of the Lord’s sayings.” — Papias, cited by Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, III, 39, 15^[13]

About Matthew, he adds a brief and much-discussed phrase:

“Matthew then wrote the logia in the Hebrew language, and each interpreted them as best he could.” — Papias, cited by Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, III, 39, 16^[14]

The Greek word logia (“oracles,” “sayings”) has sparked endless debates: does it designate a collection of sayings, an early Aramaic version of Matthew, or the entire Gospel? But the core of the testimony is clear: a direct link between Mark and Peter, and a Matthean origin in a Semitic milieu.

Irenaeus of Lyons: the four apostolic Gospels

Around 180, Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, a disciple of Polycarp who was himself a disciple of John, delivers the classic account of the four origins:

“Matthew published among the Hebrews, in their own language, a written Gospel, while Peter and Paul were evangelizing Rome and founding the Church there. After their departure, Mark, Peter’s disciple and interpreter, also handed down in writing what Peter had preached. Luke, Paul’s companion, recorded in a book the Gospel that he announced. Later, John, the Lord’s disciple, the very one who had leaned on His breast, published the Gospel during his stay in Ephesus.” — Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, III, 1, 1^[15]

This text is crucial: it attests, less than a century after the apostles, a firm memory linking each Gospel to an apostolic figure — Matthew, Peter (through Mark), Paul (through Luke), John.

Clement of Alexandria and Origen

At the turn of the 3rd century, Clement of Alexandria transmits a tradition according to which “the Gospels containing the genealogies” — Matthew and Luke — were written first^[16]. Origen, shortly after, fixes the canonical order of the four and confirms the received attributions^[17]. The diversity of these traditions about the exact order shows one thing: the early Church never claimed to settle the question of literary dependencies — but it always held, without hesitation, the apostolic origin of the four.

Saint Augustine and the harmony of the evangelists

At the turn of the 5th century, Saint Augustine devoted an entire treatise, De consensu evangelistarum, to showing that the Gospels do not contradict but complement each other. He directly confronts difficulties — differences in order, variants in words — and establishes a lasting principle of interpretation: the evangelists faithfully report the truth of what was said and done, without being bound to a verbatim exactness regarding order or exact words. This is already, in seed form, what Dei Verbum 11 will recall: Scripture teaches “firmly, faithfully and without error the truth that God wished to see recorded in the sacred Letters for our salvation” — this “for our salvation” saying why God speaks to us in Scripture, not what its inerrancy would cover^[18].

Arguments for an Early Dating

The earliest tradition places the composition of the Synoptics before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70, during the lifetime of direct witnesses to Jesus’ ministry. Several indications argue for this early writing. The most striking is the silence of the Acts of the Apostles. This sequel to the Gospel of Luke ends abruptly with Paul imprisoned in Rome, alive, around the year 62 (Acts 28:30-31). Yet Acts says nothing about three major events that occurred shortly after: the martyrdom of Paul (around 64-67), the Neronian persecution (64), and the destruction of the Temple (70).

In other words, the silence of Acts regarding Paul’s death and the fall of the Temple is most simply explained if Luke wrote before these events occurred.

The most economical explanation is that Luke wrote his second book before these tragedies. If Acts dates from the early 60s, then the Gospel of Luke, which precedes it, is even older—and Mark, which the majority theory supposes to be prior to Luke, is pushed back accordingly. This type of reasoning led the Anglican scholar John A. T. Robinson to propose, in Redating the New Testament (1976), dating the entire New Testament before 70^[19]. His thesis remains a minority view in contemporary academia, but it comes from a serious scholar and reminds us that the late “consensus” is less solid than often presented.

The Academic Consensus and Its Presuppositions

A portion of contemporary exegesis proposes rather a range of later dates: Mark around 65-70, Matthew and Luke around 80-90, John around 90-100. The main argument for placing Mark around 70 is his apparent knowledge of Jerusalem’s misfortunes; for Matthew and Luke, their supposed use of Mark requires a later date.

It should be noted that this argument rests on a questionable presupposition, not on new material fact: the gospels are often dated after 70 precisely because they contain the announcement of the Temple’s ruin (Mark 13; Luke 21), assuming from the outset that Jesus could not have truly prophesied the event. This reasoning is not neutral: it decides in advance that a genuine prophecy is impossible, then uses this decision to date the text—a circular argument that presupposes its own conclusion. For those who recognize Jesus as the Son of God, the announcement of Jerusalem’s destruction does not at all compel dating the text afterward, and the silence of Acts examined above remains the most economical clue.

What the Biblical Commission Said (1911-1912)

At the beginning of the 20th century, faced with radical criticism dismantling the authenticity of the gospels, the Pontifical Biblical Commission published decrees defending the apostolic origin of Matthew — Quaestiones de evangelio secundum Matthaeum (June 19, 1911) —, then, on June 26, 1912, two distinct acts: Quaestiones de evangeliis secundum Marcum et secundum Lucam, on the origin and dating of Mark and Luke, and De quaestione synoptica, which rejects the adoption, without traditional or historical foundation, of the two-source hypothesis while leaving exegetes free, under conditions, to discuss literary dependencies^[20]. As early as May 29, 1907, it had likewise affirmed that the apostle John — and no other — must be recognized as the author of the fourth gospel^[21]. These decisions, marked by their context of struggle against modernism, are not infallible definitions: the later magisterium, with Divino afflante Spiritu (1943) and Dei Verbum (1965), recognized exegetes’ real freedom of research regarding sources and dependencies. As early as 1955, the secretary and the assistant secretary of the Commission had themselves clarified the status of these decrees, including the 1907 decree on John: where they propose views with no connection, neither mediate nor immediate, to the truths of faith and morals, the exegete freely pursues his research, under the authority of the magisterium^[22]. But they express a constant: the Church refuses to dissolve the historicity of the gospels in the name of a method.

The Oldest Manuscripts

A frequent objection claims that the gospels were altered over the course of copying. The material facts say otherwise. The New Testament is, by far, the best-attested ancient text: thousands of Greek manuscripts, and fragments of great antiquity.

The oldest known fragment of the New Testament, Papyrus P52 (John Rylands Library, Manchester), contains a few verses from the Gospel of John and is dated to the first half of the 2nd century, around 125^[23]. For the Synoptics, Papyrus P45 (Chester Beatty Collection, 3rd century) contains portions of all four gospels and Acts, and Papyrus P75 transmits large sections of Luke and John^[24]. Following these are the great 4th-century codices, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, which give us the nearly complete New Testament^[25].

Remarkably Stable Transmission

The gap between the composition of the gospels (1st century) and our oldest substantial witnesses (2nd–4th centuries) is, on the scale of antiquity, extraordinarily short: by comparison, the oldest manuscripts of many classical authors date from nearly a thousand years after the original. The textual proximity between P75 and Codex Vaticanus, for example, shows that the same text was faithfully copied over more than a century. Variants exist, but they are overwhelmingly minor (spelling, word order) and do not affect any dogma. On this point, the argument of a “tampered text” runs up against the material reality of the sources.

The Three Stages: Jesus, the Apostles, the Evangelists

To hold together the historical rooting and the inspired nature of the Gospels, the Magisterium clarified, beginning with the instruction Sancta Mater Ecclesia of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (April 21, 1964), a clear distinction in three stages^[26] — the time of Jesus, the time of the apostles, the time of the evangelists —, taken up by Dei Verbum and then by the Catechism. The Catechism summarizes it as follows:

“In the formation of the Gospels three stages can be distinguished: 1. The life and teaching of Jesus. […] 2. The oral tradition. […] 3. The written Gospels.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 126^[27]

First stage: what Jesus actually did and taught. Second stage: after the Ascension, the apostles orally transmit his message “with that deeper understanding they enjoyed” in the light of the Resurrection and the Spirit. Third stage: the sacred authors put it into writing, choosing, synthesizing, and adapting according to the needs of the Churches. This framework defuses the false alternative between “raw reportage” and “invention”: the Gospels are a believing memory, faithful and theologically enlightened.

Historicity and Inerrancy: Dei Verbum

The conciliar constitution Dei Verbum unequivocally affirms the apostolic origin and historicity of the four Gospels:

“Holy Mother Church has held and holds firmly and, with the greatest constancy, that these four Gospels, whose historicity she affirms without hesitation, faithfully transmit what Jesus, the Son of God, during his life among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation, until the day he was taken up into heaven.” — Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, no. 19^[28]

The same text immediately acknowledges the editorial work of the evangelists, who composed “choosing certain elements from the many transmitted either orally or already in writing, writing a summary of others, or explaining them according to the situation of the Churches”^[29]. Inerrancy and free composition are therefore not opposed: God inspired true authors, with their style and intention, to transmit “firmly, faithfully and without error the truth that God wished to see recorded in sacred Scripture for our salvation” (Dei Verbum 11).

Neither Fundamentalist Naivety nor Modernist Dissolution

The Catholic stands here on a ridge. On one side, fundamentalism, which demands clockwork precision from every verse, misunderstands the nature of the Gospels: they are not transcripts but testimonies structured for faith. On the other side, modernism, which reduces the Gospels to projections of communities, empties the miracles of their reality, and makes the Resurrection a metaphor, betrays the very letter of Dei Verbum.

If one no longer holds that the evangelists really transmit Jesus, and not their own creative piety, one no longer deals with the faith of the Church, but with a reconstructed Jesus.

Pope Benedict XVI, in the foreword to Jesus of Nazareth, stated the principle: he trusts the Gospels and holds the Jesus they present to be a historically sensible and coherent figure^[30]. Recognizing the work of the editors, studying the sources, comparing the synopses—all this is legitimate and fruitful, provided one never loses sight of the essential: behind the four portraits, there is a real face, that of the Son of God made man.

The synoptic Gospels are not only an object of study: they nourish the prayer of the Church every day. The Catholic liturgy has organized its Sunday reading around them according to a cycle of three years: Year A is devoted to Matthew, Year B to Mark, Year C to Luke—John being read at major seasons, notably during Lent and the Easter season. Thus, every Christian community journeys through the three synoptic perspectives over three years.

The Catechism recalls the unique place of the Gospels among all the Scriptures:

“The Gospels are the heart of all the Scriptures, inasmuch as they constitute the witness par excellence to the life and teaching of the incarnate Word, our Savior.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 125^[31]

That is why tradition invites reading the Gospels not as a document of the past, but as an encounter. Lectio divina, contemplative prayer, meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary draw almost all their content from these accounts. Comparing the synoptics, far from being a cold exercise, then becomes a school of depth: seeing how Matthew, Mark, and Luke each illuminate a facet of the same Lord is learning to know Him better in order to love Him more.

• The datings of the life of Jesus — to deepen the chronology of Christ’s ministry.
• The destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 — the key event for the question of datings.
• How to respond to the objection of biblical contradictions — to address divergences between the Gospels.
• The Sermon on the Mount and The Beatitudes — at the heart of Matthew’s teaching.
• The Our Father — the prayer transmitted by the double tradition.
• The Passion according to the four Gospels — to compare the four accounts of the climax of Christ’s life.