Four Gospels Part II Trivia Quiz

Answer: Mark and Luke

The Gospel of Mark has traditionally, since the early 2nd century, been attributed to John Mark, a disciple of Peter. The Gospel of Luke has traditionally been attributed to Luke, a gentile convert to Christianity and a travelling companion of Paul, who also wrote Acts. Until the end of the 18th century, tradition credited John, Christ's "beloved disciple", with the authorship of the Gospel of John and Christ's disciple Matthew with the authorship of Matthew.

These traditional attributions have since been questioned.

Answer: Matthew

Matthew is also known as "the Gospel of the church" because it has been the subject of more commentaries and sermons than any other Gospel. This may be, Luke Timothy Johnson suggests in his "Jesus and the Gospels," because "Matthew is crafted so consciously to be useful to the messianic congregation."

Answer: Aphorisms

An example of one of Jesus's aphorisms is "Judge not, that ye be not judged" (Matthew 7:1, KJV). Parables are longer sayings that employ a story to communicate the speaker's message, such as the parable of the prodigal son found in Luke.

Answer: John

John is the outsider among the Gospels as it does not share much material with Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The Gospel begins with a poetic and symbolic play of darkness and light: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God...In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:1-4, NIV).

Answer: Between 65 - 180 AD

While there are a wide range of dates proposed by scholars for the Gospels, virtually all fall within the 65 - 180 AD range. (Although a few scholars will venture a pre AD-65 date for Mark, none would propose a pre AD-65 date for John.) The gospels do not appear to have been in existence at the time Paul was writing his letters (c. 49-67 AD), as he makes no reference to them and does not quote from them.

However, it is clear from the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons that, by 180 AD, the Gospels were already in circulation among the churches, considered to be authoritative in some sense, and known by their attributions of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Answer: The story of the woman taken in adultery (in John)

Another passages not found in the oldest extant manuscripts of the gospels is the so-called "longer ending" of Mark (16:9-20), in which Jesus, after his resurrection, appears to Mary Magadelene and the eleven disciples and says that "these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."

Answer: True

While most contemporary scholars consider Mark to have been written prior to Matthew, the tradition, suggested by Augustine, is that Matthew was written first, translated into Greek, and then drawn upon by Mark. About nine-tenths of the material found in Mark is also found in Matthew and Luke. Most modern scholars hypothesize that Matthew and Luke drew from Mark as well as another common source (which scholars term "Q").

Answer: John

John is the most explicit in its portrayal of the divinity of Jesus. Indeed, it even begins by explicitly equating Jesus with God: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning" (John 1:1-2). John goes on to make statements that have become core Christian doctrine, such as, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

Answer: The little apocalypse

Mark 13 has literary features that are typical of the genre of apocalyptic literature, a type of writing that foretells cataclysmic events. It is called the "little" apocalypse because it resembles the "great" apocalypse of the Revelation of John.

Answer: Teacher

Teacher, or rabbi, is a title frequently applied to Jesus by both friends and opponents in the Gospel of Mark. In Matthew, however, with only a few exceptions, the followers of Jesus call him lord while those outside his circle call him rabbi. (Judas calls him "rabbi" instead of "lord" at both the Last Supper and in the Garden of Gethsemane.) In Matthew 23:8, Jesus tells his followers, "But you are not to be called 'Rabbi,' for you have only one Master and you are all brothers."

Answer: John the Baptist

In Mark 6:17-29, the head of John the Baptist is presented to Herodias's daughter on a platter. Prior to this event, John the Baptist appears in Mark only to herald the coming of Jesus.

Answer: Luke

Neither Mark nor John contain infancy accounts. Matthew tends to focus more on Joseph than Mary, but, in Luke, it is Mary who is at the center of events and who interprets them.

Answer: Learner

In the Greek, the word translated disciple is mathetes (transliterated), and means learner or pupil. The relationship of learner/pupil/disciple to master/ teacher was common in both Jewish and Greco-Roman cultures at the time of Jesus.

Answer: True

According to Luke Timothy Johnson's "Jesus and the Gospels," Matthew "consistently" uses "a third fewer" words than Mark to tell the same stories. However, the overall length of his gospel is longer because he adds a genealogy, an infancy account, appearances of Jesus after his resurrection, and "the great commission."

Answer: Pharisees

The Sadducees focused on the temple, the Zealots on overturning Roman subjugation of the Jews, and the Essenes on the purity of the land, but the Pharisees focused on the (less geographically, politically, and physically bound) Torah, a concern that also preoccupies Matthew, who portrays Jesus as the fulfillment of the Torah. While the Sadducees accepted only the first five books of the Bible as authoritative, the Pharisees accepted all of what is now the Protestant Old Testament and strove to make the ancient scriptures more contemporary through oral tradition. While the Sadducees denied the resurrection of the body, the Pharisees anticipated it.

Of all the Jewish sects in existence at the time of Jesus, it is thought that Jesus' teachings most nearly resemble those of the Pharisees, which may have been why he had such marked disagreements with them, as one tends to disagree on details most particularly with one's own party. Many scholars have theorized that Jesus was a Pharisee of the Hillel school because some of his sayings are similar to those of Hillel.

Answer: False

Only the Gospel of Matthew uses the term ekklesia, or church, and the term appears three times in the Gospel. It first occurs in Matthew 16:18, when Jesus promises to build his "church" upon the "rock" of Peter.

Answer: Luke

Luke, who was a physician, is often referred to by Christian commentators as "the historian" because of his concern for historical detail in both his Gospel and the Book of Acts. Luke also connects the story of his Gospel to the larger biblical story and to world history. Matthew, unlike the historically narrower Mark, does place his Gospel in the larger historical context of Judaism, but Luke opens his up even more broadly. John's Gospel is more symbolic and poetic than the other three "synoptic" Gospels, and, though it contains historical material, is not stylistically written in the genre of history.

Answer: A righteous man

"The centurion" calls him "a righteous man" in Luke (23:47, NIV) but the "Son of God" in Matthew (27:54, NIV) and Mark (15:39, NIV). In Matthew's account, not only the centurion but "those with him who were guarding Jesus...exclaimed, 'Surely he was the Son of God!'"

Answer: Raising the centurion's daughter from the dead

John 1:19-12:50 is sometimes referred to as "The Book of Signs". The other four signs include healing the official's son, healing a paralytic, healing a blind man, and raising Lazarus from the dead.

Answer: Mark

Matthew opens with a genealogy of Jesus followed by the annunciation to Mary of the coming birth of the Messiah within her. Luke starts with the announcement of the birth of Jesus' older cousin John, moving on to Christ's birth. John goes back to the very beginning, when the "Word was with God" but then speeds up to John the Baptist testifying about Jesus. Mark skips the birth and childhood and jumps right into the middle of the action with Jesus' baptism and public ministry.