This short reflection was submitted on February 18, 2021 for my Bible and Western Culture course.
The synoptic gospels and the gospel of John differ in several distinct ways in order to emphasize unique aspects of Jesus, His life, His works, and who He is. Matthew, Mark, and Luke seem to emphasize Jesus as God in human form: Jesus is linked to archetypes of significant figures in Ancient Near East society—prophets, priests, and kings—in order to emphasize the kind of extraordinary human Jesus was. Portraying the humanity of Jesus is juxtaposed with the continuous questioning of Jesus’ identity, culminating together to illustrate Jesus as someone who is more than what meets the eye, so to speak. On the other hand, John seems to highlight the divinity of Jesus as God. Utilizing a powerful statement from the Hebrew Bible, Jesus utters many “I am” statements throughout the gospel of John in order to drive home the idea that Jesus is God.
Throughout the synoptic gospels, readers come to understand Christianity through the action of Jesus as he leads by example. This is solidified with the Beatitudes, which serves as a kind of formal mantra that explains Jesus’ actions. The Beatitudes is seen as a fundamental document of Christian ethics that illustrates a rather revolutionary mentality that Jesus sought to explain to the world. In reading the gospel of John comes a deeper theological understanding as John explains exactly how Jesus fits into the pre-existing ideas of God as the Israelites have come to understand it. This is evident in John’s prologue, where Jesus is tied to the understanding of God in Genesis by identifying the Word with God and that the Word became flesh.
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