Zain's Guide to Overthinking Everything

Solving the Synoptic Problem: Investigating Gospel Harmony Theories            The three Gospels Matthew, Mark, and Luke are referred to as the synoptic Gospels because they share many of the same stories in a similar sequence and even sometimes identical wording. They stand in contrast to John, whose content is largely distinct who often different in these details. For simplicity’s sake, despite the Gospel authors being unknown, they will be referred to by their traditional names. As shown in the diagram above, the three synoptic Gospels share similar information about the life of Jesus. Statistically. over three-quarters of Mark’s content is found in both Matthew and Luke, and 97% of Mark is found in at least one of the other two synoptic gospels. Furthermore, 23% of Matthew and 23% of Luke have material in common that is not found in Mark. The question of how these 3 Gospels share the same information so closely while being written at di...

  Between Heaven and Earth: The Quest for the Historical Jesus                What can we know about the “historical Jesus”? Firstly, it must be explained what is meant by the term. The historical Jesus refers to the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as he existed in history, separate from the religious beliefs and doctrines that have developed around him. It is an attempt by scholars to reconstruct the life, teachings, and actions of the actual person who lived in the 1st century C.E. in ancient Palestine. I will assume that you have some background knowledge of what the four canonical Gospels are: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and why they will be useful in our quest. However, we need to truly examine these Gospels to determine how useful they are in seeing who Jesus truly was. One must question their historicity, authorship, dating, and examine what they say. It might be surprising to read that the oldest Gospel in the...