Preface Chapter 1: The Prologues to Mark, Matthew, and Luke

*This essay covers Mark 1:1, Matthew 1:1, and Luke 1:1-4.

Beginning with the Gospels’ prologues is a useful entry point because each Gospel’s opening line reveals what its author thinks the Gospel is for. Mark opens by announcing a theological category (good news); Matthew opens by arguing a case (Jesus meets the Messianic credentials); and Luke opens by naming a method (careful research for a named recipient). Read together, the three prologues offer three distinct answers to the question “what kind of book is this?”

This chapter takes up the three synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), so called because they can be ‘seen together,’ sharing enough material and sequence to be read in parallel. John stands apart, and his prologue is treated separately.

Point #1: Mark’s Prologue: Seven Words, Three Claims

Mark 1:1: “The beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God,”

Mark’s opening line is seven words in Greek and carries three loaded ones: good news, Christ, Son of God. Each of these terms reaches back into earlier Jewish and Greco-Roman usage, and the rest of this point traces those backgrounds in turn, first the Genesis echo in archē, then Christ, then Son of God, and finally the covenant frame that the opening assumes its audience already knows.

Mark’s opening word in Greek is archē (beginning), the same word that opens Genesis 1:1 in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament most early Christians read. The echo is likely deliberate: Mark frames his Gospel as the start of something on the scale of creation. Whether the reader hears that echo as theology or as a rhetorical strategy, the word choice is not accidental.

The Greek word evangelion translates as ‘good news’ and, in the first century, was used for both ordinary and momentous announcements, from personal tidings to imperial proclamations of a new emperor or a military victory. Mark applies this common term to a specific message about Jesus, and early Christians give it corresponding weight. In modern English, we mark that weight typographically (lowercase ‘good news’ versus capitalized ‘Good News’), though Greek manuscripts of the period make no such distinction. When we call this book the ‘Gospel of Mark,’ we mean the ‘Good News (about Jesus) according to Mark.’

For the writers and audiences of these texts, the “good news” had specific content: God had sent his Son to live among humans; the Roman and Jewish authorities had executed him; his followers reported that he had risen after three days; and his life and resurrection had made eternal salvation possible for those who accepted him as the Messiah. Interpretations of that claim varied across the first-century movement and continue to do so across Christian traditions today; the prologue does not adjudicate among them. It announces the category that the rest of the Gospel will fill in.

Point 1a: Christ

The translation here reads “…about Jesus Christ…’. Christ, or Christos (Χριστός), is the Greek equivalent of “Messiah,” a Semitic term with variations in Hebrew and Aramaic. “Messiah” means “Anointed One,” referring to the ritual of anointing with oil. In ancient Israel, this anointing was performed on a new king before he took the throne.

Many ancient Jews expected a Messiah who would be a human descendant of King David, chosen to become the King of the Jews, to unify the tribes of Israel, to lead them to military triumphs over other empires, and to usher in an age of global peace. This was not the only view; Second Temple sources also describe priestly messiahs and heavenly apocalyptic figures, and many Jews were not actively expecting a messiah at all.

Christ, Messiah, and Anointed One all mean the same thing across languages. Their parallel use suggests that early Christians expressed their faith in multiple languages. Many people assume “Jesus Christ” is a name, but “Christ” is actually a title. He would have been called Jesus of Nazareth or simply Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary.

Point 1b: Son of God

Scholars discuss the closing phrase of Mark’s opening. The phrase ‘…the Son of God…’ is missing from several of the earliest Markan manuscripts, and most modern critical editions either bracket it or note the variant. The implication is worth pausing to consider: the title many readers associate with Mark’s Gospel may itself be a scribal expansion added in the second or third century rather than part of what Mark originally wrote.

The manuscript tradition is not a fixed text we read; it is a historical artifact we can analyze, with later hands visible in places. It is included here because the idea of Jesus as the Son of God is a core theme in Mark, whether or not the phrase was original. The variant itself offers a brief preview of the authorship and transmission questions that I will address in Chapter 3.

Today, it is widely recognized that the core of Christianity is the belief that Jesus is the Son of God. This conviction is significant because the earliest Christians were Jews who relied on the covenants of their scriptures: the promise to Abraham and the law given through Moses after the exodus from Egypt. For many early Christians, most influentially the Apostle Paul, believing in Jesus as the Son of God meant that God’s will was now revealed primarily through Jesus rather than through Moses and the Torah. Other early followers, including the Jerusalem church under James, continued to observe the Torah, and the relationship between Jesus and the Law was actively debated in the movement’s first decades.

Point 1c: The Covenant Frame

To understand why ‘Son of God’ carried such weight, it helps to recall the covenants the earliest Christians inherited. Genesis 17 establishes the covenant between God and Abraham: God promises to make him the father of many nations and requires circumcision of all male descendants as its sign. Genesis 15 anticipates the later Mosaic framework within the Abrahamic one, predicting 400 years of bondage and subsequent redemption. Genesis 15:13-14 says, “¹³ Then God said to Abram, ‘Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. ¹⁴ But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.”

That redemption arrives in Exodus. In Exodus 12, the final plague strikes Egypt, killing all firstborn males, both human and animal. Only households that follow a specific ritual, slaughtering a lamb, eating it, and marking their doorframes with its blood, are spared.

In Exodus 13, God emphasizes the importance of the firstborn. Exodus 13:1-2 says, “Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ² ‘Sanctify to Me every firstborn, the firstborn of every womb among the sons of Israel, among people and animals alike; it belongs to Me.” The chapter then instructs the Israelites to observe Passover, which commemorates God’s passing over their homes and sparing their firstborn during the plague. This weeklong observance, marked by unleavened bread, unsweetened wine, and the sacrifice of a lamb, honors God’s grace in freeing them from slavery and guiding them to the Promised Land, now known as Israel.

Point 1d: Passover Fulfilled

In the Christian reading that took shape in the first century, Passover came to be understood as a pattern fulfilled by Jesus’s death. Whether the historical Jesus framed his death this way is debated; what is clear is that early Christians did, and Mark’s Gospel is one of the documents in which that reading is developed.

Under that interpretation, Christians developed new rituals centered on Jesus’s life rather than on the Abrahamic and Mosaic laws. Passover symbols were reinterpreted: the wine as Jesus’s blood and the bread as his flesh. Jesus was called the “lamb of God,” and his death was understood not as an annual renewal but as a final ransom payment.

In this reading, God sent his firstborn Son, the Lamb of God, in deliberate reference to the Passover ritual that the earliest Christians had observed as Jews. Jesus, as the ultimate sacrifice, was understood to render previous offerings obsolete and to fulfill what the Passover had pointed toward. Later Christian writers, most fully in the letter to the Hebrews, drew the contrast in financial terms: the yearly lamb sacrifice was like paying interest on a loan. By contrast, the single sacrifice of God’s Son was understood to clear the debt outright. The metaphor is not Mark’s, but the underlying instinct (Passover as a pattern fulfilled rather than repeated) is already implicit in the prologue’s use of Passover language.

Mark clearly states his main message: the Good News offers a new path to salvation through Jesus as the Messiah. In the framing Mark advances, Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection confirm the covenant between humanity and God, first established with Abraham, given fuller form through Moses, and brought to its intended end in the Son. Whether one accepts that framing is a matter of belief, the prologue establishes for any reader the theological category that Mark thinks the rest of the Gospel will demonstrate.

Point #2: Matthew’s Prologue: A Genealogy as Argument

Matthew 1:1: This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham:

Matthew’s opening words in Greek are biblos geneseōs (the book of the genealogy), the same phrase that opens the toledot (“generations of”) formulas in Genesis 2:4 and 5:1 in the Septuagint. The allusion is striking: like Mark, Matthew reaches back to Genesis, but each author draws on a different part. Mark echoes the creation account, while Matthew echoes the genealogies. Both use their opening words to position their Gospels within the Hebrew scriptures.

Matthew begins with a brief preface similar to Mark’s, but with a different purpose. While Mark proclaims the Good News of Jesus Christ, Matthew does not make this announcement. Instead, he emphasizes that Jesus meets the Messianic qualifications, opening with a genealogy linking him to Old Testament prophecies.

A critical reader will notice an immediate tension. The genealogy runs through Joseph, yet a few verses later (Matthew 1:18–25), Matthew states that Joseph was not Jesus’s biological father. Matthew seems untroubled by this and treats legal paternity as sufficient to establish Davidic descent.[1] Still, the tension between the genealogy’s purpose and the virgin-birth narrative remains one of the oldest puzzles in Matthean studies.

Point 2a: The Genealogy as Composition

Matthew also employs a compositional device that the prologue verse hints at and the following genealogy makes explicit. Matthew 1:17 announces that the genealogy is organized into three sets of fourteen generations. The most widely held explanation is gematria: the Hebrew consonants of David’s name (D-V-D) sum to fourteen, encoding the Davidic claim in the structure itself. Other readings have been proposed (fourteen as twice seven, a doubled completeness), but the Davidic reading is the dominant one. The clearer evidence that the count is composed rather than transcribed is what Matthew leaves out: to reach fourteen in the middle set, he silently omits three kings (Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah) who appear in the parallel list in 1 Chronicles 3, and he collapses the gap between Josiah and Jechoniah. The genealogy is shaped to a number, not a number derived from the genealogy.[2]

The genealogy is not presented as a transparent historical record but as a theologically structured composition that serves as evidence of Matthew’s understanding of the Gospel. Davidic descent was a recognized Messianic expectation; Abrahamic descent, while true of any Jew, situates Jesus within the covenant story Matthew seeks to invoke. Matthew’s Gospel seems to address early Jewish questions about whether Jesus was the genuine Messiah, especially given that he did not accomplish any worldly conquests during his life. Skeptics might reasonably question how Jesus could be the Messiah while Roman rule continued.

Point 2b: Abraham

Abraham is the father of Israel, through whom the covenant promises flow. By connecting Jesus to Abraham at the outset, Matthew taps into his audience’s understanding of the Genesis covenant and deliberately anchors the narrative. The Abrahamic promise in Genesis 12:3 is that ‘all peoples on earth will be blessed through you,’ a universal scope that the strictly Davidic line does not encompass.

Matthew closes his Gospel with the Great Commission to ‘all nations’ (Matthew 28:19), and the framing is set in the first verse: a Messiah descended from Abraham is one whose reach would always extend beyond Israel. In this framing, Jesus’s death is not a disqualification of his Messianic status but a development within the covenant story.

Point 2c: David

Matthew emphasizes Jesus’s lineage from David to connect him to 2 Samuel 7, where God promises David an enduring dynasty. Later Jewish and Christian interpretations read this promise eschatologically, expecting a future Davidic figure to inaugurate God’s reign. As a descendant of David, Jesus fulfills Messianic hopes and, in Matthew’s framing, brings the Abrahamic covenant to its intended fulfillment.

Matthew’s prologue thus performs apologetic work that Mark’s does not. Where Mark announces, Matthew argues: Jesus, despite appearances, belongs in the line the prophets pointed to. The genealogy and its two anchor figures are the opening move in that argument, and the fulfillment-of-prophecy theme it sets up runs through the rest of the Gospel.

Point #3: Luke’s Prologue: A Named Method for a Named Reader

“¹ Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, ² just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. ³ With this in mind, since I, myself, have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, ⁴ so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.”

Point 3a: Who Was Theophilus?

Both Luke and Acts open by addressing Theophilus, strongly suggesting that the same author wrote both.

The name Theophilus, meaning ‘one who loves God,’ was a common Greek personal name in that period, attested throughout the Hellenistic world. No Christian patron of that name from the late first century has survived in the historical record, leaving scholars divided on whether Luke addresses a specific individual or uses the name as a literary device to refer to any ‘lover of God.’ This distinction matters for how the Gospel is read.

If Theophilus was a real patron, Luke is writing to persuade a particular educated reader and the community around him, which shapes both his rhetorical choices and his selection of material. If Theophilus is a literary device, the Gospel is addressed to any educated Gentile sympathetic to the movement, and the prologue becomes a general statement of method rather than a personal letter.

Point 3b: Luke as Historian

Luke is the third of the “Synoptic Gospels,” so named because Mark, Matthew, and Luke share so much narrative material that their accounts can be set in parallel columns and read together. John stands apart, narrating Jesus’s story in a distinct style and theological key.

A detail of the Greek makes this self-consciousness concrete. Luke 1:1-4 is a single, carefully constructed periodic sentence in a markedly higher literary register than the rest of the Gospel. Afterward, the narrative shifts to the simpler Greek of the infancy story and the chapters that follow. That stylistic shift is itself evidence: Luke is consciously writing in the historiographical mode for the prologue, signaling to an educated reader that he knows the genre he is invoking.

Among the three Synoptics, Luke is the most self-conscious about his purpose. He acknowledges that ‘many’ earlier accounts already exist, claims to have ‘carefully investigated everything from the beginning,’ and promises an ‘orderly account.’ This is the closest any Gospel writer comes to Greco-Roman historiographical conventions, positioning Luke as a researcher rather than a witness or a herald.

Point 3c: Sources and Composition

By the 80s CE, multiple narratives of Jesus were circulating, and Luke clearly drew on several of them. He used Mark; the prologue itself acknowledges predecessors; and he shares a substantial body of non-Markan material with Matthew. How to account for that shared material is the central question in Synoptic source criticism. The dominant solution, the Two-Source Hypothesis, posits a now-lost collection of Jesus’s sayings (conventionally called Q, from the German Quelle, meaning ‘source’) that Matthew and Luke both used independently. The main alternative, the Farrer hypothesis, dispenses with Q and argues that Luke knew Matthew directly.

The question is unsettled and matters for later chapters; for the prologue, it is enough to note that Luke worked from sources he could compare and that, on the majority view, one of those sources no longer survives. Luke is also responsible for a substantial body of unique material, including the infancy narrative, the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, and the Emmaus Road appearance. Given the prologue’s explicit method, the visible use of multiple sources, and the volume of distinct material, Luke is the most openly compositional of the Synoptics. Matthew uses more of Mark by raw verse count, but Luke is the one who tells the reader what he is doing: weighing predecessors, investigating, and ordering. The compositional work is not unique to him; the willingness to name it is.

What the prologue cannot tell us is how Luke distinguished the sources he deemed credible from those he set aside, or which early narratives did not survive his selection. The prologue projects an authorial stance of a careful researcher; it does not allow the modern reader to audit the research.

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[1] Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 138–39, on legal paternity in first-century Jewish practice as a sufficient basis for tribal and dynastic descent.

[2] On the gematria reading and the omission of Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah from the middle set, see Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, rev. ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 74–84; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, ICC, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 161–65.