Navigating Gospel Truth: A Guide to Faithfully Reading the Accounts of Jesus's LifeSýnishorn

The Texts

When it comes to the texts of the Gospels, we don’t have the original, physical manuscripts (or autographs) that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote. But copies of the Gospels started being made soon after they were written.

The scribes worked very carefully making their copies. But even the most accurate scribe would make occasional mistakes in a long manuscript, and some scribes made intentional changes. So, how can we know what the Gospel authors really wrote? The answer lies in the early spread of Christianity. Because the Gospels were shared so far and so fast from the very beginning, we have a wealth of early copies that were made independently in different countries. We can compare manuscripts from one place with manuscripts from another and spot mistakes or changes. Experts can look at the family tree of the copies we have and figure out where mistakes crept in. Because we have so many copies of all or part of the Gospels—far more than we have for other ancient manuscripts—the vast majority of the texts of the Gospels are agreed upon.

In the few places where there is doubt that a passage is original, or where we have different, equally authentic-looking versions of a particular verse from different manuscripts, our Bibles will include a note explaining this. One example of this happens at the very beginning of Mark’s Gospel.

Read Mark 1:1.

If you have a footnote in your Bible at the end of this verse, what does it say about the phrase “the Son of God”?

Many early manuscripts leave out the phrase “the Son of God” from Mark 1:1. This might at first seem like a really big deal. Maybe Mark’s original just said, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ,” and later Christians added “the Son of God.” This seems to back the claim skeptics sometimes make that Jesus was just an inspirational teacher and the idea that He was the Son of God was dreamed up after His death. But let’s assume for a minute that Mark didn’t write “the Son of God” in the opening sentence of his Gospel. Would that actually support the skeptical argument? No!

Read Mark 1:9-11.

Even if Mark 1:1 doesn’t include “the Son of God,” we have plenty of evidence from the rest of his Gospel that Mark was presenting Jesus as the Son of God. Our understanding of that truth does not depend on one verse.

After examining the Gospels more closely, do you feel more or less confident that the Gospels are giving us access to Jesus?

For more of this study by author Rebecca McLaughlin, visit lifeway.com/gospeltruth.