Last year, in first year, we studied the Introduction to the Old Testament; this year we have the Introduction to the New Testament. The New Testament includes four gospels. We will study first, synoptic gospels, then, the Johannine corpus and lastly, the Pauline corpus. It’s a very long module. It is difficult to cover it in twenty credits only. But we will try to give an overview. It is the marrow of the Bible. Why? Because the Gospels tell us the words and actions of Jesus from his birth to his death and Resurrection. They share with us the experience of the first Christian communities. Saint Jerome said: « The knowledge of the Sacred Scripture is the knowledge of God and Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of God ».

As our study is about gospels, let’s first examine the meaning of the concept « gospel » and then, the word « synoptic ». Gospel comes from Greek Euaggelion (Euaggelion) = Good News. The word has a pagan origin. When there was healing of a seriously ill person, the birth of a child in a family, the victory in a war over enemies, for the Greeks, it was Gospel. This word took a Christian meaning: « story that chronicles the life of Jesus, his ministry, his death and resurrection ». We also have the term « Gospels » in plural. It refers to the various writings of each of the evangelists on the life of Jesus. Each evangelist has his own way to tell the mystery of Jesus (birth, ministry, death and resurrection).

As for the word synoptic, applied to the first three gospels (Mt, Mk and Lk), it was introduced by J.J. GRIESBACH (1776) because they are very close and have much more things in common than differences. This word synoptic comes from Greek (sunv oyiz) because when you put these three gospels in parallel, you find that they have much more similarities than differences.