There are three gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), which agree largely in what they say.

They are
called SYNOPTIC.

The three gospels organize their materials taking into account a fixed scheme:

1.- The time of Jesus with John the Baptist.

2.- Jesus in Galilee: Preaching of the Kingdom of God.
3.- The march and the road to Jerusalem.
4.- His last days: Passion, Death and Resurrection.

The Gospel of Saint Mark is the oldest. Matthew and Luke set up their gospel narrative on the model
of Mark.
Matthew and Luke have a common source, called Source Q (it comes from the German word Quelle,
which means fountain), which was a writing that contained sayings and sentences of Jesus.

SAN MARCOS

Date: between the 60s and 70s.

Recipients: Christians of pagan origin.
Objective: show the characteristics of Jesus' messianism.
Author: Tradition attributes it to John Mark, collaborator of Paul and later of Peter
Place of composition: cities of Rome and Antioch.

SAINT LUCAS
Date: between the 70s-90s.
Recipients: communities that emerged in the pagan world.
Objective: show the characteristics of the followers of Jesus.
Author: Possibly Luke, Paul's companion.
Place of composition: no agreement (Ephesus, Corinth, Rome?).

SAINT MATTHEW
Date: Around the year 80 or something later.
Recipients: Christians of Jewish descent.
Objective: Encourage your community to follow the teachings of Jesus, model and savior.
Author: Christian of Jewish origin. Tradition has identified him with the apostle Matthew.
Place of composition: the region of Syria or Antioch
 SAN JUAN
This gospel breaks the mold of the synoptics. It is distinguished from others by its style, vocabulary
and structure.
The structure: The path of Jesus begins in the Father and ends in the Father; the setting of his life is
Galilee and Judea; His themes attempted to show Jesus as a manifestation of divine truth.
Date: the last writing between the 90s and 100s.
Recipients: Christians from the community of John the Evangelist.
Objective: Jesus reveals himself as son of God and savior of the world.
Author: Tradition attributes it to the apostle John.
Place of composition: Ephesus, a city in Asia Minor, or the region of Syria bordering Palestine.

Christian sources on the historicity of Jesus Christ

Existence of Jesus
There are historical documents that corroborate the veracity of the figure of Jesus.

By P. Antonio Rivero, LC | Source: Jesus Christ Book.

The new Testament.
The Christian testimonies that we have are collected in the New Testament and form a
set of 27 writings. It must be said that the New Testament is not a history book. It is a
set of books that contains the announcement of the message of faith. There is a lot of
historical data in it, more than in the rest of the non-Christian books, but the most
important thing is faith and conversion. For this reason, we cannot look at these books
with the eyes of a historian, but with the heart of a believer.

There are also other Christian books that speak of Jesus Christ, but they have not been
received by the Church as authentic and revealed. In them, marvelous exaggeration,
miraculous human admiration, and particular reflections count more than faith and
history. These books are called Apocrypha.

The New Testament is composed of:

 The Four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
 The acts of the apostles.
 The fourteen Letters of Saint Paul.
 The seven so-called Catholic letters (from James, 1 and 2 of Peter; 1, 2 and 3 of Saint
John, and Jude Thaddeus)
 The apocalypse.

The gospels are the most important source on the historicity of Jesus Christ. They were
written in light of Easter. The editors used previous written documents, in a first
compilation, and personal research, while giving their writings their own theological
intentionality. One of these previous documents is the so-called Quelle (source in
German) that collected speeches and logia (short memorizable phrases) of Christ,
already existing in the 1940s, which was used by Luke and Matthew. Another written
source is the one known as the "triple tradition", which collects the facts of the life of
Christ, which were available in the three synoptics (Matthew, Mark, Luke). We have valid
criteria that allow us to listen, if not to the "very words of Jesus" (obsession of the last
century), at least the authentic message of Jesus and to reach some facts that "really
happened" that belong to Jesus of Nazareth.
Furthermore, they are the path to an encounter with the true Jesus, since they are the
main source to know Jesus. Now, the Gospels are not a biography in the modern sense.
They are, in reality, a compilation of the message and fundamental facts of Christ,
written to communicate faith in Him. These facts and these words of Christ, before being
written down at the beginning of the sixties by the synoptics and the year one hundred
by John, the early Christian community had transmitted them in their liturgy and in their
preaching.

In the Gospels we find a true story of Christ: "Holy Mother Church has firmly maintained
and maintains that the four Gospels referred to - whose historicity it affirms without a
doubt - faithfully transmit what Jesus, Son of God, effectively did and taught during his
life among men, for his eternal salvation until the day he was taken up into heaven."

Is the Jewish Jesus, real and historical, the same Christ as the one preached
by the apostles and the faith of the Church? Are the Gospels historical
narratives or are they inventions of those who knew Jesus? By reading the
Gospels, do we get closer to the true historical Jesus?

Many solutions have been given from the Protestant camp, but some end up saying that
the historical Christ is not the same as the Christ preached by the apostles and shown to
us in the Gospels. The pro theologian The most influential testator named Bultmann says
that he is not interested in the historical Jesus, but rather in the Jesus of faith. The
message of Jesus is interesting, he says; The rest is myth invented by the apostles:
virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, etc.

Given the importance of this issue, we will say the following, trying to find the part of
truth and error that is hidden behind these positions.

The Gospels transmit the true Jesus Christ.

The facts they narrate were known to everyone; either for having seen them personally,
or for having heard them from those who saw them. They could not, therefore, disfigure
anything of reality. In this case they would have been denied, and there is no trace of
rectifications. If the evangelists had said what was not true, their Gospels would have
been rejected by that generation that witnessed the events. There is no document that
shows this rejection.

On the other hand, the apocryphal gospels, which lack historical rigor, were commonly
rejected. They are fanciful and implausible stories. They contain errors in the geography
of Palestine, and lack fidelity to the historical framework. These gospels have never been
accepted by the Church, because they are not contained in the Canon of Muratori, which
is a list of inspired books made by the Church in the second century.

The data that the Gospels give about the geography of the country, the political and
religious situation, and customs, agree with what we know about all this from other
sources. Furthermore, the evangelists died to defend the truth of what they said; and no
one gives their life for what they know is a lie.

Apart from the fact that since they are inspired by God they cannot make mistakes or
lie. The Second Vatican Council says that the entire Bible is inspired by God. And Saint
Paul: "The Scripture is inspired by God."

The Gospels are, in reality, catechesis and testimony of faith of people who believe in
Christ and who want to communicate the faith they have. They were written in the light
of Easter.

The fact that the Gospels are a testimony of faith does not mean that they do not
contain true historical content. We affirm with the Church that at the origin of the
Gospels are the acts and words of Jesus. But these words, facts and events of his life
have passed to us, to our Gospels through various means or processes:

First: Christ did not write anything, he only preached the Good News.
Second: the first activity of the apostles after the ascension of Christ is to orally
proclaim that Good News of Jesus. Once Jesus died, once he was resurrected, his
disciples preach that in him, in his words and in his life, salvation has been given for all
men.

They preach what they had seen and heard, under the light of the resurrection and
Pentecost. They also turned to the Old Testament to better understand everything
related to Jesus. And when transmitting the sayings and actions of Jesus they took into
account the circumstances of their listeners, with the consequent variations.

Finally, a compilation and written recording of words, deeds and events from the life of
the Lord begin, which the disciples told to raise faith. The extensive collection of Jesus'
words is called the "Q source." Each sacred writer selected the material that suited him
for the recipients of his work. The evangelists did not primarily intend to "tell" a story of
Jesus, but rather to found the faith of their recipients. Mark makes an effort to
synthesize all the materials and organizes them within his gospel. Matthew and Luke
take advantage of this scheme of Mark and complete it, attaching other materials they
had at their disposal. The evangelist John does the same.

Let's draw some important conclusions:

In the reading of the Gospels the true face of Jesus Christ is transmitted. A meditated,
believing reading, in union with Jesus Christ and in fraternal charity, gives a deep and
true knowledge of Jesus.

It is necessary to be in permanent contact with the writings of the New Testament to

rediscover the face of Jesus Christ: his human and divine dimensions. This permanent
contact is necessary to not turn Jesus into a myth; not idealize and disembodied the
image of Jesus; not allow ourselves to be captured by ideologies; rediscover unity in the
same faith; not to make Jesus a purely human ideal; not settle for our projections and
desires; find the way to God, without losing man.

When reading the Gospel, one realizes that there are texts of very different categories:
some narrate the childhood of Jesus, others his activity in Galilee; others narrate words
that Jesus said, others narrate facts, teachings, the passion or the resurrection. The
important thing is that all the texts depend on Jesus, they refer to Jesus. Now, some
 depend on Jesus directly, others update or interpret the acts or sayings of the Lord. But
all are necessary for the historical knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Why are there similarities and differences?

Each evangelist transmits to us, along with his story, his own interest, his accents, his
personal or cultural aspects. But there is no doubt that there is a fundamental identity
with respect to the Person of whom they speak and even the events they narrate.
Therefore, to find the true image of Jesus Christ you cannot choose one text and reject
others. Nor can texts that do not coincide with my way of seeing things be disregarded.
They must all be taken into account, although it is possible to make a distinction given
the nature of the text in question. It's like taking a photograph from different angles of
view.

Why do some today want to deny the historicity of the Gospels, following the
Protestant school of Bultmann?

Today no one worries about the problem of the historicity of the Koran (after all, the
Koran is an eclectic compilation of doctrines, and Muhammad, who claimed to have a
divine revelation, never justified it by miracles); and yet many are concerned about the
historicity of the Gospels. The reason is clear: other religions do not have the originality
of Christianity. Christianity presents itself as God among us, as God himself incarnated
to redeem us from the great impotence that weighs on humanity: sin, evil and death. It
is the doctrine of fraternal communion in Christ; That is why he is persecuted, that is
why many have to account for him. As Daniélou said, the ultimate cause of the
persecution of Christianity lies in its supreme beauty, in the beauty that radiates from
the truth.

Are there some criteria for the historicity of the Gospels?

Multiple source criterion: when we find evangelical data in the different sources that
make up the Gospels, we are certain that it is historical data.
Discontinuity criterion: when a piece of information is totally contrary to the
mentality of the primitive community, it cannot be said that it is the one that invented it.
Pe the title "Son of Man", she neither used it nor understood it, how then could she
invent it?
Criterion of conformity: all exegetes agree that Jesus' preaching of the arrival of the
Kingdom is historical data. It is the core of your message.
Criterion of necessary explanation: we must admit as historical a data that appears
as the only explanation of a series of evangelical events and without which such events
would remain unexplained. Pe Either Christ instituted the Eucharist or it is not
understood that the Eucharist was celebrated everywhere and from the beginning within
the Church.
 Criterion of Jesus' own style: all exegetes agree that Jesus had a personal style, a
style made of undeniable authority: "But I tell you", and an unprecedented simplicity,
which makes him break all the schemes, trying preferably with children, the sick,
women, sinners.
We conclude this section by saying that the criteria presented here must be used
together. Only in this way do they give light and security. When we read the Gospels we
 hear, if not the very words of Jesus (an obsession of the last century), at least the
authentic message of Jesus for our eternal salvation.

 What does the faith of the Church say?

Without the adherence of faith there is no adequate knowledge of the Person and work
of Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospels are the only valid testimonies, even from a historical
point of view. Faith was necessary to write these texts. To understand them it is also
necessary. This adherence to faith has some important characteristics:
It is caused by the Holy Spirit. To know Jesus, God and man, we need the light of the
Spirit, because it is a mystery. God not only proposes himself to us from history, but
from within us he is working to open us to historical testimony in all its richness and
breadth.
The adherence of faith ends neither in Jesus nor in the Spirit, but in the Father.
Christology must be fundamentally Trinitarian. Jesus Christ takes us to the Father. God,
whom Jesus told us about, is his Father.
The adherence to faith has a community and ecclesiastical dimension. Outside the
Church there is no true, permanent, right and total knowledge of Jesus Christ. Those
who separate from the Church end up, sooner or later, with a blurred and inaccurate
figure of Jesus. Although the Spirit is not confined within the limits of the institutional
Church and blows where it wants, it is also true that this Spirit guides the Church,
illuminates it, calls it to unity in charity. What role do movements within the Church
have in presenting the face of Christ? If they are united with the Pope and the bishops,
they will present the true face of Christ; If not, they will give rise to tensions and
difficulties and will end in dissolution.
CONCLUSION: The Gospels are a gift from God to the world, they are a gift that only
asks for generous hands to receive and open it, a believing heart to welcome it, a
sincere mouth to transmit it and agile feet to carry it everywhere, so that everyone may
know, admire and share the love and beauty of Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God.
Q Font
The Q Source (also known as the Q Document, Q Gospel, Gospel of Q Sayings or simply Q, derived
from German, Quelle, 'source') is a hypothetical collection of sayings of Jesus, accepted as one of the
two written sources behind the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke. Q is defined as the
"common" material that can be found in Matthew and Luke and that cannot be found in their other
written source, the Gospel of Mark. This ancient text is supposedly based on the oral tradition of the
early Church and contains the lodge or "sayings" of Jesus.1

Along with the priority of Mark, hypothesis Q was formulated in 1900, and is one of the foundations
of the modern school of the Gospel.2 B. H. Streeter formulated the most widely accepted view of Q:
that it was a written document (not an oral tradition) written in Greek, that virtually all of its content
appears in Matthew, Luke, or both, and that Luke most often preserves the original order. of the text
that Matthew. In the two-source hypothesis, both Matthew and Luke would have used Mark and Q as
sources. Some scholars have postulated that Q is actually a plurality of sources, some written and
some oral. Others have attempted to determine the phases in which Q was composed.3

The existence of Q has been challenged on occasion.3 One of Q's most notable skeptics is Mark
Goodacre, a professor of New Testament at Duke University.4 The omission of what should have
been a highly prized document from the archives primitives of the Church, as well as the mentions of
the fathers of the early Church, could be seen fundamentally and simply as a great puzzle of modern
Biblical Study.5 However, other scholars explain this point by pointing out that copying Q would not
have been necessary, being inserted in other texts, mainly two non-canonical gospels that achieved
great preeminence. The editorial board of the International Q Project states: "During the second
century, when the canonization process was taking place, scribes did not make new copies of Q,
since the canonization process involved choosing what should and should not be used in church
services. Hence they preferred to make copies of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, where Jesus'
sayings from Q onwards were rewritten to avoid misunderstandings, and to fit their own situation and
understanding of what Jesus really wanted to say."6 Despite Of these challenges, the two-source
hypothesis maintains broad support.3

History of the Q font

They are found partly in the inspired books of the New Testament , partly in uninspired writings. The “Sayings”
transmitted in uninspired works are also called Agrapha , that is, “unwritten” (under inspiration).

This article is limited to the canonical Jesu Lodge. Even this title encompasses a broader area than is
technically covered by the term Sayings of Jesus . Strictly speaking, all the words of Christ that appear in the
inspired books of the New Testament are canonical Logia Jesu, while the technical expression includes only
the "Sayings of Jesus" of which Saint Papias speaks in a passage preserved by Eusebius (Hist. Ecl.,
III.39.16).

The question concerning the Jesu Lodge, taken in this restricted sense, has become important because of its
connection with the so-called "synoptic problems." Lessing (Neue Hypothesen uber die Evangelisten, ed.
Lachmann, XI, -§ 53) considered the "Gospel of the Hebrews" as the source of the three canonically accepted
Synoptic Gospels . Eichhorn (Einleitung in das Neue Testament, 1804) accepted as his source a primitive
gospel, which contained the forty-two sections common to the Synoptics; Composed in Aramaic by the
Apostles , shortly after Pentecost , and later translated into Greek, it gave a summary of the ministry of Christ,
and served as a guide to the early evangelists in their preaching. Bleek and de Wette, in their "Introductions",
substituted Eichhorn's “Gospel of the Hebrews” for a gospel composed in Galilee , which was the source of
Matthew and Luke; In our second Gospel we have, then, a compendium of the first and third Gospels.

A large number of other writers tried to solve the synoptic problem by the theory of the mutual dependence of
the first three Gospels; still others, through recourse to unwritten traditions. It was at this juncture that
Schleiermacher ("Ueber die Zeugnisse des Papias von unseren beiden ersten Evangelien" in "Studien and
Kritiken", 1832, IV) tried to demonstrate that Papias' texts on Matthew and Mark do not refer to our first and
second Gospels, but to some early Matthew and Mark. Shortly afterwards, Credner (Einleitung, 1836) found in
early Mark the source of all the historical material contained in the Synoptics, and in early Matthew the source
of the discourses in the First and Third Gospels. Weisse ("Evangelische Geschichte", 1838; "Die Evangelien-
Frage", 1856) concurs with Credner, but replaces our canonical Mark with Credner's proto-Mark.

Credner's hypothesis was followed with slight modifications by Reuss ("Geschichte der heil. Schrift N. T.", 3rd.
ed. 1860), Holtzmann ("Die synoptischen Evangellen II, 1862), Weizsacicer (l Untersuchungen uberdie evang.
Gesch.", 1864), Beyschlag ("Die apostolische Spruchsammlung" in "Studien and Kritiken", 1881, IV), from
Pressense ("Jesus-Christ, son temps", etc., 7ma. ed., 1884), and others, all of whom accepted the Lodge and
proto-Mark as the sources of the Synoptics. The Lodge and our Mark have been considered sources of the
first three Gospels, although with various explanations, by such scholars as G. Meyer ("La question
synoptique", 1878), Sabatier (in Encycl. des sciences religieuses, XI, 781 ff.), Keim (Geschichte Jesu I, 72,
77), Wendt (Die Lehre Jesu, 1), Nosgen (cf. Stud. or. Krit., 1876-80), Grau (Entwicklungsgeschichte des N. T.
Schriftthums, 1871), Lipsius (cf. Feine, "Jahrb. F. prot. Theol.", 1885), and B. Weiss ("Jahrb. F. deutsch.
Theol.", 1864; "Das Markusevang. or. seine synopt. Parallelen", 1872; "Das Matthausevang.", 1876; "Einl. in
days N. T.", 1886).

As for the content of the Lodge, the work must have contained most of the material common to Matthew and
Luke, with the exception of that which these Gospels share with Mark. This material amounts to approximately
one-sixth of the text of the third Gospel, and two-elevenths of the text of the first Gospel. In these parts, the
first and third Evangelists depend neither on Mark nor on each other, but must have followed the Lodge, a
document now represented by "Q." When Eusebius (loc. cit.) copied the words of Papias that "Matthew
 composed the Lodge in Hebrew [Aramaic], and each one interpreted them as he could", probably
understanding that they referred to our first Gospel. But critics insist that Papias must have understood his
words to denote a collection of the "Sayings of Jesus," or the Lodge (Q). Much has been written about this
hypothetical document Q and it has been investigated by Weiss, Holtzmann, Wendt, Wernle, Wellhausen, and
recently by Harnack ("New Testament Studies", II: "The Sayings of Jesus", etc.; tr. Wilkinson, New York and
London, 1908), and Bacon ("The Beginning of Gospel Story", New Haven, 1909). A reconstruction of the
Lodge is attempted in "Die Logia Jesu nach dem griechischen and hebraischen Text wiederhergestellt", 1898
by Resch (cf. also his "Aiissercanonische Paralleltexte zu den Evangelien" in "Texte and Untersuchungen", X,
IV, 1893-96), and in the work of Harnack already cited.

A number of questions have been raised in this research, but no completely satisfactory answers have
emerged. Is it possible to resolve the Q source text of the first and third Gospels, seeing that one Gospel may
have been corrected from the other? Did Saint Matthew and Saint Luke use the same translation or recension
of Q? Did any of the Evangelists pay attention to the Aramaic original? In which of the two Gospels is Q best
reproduced both in terms of scope and layout? How much of the material from the first or third Gospel has
been taken from Q? Again, was Q's original form a gospel, or was it an actual Lodge collection? These are
some of the fundamental questions that critics must answer. Then come questions as to the authorship of the
Lodge, its time and place of origin, its relation to St. Paul , its influence on St. Mark, the cause , manner and
time of its disappearance, and other similar problems. The answer to many, if not all, of these questions is not
satisfactory so far.

The student of Eusebius's record of Papias's words will have his doubts as to the meaning of the lodge
promoted by the critics.

 1. In several other ancient writers the word does not have the restrictive sense of mere "sayings": Rom. 3,2 applies
it to the entire Old Testament; Heb. 5:12, to the entire body of Christian doctrine ; Flavius Josephus makes it
equivalent to ta hiera grammata (Bel. Jud., VI, V, 4); Saint Irenaeus uses ta logia tou Kyriou from the Gospels;
Other instances of a broader meaning of lodge have been collected by Funk (Patres Apostol., II, 280), and Schanz
(Matthaus, 27-31).

 2. The lodge of Saint Papias can at least refer to the Gospel of Saint Matthew. Eusebius (Hist. Ecl., III.39.16)
understands the words in this sense. The context of Papias also suggests this interpretation; for, speaking of St.
Mark, Papias says that the evangelist recorded "what Christ had said and done," and what he had heard St. Peter
speak, and not "as if we were composing an orderly account of the lodge ," so that the lodges are equivalent to the
recorded "words and deeds" of Christ. Once again, the title of Papias's work is Logion Kuriakon Eksegesis ,
although the writer does not limit himself to the explanation of the "sayings" of the Lord.

 3. The lodge of Papias must refer to the Gospel of Saint Matthew:

 to. In the second century no writings of Saint Matthew were known except his Gospel;
 b. There is no record of a work of the evangelist that contained only the words of the Lord;
 c. Even Eusebius found no vestiges of the kuriaka lodge , although he diligently collected everything that the
Apostles and disciples had written about Christ;
 d. All antiquity could not have remained ignorant of a work of such importance, if it had existed;
 and. The first Gospel contains so many discourses of the Lord that it could very well be called logia kuriaka (cf.
Hilgenfeld, "Einl.", 456; Lightfoot in “Contemp. Review", August 1867, 405 ff.; August 1875, 399 ff., 410 ff.).

The Lodge, or document Q of the critics, is not based, therefore, on any historical authority, but only on critical
induction.