Mark, Matthew, and Luke all report that "after John had been arrested" Jesus returned to Galilee. The gospel of John claims that Jesus began his career by turning the water into wine at Cana, went to Jerusalem and drove the money-changers out of the temple, and had a discourse with a member of the Sanhedrin named Nicodemus. But the other three gospels (Mark copied by Matthew and Luke) say that he didn't drive out the money-changers until nearly the end of his career, and they do not mention Cana or Nicodemus or turning water into wine at all. (Turning water into wine is very like turning stones into bread, which Jesus has refused to do.) Furthermore the first three gospels say that John had been imprisoned BEFORE Jesus began preaching, whereas John tells us that John was NOT YET cast into prison even after the first three events and that John praises Jesus effusively. These conflicts between the gospel of John and those of Mark, Luke and Matthew are some of the reasons that we cannot accept John as a reliable gospel.

Mark and Matthew report that Jesus' first words were the same as those of John the Baptizer: Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand (Mark 1:15). But they do not tell us where or to whom he made this statement, and it sounds like it was written by the narrator in any case. Luke gives instead as the first event in Jesus' career his visit to his hometown, and his rejection by them after he speaks in the synagogue. This event is not reported until much later in Mark's and Matthew's gospels, however; but they all agree that he was rejected by the people of his home town and that he made his famous epigrammatic statement, "No prophet is accepted in his own country" on that occasion, which is one of the only two statements which are found in all four gospels.

Mark and Matthew then report that Jesus called Simon and Andrew, two brothers, to be his disciples; and then he called James and John, another two brothers, to be his disciples. This event is reported also by Luke, but Luke's version of the calling of the first disciples is completely different from that of Mark and Matthew and appears at a different place in his gospel. It reports how Jesus tells them to cast their nets on the right side of their boat, and they bring in a huge catch of fish, after which Jesus tells Simon, later called Peter, that from henceforth he will "catch men". This story probably comes from Document G, but it is a little too fanciful to be accepted.

John would have us believe that the first disciples chose Jesus,  rather than Jesus choosing them, because they thought he was the Messiah; and the names John reports include Nathaniel who is not mentioned in the other three gospels, and one unnamed disciple. These conflicts between John and the others also make us less ready to accept John as an authentic gospel.

Mark and Luke (but not Matthew) tell us that the first healing event reported of Jesus was an exorcism. The story is that he went to Capernaum, a city on the northwest corner of the Sea of Galilee, and preached in the synagogue, though no content of what he said is reported. But someone in the audience (called a person with an "unclean spirit" by the gospels) yelled something critical to Jesus (the words ascribed to that person by Mark and Luke are almost certainly unreliable); and Jesus "rebuked" him for his outburst. The man calmed down, and the audience was astonished, and thought that Jesus had driven the "unclean spirit" out of the man. And this report went out "immediately into all the region of Galilee round about" as Mark puts it.

What can we conclude from this report? Only that Jesus gave a talk in the synagogue, which must have been an unusual and very impressive speech, and also that he was heckled by someone, who was immediately calmed by what Jesus said to him.

All three Synoptic gospels then tell us that Jesus then went to the house of the fisherman Simon, where Simon's mother-in-law was sick, and that Jesus took her by the hand, and she rose up. Luke claims that he "rebuked" the fever, and it left her; but the other two merely say that "the fever left her". (Mark 1:29-31)

Then the imagination of the gospel authors runs riot, and we are told that all the city of Capernaum brought their sick and mentally ill persons to him to be healed. Mark says that he healed "many" of them, and cast out "many devils"; whereas Matthew and Luke exaggerate the report by saying that he "healed ALL that were sick, and ALL who were possessed of devils." Which is more likely, that he healed all of them, and Mark watered it down to that he healed "many", or that Mark said that he healed "many", and Luke and Matthew exaggerate Mark's report? The latter seems far and away the most probable. Finally, Mark reports that he "suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him," which Luke inflates to tell us the possessed persons call him the "son of God", and that Jesus tells them sternly not to say that. (Mark 1:32-34)

The gospels report that "the next day" he went up in the mountain alone, but the disciples found him and urged him to return, because everybody was seeking him. But Jesus answers with a definitive statement of what he considered his mission to be:

Luke inserts the phrase "the kingdom of God" into the words of Jesus: "...that I may preach the kingdom of God there also..." Matthew does not copy the quotation from Jesus in Mark about going into the next towns, but he expands on the final verse by adding that "he preached throughout all Galilee, healing all manner of disease and all manner of sickness."

But we can conclude from this that since he regarded his mission as preaching that the healings attributed to him were incidental to that mission. However, we still do not have any content yet on what his preaching is all about.

This is about another individual whom Jesus reportedly cured, as distinct from when the gospels tell us that he healed "many". The place is not identified (Luke calls it "one of the cities"). He is approached by someone called a "leper", which was a dreaded disease in the Middle East, who asks Jesus to heal him. Jesus is "moved with compassion", according to Mark, and he tells the man that he is clean. Mark and Luke report that "the leprosy departed from him", Matthew says it was "cleansed". Jesus then tells the man to go and see the priest and make the offering that Moses commanded, and further orders him to tell no man about his healing. But here we see unmistakable evidence that Luke copied from Mark, because Mark reports that "...Jesus said to him, See that thou tell no man, but go thy way...", but Luke copies it as, "...he charged him to tell no man, but go THY way..." ( (Mark 1:44;Luke 5:14;Matt.8:4). Thus Luke changes the first clause to a third person statement, but preserves the second person in Mark when he says, "Go thy way."

But the man goes out anyway, and begins to tell everyone he meets how he was cured, and the story spread far and wide. And the narrator says that Jesus couldn't enter into a city because of the crowds, and he sought solitude in the desert.

The next episode, found in all three gospels in nearly all the same words, reports that Jesus healed a man of paralysis and had a dispute with the scribes about forgiveness of sins, and the crowds were astonished about him.  The event is described as: Jesus was in Capernaum, and the house was filled with people, and a few men brought a friend of theirs who was paralyzed into the house through the ceiling. Then we are treated to a little dialogue:

But assuming that the man WAS healed, by Jesus telling him that his sins were forgiven and to rise up and walk, it's still notable that Jesus didn't lay his hands upon the man, but only spoke to him, and didn't claim it as a sign or that he had any special healing power. It cannot be stressed often enough: the way Jesus uses the term "bar-nasha" here, and in every other instance, including where he clearly means himself, is only the Aramaic expression for the soul or spirit of each individual person, as shown in its usage in the book of Ezekiel; in the same way that in English we would use the term "the human spirit" is this or that. But it has erroneously come to be used to mean Jesus talking about himself as a unique being and the only one entitled to be referred to by that term.

So our conclusions are, that this man Jesus, whom we know must have existed because these stories couldn't have been written if there wasn't some basis in fact, however overlaid with later interpretations of him and his life and his teachings these stories may have become; that he came as a preacher, as he tells people and as he travels through the cities of Galilee; that people sought him out to have their sick family members and friends healed of their maladies; and that in none of the cases reported in these chapters did he claim any healing power or lay his hands on anyone but that he told them NOT to tell others about their healings, almost certainly because he considered himself a preacher, not a wonder-worker. Beyond this we know that he had gathered a few followers; we have been told four of them by name, Simon, Andrew, James, and John, who were following him in all of his travels.

But we still do not know any of the content of his preaching, except for the reference in Mark 1:15, where Mark reports him as saying, "The kingdom of God is at hand", which is probably just the narrator's way of summarizing Jesus' message, rather than the actual words Jesus used. And in any case we have not yet been told anything about this "kingdom of God", nor what it means to repent, or what the gospel (the word means "good news") is that we are supposed to believe in.