Jesus in the Gospels

Jesus in the Gospels is a second-generation Disciple Bible Study which means that its similar, but a little different than Disciple studies. It is similar in that it is a long-term 30 week study with weekly meetings to discuss what we learn from daily Bible reading. It also has weekly commentary and a religion professor expert in the week’s discussion to talk about it. It is different in its focus on the four gospels of the New Testament. Instead of devoting 16 weeks to the Hebrew scriptures and 16 weeks to the New Testament, weekly we compare the different gospels and look at the embedded Hebrew scriptures we find there.

Dr Priscilla Hope-Levison who is currently at the Perkins School of Theology serves as host of Jesus in the Gospels. She explains the idea of the study:

For our purposes, we want nothing to distract us from the portraits of Jesus that we find in the gospels. The church in its wisdom collected and authorized four gospels each offering a different angle and perspective on Jesus. Matthew groups Jesus’ teachings in five blocks reminiscent of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Mark offers a simple two-step pattern for understanding who Jesus is. First, he is messiah. Then he is suffering servant. Luke includes a large central section in which Jesus traverses Samaritan terrain en route to Jerusalem. In this section, we find parables unique to Luke’s gospel. In John, Jesus is the divine logos who took on human flesh and pitched his tent among us. It is to the richness of these gospel portraits that we turn our attention. 

The study encourages work in small groups and side by side comparisons of scripture passages to help discern the point different writers make by including or excluding different material. 

The study manual and gospel comparison will be helpful tools in our work. Both are currently on sale at Cokesbury here.

We will have an online class that will meet on Sunday afternoons and a face-to-face class at the church that meets on Monday afternoons.