Darrell L. Bock - Jesus the God-Man: The Unity and Diversity of the Gospel Portrayals

I have long wanted to write this book. It has an interesting prehistory that also helps to explain its origins and importance. In the first edition of Jesus according to Scripture , the discussion of Jesuss teaching as a whole made up the final section, part 4. I had hoped that it would be seen as a useful synthesis of what the Gospels are doing. As can sometimes happen in a long and complex book, the part the author most wanted to be seen as the climactic section was lost in all the detail that preceded it. So I have decided to expand and develop this section and let it stand on its own, updating and reworking the material in the process.

Part of what I wanted to show and now can make even more clear is how the Synoptics and John work on their own and in relationship to each other. In the interim, I have thought a lot more about some of the ideas I first expressed in the concluding section of that book. My key premise is that the Synoptics primarily present Jesus through what he does. They reveal who Jesus is from the earth up by taking readers from categories we normally apply to people and then showing how it dawned on his followers that Jesus uniquely transcends those categories. John goes the other direction. We know from John 1:1 that Jesus is divine and took on flesh. John declares who Jesus is from the start. This difference has led believers to rely heavily on John. In the process, the Synoptics have been less appreciated for how they present Jesus, since John does much heavy lifting for us.

What makes this difference important is that all of us must approach Jesus from the earth up. None of us comes with an inherent understanding of all that he is. Someone must explain Jesus and his uniqueness to us. This book aims to retell that story and show how the Gospels do it. The hope is that in doing so, a fresh appreciation for how to read the Gospels and understand how Scripture presents Jesus will emerge for you as it has for me. My desire is that this book will not only prove to be a useful summary of key elements in the Gospels portrait of Jesus but also serve to open up fresh avenues for understanding how the Gospels work within the canon.

So what was originally intended as a climactic section in a developing inductive study of Jesus in the Gospels we now present as a stand-alone synthetic look at Jesus from the core documents of the early church. By highlighting the inherent unity and consistency among the Gospels, I hope to instill a greater appreciation for how to read the Gospels and how to talk about Jesus to those who are curious to understand what his life and ministry sought to achieve.

We continue to be grateful to Dallas Theological Seminary for its support. Mark Bailey and Mark Yarbrough deserve thanks for their encouragement of our writing. Joseph Fantin, Mike Burer, Will Johnston, Samuel Chia, Terri Moore, and James Davis need to be added to the names of supportive New Testament colleagues. Thanks also goes to the staff at the Hendricks Center, including Bill Hendricks, Pam Cole, Kymberli Cook, and Mikel DelRosario. Heather Zimmerman at the Center worked on a related project that also fed into this work.

Of course we also thank our wives, Sally Bock and Amber Simpson, who put up with much when we undertook this project.

Darrell L. Bock
Ben Simpson
October 15, 2015

. Darrell L. Bock, Jesus according to Scripture: Restoring the Portrait from the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002; 2nd ed., forthcoming).

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Old Testament