I openned our Bible study up to questions last night, and this was the first question, “Why does the Bible have four gospels instead of just one?”
It’s actually a pretty good question. I mean what’s the point of having four books which pretty much tell the exact same story?
If you’re wondering the same thing, here’s what I told him last night.
Pretend you’re a judge of an extremely important case in court. You want to be as unbiased about everything as you possibly can. The prosecution has their story, the defendent has his story, but nobody really knows who’s telling the truth or not. You, as the judge, weren’t there when the incident took place and neither was the jury.
In every single case, the most powerful source in determining what happened is an eye witness.
The only thing more convencing than an eye witness is four witnesses telling the exact same story.
Was Jesus the Messiah? Was He crusified and did He rise again? Is He the Son of God?
Don’t ask my opinion, ask the eye witnesses who saw the whole thing.
When evidence is stacked up like that, you have to either accept it or choose to ignore it.
It’s as ridiculous as saying that I don’t believe George Washington really existed. It’s just something made up by patriotic Americans to sound like we had a great man lead us to independence. I never saw him and my professor says the story is made up. Only naive fanatics would believe in somebody like that.
The Masters Call 
February 25th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Interesting your explication about the four gospels
March 28th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Both of the answers given to the question “Why 4 Gospels” were wonderful answers. I had not really even thought of this question previously. The explanation of the 4 eyewitnesses with the exact same story was new to me. I had not heard that explanation before. Your answer was a blessing as it helped me to better understand ‘why 4 Gospels’. Thank you. Praise be to God. The 2nd explanation regarding 4 different perspectives helped me to understand that explanation better. I have been taught the 4 different men taught different ‘sides’ of Jesus but I had not processed the idea that this was their perspective of Jesus. What a blessing! Thank you for your ministry and your service to God and Our Saviour. I thought the baby clip was great. It was so cute. I watched it at least 4 times. She is precious. You and Gretchen have been blessed and I appreciate you sharing that blessing with us. My prayers are with you. Your Sister in Christ, Pam
March 28th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Thank you, Pam, I appreciate your prayers and the encouragement.
To God Be The Glory,
Tyler
October 4th, 2008 at 3:27 am
IF I accept your explanation, then surely 5 is better than 4, and 6 is even better; but the church decided that they will recognize 4 only, why the others were rejected? On what criteria were the 4 selected? what made them special from the rest that were around?
October 4th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Thank you, Zed, for sharing your question with us.
I’ll go ahead and give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that the question is sincere and that I’m not going to waste my time arguing religious or even secular “dogma.”
There are several reasons why these 4 were recognized and the so-called “others” were rejected.
1. When They Were Written
The books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written shortly after the resurrection of Jesus Christ. All of them written if the first century. There were hundreds if not thousands of witnesses to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus alive when the books were written. Even secular historians like Josephus recorded these events without contradiction.
Most of the other contradicting documents were written hundreds of years later.
2. Who Wrote Them
The 4 gospels were written by men who witnessed the life of Jesus Christ first hand.
3. Consistency with Other Testimonies
Of course there is always someone who wants tell his own story about what happened. I court the jury has to listen to several different witnesses tell the same story. When 4 people tell the exact same story with no contradiction, that’s pretty convincing. When other people stand up and tell a contradicting story we need to find out if anybody else tells it the same way that they do. And like almost always, liars can never be consistent with their stories. One says it happened one way, the other said it happened another way. Their stories contradict themselves. The book of Thomas has no other valid book that supports its ludicrous accusations which are blatantly contradictory to the other 4 perfectly consistent gospels (that’s only one of about a thousand problems with the heretical “book of Thomas”).
4. The Circulation of the Gospels
Since we’ve already established that there were still living witnesses when the books were written, we need to take into account the documents they accepted as truth. After all, they were there too. The other counterfeit books were never copied or even read as often by the first century church. Only heretics who denied Christ have used them.
I’m sure there are other reasons for this, but hopefully this will give you an idea of why I personally and other Christians accept Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the truth and accurate historical records of the life of Jesus Christ.