Algebra can be used to abstract from a potentially infinite number of possibilities to a finite representation of those possibilities. Consider the following pattern.


Many students have trouble abstracting the above to the following function.

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Text: from Peanuts cartoon of March 23, 1990, by Charles Schultz. Snoopy is talking to Woodstock, who says nothing.

Many people have trouble with abstraction - looking at similarities and ignoring differences. If they think not, try having them write a small computer program that requires abstraction. Many professional programmers have problems making appropriate abstractions.

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Someone started the following and it got repeated enough times that people accept it without thinking. On just a little thought, it does not really make sense.

• Matthew was written to the Jews.
• Mark is the Gospel of a servant.
• Luke was written to the Gentiles.
• John is the Gospel of a mystic.

Synoptic means "same" and "view" where the "same" is not an analogy but, rather, "together". Matthew, Mark, and Luke are the "synoptic" gospels.

The synoptic gospels are Matthew, Mark and Luke.

• Matthew: bottom-up (chronologically, in Greek, recorded what Jesus said)
• Mark: bottom-up (chronologically, from what Peter told Mark and what Mark remembered)
• Luke: bottom-up (chronologically, historically, by Luke, from what people remembered some 20 years later, could be, with Acts, required documentation for trial of Paul in Rome)
• John: organized very differently. Why?

Matthew was a tax collector and is written to the Jews. The skills of a tax collector included remembering details and taking shorthand, so many believe that Matthew's discourses of what Jesus said are close to the actual words of Jesus. In writing to the Jews, Matthew provides many Old Testament prophecies of Jesus.

Mark is the writer of the Gospel as related to Mark by Peter for publication. Mark appears to add a few personal touches, as was usually done, and probably with the permission of Peter. The Gospel of Mark is often taken as a Gospel of servant-hood, laking a genealogy as in Matthew and Luke. My personal preference is that Peter thought like a scientist, making many observations, making conclusions based on those observations, and leaving out parts that were either assumed to have been known or not relevant for what he was trying to say.

Luke was a physician for Paul. Medical practice was not like we know it today. As a physician, one could often not do much to help the patient. What one could do is ask questions, listen, console, and do limited things to help. Such skills made for an excellent historian. Luke appears to have sought out, questioned, and collected stories that he could verify. If a story is in the other Gospels but not Luke, it does not mean they are untrue. It means that Luke either did not know about them or could not personally verify their validity.

John is sometimes considered a mystic. On the other hand, John approaches problems and explains them in what today is considered a top-down backward-chaining approach that is embodied in the computer/information science of today.

More: Same as in like or similar

The ancient Greek word "συμφωνία" ≈ "agreement" and comes from the words for "same voice". The English word "symphony" cames from a group of people with the "same voice".

The Latin word "concordo" ≈ "agree, harmonize" and is the source of the English word "concordant".

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Luke records and correctly reports what people remembered as to the meaning of what Jesus said, sometimes using other words. This often loses the additional meanings as recorded in Matthew.

More: Parables and secret codes used and explained by Jesus

Many of the differences between Matthew and Luke can be explained by the context in which each was written.

• Jesus: Jew, spoke Aramaic and Greek.
• Matthew: Jew, spoke Aramaic and Greek, eyewitness, took notes.
• Luke: Greek, spoke Greek, interviewed eyewitnesses about their memory.



More: An errant look at Biblical inerrancy and infallibility

It appears that Matthew may have not understood what Jesus was saying. If Matthew is transcribing what was said, there is no need for Matthew to actually know the precise meaning of what was said.

If Mark (Peter's Gospel) is writing what Peter (and Mark) remembered, inaccuracies can get into the text. The same applies to John.

If Luke is interviewing and writing what people remember after some 20 years or more, additional inaccuracies can get into the text.

If one assumes that what was said was transcribed verbatim, as appears to be the case with Matthew, there are considerations that arise.

• How well was the text preserved?
• What transcription errors might have been made?

The Bible dictionary used by pastors, etc. is often explained away as being a different Greek, the Koine Greek, that the people spoke, with special idioms of Greek. Changes are often attributed to:

☐ Koine Greek being different than Ancient Greek.
☐ Originally written in Aramaic. Koine Greek had many idioms.
☐ English changing over the years.

A problem arises when ancient, medieval and modern Greek, as one continuous language, have the same meaning for the same word but the Koine Greek definition is different and matches the Latin word used to translate that Greek word in the 4th century. This happens with many important words but not so much with less important words. Suspicion arises when the common Greek meaning makes more sense in the Bible text than the English word based on the Latin word.

[Amplified Bible, Berean Bible, Bible Hub]
[language ambiguity, preciseness of Greek language fallacy]

More: An introduction to Bible truth