Mark 1:1, Matthew 1:1, and Luke 1:1–4
This essay is the first in a series that follows the four Gospels chronologically, using Aland’s Synopsis of the Four Gospels and the NASB 2020 translation.
Mark’s Gospel explicitly states its purpose: to prove that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God. Matthew focuses on Jewish history and prophecy to demonstrate how Jesus fulfills messianic hopes. Luke bases his account on detailed investigation, using earlier written sources and eyewitness testimonies. These are not three versions of one preface but three different arguments about how to introduce Jesus, and that difference, more than the events each writer narrates, is the thread this series will follow.
Point 1: Mark’s Prologue – Proclaiming the Good News
Mark 1:1: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,”
Mark’s opening highlights four key terms: “beginning,” “good news,” “Christ,” and “Son of God.” Each term draws on Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions at once.
Point 1a: Beginning and Good News
Mark’s first Greek word is archē, “beginning,” the same word that opens Genesis 1:1 in the Septuagint (en archē, “in the beginning”). The parallel is hard to read as an accident: Mark presents his Gospel as the start of something on the scale of creation.
Next, Mark declares that this new beginning is the good news, or euangelion. In the first century, the word covered announcements both ordinary and momentous, from personal tidings to imperial proclamations of a new emperor or a military victory.[1] Mark applies this common term to one specific message about Jesus, and early Christians gave that message the weight an imperial proclamation carried. When we call this book the “Gospel of Mark,” we mean the “Good News (about Jesus) according to Mark.”
For these writers and their audiences, the “good news” was a claim the movement was still working out: that God had acted decisively in Jesus; that the Roman and Jewish authorities had executed Him; that His followers believed He rose after three days; and that through His death and resurrection, salvation was available to all who accepted Him as the Messiah.
Point 1b: Christ
The NASB reads “…of Jesus Christ….” Christos is the Greek for “messiah,” a Semitic title that varies slightly between Hebrew and Aramaic. “Messiah” means “Anointed One,” and the word points back to the ritual of anointing with oil. In ancient Israel, the act set a person apart for a sacred role: kings above all, but also priests and, in some traditions, prophets.
Many ancient Jews looked forward to a messiah who was a human descendant of King David, expected to become King of the Jews, unite Israel’s tribes, secure military victories over other empires, and bring about a period of global peace. That was not the only expectation. Second Temple texts also describe priestly messiahs and celestial apocalyptic figures, and many Jews were awaiting no messiah at all.
Christ, Messiah, and Anointed One are one title in three languages. “Jesus Christ” is therefore not a name but a name plus a claim. He would have been called Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus, son of Joseph (Yeshua ben Yosef).
Point 1c: Son of God
In Jewish scriptures, the title “Son of God” carried royal and covenantal weight. For example, God calls the Davidic king “My Son” in Psalm 2:7 and assures David, “I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to Me,” in 2 Samuel 7:14. To a Jewish audience, “Son of God” might mainly denote the anointed king described earlier, rather than suggesting divine nature.
A Greco-Roman audience would interpret this differently. Augustus and other Roman emperors were called divi filius, meaning “son of the deified one,” on coins and inscriptions throughout the empire. For Mark to place “Son of God” at the head of a Gospel about a man Rome had crucified is to set Christian claims about Jesus against the emperor’s self-claim. Mark does not specify which background he intends, and the ambiguity may be deliberate. The same two words carry a royal-messianic sense for one audience and an imperial counter-claim for the other.
The phrase’s double meaning is complicated by the fact that it may not belong to the text at all. Our earliest complete copies of Mark date to the fourth century CE, and they disagree. Codex Sinaiticus and a few other early witnesses omit the phrase; Codex Vaticanus and the majority of manuscripts carry it. Most modern editions of Mark’s Gospel include it within brackets or as a variant note.[2]
The cause of the variation remains uncertain. If Mark’s inclusion of “Son of God” was meant as a nod to the Psalms and Samuel, its omission likely results from scribal mechanics rather than political motives: a copyist could have accidentally dropped sacred abbreviations with similar endings. Conversely, since scribes usually expanded divine titles rather than shortened them, a later scribe might have added the phrase as a confession. Both explanations are plausible.
Since no original copies survive, the Gospels are not fixed texts but historical artifacts carrying later edits that are sometimes impossible to detect. Jesus as the Son of God is central to Mark whether or not the phrase stood in the opening line.
Point 2: Matthew’s Prologue – A Covenant Fulfilled
Matthew 1:1: “The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham:”
Matthew begins in Greek with biblos geneseōs, meaning “the book of the genealogy,” the phrase that opens the “generations of” sections in Genesis 2:4 and 5:1 in the Septuagint. The allusion appears deliberate. Both writers reach for Genesis, but not for the same part. Mark takes the creation account, Matthew the genealogies.
His preface is as brief as Mark’s but does different work. While Mark proclaims the good news of Jesus Christ, Matthew emphasizes that Jesus meets the messianic qualifications. He introduces Jesus with a genealogy that anchors Him in the covenant line of David and Abraham.
A careful reader will quickly sense a tension in the genealogy. It traces through Joseph, but shortly afterward (Matthew 1:18–25), Matthew clarifies that Joseph was not Jesus’s biological father. Matthew shows no discomfort with the gap; for him, legal paternity is enough to carry Davidic descent.[3] Still, the tension between the genealogy’s purpose and the virgin-birth narrative remains one of the oldest puzzles in Matthean scholarship.
Point 2a: The Genealogy as Composition
The prologue verse hints at a compositional device that the genealogy then makes explicit. Matthew 1:17 divides the line into three groups of fourteen generations. The most common interpretation is gematria: the Hebrew consonants of David’s name (D-V-D) total fourteen, so the numerical structure of the genealogy itself reinforces the Davidic claim.
Other interpretations have been proposed, such as that fourteen is twice seven, indicating doubled completeness, but the Davidic interpretation remains the most prevalent. The evidence that the count is intentionally constructed rather than transcribed is clearer in what Matthew omits: to achieve fourteen in the middle group, he quietly leaves out three kings (Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah) who are listed in 1 Chronicles 3:11–12, and he also omits Jehoiakim between Josiah and Jechoniah. The genealogy is built to hit a number, not to record a complete line of descent.[4]
Matthew’s genealogy, then, is less a record than an argument in the form of a list. Descent from David was a recognized messianic credential; every Jew shared descent from Abraham, but naming Abraham places Jesus inside the covenant story Matthew wants to tell. Matthew’s Gospel appears to answer early Jewish doubts about Jesus’s messiahship. He won no throne and no battle, so how could He be the Messiah while Roman rule persisted?
Point 2b: Abraham
Abraham is the father of Israel and the first recipient of the covenant promises. By naming Abraham in the first verse, Matthew roots the Gospel in a covenant his audience already knows. In Genesis 12:3, God says to Abraham, “In you all the families of the earth will be blessed,” pointing to a universal blessing that extends beyond the Davidic lineage.
Matthew closes his Gospel with the Great Commission to “all the nations” (Matthew 28:19). The first verse already set that frame. 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 also traces Jesus’s lineage back to David. The link rests on passages like 2 Samuel 7:16, which reads, “Your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever.” Later Jewish and Christian readers often took this promise as eschatological, looking for a future Davidic king who would establish God’s reign.
Descent from David gives Jesus the messianic credential; descent from Abraham sends His mission beyond Israel. For Matthew the two lines converge. The Davidic king is the one through whom the Abrahamic promise of universal blessing is realized.
Matthew’s prologue is an apologetic where Mark’s is an announcement. Matthew asserts that Jesus, despite appearances, fits the prophetic lineage. The genealogy and its two named ancestors open that argument, and fulfilled prophecy carries it through the rest of the Gospel.
Point 3: Luke’s Prologue – A Message to Theophilus
Luke 1:1–4: “1 Since many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, 3 it seemed fitting to me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in an orderly sequence, most excellent Theophilus; 4 so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught.”
Both Luke and Acts begin by addressing Theophilus, indicating a shared author. The name Theophilus, meaning “one who loves God,” was a common Greek name at the time, documented across the Hellenistic world. No late first-century Christian patron with that name can be identified, leading scholars to debate whether Luke speaks to a specific person or uses the name as a general term for any “lover of God.”[5] The choice changes what the prologue is doing.
If Theophilus was a historical patron, Luke’s purpose is to persuade an educated reader and his community, which shapes both how he writes and what he chooses to include. If Theophilus is a literary symbol, the Gospel addresses any educated Gentile sympathetic to the movement, and the prologue is a general statement of intent rather than a personal letter.
Point 3a: Luke as Historian
Luke is the third of the “Synoptic Gospels.” The label reflects how much narrative material the three share, enough that their accounts can be set side by side. John, however, is separate, presenting Jesus’s story in a different style and theological perspective.
Among the three Synoptics, Luke is the only one who states his method. He notes that “many” previous accounts exist, states that he has “investigated everything carefully from the beginning,” and promises an “orderly sequence.” That is the posture of Greco-Roman historiography, and it frames Luke as a researcher rather than a witness or a herald.
A detail of Greek makes this self-awareness tangible. Luke 1:1–4 forms a single, meticulously crafted periodic sentence in a notably elevated literary style compared to the rest of the Gospel. The narrative then drops into the plainer Greek of the infancy story and everything after it. The shift is itself the evidence: Luke puts on a historian’s voice for four verses, signaling to an educated reader which genre he means to be read in.
Point 3b: Sources and Composition
Luke likely wrote in the 80s CE, though proposals range from the 70s to the 90s. By then various narratives about Jesus were circulating, and he appears to have drawn on several of them.[6] A significant part of his content, commonly estimated at one-third to one-half depending on how overlap is counted, derives from Mark’s Gospel, the only source we are certain he used. The prologue also acknowledges earlier sources, and Luke includes notable non-Markan material shared with Matthew, implying he depended on a second major source besides Mark.
Understanding where this shared material comes from is fundamental to Synoptic source criticism. The predominant theory, the Two-Source Hypothesis, posits a now-lost collection of Jesus’s sayings, known as Q (from the German Quelle, meaning “source”), which Matthew and Luke used independently. The primary alternative, the Farrer Hypothesis, dispenses with Q and holds that Luke knew Matthew directly.[7]
Debate persists over where the shared material came from and whether Luke and Matthew knew each other’s work. This series presumes that Mark was written first, followed by Matthew, Luke, and John, and that Matthew and Luke used Mark without knowing of one another. Luke relied on sources he could compare, most likely including at least one that no longer exists.
Luke also carries a great deal that is his alone: the infancy narrative, the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, and the Emmaus Road appearance. A stated method, visible sources, and a large body of unique material make Luke the most methodologically self-conscious of the Synoptics. Matthew carries more of Mark by verse count, but Luke is the one who tells the reader what he is doing: weighing predecessors, investigating, arranging. The method was probably not his alone; the willingness to describe it was.
Conclusion:
Read against one another, the three prologues announce three different aims. Mark proclaims, opening with a herald’s announcement that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God. Matthew argues, building on the genealogy, that Jesus fulfills the covenants with David and Abraham. Luke investigates, presenting himself as a researcher who has weighed his sources and ordered his account.
Each writer signals the kind of story he plans to tell in his opening lines, and these cues shape everything that follows. A second point follows, one Mark’s disputed opening line already made: these prologues are first-century texts, shaped and sometimes altered in transmission, not fixed transcripts. This series will treat them as documents with identifiable sources, aims, and audiences. The upcoming chapters will examine how each Gospel fulfills the promises made in its opening words.
[1] The classic example is the Priene calendar inscription (c. 9 BCE), which proclaims that the birthday of Augustus marked the beginning of “good news” (euangelia) for the world, showing how euangelion was attached to imperial announcements.
[2] On the omission of υἱοῦ θεοῦ (huiou theou, “Son of God”) by א* Θ 28 and other witnesses, against its inclusion by א¹ B D L W and the majority, see Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), 62; the phrase is printed in brackets in NA28.
[3] Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, rev. ed. (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 138–39, on legal paternity in first-century Jewish practice as a sufficient basis for tribal and dynastic descent.
[4] On the gematria reading and the omission of Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah from the middle set, see Brown, Birth of the Messiah, 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.
[5] Luke uses the honorific “most excellent” (kratistos) for the dedicatee; Acts applies the same title to the Roman governors Felix and Festus (Acts 23:26; 24:3; 26:25), suggesting a person of official or equestrian rank rather than a purely symbolic reader.
[6] A composition date in the 80s CE is the common scholarly estimate, based on Luke’s use of Mark (usually dated c. 70 CE) and the Gospel’s apparent awareness of the fall of Jerusalem, though a minority argue for dates earlier or well into the second century.
[7] On the Two-Source Hypothesis and Q, see B. H. Streeter, The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins (London: Macmillan, 1924), 149–98, and John S. Kloppenborg, Excavating Q: The History and Setting of the Sayings Gospel (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000). For the Farrer alternative, which dispenses with Q, see Austin Farrer, “On Dispensing with Q,” in Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of R. H. Lightfoot, ed. D. E. Nineham (Oxford: Blackwell, 1955), 55–88, and Mark Goodacre, The Case Against Q: Studies in Markan Priority and the Synoptic Problem (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002).
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