Comparing Matthew, Mark, And The Confession At Caesarea Philippi

At first glance, the three Synoptic Gospels seem so similar. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell roughly the same stories of Jesus (and the same stories that Jesus told himself). Their overall messages are the same. The Lesson of the Fig Tree (§ 220) warns people that God’s Kingdom is near and in The Confession at Caesarea Philippi and The First Prediction of the Passion (§ 122) Jesus asks his disciples who people think he is, before ordering them to keep his true identity to themselves. They tell the same stories. Still, knowing that these Gospels had different authors, were written at different times, and were put together with different intentions, the differences and similarities have to be extracted and analyzed. Of the sections we read for this journal, I first noticed that § 2, § 19, § 34, § 35, and § 88 only contained text from Matthew and Luke. None of these sections share particular events of Jesus’ life, but rather his teachings, …show more content…
Compared to Luke, The Return of the Unclean Spirit (§ 88) is nearly the same as it is in Matthew, but he throws in a final line, “So will it also with this evil generation.” Luke didn’t find it necessary to add this line, but it comes from Matthew, sounding pointed and a bit frustrated with present society. Matthew is again concerned with evil in the passage about the Lord’s Prayer, with an added request to “rescue us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13). I see the dramatic side of Matthew again when Jesus asks his disciples who people think he is. After Peter gets the correct answer, Jesus praises him, saying, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!” and “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 16:17-19). This doesn’t happen in either of the other Synoptic Gospels, so when Jesus turns right around and reprimands Peter the moment is that much