What Does It Mean?

After you have underlined your synopsis with colored pencils, or used other tools to compare Matthew, Mark and Luke closely, gather your data and analyze it. Basically here, you are looking for similarities between texts, and differences between them, and asking, "What does it all mean?"

Describe What You See

Look at what you have underlined in the synopsis. You will probably have lots of data that is not all that significant, unless you are trying to make an argument related to sources behind the gospels, or certain other highly specialized academic questions. In other words, for most standard exegetical study of the gospels, it doesn't matter a great deal that only Matthew and Mark describe the mustard seed as "the smallest of all seeds," while that phrase is missing from Luke. You will have a lot of data when you have finished underlining a pericope. How do you sort through it?  Here are two questions to help you.

1.  What are the clearest points of agreement between different accounts of the same story?

Usually, the gospel writers have different ways of beginning and ending a story, but in the middle, they will often have strikingly similar wording. In this step, you look for those phrases and sentences that agree with each other across gospels. Points of agreement between the texts may give us a window on parts of the oral tradition that were fairly well set by the time the gospel writers were composing their books.

In this step, you will also look for similar details about the setting of a story, as well as similar words or phrases. Do the gospel writers agree, for instance, about the audience to whom a certain saying is addressed, or the place where a certain event happens?

2. What is distinctive about each gospel's account?

Difference in the New Testament

I believe that our reading of scripture is richer when we are able to hear the distinct voice of each author of scripture, rather than blending all the voices together. This is a judgment call, of course. Some readers find that my way of reading elevates differences in scripture above agreements within the scriptural witness.

Yet I remain convinced that the New Testament has more to say to us if we do not smush together (that's a technical term) all the different texts it contains. The activities in Into the New Testament will often direct your eye to distinctive elements in the texts you are reading.

In this step, you look closely at differences between the gospels you have compared. If the evangelists are telling the story differently, what are those differences? Maybe in one gospel the crowds are addressed, while in another, Jesus is talking only to the disciples. Or, as in pericope no. 254, in one gospel, it is "a man" who asks Jesus a question (Mark 10:17), while in another it is "a ruler" (Luke 18:18). The goal of this step is to listen for how each evangelist's voice is present as each one tells a similar story.

Decide What It Means

By now you have sorted your findings into things that are the same across the gospels and things that are different. What does it all mean? Here are two questions that may help you think about the significance of the things you have noticed.

1. What have you learned about the particular story of the text you are studying?

Let's say you are studying Luke's story of the man who comes to Jesus and asks, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" (Luke 18:18-23; pericope no. 254). Particular to Luke's witness is that the man is a ruler. Neither Matthew nor Luke describe him this way. Also, only Luke leaves the man in the story for the next scene in the gospel. Matthew and Mark both say, "he went away sorrowful..." but in Luke, Jesus continues to talk to him in the next pericope (see Luke 18:24-30; pericope no. 255). Details like these help you to interpret the story, as Luke tells it, rather than as it is in a blending of all three accounts.

2. What do you want to know more about?

Your synopsis study may highlight additional questions to ask. For instance, since Luke calls the man a ruler, you might want to know whether rulers are mentioned elsewhere in Luke. You could find out by completing a word study on the word Luke uses to describe the man. Luke also calls the man "very rich," rather than saying he had "great possessions." You might find out more about this man if you look at other places where Luke describes people as rich or very rich. Again, a concordance and the skill to complete a word study will help here.

Objectives of Comparing the Synoptic Gospels

Remember that overall, the objectives of synoptic underlining, as I use it here, are:

1. to identify the voice and particular emphases of each gospel writer, and
2. to discover questions you would like to follow up on as you continue to study a text.

With these objectives in mind, try one of the problems related to Comparing Similar texts on the activity grid.