A BRIEF STUDY OF THE 
FOUR GOSPELS 

BY 

REV. JOSEPH I. MALLOY, C.S.P. 

NEW YORK 

THE PAULIST PRESS 
401 VVEST 59TH STREET 



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CONTENTS 

PAGE 

MAP OF PALESTINE.......... ... ... .. ................. ... ................. ...... . 4 

CHAPTER I . 

BIBLE MANUSCRIPTS 7 

CHAPTER II 

HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL TEXTS...... ............ .................. .... 12 

CHAPTER III 

THE ' HOLY LAND 19 

CHAPTER IV 

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW.................... .. 23 

CHAPTER V 

. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO' ST. MARK.. .. .......................... 31 

CHAPTER VI 

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE...... .... .................. .. .. 37 

CHAPTER VII 

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN.................... .... .. .... 46 

CHAPTER VIII 

SPECIAL TOPICS ...... .................... ........................ .................. 53 

DISCUSSION CLUB QUESTIONS .............................................. 59 





CHAPTER I 

BIBLE MANUSCRIPTS 

A FTER the Ascension of our Blessed Lord into Heaven and 
the Coming of the . Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the Apostles 

began preaching what their Divine Master had taught them dur-
ing their association with Him for the three years of the Public 
Ministry. They preached-they did not write. That is to 
say, most of them did not write anything which has been pre-
served, and only five of the twelve Apostles wrote any part 
of what is now in our New Testament. St. Matthew wrote 
the First Gospel; St. John, the Fourth Gospel, three short 
Epistles, and ,The Apocalypse; St. Peter wrote two short 
Epistles; St. Jude (or Thaddeus) wrote one short Epistle, 
and St. James wrote an Epistle. The other two Gospels were 
written by St. Mark, a disciple of St. Peter, and by St. Luke, 
a disciple of St. Paul. St. Luke also wrote The Acts of the 
Apostles. St. Paul wrote fourteen Epistles. He had become 
a Christian just a few years after the Death of our Lord. 
None of these writings appeared until several years after the 
Apostles had begun preaching the doctrines of Christ. 

Why No Originals? 

We shall concern ourselves here only with the Four Gospels. 
St. Matthew wrote the First Gospel in Aramaic, the language of 
the country where our Lord lived. This is one of the Semitic 
group of languages; it differs from the ancient Hebrew of the 
Old Testament. The other three Gospels were written in 
Greek, because Greek was the language of literature and cul-
ture throughout most of the countries around the east end of 
the Mediterranean Sea. Unfortunately, none of the original 
writings of the Evangelists is known to us. There are three 
explanations for this: 

7 



8 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

(1) The material on which most writing was done in the 
first century, when the Apostles lived, was fragile. It was 
papyrus. This was made from the pith of the stem of a plant 
of that name which grew along the Nile River and was also 
found in Abyssinia, in the Island of Sicily and in Palestine 
itself; it is now almost extinct, except in Egypt. The papyrus 
was prepared by cutting the central pith of the reed into 
longitudinal strips which were laid side by side, with another 
layer of strips crossing them at right angles. The two layers 
were then soaked in water and pressed together to make them 
adhere; they then were dried. For books, the papyrus was 
formed into rolls by fastening together a number of sheets. 
By its very nature it was perishable, and we find at the present 
day only a very few remains of ancient Biblical writings on 
this material. One of the oldest scraps of papyrus is in Phila-
delphia, but it contains only eighteen verses of- the first chap-
ter of the Gospel According to St. Matthew; it was probably 
written about the middle of the third century. Another small 
scrap of equal age is in the British Museum. This has a few 
verses from the Gospel According to St. John. 

(2) When copies of anything were made, the originals were 
allowed to perish, because the teaching was taken to be the 
important thing, not the material on which it was written. 

(3) As you know, the followers of Christ were bitterly 
persecuted during the first three hundred years of Christian 
history. The persecutors strove not , only to kill the Chris-
tians, but to destroy their teachings, and therefore in every 
place where the early Christians were hunted down, Christian 
writings were also destroyed . . However, we are really much 
better off in the field of New Testament writings than in the 
field of the Greek and Latin Classics. Most of the copies of 
the latter are no older than the ninth century of the Christian 
Era, and the only available manuscripts (abbreviated MSS.) 
of many of the better known Classics are much more recent. 
On the other hand, we have MSS. of the New Testament which 
we know were written in the fourth and fifth centuries. 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 9 

Codex Vaticanus 

The most important of all Greek MSS. is called the Codex 
Vaticanus, because it is in the Vatican Library in Rome. 
Codex is the word used for an ancient MS. , especially of the 
Scriptures, before the invention of printing. This Vatican MS. 
was written in the first half of the fourth century in Greek let-
ters called uncials, which means " inch," because they were about 
an inch high. It is written on fine parchment. Parchment is 
made from the skins of calves or goats prepared in a bath 
of lime and then rubbed with a burnisher; it is very durable. 
The Vatican MS. contains nearly the entire Bible, written 
three columns to a page, or two columns for the poetical 
Books. It has been in the Vatican since the fifteenth century, 
except for a brief time when the Emperor Napoleon held it 
in Paris. 

In scholarly books treating of Scriptural subjects, all these 
uncial MSS. are represented by capital letters of the Hebrew, 
Latin and Greek alphabets. The Vatican MS. is called Co-
dex B. 

Codex Sinaiticus 
The MS. next in importance to the Vatican Codex was also 

written in the fourth century, in Greek, but its existence did 
not become known until about a hundred years ago. It is an 
interesting story. In 1844, a German Biblical scholar named 
Tischendorf, who was not a Catholic, visited St. Catherine's 
Monastery near Mount Sinai in Syria. This Monastery was 
built by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. Since 1782 
it has housed a Community of Monks forming an independent 

- unit of the Greek Orthodox Church. There, in a rubbish 
basket, Tischendorf found forty-three leaves of parchment 
which he recognized contained a Greek text of some parts of 
the Old Testament. He secured possession of them and pub-
lished them when he returned to Europe. They are preserved 
at Leipzig in Germany. 



10 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

In 1853, Tischendorf visited St. Catherine's Monastery 
again, at which time he found two short fragments of the Book 
of Genesis, but nothing else. Six years later he again went 
there, working with the aid of the Russian Czar, Alexander 
II, and at that time found a large MS. which he recognized 
as the major part of the Bible from which the portions found 
earlier had come. It contained most of the Old Testament, 
the whole of the New Testament, and two other early Christian 
writings, all in Greek. Tischendorf persuaded the Monks to 
present this MS. to the Russian Czar. It.is not known how St. 
Catherine's Monastery came into possession of so important 
a MS, or how the Monks let it fall into decay. Some of the 
outer leaves had actually been cut up and used to bind modern 
books. These were not rescued until 1857, when a Greek 
clergyman discovered them and turned them over to Tischen-
dorf. So the entire Bible contained in these MSS. was pub-
lished in four sections, between 1844 and 1867. 

For years this Codex Sinaiticus, as it is called from the 
place where it was found, was preserved in the Imperial Li-
brary at St. Petersburg. The Soviet Government, which came 
into power after the Russian Revolution, had no interest in 
this Bible except for what money they could get for it. The 
British Government negotiated to buy it for 100,000 pounds 
(nearly half a million dollars). Half the money was raised 
by popular subscription and ~he other half was supplied by 
the British Government. It was the greatest book sale of all 
time. The precious MS. was brought to England on Christmas 
Eve, 1933, and is now preserved in the famous British Museum 
in London. 

This Codex is about as old at the Vatican MS; it was cer-
tainly written no later than the fourth century. It is estimated 
that the skins of about two. hundred animals were used to pro-
vide the three hundred and forty-seven parchment leaves which 
comprise the MS. It is represented by the first letter of the 
Hebrew alphabet called Aleph. 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 11 

Codex Alexandrinus 

A third important MS. which contains the New Testament 
is also in the British Museum in London. It is called the 
Codex Alexandrinus, because it came to England from the 
Library of Alexandria, in Egypt. It was a gift to King James 
I. It contains nearly all the Old Testament and all of the New 
Testament with just a few verses missing, 'and it also contains 
some other writings, not part of the Bible. It was probably 
written in Egypt early in the fifth century. The leaves are 
thin parchment and each page has two columns of about fifty 
lines each. It is represented by the letter "A." 

Manuscripts Before Printing 

There are now in existence over 3,000 MSS. of the Bible, 
or of parts of the Bible, which were written before the inven-
tion of printing in the fifteenth century. Remember that 
during all these years, from the time of Christ to the fifteenth 
century, everything that was written about Him and His Life 
and His Teachings had to be done by hand, and therefore all 
these MSS . of the Bible which we know to have existed before 
the invention of printing, were laboriously copied, letter by 
letter, by hand. Of course, after the invention of printing 
it was very easy to multiply copies of the Bible. 



CHAPTER II 

HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL TEXTS 

Apocryphal Gospels 

WHILE the New Testament writers, whom we mentioned in 
the last chapter, were compiling their records under the 

direct inspiration of God, many other people were also writing 
on Christ's teachings. Some of these were devoted and faith-
ful Christians; some had strayed from the true doctrines and 
wrote to support their own errors, while others were the ene-
mies of Christ. Therefore we find, scattered through early 
Christian writings, references to over fifty Apocryphal Gos-
pels. "Apocryphal" comes from the Greek word " apokryphos, " 
which means " hidden"; an Apocryphal Gospel, then, is one 
whose real author is hidden, and it is therefore of doubtful 
authorship and authority. Because of this condition, and be-
cause of the confusion that existed in the minds of ordinary 
Christians, the Church made an official decision in a Council 
which met at Carthage in North Africa, in the year 397 , 
listing the names and authors of Books which were truly in-
spired and which therefore were to be considered by all Ca tho-
lics as constituting the Bible. It was through the influence 
of the great St. Augustine that the Council of Carthage made 
this very important pronouncement. About twenty years later, 
another Council of Carthage reiterated this decision on the 
contents of the Bible. This is what is called fixing the " Canon" 
of the Scriptures, and the Books which were listed in this man-
ner as being part of the inspired Word of God are said to be 
" Canonical. " 

Early Testimony 

Even before these Councils of Carthage, however, we find 
clear and unmistakable evidence that our Four Gospels were 
acknowledged as inspired records of the Life and Teachings of 

12 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSP~LS 13 

Jesus Christ. Writing at the end of the first century, St. Cle-
ment, who was the third successor of St. Peter as Bishop of 
Rome, testified to their authenticity, and in the next 'century 
we have the evidence of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, France. He died 
in the year 202, so most of his writing must have been done 
in the last twenty or thirty years of the second century. He 
is important, because he was a disciple of St. Polycarp, who 
was a disciple of the Apostle St. John. About 500 quotations 
from our Four Gospels are found in the works of St. Irenaeus, 
and several times he makes clear that in his opinion there are 
only Four Gospels. During the time when Irenaeus was writ-
ing, probably about the year 175, someone compiled a list of 
the Sacred Books. It is called the "Muratorian Fragment," 
from the name of the man, Muratori, who discovered it in the 
year 1740. It contains the names of all but three of the Books 
in our New Testament. The first part of it is lost, but it be-
gins by saying that the Third Book is St. Luke's Gospel, so 
the author must have known about our first two Gospels; then 
the list goes on to mention St. fohn's Gospel , Again, in the 
following century, we find in the writings of St. Eusebius, un-
mistakable proof regarding the position held by our Four 
Gospels; this eminent Church historian lived from the year 
267 to the year 338. 

Lotin Bible 
We still, however, have to answer the question how these 

Gospels, written, as we saw before, in Greek, come to us now 
in English. There lived, in the fourth century, a very re-
markable man, known to history as st. Jerome. He was born 
in the year 346, near Aquileia on the north shore of the Adriatic 
Sea. Jerome was not baptized until he was twepty years of 
age, and some thirteen years later he was ordained a priest. 
He lived in Bethlehem from 386 to 420, and there he accom-
plished the stupendous work of revising practically the whole 
Bible and translating it into Latin. He began with the New 
Testament, which he revised from old Greek MS. This work 



14 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

of St. Jerome is called "The Latin Vulgate," and in 1546 the 
Council of Trent declared the Vulgate to be the official Bible 
of the Catholic Church. For many centuries Latin was the 
languag~ in all Western Europe, and everyone who could read 
at all could read Latin. 

European Languages 

In the later Middle Ages, however, when other European 
languages developed in various countries, the Gospels and other 
parts of the Bible were translated into English, French, Ger7 
man, Spanish, and several other languages. Remember that 
this was before the invention of printing. The charge used 
,to be made against the Catholic Church that she kept the Bible 
from the people and always refused to give it to them in their 
own language, and we have been told, furthermore, that it was 
only through the efforts of some who broke away from the 
authori~y of the Church, even before the beginning of Prot-
estantism, that the Bible was given to the English people in 
their own tongue. One of the men who made ;such a trans-
lation was John Wycliffe, in 1382, but the great St. Thomas 
More wrote on this subject: "The whole Bible., long before 
Wycliffe's day, was by virtuous and well learned men translated 
into the English tongue, and by good and godly people, with 
devotion and soberness, well and reverently read." 

German 

This same unfounded charge was made with regard to 
Germany. We have been told that Martin Luther was the 
first to give the Bible to the German people in their · own 
tongue.' printing was invented in 1450, and the first book ever 
printed was the "Mazarin Bible" at Mayence (Mainz), Ger-
many, ih 1456-twenty-seven years before Luther was born. 
This Bible was printed by the famous Gutenberg, and the 
first known copy of it was discovered in the Mazarin Library 
in Paris in 1760. In the Archives of the Paulist Fathers 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 15 

in New York there is a two-volume Bible in German, printed 
in 1483, the year in which Martin Luther was born. It is 
illustrated in colors and is the first illustrated printed Bible in 
German. 

English Bible 

Our English Catholic version, which is called the "Rheims-
Douay," is the work of English Catholic scholars who fled from 
England because of the persecution of the Church there in the 
sixteenth century, and established colleges at these two cities 
in France. Our Gospels and the rest of the New Testament 
were first published at the English College at Rheims, in 
1582. The Old Testament was published after the College 
moved to Douay in 1609. In the middle of the eighteenth 
century, the famous Bishop Challoner, Vicar-Apostolic of the 
London district, revised the Bible, because changes in the Eng-
lish language were making more and more words of the 
Rheims-Douay version obsolete. 

Since the days of Bishop Challoner our language has under-
gone still further modification and the New Testament which 
he gave us no longer clearly expresses the thought in a way 
which can be easily understood by twentieth century readers. 
We are therefore in need of a new revision and, as you prob-
ably know, late in the year 1939, a group of eminent Catholic 
scholars published the first part of a revised form of the 
Gospels. The entire New Testament in the new version may 
be expected soon. 

Authenticity of the Gospels 

Two of the Gospels were written by Apostles who were 
eyewitnesses of most of the events they record and who 
actually heard most of the words of our Lord which they 
wrote down; the authors of the other two Gospels received 
their information directly from others who were eyewitnesses 
and who had heard the Saviour's words. Did the Four 
Evangelists faithfully and truly report what they had seen 



16 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

and heard? We have many weighty reasons for saying posi-
tively that they, did: 

(I) It is historically certain beyond a shadow of doubt 
that the first three Gospels were written within thirty or forty 
years of the events narrated, i. e., within the life time of many 
who were familiar with these events and who would readily 
have detected errors or inaccuracies, if there had been any. 
The Fourth Gospel was certainly written before the end of the 
First Century. Besides the information which each Evangelist 
had personally, they all used oral and written sources which 
go back to the first days of the Apostolic teaching. 

(2) The Gospels all bear the obvious stamp of sincerity 
which any careful reader can se"e for himself. Their authors 
record incidents which reflect no credit upon themselves, as, 
for example, that they fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane 
and fled when their Master was apprehended, that they quar-
reled among themselves as to who would be first, that they 
did not understand many of our Lord's Parables and other 
Teachings; the fact that our Lord reproved them many times , 
that Peter, who they all agree was chief among the Apostles, 
denied his Lord after having protested vehemently that he 
never would; that they lost faith in Christ after His death, 
and completely forgot , or disbelieved , His prophecy that He 
would rise again. They record the most startling facts simply 
and without comment, for example, the great Miracles of our 
Lord, even the raising of the dead to life; they record the 
fact of the Resurrection , but do not describe it. This is par-
ticularly significant; it demonstrates the honesty and sincerity 
of the Evangelists, for if anyone of them had been romancing 
and using his imagination to embellish the Life of Christ, 
the most natural thing for him to have done would have been 
to describ e the Resurrection , as they did the Transfiguration, 
which some of them saw. They did not see the Resurrection, 
so they do not claim to have seen it , they saw only the empty 
tomb and the Angels, and then they saw the Risen Lord. It is 
conclusive proof of the trustworthiness of the Evangelists that 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 17 

they did not describe the stone being rolled back and their 
Divine Master coming forth glorious and alive from the grave 
where they had laid Him on Good Friday afternoon. 

(3) Where the Gospels mention, even casually, persons, 
places, customs, incidents that can be checked by secular his-
tory, the Gospels are found to be accurate. For example, St. 
Matthew tells us (St. Matt. ii. 20-23) that Archelaus ruled in 
the place of Herod his father and was cruel like his father, and 
we know this from other historians. St. Matthew tells us 
about the Temple Tax called the didrachma (St. Matt. xvii. 
23) , without any word of explanation; the Jewish historian, Jo-
sephus, writing at a later date, mentions it and explains it. The 
census at the time of our Lord's Birth is another instance, 
though hostile critics of the Gospels have claimed that St. 
Luke made a glaring mistake in saying that "this enrolling 
was first made by Cyrinus, the governor of Syria" (St. Luke 
ii. 2). They quote the historian Josephus, who states that 
this Cyrinus did not become governor till several years after 
the Birth of Christ. But modern historical research clears 
away this difficulty and sl).ows that St. Luke was correct, be-
cause Cyrinus was governor of Syria twice , and it is to his 
second term in office and a census taken at that time that 
Josephus refers. St. Luke knew this, and therefore, in the 
Gospel, he speaks of a " first census," and in his later Book, 
the Acts of the Apostles (v. 37), he records an event which 
happened "in the days of the enrolling," i. e., another census. 

Finally, it is important to notice that when the Gospels, and 
especially the Gospel According to St . John, mention places in 
Jerusalem and in other parts of Palestine, they are so accurate 
that we know their authors had precise and first-hand informa-
tion about the entire country. Remember that the Fourth 
Gospel was written by St. John late in the First Century, after 
the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple. It is remark-
able, therefore , to note the exactness with which St. John 
identifies place~ in Jerusalem , for example, he describes the 
pool of Bethsaida in the following words: "Now there is at 



18 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

Jerusalem a pond called Probatica, which in Hebrew is named 
Bethsaida, having five porches" (St. John v. 2), and then he 
distinguishes another pool, that of Siloe, to which our Lord 
sent the man. born blind (St. John ix. 7) . He identifies the 
place of Christ's trial before Pilate by both the Greek and 
Hebrew names; he tells us that Pilate " sat down in the judg-
ment seat in the place which is called Lithostrotos, and in He-
brew, Gabbatha" (St. John xix. 13). Furthermore, he is 
thoroughly familiar with the Jewish objection to entering a 
pagan dwelling at the time of the Pasch, and, in recording that 
our Lord was brought before Pilate, St. John tells us that 
"they went not into, the hall, that they might not be defiled, 
but that they might eat the Pasch," and then he adds that 
"Pilate, therefore, went out to them" (St. John xviii. 28, 29). 

Inspiration 

We shall say only a few brief words on this important sub-
ject. We have an official sta tement from the Vatican Coun-
cil ; speaking of the Books of the Bible, the Fathers of the 
Council stated: . 

"These Books are held by the Church as sacred and 
canonical, not as having been composed by merely human labor 
and afterwards approved by her authority, nor merely because 
they contain revelation without error, but because, written un, 
der the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their 
author, and have been transmited to the Church as such." 

More recently, Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclical, Provi-
dentissimus Deus, said on the subject of inspiration: "The 
Holy Ghost Himself, by His supernatural power, stirred up 
and impelled the Biblical writers to write, and assisted them 
while writing, in such a manner that they conceived in their 
minds exactly, and determined to commit to writing faith-
fully, and render in exact language, with infallible truth, all 
that God commanded and nothing else." (See article " Inspira-
tion of the Bible," Catholic Encyclopedia, viii., pp. 45-50) . 



CHAPTER III 

THE HOLY lAND 

THE Jewish world of the first century, into which our Blessed 
Lord came, is very well known. Its politics, its philosophy 

and its religion are all in the full light of history. Not only do 
our Gospels tell us about this world, but we have the studies of 
learned men who have unearthed the secrets of archeology and 
of the ancient languages of all those countries around the 
Mediterranean Sea. Christ our Lord was born in the reign of 
the Emperor Augustus, and He died while Tiberius was Em-
peror. In the generation immediately after Christ there lived 
the historians Josephus, Plutarch and Tacitus. Many of the 
persons mentioned in the New Testament are well-known his-
torical characters. 

Palestine 

The country where our Lord and His Apostles lived in the 
first century was at the crossroads of the ancient world. 
Palestine is at the east end of the Mediterranean Sea, with 
Syria to the northeast and Arabia to the east; with Asia-Minor 
(Turkey) to the northwest, and Egypt to the southwest. The 
warring armies of all these and several other countries marched 
back and forth through Palestine. This little country was 
about as large as the state of New Hampshire, and much the 
same shape, for Palestine, at our Lord's time, was approxi-
mately 190 miles from north to south and 85 miles across at 
its widest part. 

The River Jordan 

A little east of the middle of this territory ran the historic 
River Jordan, from north to south; the upper portion of the 
river flowed into the Sea of Galilee, and continued south from 
there to the Dead Sea. Most of the events in our Lord's life 
happened to the west of the River Jordan, where the territory 

19 



20 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

in that day had three main divisions, Galilee, SamaHa and 
Judea. In the far north was Phoenicia with the Lebanon 
Mountains; directly south and east lay the Province of Gali-
lee, where so many of the places mentioned in the Gospels are 
located: Nazareth, Nairn, Mount Tabor, Bethsaida and Ca-
pharnaum. The River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee formed 
the eastern border of the province. The Sea of Galilee was 
sometimes called the Lake of Genesareth, or the Sea of Ti-
berius; it is oval in shape, about thirteen miles long and nearly 
seven miles wide. Directly south of Galilee was Samaria, ex-
tending from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. The 
Samaritans, of whom we shall speak later, lived there. Only 
a few of the events in our Lord's public life occurred in this 
part of Palestine. 

Judea 

Continuing south again, we come to the important Province 
of Judea, with the River Jordan and the Dead Sea forming 
its eastern border and the Mediterranean Sea its western limits. 
Jerusalem was the Capital of Judea, and here were the other 
well-known Gospel cities of Bethlehem, Jericho and Bethany, 
as well as Calvary and the Mount of Olives. 

East of the Jordan 

The territory to the east of the River Jordan was divided 
into several provinces, not of great importance for our Gospel 
narrative , except that some of them are mentioned in the Gos-
pel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, when we read from St. 
Luke's Gospel that the preaching of St. John the Baptist be-
gan while Philip was " Tetrarch of Iturea and the country of 
Trachonitis, and Lysanias Tetrarch of Abilina." The former 
Tetrarchy lay directly east of Galilee. In its northern part 
was the town of Caesarea Philippi, where an important event 
in our Lord's Public Ministry took place, namely the magnifi-
cent Confession of St. Peter and our Lord's pronouncement 
that Peter was the Rock upon which He would build His 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 21 

Church. North of this country we come to Abilina. The fa-
mous City of Damascus was located here. This city does not 
enter into the Gospel history, but is important, nevertheless, 
being the scene of the Conversion of St. Paul. 

Continuing this account of the geography of the country 
east of the Jordan, and coming south from Trachonitis, we 
find Perea and a territory called the Decapolis-Ten Cities. 
Perea lay east of both Samaria and Judea, and during His 
Public Ministry our Lord spent a short time here though , 
as we shall see later, only St. Luke tells us about it, and he 
records for us several beautiful Parables spoken by our Lord 
while He was in this part of Palestine. If we keep these main 
divisions in mind, we shall be better able to follow the details 
of the journeys of our Blessed Lord and His Apostles during 
those important years of His Public Ministry. 

The Holy Land 
This, then, was the country in which our Blessed Lord 

spent all His earthly life, and for this reason it has always been 
held sacred by His followers. The Jewish people also consider 
this their Holy Land, for it was their country for centuries 
before Christ. Here lived King David and many of the 
Prophets. Solomon built a great Temple in Jerusalem. The 
Temple in our Lord's day had been built by King Herod the 
Great, who reigned at the time of the Nativity and who 
ordered the slaughter of the Holy Innocents. Herod died 
shortly after the Birth of our Lord. This Temple of Herod 
was completely destroyed by the Roman army in the year 
70 A. D., thus fulfilling the prophecy made by Christ. 

Palestine is likewise held sacred by the Mohammedans. 
This fanatical religious sect, started by Mohammed early in the 
seventh century, quickly overran Syria, Palestine, Arabia, 
Persia; Egypt and North Africa . The Mosque of Omar was 
built in Jerusalem on the site of the Jewish Temple. The 
Crusades of the Middle Ages, from 1095 to 1270, were wars 
undertaken by Christian armies of Europe, in a futile effort to 



22 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

win back the Holy Land from the Mohammedans. The coun-
try remained under Turkish rule until its conquest by the 
British in the final years of the World War. On July 24,1922, 
it was mandated to Great Britain by the League of Nations. 
The territory under this mandate covers an area of about 
10,000 square miles, and in 1939 it was estimated that the 
population numbered about 1,435,285, of whom 900,249 were 
Mohammedans, 411,422 Jews, and 123,614 Christians. The 
City of Jerusalem, in 1938, had a population of 126,000. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW 

THE word "Gospel" means "good tidings," or "glad tid-
ings," and we give this name to the four Books in the 

New Testament because they contain the "good news" that 
Christ our Saviour came and lived and taught and suffered 
and died in order to redeem mankind. These "glad tidings" 
are about Christ, so it is proper to speak of any Gospel as 
"The Gospel of Jesus Christ," and then to add the author's 
name, thus: "according to St. Matthew," etc. 

St. Matthew, the Apostle 

The First Gospel was written by St. Matthew, one of the 
Twelve Apostles. In the New Testament we have several 
references to this Apostle. His name is mentioned twice in 
his own Gospel, twice in the Gospel According to St. Mark, 
twice by St. Luke, and once in the Acts of the Apostles, the 
Book which follows the Four Gospels in the New Testament. 
Besides this, we have two references to "Levi," one by St. 
Mark and the other by St. Luke; these correspond with one 
of the passages in the First Gospel, so we know that they 
refer to the same man. In St. Matthew ix. 9, we read: "And 
when Jesus passed on from thence, He saw a man sitting in the 
custom house, named Matthew; and He said to him: 'Follow 
Me.' And he arose up and followed Him." St. Mark, report-
ing this same event, says: "And when He was passing by, He 
saw Levi, the son of Alpheus, sitting at the receipt of custom; 
and He saith to him: 'Follow Me.' And rising up, he fol-
lowed Him" (St. Mark ii. 14). St. Luke gives a more detailed 
account of the calling of this Apostle: "And after these things 
He went forth, and saw a publican named Levi, sitting at the 
receipt of custom, and He said to him: 'Follow Me.' And 

23 



24 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

leaving all things, he rose up and followed Him. And Levi 
made him a great feast in his own house; and there was a 
great company of publicans, and of others, that were at the 
table with them. But the Pharisees and scribes murmured, 
saying to His disciples: 'Why do you eat and drink with 
publicans and sinners?' And Jesus answering said to them: 
'They that are whole need not the Physician; but they that 
are sick. I came not to call the just, but sinners to pen-
ance'" (St. Luke v. 27-32). 

It was quite usual for Jews to have two names~ we shall 
see many instances of this. "Levi" was probably the Apos-
tle's original name; the name "Matthew" may have been con-
ferred upon him by our Lord when He called him. It means 
"Gift of God." 

We know, therefore, that Matthew was the son of Alpheus, 
and that he was a publican-that is, a collector of customs 
(see pages 54-56). Matthew is mentioned, of course, each time 
the Evangelists give us the list of the names of the · Twelve 
Apostles; we find these lists in the first three Gospels· St. 
Matthew x. 3, St. Mark iii. 18, and St. Luke vi. 15. The final 
reference to St. Matthew is in the first chapter of the Acts of 
the Apostles, where he is mentioned as having been in the 
Upper Room with the other Apostles and our Blessed Lady. 

From Tradition we know that St. Matthew preached in the 
East, in Syria and Persia; he may also have evangelized part 
of Macedonia. His Feast Day is observed on September 21st 
and his symbol is a winged man carrying a lance. 

St. Matthew, the Evangelist 

The universal consensus of opinion among all the early 
writers is that St. Matthew wrote the First Gospel in Aramaic, 
and that his purpose was to present the Life and Teachings 
of Christ our Lord to the Jews. There are many indications 
in the Gospel itself that it was written at avery early date, 
perhaps as early as the year 41 A. n.-certainly before the de-
struction of Jerusalem, which, as we saw ' in the last chapter, 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 25 

occurred in the year 70 A. D. This Gospel is thoroughly Jewish 
in its allusions and arguments. It contains about thirty-three 
direct quotations from the Old Testament, besides several more 
allusions to events in the Hebrew Scriptures. St. Matthew 
appeals again and again to the Jewish Prophecies, and then 
shows their fulfillment in the Life and Teachings of Christ. He 
answers the questions which a Palestinian Jew, living before 
the destruction of his Holy City, would naturally ask regard-
ing the Person of Jesus Christ, His Message, and the reception 
given to that Message by Israel. 

Importance of the First Gospel 

The Gospel According to St. Matthew is the most complete 
of all the Four Gospels, and is used by the Church more than 
any of the others. It provides us with the Sunday Gospels 
twenty times throughout the year and four times in the Christ-
mas Season: on Christmas Eve, on the Feast of St. Stephen, 
December 26th; on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, Decem-
ber 28th, and on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th. 

In reading St. Matthew, it will help us if we see the plan 
and structure of the First Gospel. We shall find that it is di-
vided into two almost equal parts. The first part leads up to 
a climax-St. Peter's Profession of Faith in the Divinity of 
Christ, when he said: "Thou art Christ, the Son of the Living 
God." It was on this occasion that our Lord gave His chief 
Apostle the name "Peter," and declared that he was the foun-
dation stone of His Church: "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-
Jona (Simon, son of John), because flesh and blood have not 
revealed it to thee, but My Father Who is in Heaven. And 
I say to thee, that thou art Peter (Rock), and upon this Rock 
I will build My Church, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail 
against it"(St. Matt. xvi. 16-18) . 

We see here another instance of two names; the Apostle's 
name was Simon, and our Lord gave him the name "Peter," 
meaning "Rock." This important event in the Public Life of 
Christ is followed almost immediately by the Transfiguration 



26 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

(St. Matt. xvii. 1-9), and then the second half of the Gospel 
begins in which everything leads up to the Sacred Passion, 
Death and Res~rrection of our Lord. 

Parables 

As it will be necessary from now on to speak many times 
of our Lord's Parables, it may be welI to devote a few words 
to the subject of Parables in general. "Parable" comes from 
a Greek word which means, literally, "to cast before"; later it 
came to mean "to compare." The word occurs forty-eight 
times in the three Synoptics; sometimes, especially in St. Luke, 
we find instead the word "similitude": "And He spoke a simili-
tude to them" (St. Luke v. 36). In the Gospels the Parable is 
usually a developed comparison. Some, like that of The Prodi-
gal Son, are quite long. Nowhere, outside of the Gospels, do we 
find Parables that compare with those of our Lord. There are 
but a few instances of Parables in the Old Testament. There 
are none in any part of the New Testament, outside of the 
Gospels, which means that the Apostles did not attempt to imi-
tate this manner of teaching used so many times by our Lord. 
Nor do the Apocryphal Gospels, which we mentioned on page 
12, contain Parables. However, we do find some attempt at 
this form of moral teaching in the Rabbinical writings of the 
First Century of the Christian Era. 

Our Lord's Parables, then, stand in a class apart. They 
bear the stamp of Divinity. It is a form of teaching well 
suited to the Oriental mind, which was fond of clothing ideas 
in figurative language. Our Lord took alI His Parables from 
the life of the people among whom He lived. Sometimes they 
were taken from the institutions and customs of social life, 
as wedding feasts and banquets; sometimes they were taken 
from the customs of domestic family life, as when Christ spoke 
of the leaven and the lost coin; some are taken from the pas-
toral and agricultural customs of the country, or from the life 
of fishermen, as when they use the sower and the seed, the mus-



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 27 

tard seed, the fish net dropped into the sea. Practically all the 
Parables deal, in one way or another, with the Kingdom of God. 

The Parables are never trivial, although they deal with 
ordinary things; they are always dignified and they are always 
interesting. They tell a story which holds our attention, and 
in most cases the lesson of that story is quite evident. There 
are some instances, as you remember from the Sunday Gospels, 
where our Lord found it necessary to explain a Parable, and 
the Evangelist has added this explanation. An instance of 
this is the Parable of Th e Sower and the Seed, which we find 
in all three -Synoptics (see St. Matt. xiii. 3-23); another in-
stance is the Parable of The Wheat and the Cockle, which we 
find only in St. Matthew (xiii. 24-30, 36-43). 

Some of the Parables do contain hidden meanings and, in a 
few, notably the Parable of The Unjust Steward, we need a 
careful guide and a knowledge of ancient customs before we 
can fully understand the lesson our Lord intended to teach. 
Let us remember that we live nearly 2,000 years after Christ 
and that our habits of life differ greatly from those of the peo-
ple of Palestine of that age so long ago. What our Lord 
said, we may be sure was understood by those who heard 
Him, especially His own Apostles, and these were the first 
Bishops of the Church. Christ gave to this Church the com-
mission to teach in His Name and with His authority until 
the end of time. 

Plan of the First Gospel 

Looking at the First Gospel again, we notice that it may be 
divided into six parts: the first deals with the Birth and In-
fancy of Christ, and the beginning of His Public Ministry, and 
it is from these - introductory chapters of St. Matthew that 
the Church takes the Gospels for the Masses of the Christmas 
Season, spoken of before. The other five parts of the Gospel 
are all written according to a definite plan in which we find, 
first, some verbal Teachings of Christ, followed usually by a 
series of Miracles. We shall see how this plan is worked out 



28 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

in the following outline of the contents of each division of the 
Gospel: 

1. The geneology of Christ, His Birth, the Adoration of 
the Magi, and the Killing of the Holy Innocents; the 
Preaching of St. John the Baptist; the Baptism of 
Christ, and the Fast in the Desert (Chapters i-iv). 

2. The Sermon on the Mount (filling three chapters) , fol-
lowed by a series of Miracles recorded in two chapters: 

The cure of a leper, 
The cure of the Centurion's servant, 
The cure of Peter's wife's mother, 
The calming of the Tempest, 
The casting out of evil spirits from those possessed, 
The cure of the man sick of palsy, 
The raising to life of the Ruler's daughter, 
The cure of the woman suffering from an issue of 

blood, 
The restoration of sight to two blind men, 
The cure of a dumb man. 

(Chapters v-ix). 

3. Instructions to the Apostles; answer to the disciples 
of St. John the Baptist; controversy with the Phari-
sees regarding Miracles on the Sabbath, and Christ's 
defense of His Miracles (Chapters x-xii). 

4. Parables of the Kingdom of Heaven: 

The Sower, 
The Good Seed and the Cockle, 
The Grain of Mustard Seed, 
The Leaven, 
The Pearl of Great Price, 
The Net Cast Into the Sea. 

(Chapter xiii) . 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 29 

These are followed by another series of great Miracles: 

The feeding of the multitude of 5,000, 
Christ walks upon the sea, 
The healing of many' that were diseased, 
The cure of the daughter of the Woman of Canaan, 
Many miracles of healing, 
The feeding of the multitude of 4,000. 

(Chapters xiv, xv). 

Then comes the climax we spoke of before, which brings 
us to the middle point of the Gospel (Chapters xvi, xvii). 

5. Further teachings on Christian virtues, and more Para-
bles: 

Humility, 
Avoiding Scandal, 
The Parable of the Lost Sheep, 
The Parable of the Merciless Servant, 
Christ's Teaching on Marriage, 
The Rich Young Man, 
The Parable of the Vineyard . 

These teachings are followed by an account of our Lord's 
journey to Jerusalem, where He restores sight to two blind 
men. Next comes Palm Sunday, with more Miracles in the 
T emple after our Lord 's arrival there, and on the following day 
there is the Miracle of the Fig Tree (Chapters xviii-xxi. 22). 

6. The final teachings of Jesus in Holy Week : 
Arguments with Jewish leaders, 
The Parable of the Householder and the Vineyard, 
The Parable of the Marriage Feast, 
The question of Tribute to Caesar, 
The questions about Marriage, 
Questions about the Great Commandment, 
The long discourse condemning the Scribes and 

Pharisees and foretelling the destruction of 
Jerusalem and the end of the world. 

(Chapters xxi. 23-xxiv.Sl). 



30 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

This is followed by two more Parables: 
The Wise and the Foolish Virgins, 
The Talents. 

After which comes a description of the Last Judgment. 
( Chap ter xxv) . 

St. Matthew then devotes the last three chapters to the 
History of the Sacred Passion and the Resurrection (Chapters 
xxvi -xxviii) . 

We can see from this summary that St. Matthew has not 
written a record of our Lord's life in strictly chronological 
order; he has preferred to group events and teachings to suit 
his purpose-namely, to point out to the Jewish people, whom 
he was particularly addressing, that the Teachings of Christ 
and His many Miracles prove that He was the Messias prom-
ised to them in their own Scriptures. That is why we find 
St. Matthew gathering together many sayings of our Lord, 
giving His Teachings on many different subjects necessary for 
our salvation, and then grouping together a number of Miracles 
which proved the Divinity of the Teacher. 

Read this Gospel for yourself, using the summary here to 
guide you. Notice that most of the events recorded by St. 
Matthew, except the Birth of Christ and the happenings of 
Holy Week, occurred in Galilee and other places in the 
northern part of Palestine. This will be true of the Second 
Gospel, also, and to a certain extent, of the Gospel According 
to St. Luk e, but when we come to the Fourth Gospel, we shall 
find that most of the events recorded there occurred in Judea. 



CHAPTER V 

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK 

St. Mark, the Evangelist 

EARLY in the second century, a Christian writer named 
Papias wrote: "Mark, who had been Peter's interpreter, 

wrote down exactly, but without placing it in order, all that he 
could remember of the words and actions of the Lord." 

We know more about St. Mark than we do about St. Mat-
thew . Very probably he is the young man mentioned in his 
own Gospel, and nowhere else (St. Mark xiv. 51,52), who came 
to the Garden of Gethsemane and then fled when the soldiers 
tried to apprehend him. Nearly all authorities, ancient and 
modern, identify Mark who wrote this Second Gospel with John 
Mark, who is mentioned several times in the Acts of the 
Apostles and in the Epistles of St. Paul. With this granted, 
then, we know that his mother 's name was Mary and that 
she had a house in Jerusalem to which St. Peter went after he 
had been delivered from prison by an Angel (Acts xii . 12-17). 
He was a cousin of St. Barnabas, St. Paul's first companion. 
St. Mark was a disciple of St. Peter (not of our Lord) and 
acted as secretary for St. Peter. He traveled with SS. Paul 
a nd Barnabas on their first Missionary Journey; here and 
in a few other places, he is called simply "John." He left St. 
Paul and his cousin during this journey and returned to 
Jerusalem, and St. Paul held this to be a weakness and would 
not take him with him on his next journey; but later he 
writes of him very kindly in three of his Epistles (Col. 
iv. 10; Philem. i. 24; 2 Tim. iv. 11). In this last Epistle 
St. Paul instructs Timothy: "Take Mark and bring him with 
thee, for he is profitable to me for the ministry." 

Of the later life of St. Mark we have no great certainty. 
Tradition says that he went to Egypt and founded the Church 

31 



32 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

of Alexandria, where he was bishop for twenty years. His 
relics are at St. Mark's, Venice. His Feast Day is April 25th, 
which is also a Rogation Day, though there is no connection 
between these two. 

The Second Gospel was written in Greek, very probably in 
Rome, for the Christian Church in and near the Eternal City. 
It was certainly written at a very early date. 

St. Mark and St. Peter 

That St. Mark was closely associated with St. Peter seems 
evident from the prominence given to Peter's name in several . 
instances, especially where corresponding passages in the other 
Gospels do not single him out. We may note the following: 

"And Simon and they that were with him followed after 
Him" (St. Mark i. 36). 

"And Peter remembering , said to Him : 'Rabbi, behold 
the fig tree, which Thou didst curse is withered'" (St. 
Mark xi. 21). 

"And as He sat on the Mount of Olivet, over against 
the Temple, Peter and J ames and John and Andrew asked 
Him apart: 'Tell us when shall these things be?'" (St. 
Mark xiii . 3, 4). 

"Go, tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth before 
you into Galilee; there you shall see Him as He told you " 
(St. Mark xvi. 7). 

Characteristics of the Second Gospel 

St. Mark's is the shortest of the Gospels. Wh ereas SL 
Matthew's has twenty-eight Chapters, St. Mark's has only six-
teen; St. Luke's has twenty-four and St. John's twenty-one. 
St. Mark gives us chiefly the works of Christ. There are no 
long discourses, but he supplies us with many interesting de-
tails omitted in the other Gospels. Let us point out some of 
these: 

He quotes St. John the Baptist as ha.ving sa.id of Christ : 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 33 

"There cometh after me One mightier than I, the latchet of 
Whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and loose" (St. 
Mark i. 7). 

After recording how our Lord called the Apostles St. James 
and St. John, St. Mark says: "And leaving their father Zebedee 
in the ship with his hired men, they followed Him" (St. Mark 
i. 20). 

Recording the cure of the leper, whom Christ instructed 
to show himself to the priest and to tell no one, St. Mark says 
that it was the "high priest, " and adds that the cured man 
"being gone out, began to publish and to blaze abroad the word 
so that He (Christ) could not openly go into the city, but 
was without in desert places; and they flocked to Him from 
all sides" (St. Mark i. 41-45) . 

Both St. Mark and St. Luke give us the incident of the 
crowded house where the friends of a sick man let him down 
through the roof. In describing how crowded the house was, 
St. Mark says: " There was no room; no, not even at the door" 
(St. Mark ii . 2) . 

The three Synoptic Gospels record the healing by our Lord 
of a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. St. Mark 
alone tells us that after this, "a great multitude followed Him , 
from Galilee and Judea, and from Jerusalem, and from Idumea, 
and from beyond the Jordan. And they about Tyre and 
Sidon, a great multitude, hearing the things which He did, 
came to Him" (St. Mark iii. 7, 8). 

In recording. the selection of the Twelve Apostles, St. Mark 
is very precise. He writes: "And going up into a mountain, 
He called unto Him whom He would Himself: and they came 
to Him. And He made that twelve should be with Him, and 
that He might send them to preach. And He gave them power 
to heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils " (St. Mark iii. 13-15) . 

In this same place, listing J ames and John his brother among 
the Twelve Apostles, St. Mark reports that our Lord named 
them " Boanerges, which is, The Sons of Thunder" (St. Mark 
iii. 17). 



34 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

In describing the Miracle of the Calming of the Tempest, 
while the other Gospels merely record the fact that our Lord 
was asleep , St. Mark says: "And He was in the hinder part 
of the ship, sleeping upon a pillow" (St. Mark iv. 38). 

In recording the Miracle of the Raising of the Daughter of 
Jairus, St. Mark gives us the Aramaic words. He writes: "And 
taking the damsel by the hand, He (Christ) saith to her: 
'Talitha cumi,' which is, being interpreted, 'Damsel, I say to 
thee, arise'" (St. Mark v. 41). 

In writing of the Feeding of the Multitude, St. Mark 
specifies that the Lord made the people sit down upon the 
"green grass, " and adds tha t " they sat down in ranks, by hun-
dr eds and by fifties" (St. Mark vi. 39,40). 

Describing the Transfiguration of our L ord, St. Mark says: 
" And His garments became shining and exceeding white as 
snow, so as no fuller upon earth can make white" (St. Mark 
ix. 2). 

In speaking of the Blind Man outside of Jericho, St. Mark 
tells us that his name was "Bartimeus, the son of Timeus" 
(St. Mark x. 46) . He gives us another Miracle of the heal-
ing of a blind man at Bethsaida (St. Mark viii. 22-26), which 
is contained in no other Gospel . This is the only instance in 
which St. Mark records a Miracle not mentioned in one or 
more of the other Gospels. 

The man who helped our Lord carry His Cross is simply 
called "Simon of Cyrene," by St. Luke, and St. Matthew says: 
"A man of Cyrene, named Simon." St. Mark, however , adds 
two further details. He writes: "And they forced one Simon a 
Cyrenian who passed by, coming out of th e country,the father 
of Alexander and of Rufus, to t ake up His Cross" (St. Mark 
xv. 21). St. Paul seems to refer to this " Rufus " in his Epistle 
to the Romans (xvi. 13), where he says, "Salute Rufus, elect 
in the Lord, and his mother and mine." 

Of Joseph of Arimathea, St. Matthew says : " He went to 
Pilate and asked the Body of Jesus ," and St. Luke says: "This 
man went to Pilate and begged the Body of Jesus." St. Mark 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 35 

says that Joseph of Arimathea "went in boldly to Pilate, and 
begged the Body of Jesus" (St. Mark xv. 43). 

We see, then, that while this Second Gospel is the shortest 
of the Four, we are indebted to it for many graphic details 
concerning our Lord and other persons connected with His his-
tory, as well as for many details concerning the events in which 
He moved during the few years of His Public Ministry. St. 
Mark's purpose was to paint a picture in vivid words, showing 
the wonderful works of Jesus Christ and demonstrating that 
He was the Messias, the Son of God. Notice how simple and 
strong is St. Mark's report of the question put to Christ by 
the High Priest, and our Lord's answer: 

"Again the High Priest asked Him, and said to Him: 
'Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed God?' And 
Jesus said to him: 'I am. And you shall see the Son of 
Man sitting on the right hand of the Power of God, and 
coming with the clouds of heaven ' " (St. Mark xiv. 61, 62). 

There is no clearer statement anywhere in the New Testa-
ment that Christ our Blessed Lord claimed to be God. 

A Summary of the Second Gospel 

Introduction: The ministry of St. John the Baptist, the 
Baptism of Jesus, and, very briefly, the Temptation in the 
Desert (St. Mark i. 1-13). 

1. Christ's Public Ministry in Galilee. Some of the Mira-
cles which we saw recorded by St. Matthew: 

Healing of a Leper, 
Healing of a Paralytic, 
Healing of a withered hand , 
Healing of the blind and dumb Demoniac. 

CSt. Mark i. 14-iii. 35). 

2. By the Sea of Galilee: Eight Parables recorded by St. 
Matthew, more briefly recorded in this Gospel; then 
some Miracles: 



36 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

Stilling the Tempest, 
Other Miracles, especially the Raising of the 

Daughter of Jairus to Life, 
Feeding of the Multitude, as in St. Matthew. 

(St. Mark iv-vii). 

3. Second Feeding of the Multitude. Profession of St. 
Peter's Faith, as in St. Matthew, but very briefly, fol-
lowed by the Transfiguration and a Miracle of Heal-
ing. (St. Mark viii, ix). 

4. In Jerusalem : 
The Teaching on Marriage, 
Christ Blesses the Children, 
The Apostles James and John ask special places in 

Christ's Kingdom, 
The Curing of a Blind Man. (St. Mark x). 

5. Palm Sunday and the events of Holy Week, similar to 
St. Matthew, with the addition of the incident of the 
Widow's Mite. (St. Mark xi-xiii). 

6. Last Supper, Passion and Resurrection. 
(St. Mark xiv-xvi). 



CHAPTER VI 

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. LUKE 

Life of St. Luke 

THE Third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles were written 
by St. Luke. The information about St. Luke in the New 

Testament is very meager. He was not one of the Twelve 
Apostles, and though some think he was one of the seventy-
two Disciples of our Lord-since his Gosp el alone mentions 
them-it seems much more likely that he was a Gentile and 
that he never knew or even saw our Blessed Lord. 

St. Luke was probably born in Antioch, the Capital of 
Syria. He was an educated man and a physician, and it is 
likely that he studied medicine at St. Paul's native city of 
Tarsus, in Cilicia, on the north shore of the Mediterranean 
Sea. He was converted to Christianity through the preaching 
of St. Peter or St. Paul, probably the latter. He attached 
himself to St. Paul and traveled with him on some of his mis-
sionary journeys and on the final journey to Rome, when St. 
Paul was being taken there as a prisoner. Nothing is known 
of him with certainty after the Roman captivity of St. Paul. 

There is a tradition that St. Luke was an artist and there 
are pictures which are supposed to have been painted by him. 
Unfortunately, historic evidence seems to prove that these 
pictures cannot be older than the sixth century of our era. 
However, St. Luke is the patron of physicians and of artists. 
His emblems are: A book, an ox, a brush and a palette. His 
Feast is observed on October 18th. His relics are venerated at 
the Church of St. Justina in Padua, Italy. 

Three times in the Epistles of St. Paul we find the name 
of this Evangelist: 

"Luke, the most dear physician, saluteth you," St. Paul 
wrote to the Colossians (Col. iv. 14). 

"There salute thee Epaphras, my fellow-prisoner in 
37 



38 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

Christ Jesus ... and Luke my fellow-laborer" (Philem. 
i. 23, 24). 

And in the last Epistle which St. Paul wrote, in the 
same verse where we find the reference to St. Mark (see 
page 31) the Apostle says: " Only Luke is with me " (2 
Tim. iv. 11). 

There are some portions of the Acts of the Apostles which 
are written in the first person plural, so we know that at these 
times St. Luke was actually an eyewitness to the events which 
he relates and had a part in them. It is very probable that 
St. Luke wrote his Gospel at Caesarea, on the Mediterranean 
coast of Samaria, a different city from that mentioned as the 
scene of St. Peter's Confession (see page 20), while St. Paul 
was a prisoner there, about the year 60 A. D., or a few years 
later during Paul's imprisonment in Rome; it was certainly 
during this latter time that he wrote the Acts of the Apostles. 

The Third Gospel 

" The most beautiful book that has ever been written," 
was the judgment of the French Agnostic, Ernest Renan, on 
the Third Gospel. Students of Greek point out the rich 
vocabulary of St. Luke; there are over three hundred words 
in this Gospel not found elsewhere in the New Testament. It 
is the most " literary" of the Gospels and the best arranged. In 
the beautiful Prologue, St. Luke says that he has "diligently 
attained to all things from the beginning," and that he is go-
ing to write them "in order" (St. Luke i. 3). For this reason, 
it is in marked contrast to St. Matthew, who, as we have seen, 
grouped teachings and Miracles, with little regard to chrono-
logical sequence. 

The Joyful Mysteries 

St. Luke goes back more than a ·year before the Birth of 
Christ, to begin his Gospel with the account of the Angelic 
announcement to the priest Zachary that a son would be born 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 39 

to him and that he should name the child "John." Then fol-
lows the familiar history of the Annunciation, the Visitation, 
the Nativity of our Lord, the Presentation in the Temple, and 
the Finding of the twelve-year-old Boy Jesus in the Temple-
all the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary come from the Gospel 
According to St. Luke. The Gospels of the First and Second 
Masses of Christmas are from the Second Chapter of St. Luke, 
as are those of the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas, 
the Feast of the Circumcision, Sunday within the Octave of 
the Epiphany, and the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed 
Virgin, February 2nd. In addition to this, St. Luke's Gospel 
has been assigned by the Church for fifteen Sundays through-
out the year. 

There is an old tradition that St. Luke received his infor-
mation from our Blessed Lady herself, and, indeed, it is hard 
to see who else could have supplied him with the material in 
the first two chapters of his Gospel. 

It is only St. Matthew and St. Luke who treat of the Birth 
and Infancy of Christ, and each supplies different details, so 
that with the two together we have a very complete picture of 
all the events surrounding the Birth of our Blessed Lord. 

From St. Luke's account the Church takes the three well-
known Canticles, the Magnificat, the B enedictus, and the Nunc 
Dimittis. The Magnificat is that sublime Hymn of Praise 
spoken by our Blessed Lady when she visited St. Elizabeth 
(St. Luke i. 46-55); it is part of Vespers in the Divine Office. 
The Benedictus is the inspired prophecy of St. Zachary, father 
of St. John the Baptist, spoken when his power of speech was 
restored to him (St. Luke i. 67-79). This is part of Lauds in 
the Divine Office, and part of the Absolution following a 
Funeral Mass. The Nunc Dimittis was spoken by the holy 
old man Simeon, as he took the Divine Infant into his arms , 
when His Blessed Mother and St. Joseph brought Him to the 
Temple for Mary's legal Purification forty days after the 
Birth of Jesus (St. Luke ii. 28-32). It is a short Canticle 
which the Church incorporates into Compline, the Night 



40 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

Prayer of the Divine Office. Note also that the first part of 
the Hail Mary comes from this Gospel ; for in this prayer we 
repeat the words of the Angel Gabriel and of St. Elizabeth ad-
dressed to the Blessed Virgin (St. Luke i. 28,42). We owe 
much, therefore, to these first two chapters of the Third Gospel, 
because we find this material nowhere else in the Gospels. 

St. Luke calls attention to important facts of profane his-
tory which coincide with the sacred events he sets down in his 
Gosp el. For example, he points out that Herod was King of 
the Jews when the Annunciation took place; that the Birth of 
Christ was at the time of the Census of Cyrinus; and that 
John the Baptist began his mission " in the fifteenth year of 
the reign of Tiberius Caesar" (St. Luke iii. 1). It is only in 
this Gospel that another Herod is brought into the history of 
our Lord 's Passion (St. Luke xxiii . 7-12). 

Characteristics 

This Third Gospel has some striking characteristics and 
contains considerable material not found in the earlier Gospels 
which we have already studied. One characteristic is "the 
prominence given to women. When we recall the inferior place 
held by women both in Jewish and in Greek life, this aspect 
of the Gosp el According to St. Luke becomes the more re-
markable. In the first two chapters, besides the important 
place necessarily given to the Blessed Virgin and her cousin, 
St. Elizabeth, there is brought into the narrative the Prophetess 
Anna, who spoke of Jesus to all who looked for the Redemp-
tion of Israel (St. Luke ii. 36-38). 

Later in his Gospel St. Luke relates the touching story of 
the Widow of Nairn, whose only son was restored to life by 
Christ our Lord (St. Luke vii. 11-15); no other Gospel re-
cords this Miracle. Again, it is St. Luke alone who speaks of 
the holy women who helped our Lord during His Public Min-
istry (St. Luke viii. 2, 3). He alone of the Evangelists speaks 
of our Lord's visit to the house of the sisters, Martha and 
Mary, and reports the very human complaint of Martha that 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 41 

her sister failed to help her with the domestic duties (St. Luke 
x. 38-42). St. John, too, speaks of these sisters, and their 
brother, Lazarus, but records only the more important fact 
that Jesus restores Lazarus to life after he had been dead for 
four days (St. John xi . 1-44). 

Among the many Miracles of Christ, St. Luke alone records 
the cure of a woman who had been crippled for eighteen years 
(St. Luke xiii. 11-13). And among the many Parables we find 
two in which women are the characters used. St. Matthew 
had recorded the beautiful Parable of the Lost Sheep (St. 
Matt. xviii. 12-14); St. Luke repeats this an4 then adds the 
Parable of the Woman and the Lost Coin, called a groat 1 (St. 
Luke xv. 8-10). It is to St. Luke that we must go for the 
other Parable of the Importunate Widow and the Judge (St. 
Luke xviii. 1-8). We would naturally expect that any special 
prominence given to women by the earlier Gospels would be 
duplicated by St. Luke, and therefore we are not surprised 
to find our Lord's commendation of the Widow who put her 
meager offering into the Temple treasury (see St. Mark xii. 
41), repeated in more detail in the Third Gospel (St. Luke 
xxi. 1-4). 

However, the most beautiful instance of this characteristic 
of St. Luke we find in the History of the Sacred Passion. He 
alone records that Christ our Lord, on His way to Calvary, 
stopped on the road to speak to some Women of J erusalem. 
The incident forms the Eighth Station in our Way of the Cross, 
but usually our prayer books give only a few of the words 
our Lord spoke on that occasion. Read the whole incident for 
yourself (St. Luke xxiii. 27-31). 

Other Characteristics 
As we noted in the beginning of this Chapter, St. Luke 

was a Gentile. He wrote his Gospel for Gentiles. This made 
him considerate of the feelings of the people who were not of 
the J ewish race and religion. When our Blessed Lord spoke 

1 The groat was an old English silver coin worth fourpence. 



42 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

of the obligation of universal charity, He asked a series of 
questions, as St. Matthew reports (St. Matt. v. 46,47): "For if 
you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? 
Do not even the publicans this? And if you salute your 
brethren only, what do you more? Do not also the heathens 
this? " St. Luke changes the wording, keeping the same sense, 
of course : "And if you love them that love you, what thanks 
are to you? For sinners also love those that love them. And 
if you do good to them that do good to you, what thanks 
are to you? For sinners also do this " (St. Luke vi. 32, 33). 
You see he has not mentioned publicans or heathens. 

In spite of his interest in Gentiles, and the prominence 
given to women in his Gospel, St. Luke does not record a 
Miracle performed to help a Gentile woman, obviously be-
cause our Blessed Lord had tested the faith of this woman 
by using language that must have seemed harsh. Both St. 
Matthew and St. Mark record the happening (St. Matt. xv. 
21-28; St. Mark vii. 24-30). The late Mother Loyola made 
a beautiful meditation on the incident in Welcome, her lovely 
book for Holy Communion . 

The Mercy of God 

st. Luke emphasizes the Divine Mercy. St. Matthew and 
St. John apply the Prophecy of Isaias to St. John the Baptist: 
" A voice of one crying in the wilderness." St. Luke does , too, 
but he quotes a longer passage from Isaias, using the Greek 
Version (the Septuagint, which he always uses), concluding 
with the words: "And all flesh shall see the salvation of God" 
(St. Luke iii. 4-6; Isaias xl. 3-5) . He gives us in considerable 
detail the incident of " the woman that was in the city, a sin-
ner ," who bathed the feet of the Lord , and records Christ's 
defense of her and His grant of pardon for her sins (St. Luke 
vii. 36-50). We find this episode nowhere else though St. 
John refers to it (see St. John xi. 2). 

We owe our knowledge of another Gospel character to St. 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 43 

Luke, for he alone has preserved for us the account of our 
Lord's meeting with the rich publican named Zacheus, "chief 
of the publicans" in Jericho. This man entertained Jesus in 
his home, and the Lord said, "This day is salvation come to 
this house . . . for the Son of Man is come to seek and to 
save that which was lost" (St. Luke xix. 1-10). This incident 
forms the Gospel for the Mass for the Dedication of a Church. 

The consoling story of the promise of Paradise to the Peni-
tent Thief on Calvary is told us only by St. Luke; it makes 
the Second of the Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross. 
He records also the First and Sixth of these Words: "Father, 
forgive them for they know not what they do!" (St. Luke 
xxiii. 34), and "Father, into Thy Hands I commend My 
Spirit!" (St. Luke xxiii. 46). These occur nowhere else. 

Parables Found Only in the Third Gospel 

The first two Gospels barely mention the fact that our 
Lord traveled through any of the territory east of the River 
Jordan. But St. Luke gives us a fairly long account of the 
Teaching and Ministry of Christ while He and His followers 
journeyed for the last time from Galilee to Jerusalem by way 
of the country east of the Jordan, because the Samaritans 
would not let them pass through their country (St. Luke ix. 
51-53) . We are indebted to St. Luke for the account of eleven 
Parables 2 that we do not find in any other Gospel, and these 
were spoken by our Lord while He was in Perea aria the coun-
try of the Decapolis. Best known among these Parables are ____ 
the following: ~ 

The Good Samaritan (S t. Luke x. 30-3 7 ) . 
The Prodigal Son (ibid. xv. 11-32). 
The Unjust Steward (ibid. xvi. 1-9) , 
The Rich Man and Lazarus (ibid. xvi. 19-31). 
The Pharisee and the Publican (ibid. xvi ii . 9-14). 

2 If we count three Parables found in St. Matthew differently worded, and then 
some brief illustrations, we can consider that sixteen or seventeen Parables are found 
only in St. Luke. . 



44 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

Miracles Found Only in the Third Gospel 

Six Miracles performed by our Blessed Lord are recorded 
only in this Gospel According to St. Luke; two of them have 
been already mentioned but we shall list all six of them for 
convenience: 

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (St. Luke v. 1-10). 
The Son of the Widow of N aim (ibid. vii. 11-16). 
The Woman Crippled Eighteen Years (ibid. xiii. 11-13). 
The Man With Dropsy (ibid. xiv. 1-6). 
The Ten Lepers (ibid. xvii. 11-19). 
Cure of Malchus in Gethsemane (ibid . xxii. 49-51) . 

Other Important Points Concerning the Third Gospel 

We said at the beginning of this chapter that St. Luke was 
a physician. This is borne out by the text of his Gospel. 
While all the Gospels speak of Christ's miraculous cures, only 
St. Luke uses the words "heal" and "healing" and these 
words are found nowhere else in the New Testament. He 
alone tells us of our Lord 's Sweat of Blood in the Garden (St. 
Luke xxii. 44), and he alone records that saying of Christ 
our Lord, "Physician, heal thyself" (St. Luke iv. 23). 

!twas pointed out earlier that St. Luke was a companion 
of St. Paul. There is a close similarity between some pas-
sages in the Epistles of St. Paul and some in this Gospel, when 
they are dealing with the same teachings of Christ; especially 

. is this true of the Last Supper (compare St. Luke xxii. 14-23, 
and 1 Cor. x. 16, xi. 23-29). Christ appeared to St. Peter 
on the day of His Resurrection according to St. Luke (xxiv. 
34), though no other Gospel mentions this; but St. Paul men-
tions it (1 Cor. xv. 5). 

St. Luke alone mentions another appearance of Christ on 
Easter: that to the unknown Disciples on the road to Emmaus, 
outside Jerusalem (St. Luke xxiv. 13-35), and you see from the 
reference that he speaks of this event in some detail. 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 45 

Summary of the Gospel 

I. Before and After the Birth of Christ, 
The Five J oyful Mysteries. 

(St. Luke i and ii). 
1. St. John the Baptist. Temptation in the Desert. 

(Ibid. iii. I-iv. 13). 
3. Teachings and Miracles in Galilee, 

Founding of the Church. 
(Ibid. iv. 14-ix. 50). 

4. The Perean Ministry, Parables. 
(Ibid. ix. 51-xix. 28). 

5. Jerusalem; Last Teachings. 
(Ibid. xix . 29-xxi. 38). 

6. Passion, Resurrection and Ascension. 
(Ibid. xxii -xxiv). 



CHAPTER VII 

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN 

St. John, the Beloved Disciple 

THE Fourth Gospel was written by St. John, the disciple 
" whom Jesus loved" (St. John xiii. 23). John and his 

older brother James 3 were the sons of Zebedee, a fisherman 
on the Lake of Galilee. St. Matthew tells us how the Lord 
summoned them: "He (Christ) saw other two brethren, James 
the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee 
their father, mending their nets, and He called them. And 
they forthwith left their nets and father, and followed Him" 
(St. Matt. iv. 21,22). These two, with Peter, were the Apos-
tles specially favored by our Lord; only they entered into the 
house where the daughter of Jairus lay dead, and witnessed 
the miracle of her restoration to life (St. Luke viii. 51); only 
they were present at the Transfiguration (St. Matt. xvii. 1) , 
and during Christ's Agony in the Garden (St. Matt. xxvi. 37) . 
St. John alone was faithful throughout the Sacred Passion and 
stood with our Blessed Lady at the foot of the Cross. He tells 
us in his own Gospel how Jesus commended His Blessed Mother 
to his care (St. John xix. 25-27) . 

After the Ascension of Christ, St. John remained the com-
panion of St. Peter during the early days of the Apostolic min-
istry, and St. Paul referred to them as "pillars" of the Church 
(Gal. ii. 9). St. John traveled through Asia Minor and estab-
lished several churches. Then, during a persecution, he was 
exiled to the Island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, where he 
wrote the Book that stands last in the New Testament, Th e 
Apocalypse. He returned to Ephesus later where he wrote the 
Fourth Gosp el and three short Epistles . 

3 51. James the Grea ter , slain by ord er of Ki ng H erod Agrippa in J eru salem 
(Acts xii. 2). 

46 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 47 

St. John probably died at Ephesus, a very old man, near 
the end of the first century. His Feast is observed December 
27th. Another Feast, May 6th; called "St. John Before the 
Latin Gate," commemorates the attempt made to kill him by 
throwing him into a vat of burning oil, from which he escaped 
unharmed. His emblems are: an eagle, a chalice, a kettle, a 
suit of armor. 

Author of the Fourth Gospel 

That St. John wrote this Gospel near the end of his long 
life, and wrote it in Ephesus, an important city that was the 
Capital of Proconsular Asia, is the testimony of very early 
Christian writers. St. Irenaeus, who died at the end of the 
second century, wrote between the years 177-188 A. D., that 
" John, the disciple of the Lord, who leaned upon His breast, 
himself also published the Gospel while he was dwelling at 
Ephesus in Asia." Now this Irenaeus knew St. Poly carp who 
lived to be nearly ninety years of age and who knew St. John. 
An English writer, not a Catholic, discussing this question, said 
he saw no reason why the Churches of Asia Minor should not 
have been just as sure that the Apostle John had once lived 
among them, as the English are that Oliver Goldsmith once 
lived in London (Drummond, Character and Authorship of 
the Fourth Gospel). 

Characteristics of the Fourth Gospel 

When you read the Fourth Gospel you will notice at once 
how it differs from the other three Gospels we have already 
studied. You find many long discourses by our Blessed Lord, 
and you find several Miracles that were not recorded in any 
of the other Gospels. In fact nearly all the material of this 
Fourth Gospel is new: St. John wrote for that reason, to sup-
ply a record of important things Christ said and did during 
His Public Life that had not yet been written down. As he 
was the last of the Evangelists to write, and as he knew what 



48 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

the others had written, he planned to record what had been left 
out of the earlier Gospels. He tells us quite plainly, however, 
that all the records are incom'plete : "Many other signs also did 
Jesus in the sight of His disciples which are not written in this 
book." And a little later he says again: "There are also many 
other things which Jesus did, which, if they were written, every 
one the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the 
books that should be written" (St. John xx . 30, xxi. 25). 

Purpose of the Gospel 

But there was another and more important reason why St. 
John undertook to write a Gospel: " These things are written," 
he says, "that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the 
Son of God; and that believing, you may have life in His 
Name" (St. John xx. 31). St. John begins the Gospel with 
a proclamation of the Divinity of Christ. It is these first 
fourteen verses of the Gospel According to St. John that the 
Church uses as the Last Gospel of Holy Mass , unless some 
special Gospel is called for there, as on Feast Days in Lent. 

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was 
with God, and the Word was God . .. . And the Word was 
made flesh and dwelt among us , and we"-i. e., John and 
the other Apostles-"saw His glory, the glory, as it were, 
of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" 
(St. John i. 1, 14). 

This is the Apostle's thesis. He uses "WORD" to desig-
nate Christ in The Apocalypse (xix. 13) , and in the introduc-
tion to his First Epistle (1 Epistle i. 1). The Greek term, 
logos, which is translated in our Bible by word, really means 
more than that; it means the thought which is expressed by 
the word, and sometimes it means reason. Something like it 
was used by writers in the Old Testament, so St. John was 
using an expression that was familiar to his first readers. We 
are familiar with it because we hear it so often, but perhaps 
it has not always been clear to us just what was meant. 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 49 

Many of the chapters in the Fourth Gospel are long; one 
incident and the discourse of Christ in connection with the 
incident often take up a whole chapter. In the case of our 
Lord's Discourse after the Last Supper, St. John devotes three 
chapters to it. All through the Gospel, St. John makes clear 
to us the Divine claims of his Master and shows how our 
Lord's Miracles prove these claims. It was pointed out before 
(page 30) , that the majority of the events recorded in this 
Gospel occurred in Judea, in or near Jerusalem. In the early 
chapters, however, there are important happenings in Galilee 
and in Samaria. 

Summary of the Fourth Gospel 

After the Prologue mentioned above, comprising the first 
fourteen verses of the first chapter, St. John proceeds to give 
us the account of the work of St. John the Baptist, the calling 
of the first Apostles by Christ and then the Public Ministry, 
filling eleven chapters out of a total of twenty-one chapters ; 
the events of Holy Week start with the beginning of Chapter 
xii., so you see that St. John devotes nearly half of the entire 
Gospel to the events that we commemorate in Holy Week and 
at Easter. 

Public Ministry 

We may divide the first half of the Gospel into two parts: 
(a) The Public Ministry begins with the Miracle at the 

Wedding Feast at Cana in Galilee; then our Lord returns to 
Jerusalem and casts out from the Temple the sellers and the 
money changers ; Nicodemus comes to Jesus for an interview 
and Christ speaks of the necessity of Baptism; soon after He 
journeys up to Samaria and talks at length with a Samaritan 
woman; He continues into Galilee and heals the son of the 
ruler of Capharnaum, Chapters i-iv. 

(b) The conflict begins with the Jewish authorities over 
the miraculous healing of a crippled man in Jerusalem on the 
Sabbath. Christ goes again into Galilee and miraculously 



50 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

feeds the multitude; this is the only one of our Lord's Miracles 
which is recorded in all Four Gosp els; St. John reports it evi-
dently because it led up to that beautiful discourse on the 
Bread of Life, which was the Promise of the Holy Eucharist. 
Jesus returns to Jerusalem and the scenes of all the rest of the 
events in the Fourth Gospel are in or near Jerusalem. First 
there is the teaching of our Lord on the occasion of the Jewish 
Feast of Tabernacles, followed by the incident of the woman 
accused of adultery; then Christ gives sight to a man born 
blind. He performs this Miracle on the Sabbath, and a bitter 
controversy results. Then comes the Discourse on the Good 
Shepherd and the Miracle of the Raising of Lazarus. The re-
sult of this Miracle is worth noting: 

"The chief priests therefore and the Pharisees gathered 
a Council and said: 'Wha t do we for this Man doth many 
miracles? And if we let Him alone so, all will believe in 
Him, and the Romans will come and take away our place 
and na tion '" (St. John xi. 47, 48). 

Holy Week and Easter 

The Public Ministry is thus brought to a dramatic end by 
this great Miracle which the enemies of Jesus use as an argu-
ment to destroy Him , and we are led up to the 'events that 
immediately precede the Sacred P assion. This portion of the 
Gospel may be divided into four parts as follows: 

(a) Jesus is Glorified, (1) He is anointed with pre-
cious ointment, (2) He enters Jerusalem in triumph on 
Palm Sunday, and (3) a Voice speaks from Heaven: " I 
have both glorified it (Jesus' Name), and will glorify it 
again" (Chapter xii). 

(b) The Last Supper with the Disco urse and Prayer 
of Jesus (Chapters xiii-xvii). 

(c) The Passion (Chapters xviii, xix). 
(d) The Resurrection . Jesus gives to His Apostles the 

power to pardon sin (Chapters xx, xxi). 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 51 

In this second part of the Fourth Gospel St. John treats of 
subjects that are contained in the other three Gospels, but if 
you compare his account of these events with those in the 
Synoptic Gospels, you will notice that he treats them different-
ly. St. John does not mention the Institution of the Holy 
Eucharist at the Last Supper, because it has been completely 
covered i~ the other three Gospels and in St. Paul's First Epistle 
to the Corinthians, but he does give us a most beautiful Dis-
course of Jesus to His Apostles and His Prayer for them, and 
from this portion of the Gospel According to St. John are 
taken the Sunday Gospels for several Sundays before Pente-
cost, because it was on the night of the Last Supper that our 
Lord told His Apostles about the coming of the Holy Spirit. 

So in the History of the Passion according to St. John we 
find many different details not mentioned in the other Gospels; 
for example, we go to this Gosp el for three of the Seven Last 
Words of Christ. You remember we noticed that St. Luke 
supplied us the First, Second and Sixth of these Words. St. 
John gives us the Third: " Woman, behold thy Son; Behold 
Thy Mother" (St. John xix. 26, 27) . He also gives us the 
Fifth Word: " I thirst," and the Seventh: " It is consummated" 
(St. John xix. 28, 30) .4 

While it is clear from the first three Gospels, as we have 
seen, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, in the Fourth Gospel 
this teaching of the Divinity of Christ is emphasized in many 
ways. Some of the most striking texts are gathered here. 

St. John says that our Lord knew "that the Father had 
given Him all things into His hands and that He came from 
God and goeth to God" (xiii . 3). In His Prayer for His Dis-
ciples, our Lord says: "Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy 
Son that Thy Son may glorify Thee. As Thou hast given Him 
power overall flesh, that He may give eternal life to all whom 

4 The Fourth Word: "My God, My God, wliy hast Thou forsaken Me?" is found 
in the first two Gospels CSt. Matt. xxvi i. 46; St. Mark xv. 34). Our Lord here 
was reci tin g Psalm xxi., which was a prophecy of the Passion (see Psalm xxi. 2). 



52 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

Thou hast given Him" (xvii. 1, 2). In this same Prayer, our 
Lord says that He prays for His Disciples because " they have 
known in very deed that I came out from Thee and they have 
believed that Thou didst send Me" (xvii. 8). Earlier in this 
Gospel, Jesus says that the Father " hath given all judgment to 
the Son, that all men may honor the Son, as they honor the 
Father" (v. 22, 23) . In His Discourse on the Bread of Life 
our Lord says: " This is the will of My Father that sent Me, 
that everyone who seeth the Son, and believeth in Him, may 
have life everlasting, and I will raise him up in the last day" 
(vi. 40). " I am not of this world," Christ says of Himself; 
I am " the Beginning Who also speak unto you " (viii. 23,25). 
"Before Abraham was made, I am" (viii. 58). " I am come 
in the Name of My Father and you receive Me not" (v. 43). 
"All things whatsoever the Father hath are Mine" (xvi. 15). 

St. John records that " the Jews sought the more to kill 
Him (Jesus), because He did not only break the Sabbath, but 
also said God was His Father, making Himself equal to God" 
(v. 18). Jesus prays for His followers " that they all may be 
one, as Thou Father in Me and I in Thee" (xvii. 21). Jesus 
said to one of His Apostles, "If anyone love Me, he will keep 
My Word, and My Father will love him and WE will come to 
him, and will make Our abode with him " (xiv. 23). " I and 
the Father are One" (x. 30). 

Appealing to His Miracles, Jesus says : " If ~I do not the 
works of My Father, believe Me not; but if I do, though you 
will not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know 
and believe that the Father is in Me and I in the Father" 
(x. 37, 38). Jesus said to Thomas, "I am the Way and t.he 
Truth and the Life" (xiv. 6) . He said, "I am the Light of the 
World" (viii. 12). Jesus said to Martha, the sister of Lazarus, 
"I am the Resurrection and the Life" (xi. 25). 

In these and in many other passages in this wonderful 
Gospel, St. John clearly sets forth the teaching which is the 
very cornerstone of our Catholic Faith, that Jesus Christ is 
God made Man. 



CHAPTER VIII 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

Samaritans 

SAMARITANS are mentioned several times in the Gospels, . and we ought to know who these people are and why there 
was antagonism between them and the Jews. That there was 
such antagonism we learn, for example, from the question of the 
Samaritan woman whom our Lord met by the Well of Jacob; 
she said to Him: "How dost Thou, being a Jew, ask of me to 
drink, who am a Samaritan woman?" CSt. John iv. 9.) We 
see it again in the accusation hurled against Jesus by His 
enemies: "Do not we say well that Thou art a Samaritan and 
hast a devil?" CSt. John viii. 48.) 

We must go back to the Old Testament to learn the origin 
of the Samaritans. One of the most terrible disasters in an-
cient Jewish history was the conquest of the Northern King-
dom of Israel by the Assyrians C 4 Kings xvii. 1-18). When 
they destroyed the City of Samaria, they carried off large 
numbers of the population into Assyria; then the conquerors 
colonized the land of Samaria with pagans from their own 
country. These colonists soon picked up part of the Jewish 
religion and joined it to their own idolatrous superstitions 
which they had brought with them. This resulted in a mixed 
religion; as the Assyrians intermarried with the remnants of 
the Israelites ' who had been left in Samaria, we find also a 
mixed race. This was about 700 years before Christ, and even 
in the time of Christ the people of Samaria were looked upon 
by the Jews as a mongrel race and as heretics in religion. A 
Temple was built upon Mount Garizim. We find a reference 
to this in the words of the Samaritan woman to our Lord: 
"Our Fathers adored on this Mountain" CSt. J ohn iv. 20). 
This Temple was taken from the Samaritans in 164 B. c. by a 

53 



S4 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

Roman conqueror and consecrated to Jupiter. Thirty years 
later it was destroyed. Finally King Herod built a new Temple 
on the same Mountain. 

These facts explain the antagonism between the Jews and 
the Samaritans, and if we keep them in mind we can under-
stand better the force of our Lord's Parable, " The Good 
Samaritan" (St. Luke x. 30-37). 

These people still exist. The bulk of the popula tion was 
almost annihilated in the Sixth Century of the Christian Era, 
by the Emperor Justinian, but in a census taken in 1923, one 
hundred and fifty Sama ritans were found living around the foot 
of Mount Garizim. 

Publicans 

Another group of people in Jewish life at the time of our 
Lord, who were perhaps even more bitterly hated than the 
Samaritans, were the Publicans. This was the name given to 
the tax collectors. They were Jews employed by the Romans 
to collect the taxes from their own people. A glance at the 
system will show us why these collectors were so universally 
despised. Rich Roman citizens, either individually or acting 
in what we would call a Stock Company, bought from the 
Roman authorities the tax "concession" in the territories which 
had been conquered by the Romans . Whenever possible, they 
employed natives of the territory to collect the taxes, and this 
was true in Palestine. The Publicans were paid by a commis-
sion on the taxes they collected, so obviously it was to their 
advantage to collect as much as possible-even more than the 
law demanded. If they were unscrupulous, they could easily 
become "extortioners," as the Pharisee described the Publican 
in the Parable recorded by St. Luke (xviii. 9-14). We have 
another reference to this danger in the advice given by St. John 
the Baptist: "And the Publicans also came to be baptized and 
said to him: 'Master, what shall we do?' But He said to them: 
'Do nothing more than that which is appointed you'" (St. 
Luke iii. 12, 13). 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS SS 

Furthermore, the taxes were a terrible burden upon the 
people. Perhaps we think in these days that we are heavily 
taxed, but a list of the taxes to which the people of Palestine 
were subject in our Lord's day will indicate in how many 
ways the conquered Jewish people were called to support 
the Roman Government: There was a Capital Tax of two 
drachmas per person, which was originally a religious tax; 
there was a general Income Tax, besides a Poll Tax of 1 % 
on total property. This applied to boys and men from four-
teen to sixty-five and to girls and women from twelve to 
sixty-five years of age and even to slaves. Then there was a 
Land Tax, a tax on grain and cattle to maintain the Roman 
Army; a tax on fruit trees, fishing boats and nets, and a spe-
cial tax on jewelry. There was a tax on professions and oc-
cupations, which affected butchers, bakers and tanners. There 
was also a Sales Tax, and there were Port and Market Dues, 
Road and Frontier Dues, and if we recall, from the chapter 
on the geography of Palestine, that there were a great many 
small States, each with its own boundaries where taxes were 
collected, we can uriderstand what a nuisance these last forms 
of taxation became to the people. 

The Publicans had booths in every town and village. In 
St. Luke 's account of the calling of St. Matthew by our Lord, 
we read: "And after these things, He went forth, and saw a 
publican named Levi sitting at the receipt of custom, and He 
said to him: 'Follow Me.' And leaving all things , he rose up 
and followed Him" (St. Luke v. 27,28). 

The Jews felt that they did not have to keep faith with 
"murderers, thieves and Publicans." No gift of a Publican 
could be accepted in the Temple or Synagogue; no Publican 
could be a judge, or even a witness in a Jewish Court of 
Justice, nor could any member of his family. They were com-
plete outcasts. All the abusive things said about Publicans 
are recorded by St. Matthew, who had been a Publican; It is a 
splendid commentary on his humility. 

If we bear in mind this state of things we can better ap-



56 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

preciate the force of our Lord's Parable about the Pharisee and 
the Publican (St. Luke xviii. 9-14). To say, as Christ our 
Lord did,that the Publican was justified rather than the 
Pharisee, was to fly in the face of public opinion and the 
Parable must have made a profound impression on the Jewish 
people who heard it. 

Pharisees 

From our memory of the Sunday Gospels in which Phari-
sees are mentioned, we might be tempted to think that, as a 
class, they were all hypocrites, because we probably will call 
to mind very readily the fact that Christ condemned them for 
hypocrisy. However there were many good men who were 
Pharisees. We need to learn, then, something about the his-
tory of this important group in the Jewish nation. The word 
" Pharisee" means "separated ones," because they " separated" 
themselves from the heathen peoples surrounding them by a 
scrupulous adherence to the letter of the Law. The Pharisees 
originated soon after the return of the Jewish people from the 
Babylonian Captivity in the Sixth Century before Christ. The 
Jewish historian, Josephus, claims that there were about 6,000 
Pharisees in the time of Christ. They were an exclusive so-
ciety, a sort of religious free masonry within Jewry, closely 
bound to one another ; each member took upon himself an 
oath in the presence of three others to remain true to the Laws 
of the Brotherhood. They had great influence with the ordinary 
people, though by their rules they were cut off from most of 
their own people, and they were absolutely cut off from all 
Gentiles. 

NicoderrlUs , whom we mentioned in the Chapter on the 
Gospel According to St. John, was a Pharisee. We may men-
tion, also, that St. Paul was a Pharisee before his conversion. 

In all the Gospels we find the record of many clashes be-
tween' our Lord and the Pharisees. Their principal fault ap-
parently was that they had lost the spirit of the Law while 
adhering rigorously to its letter. They are not to be con-



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 57 

sidered a "political" party, but rather a "sect." Originally 
they had called themselves "the pious ones." 

Scribes 

Joined with the Pharisees in many of our Lord's criticisms, 
were the Scribes. The term "scribe" means simply "writer," 
but it implies learning. About 200 years before Christ, a 
High Priest apostatized and a group of laymen arose who dedi-
cated themselves to the studying and expounding of the Law. 
They became a professional class of trained copyists and 
notaries, and interpreters of the Law of Moses. Practically all 
Scribes were Pharisees. Their status was self-assumed, based 
on the claim of scholarship and the conscientious observance 
of the Jewish Law. 

Soon after the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 A. D., the functions 
of the Jewish Priesthood practically ceased and the Scribes 
became the leaders of the people. 

Sadducees 

The Sadducees are mentioned only a few times in the 
Synoptic Gospels . In St. Matthew xvi. 1 we read: "And there 
came to Him the Pharisees and Sadducees, tempting: and they 
asked Him to show them a sign from heaven." St. Matthew 
(xxii. 23-33), St. Mark (xii. 18-27) and St. Luke (xx. 27-40) 
all record the incident where the Sadducees came to our Lord 
and asked Him whose wife a woman would be after the resur-
rection who, during her life, had in turn married each of seven 
brothers. The Sadducees did not believe in the immortality 
of the soul, the resurrection of the body, nor in angels. The 
three Evangelists all refer to the fact that the Sadducees did 
not believe in the resurrection. For example, St. Matthew 
writes: "That day ·there came to Him the Sadducees, who say 
there is no resurrection," etc. (St. Matt. xxii. 23). 

They were a political group. The name comes from "Za-
dok," a High Priest; they were adherents of his family. The 



58 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

name is met with about 100 B. c. The Sadducees were aris-
tocrats and "liberal" Jews. They held to the Scriptures and 
the Scriptures alone, and hence differed from the Scribes and 
Pharisees, who laid great emphasis on the elaborate oral tra-
ditions which had grown up around the text of the Mosaic Law. 
Ordinarily there was little in common between the Sadducees 
and the other two groups, yet they forgot their differences 
and united in opposing Jesus. The Sadducees had great po-
litical influence in their day, but they disappeared after the 
destruction of Jerusalem. 

The Sunday Gospels should become much more interesting 
to us when we know that the people who had such strange 
names as Pharisees, Sadducees, Samaritans, etc., were real 
people, and when we become familiar with their background 
and the history of how these various groups came into exist-
ence. 



DISCUSSION CLUB QUESTIONS 

Chapter I 

1. Who were the four Evangelists? 
2. Which of them were our Lord's Apostles? 

3. Names the Apostles who wrote Books of the New 
Testament. 

4. What is papyrus? 
5. What happened to the original writings of the 

Apostles and Evangelists? 
6. Describe the Vatican Manuscript. 

7. What is a Codex? 
8. Where and by whom was the Codex Sinaiticus 

found? 
9. Tell the story of the Codex Alexandrinus. 

10. How we~e copies of the Bible made before the in-
vention of printing? 

Chapter II 

1. What does apocryphal mean? 
2. What Church councils fixed the "Canon" of the 

Bible? 
3. Name three early saints who testified to the au-

thenticity of our Gospels? 
4. What is the "Muratorian Fragment"? 

5. Tell the story of St. Jerome. 
6. What is the testimony of St. Thomas More abou1 

the English Bible? 
7. Describe two German Bibles earlier than Luther's. 

8. Why are we sure of the accuracy of the Gospels? 
9. How does the account of the Resurrection prove 

the sincerity of the Evangelists? 

10. What do we mean by the Inspiration of the Scrip-
tures? 

59 



60 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

Chapter III 

1. Who was Roman Emperor when Christ was born? 
When He died? 

2. Name and locate the countries near Palestine. 

3. Describe the course of the River Jordan and name 
the Provinces which it borders. 

4. What are the principal places in Galilee? In 
Judea? 

5. Read the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent 
and locate the places mentioned in it. 

6. Where is Caesarea Philippi, and what happened 
there? 

7. Why is Palestine sacred to the Jews? 

8. Who built Temples in Jerusalem? When and how 
was the last Temple destroyed? 

9. Who are the Mohammedans, and what sacred 
building have they in Jerusalem? 

10. Who governs Palestine now? 

Chapter IV 

1. What is the proper way to refer to the Gospels? 
2. Tell briefly what we know of St. Matthew. 

3. How do we know that St. Matthew wrote to con-
vince the Jewish people? 

4. What does St. Matthew tell us about the Birth 
and Infancy of Christ? . 

5. Relate the important event regarding St. Peter 
which we find in this Gospel. 

6. What different bodily afflictions did our Lord 
miraculously cure? 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 61 

7. What other miracles did Christ perform, besides 
healing the sick? 

8. Explain what is a Parable and name at least five 
found in the First Gospel. 

9. Describe the raising to life of the Ruler's daughter. 

10. Explain some of the virtues discussed by Christ 
in the second half of the First Gospel. 

Chapter V 

1. Relate the history of St. Mark briefly. 

2. On what day is his Feast observed? What else do 
you know about this day? 

3. What evidence is there that St. Mark was closely 
associated with St. Peter? 

4. Describe the most remarkable characteristic of the 
Second Gospel. 

5. 11\ this Gospel what name does our Lord give the 
Apostles James and John? 

6. What details does St. Mark give us about Christ 
in the ship during the storm? 

7. How does he describe the scene of the Miraculous 
Feeding of the Multitude? 

8. What is the name of the blind man whom Christ 
cured outside of Jericho? 

9. Who was Simon of Cyrene? 

10. What did our Lord reply to the question of the 
High Priest: "Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the 
Blessed God?" 

Chapter VI 

1. What do you know of the Life of St. Luke? 
2. What are the Joyful Mysteries? Describe each 

event. 



62 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 

3. What Canticles come from the Third Gospel, and 
where are they used? 

4. In what Miracles and Parables do women play an 
important part? 

5. In what other events in the Public Ministry of 
Christ do women playa part? 

6. How does St. Luke try to spare the feelings of his 
Gentile readers? 

7. Which of the Seven Last Words of Christ do we 
find in St. Luke? 

8. Name five Parables found only in this Gospel. 
9. Name five Miracles described only in this Gospel. 

10. Give some instances of similarity between this 
Gospel and St. Paul's Epistles. 

Chapter VII 

1. Relate what you know of the Life of St. John. 
2. Give two reasons why St. John wrote a Gospel. 
3. Explain what St. John means by "WORD". 
4. What are the principal ways in which the Fourth 

Gospel differs from the other three? 
5. What is the first Miracle related in the Gospel Ac-

cording to St. John? 
6. Which one great Miracle of our Lord's is recorded 

in all Four Gospels? 

7. What did the enemies of Christ say after He had 
raised Lazarus from the dead? 

8. What can you say about St. John's account of the 
Last Supper? 

9. Which of the Seven Last Words do we find in the . 
Fourth Gospel? 

10. Quote at least five texts from this Gospel proving 
the Divinity of Christ. 



A BRIEF STUDY OF THE FOUR GOSPELS 63 

Chapter VIII 

1. Explain briefly the reasons for the antagonism he-
tween the Samaritans and the Jews. 

2. Are there any Samaritans still living? Where? 
3. Who were the Publicans? Why were they so de-

spised? 
4. Mention some of the taxes imposed hy the Roman 

Government on the conquered Jewish people at 
the time of our Lord. 

5. Which of our Lord's Apostles was a publican? 

6. What does the word "Pharisee" mean? Why did 
Christ condemn the Pharisees? 

7. What character in the Gospels was a Pharisee? 

8. Relate the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publi-
can. 

9. What was the origin of the Scribes and what does 
the term mean? · 

10. What do you know about the Sadducees? How 
did the name originate? 








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