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...

The Christology of The Gospel of John   Jesus in the Gospel of John (we shall continue to call him John, though we do not know who wrote this book and this essay is not on the historicity of the Gospel) is traditionally presented as equal to God the Father in status before coming in the world as read in his famous prologue, “In the beginning was the Word ( Logos ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1,14) At the same time, he is not identical to the Father as when he talks to God he is clearly not talking to himself. Yet when he leaves the world after his resurrection at the end of the Gospel, his glory will be restored by God to be as it was before his incarnation as being God’s logos as a preexistent divine being. However, is the standard narrative true about the logos being equal to the Father?...