Favourite New Testament Gospel

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While for Christians each of the four gospel accounts are, of course, Sacred Scripture and at the very heart of our faith identity, there is no getting by the fact that we tend to feel a greater affinity for certain texts over others.

The Bible is a library, after all; a library of books spanning a range of genres, literary styles and degrees of rhetorical prowess and aesthetic merit. This is no less the case for the canonical gospels. One scholar has described the different tones of the four gospels succinctly as, “the elegant style of Luke, the elevated style of John, the forceful style of Matthew, and the plain style of Mark .” Take your pick! Which one do you connect with the most?

The synoptics share broad intertextual themes and dependence (i.e. Markan primacy, potentially a shared Q source for Matthew-Luke etc.), whereas the Gospel of John is quite distinct in its more mystical, realized eschatology.

What about you?
 
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I am willing to stick my neck out and declare my preference for the Gospel of Luke, or rather Luke-Acts given that they really constitute a double-volume epic.

Already in chapter 1, near the end of Mary’s hymn of praise to God (The Magnificat), she mentions how God subverts conventional hierarchies of power and privilege (Luke 1:52-53):
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
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When a book begins like that, with that sort of awesomely subversive and egalitarian principle, I know - just know - its a book I’m going to like.

In the original Koine Greek, Luke is unanimously regarded by scholars as the most literary and syntactically perfect of the gospels (with poor Mark being the least grammatically correct or aesthetically pleasing), evidencing a rich vocabulary and sophisticated command of the Greek tongue, which approaches the heights of classical literature (i.e. Homer, Herodotus, Plato).

At a length of 19,482 words and with 59% of its material being wholly unique to Luke, it is by far the lengthiest gospel. Together with its second volume The Book of Acts, the combined Luke-Acts accounts for 27.5% of the New Testament, making it the largest contribution by a single sacred author.

All of these factors make Luke stand out in the midst of NT literature, and yet its distinguishing content, theology and missionary focus are even more striking, when viewed comparatively. Beyond doubt, this is the gospel ‘of the margins’ and of ‘social justice’. For all its urbane linguistic character, Luke is the strongest advocate - with the honourable exception of the Epistle of James, a work of similarly erudite prose - for the poor, dispossessed and marginalized members of society.

When we think about Jesus, in an everyday sense, I feel that we naturally gravitate towards images of the Lukan Jesus: the Jesus of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the preacher decrying the evil of rich oppressors and valorising the poor, the Jesus who reaches out to the outcasts and welcomes them. His gospel pays far more attention to women and feminine role models than do the other evangelists. Luke emphasizes, more than any other evangelist, the ‘radical’ nature of Christian discipleship.

The only rival to Luke, in this respect, is the justly celebrated Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew (widely regarded as the greatest summation of Jesus’s moral message) and the Judgement of the Nations, where the Matthean Jesus announces that we will be judged by how well we looked out for the least among all people and fulfilled the corporal works of mercy, as well as Matthew’s special recognition of Jesus’s outreach to prostitutes.

I love all four of the canonical gospels, albeit for different reasons. Mark, for his fast-paced, terse and emotive ride through Jesus’s life and mission. Matthew for the reasons I mentioned above. John for his lofty spiritual emphases and powerful symbolic language. But Luke still resonates the most with me.
 
Vouthon said:
Mark, for his fast-paced, terse and emotive ride through Jesus’s life and mission. Matthew for the reasons I mentioned above. John for his lofty spiritual emphases and powerful symbolic language.
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My favorite Gospel is Mark. It has always evoked the most intense emotional reaction in me and Jesus feels very alive, close, personal and very human. My second favorite is John’s Gospel.
 
I agree entirely, Mark has the most intimate portrayel of Jesus. There is something intensely personal and moving about his simple, unvarnished prose, which makes one feel as if they are actually following Christ in his travels. And it’s very fast-moving.

John, oddly, goes for the opposite depiction of Jesus: his gospel is otherworldly and incredibly lofty in tone, beginning with Jesus’s pre-incarnate divinity and agency in creation. I find it interesting that it’s your second choice after Mark, therefore, since they are both very different.
 
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John, because he sees so much of the savior and spirit in Jesus. He sees his miracles and his suffering from a close proximity, connecting the dots with the OT and the NT.
 
Wow, I guess that’s what I like about John. His ability to see the other worldly… but also on an intimate level. 🙂
 
That’s a great point, otherworldly but paradoxically intimate as well.

This is the gospel where Jesus both declares that before Abraham was “I AM” and yet also cries after the death of Lazarus, and bows down at the Last Supper to wash his disciples’ feet.

John thus succeeds with both the supramundane and the mundane, the extraordinary and the ordinary aspects of Christ, his divine and human nature.
 
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Kinda like saying who do you love more, your mom or your dad?

None of the four Gospels can, or should, be taken in isolation.
 
True, that’s a good point. They are fourfold accounts of one life.

However, while we must read them in unison, we also need to understand them on their own terms, as books with distinct approaches and literary styles in their own right, tailored towards different audiences.

The one does not exclude the other.
 
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I would choose Luke, though I don’t have the Biblical knowledge to give a detailed analysis explaining my preference, as @Vouthon did. Luke is the longest of the four Gospels – in fact, it’s the longest book in the whole NT, with Acts in second place – and it gives me the impression that Luke has tried harder than the other Evangelists to arrange his narrative in chronological order. There are one or two key incidents found only in Luke, such as the “Jesus Before Herod” episode (Luke 23:7-12), and this Gospel also has the fullest account of the Institution of the Eucharist (Luke 22:15-20). But of course you can’t disregard any of the four Gospels. You need all four to add up to the whole Gospel of Christ.
 
They are all beautiful in their own unique ways, but Mark is my favorite. The action of Jesus’s exorcisms and miracles is amplified, I love Mark’s excessive use of the word “immediately” to convey His sense of urgency in carrying out His ministry, and I love how he juxtaposes the belief and then misunderstandings or failings of the disciples and apostles in such close passages. My favorite example of this style is Mark 13 and 14. In 13, Jesus delivers his apocalyptic prediction of the destruction of the Temple and prefigurement of the end of the world, and ends his prophecy by warning the apostles, "35 Watch therefore—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning— 36 lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Watch.” Then in chapter 14 while praying in the garden of Gethsemane, "37 [H]e came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? 38 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

I also like the beginning of Mark’s Gospel; Luke has his beautiful introduction to Mary and Annunciation; Matthew provides our Lord’s genealogy and links to the Old Testament, and John’s prologue is so poetic to nearly bring a tear to one’s eye. But Mark gets straight to the point: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
 
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Ooo! In remembering the spirituality of John’s gospel I forgot the humanness of Luke. I love Luke, too, for his attention to detail. I guess it is like choosing one child over another…
 
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