Benjamin L. Gladd - Handbook on the Gospels

I should have written this volume years ago. Penning this project on the Gospels afforded me the opportunity to sit down and pensively work through all four narratives. Its been a delight. Tracing the flow of thought, charting the characters, and returning again and again to the OT increased my personal faith in and devotion to Christ.

The impetus for this project, and the Baker handbooks at large, stems from the lack of accessible and robustly evangelical resources for students, pastors, and teachers. When working on an unfamiliar text, I often turn to a commentary, only to be bogged down in the morass of word-by-word exegesis. Detailed and technical commentaries are necessary for the steady growth of the church. I wanted, though, to produce a volume on the Gospels that retains a close reading of the text while maintaining clarity and accessibility.

In quoting from the NIV (2011) and generally relying upon its outlines and parallels of the Gospels, Ive attempted to add yet another layer of accessibility for the readers. Brevity and directness characterize the three-volume Baker handbook series on the NT. Tom Schreiners volume spans Acts and all thirteen of Pauls letters, while Andreas Kstenberger distills Hebrews through Revelation. This volume on the Gospels covers only four books, so I decided early on to delve a bit deeper into the text than the other two handbooks do.

A few introductory remarks are in order. Commentators have pursued every imaginable angle on how the Gospels function in a wider Greco-Roman context and in the various strands of Judaism. Theres little doubt that the four evangelists share points of contact with these environments. My primary aim, though, is to read the narratives with care and situate the Gospels within the history of redemption by recognizing and exploring OT concepts, allusions, and quotations. I secondarily draw attention to Jewish and Greco-Roman culture and life. The three Baker New Testament handbooks are sensitive to a biblical-theological reading of the text, and this project reflects this emphasis. I often point readers back to critical OT passages and events that prophetically anticipate Jesuss ministry, and I do not hesitate to point forward to other NT passages that address the same theme or event.

While the study of every imaginable aspect of the Gospels continues unabated, I also make little attempt to engage the avalanche of secondary literature. Its dizzying how much has been written in the last twenty years. At times, I give the reader the various options for differing interpretations and try to point the reader in the right direction. At the end of each chapter, I include a handful of sources to give readers a starting point for further investigation.

Critical scholars drove a wedge between the historical Jesus and the Gospels many years ago. While I do believe that the four evangelists accurately (and theologically!) narrate the career of Jesus, my primary focus in this project is to study the individual narrativesfour unique books that retell Jesuss life, death, and resurrection. Its the same Jesus, the same gospel. These accounts present four distinct yet complementary accounts of what transpired nearly two thousand years ago.