Eldon N Spady

The Four Gospels Eldon N Spady

In my reading of the Four Gospels, I've found that many times all four authors wrote about the same incident. Other times an author wrote about incidents that only he or maybe one or two other authors recorded. Sometimes the accounts of an incident are almost verbatim, and sometimes their memories of what happened vary quite a bit. This has intrigued me. As you will see in Introduction to Authors, the writings were done anywhere from 28 to 50 years after the incidents actually happened or after the words were uttered. So these writers were depending both on their memories and on the inspiration of God, with the possible exception of Matthew, who knew shorthand and allegedly took notes. Two of the authors, Mark and Luke, were not present at any of the incidents, depending completely on word of mouth and, like their earlier brethren, the inspiration of God. The comparisons that follow are my effort to put incidents related by more than one author side by side, so that I can easily study them, understand why they differ, and/or marvel at their similarities.