a)      Luke used Document G at the beginning of his story, inserting bits of Mark where it seemed appropriate to do so. He used Document P in its entirety, interpolated between Mark 10:1 and Mark 10:2, confirmed because Matthew reports those same two verses in the same order with NO interpolated material. Luke interpolated parts of Document J at appropriate points in his copy of Mark, which is believed to have been incomplete because he omits several consecutive episodes from Mark.

b)      Matthew also used Document G at the beginning of his story, but rearranged both Mark and G freely to group related material, and inserted bits of Document P everywhere in his gospel. He follows Mark faithfully starting with Mark 10:2, and he interpolated bits of Document M freely throughout his gospel.

c)      Both Luke and Matthew drew on legends and other unknown sources for the beginning of the story, regarding the birth and genealogy of Jesus; and both drew on different traditions for the happenings after Jesus was executed.

1. John reports four trips to Jerusalem during Jesus' career, three of which are during Passover, which is the source of the legend that he taught for three years. Mark and the other two report only one trip to Jerusalem (not counting the visit when he was 12 years old), and that it was the final week of his life.

2. John the evangelist reports John the Baptizer as being very effusive in his praise of Jesus as being the one who would supersede him. John the evangelist also reports that John the Baptizer was the one who saw the vision at the moment of baptism of Jesus, rather than it being an appearance to Jesus alone. John the evangelist also says that John the Baptizer did not know Jesus until he saw the vision. And John the evangelist says nothing about John the Baptizer's doubts about Jesus as we are told in Luke 7:2-3 and Matthew 11:2-3. He further tells us that it was the disciples who believed that Jesus was the messiah and decided to follow him, rather than Jesus calling the fishermen and others to be his disciples, as reported by Matthew and Luke.

3. John only reports four (4) healings, ALL of them claimed as signs, compared with 21 in Mark, Luke, and Matthew, with NONE of them claimed as signs, where Jesus tells the healed person not to tell anyone, and with Jesus on more than one occasion refusing to perform a sign, other than his preaching. We may especially remark the so-called Raising of Lazarus after 4 days in the tomb as a totally fictional story, for several reasons: it is improbable in the highest degree that a corpse should come back to life; Lazarus would certainly have become an ardent preacher in favor of following Jesus if he had been raised from the dead; but thirdly he is never heard of again, either in the New Testament or any of the early church writings; and in fact he does not even appear again in John's gospel.

4. John does not report a single parable, compared with the thirty-two parables in Mark, Luke, and Matthew, and with the three Synoptic authors going so far as to tell us: And he did not speak to them except in parables (Mark 4:34;Matt.13:34).

5. The clincheroo, however, is the content of the discourses. The gospel of John contains 10 discourses, EVERY ONE of which reports Jesus as telling the hearers that he is the son of God and also the messiah, which he NEVER claims in the Synoptics. These discourses are:
        1. Conversation with Nicodemus on being born again (John 3:1-21)
        2. Himself as living water and the Messiah (4:4-42)
        3. On the Son and the Father (5:19-47)
        4. Himself as bread out of heaven, and telling them to
        eat his body and drink his blood (6:27-70)
        5. Living water and the Son (7:14-53)
        6. The Son and the Father (8:12-19)
        7. The good shepherd and the door of the sheep (10:1-21)
        8. The Son and the Father (12:23-30)
        9. He is the son of God (John 14-16)
        10.Telling them that his followers will all be saved and the rest
        are outside his love (John 17).
By contrast the Synoptic gospels report six extended discourses, NOT ONE OF WHICH is about himself, but rather about ethical and moral behavior, and about living under the reign of God, and about what he saw as the future of Judea. These may be listed as follows:
        a. The Sermon on the Mount
        b. The Parables of the Kingdom of God
        c. Instructions to the disciples on their mission
        d. Teachings on greatness and service and forgiveness
        e. Discourse against the scribes and Pharisees
        f. Discourse about events of the future
There are also many isolated sayings or series of sayings which do not seem to have been an extended discourse.
        It is the dogmatic and egotistical content and tone of ALL of the discourses reported by the gospel of John that make it impossible for us to accept that gospel as truly a record of the teachings of Jesus. When to this is added the fact that John contains no moral or ethical teachings whatever, without ever mentioning repentance, forgiveness, prayer, faith, hope, or wisdom, that gospel stands exposed as someone's fictional story about Jesus.

6. The gospel of John was almost certainly produced by a group of followers in Asia Minor who had come to believe that Jesus was in fact the son of God and God himself, and wrote their own gospel making this point and only this point. Loisy thinks that they were trying to discredit the Synoptic gospels, all three of which were in existence in some form by the time that the gospel of John was written, which was almost certainly the first quarter of the second century, if not later.

7. It's not a big deal, but there is the fact that John only mentions SIX of the disciples by name, and the rest are all unnamed, including one who is never named but is referred to as the "beloved" disciple and whose witness is cited as proof of the authenticity of John's gospel. An unidentified witness? That won't hold up in court.

1. Jesus was the son of a man named Joseph and a woman named Mary. In childhood he exhibited a precocious interest in matters of religion, as told in an anecdote in Luke.

2. When he was about 30 years old, a man named John known as the Baptizer came into Judea east of Jerusalem along the Jordan river. Jesus came to John, probably as his disciple, and then had an inspirational experience at the moment of his baptism at the hands of John which transformed him from a little-known carpenter from Nazareth in Galilee into one of the most acclaimed teachers in the history of humanity.

3. He also had some kind of solitary desert experience after the baptism, which he described to his followers in the form of little parables about himself and how Satan the adversary of humankind had come to him and tempted him to power in several ways. He refused the temptation to just provide material comforts for his people, and the temptation to seek political power, or to show any sign to the people to prove anything about himself or his mission. He reaffirmed this refusal to show a sign at least three times during his teaching career, according to Mark, Matthew, and Luke.

4. He was an extremely popular speaker, it being reported that great crowds came from all over Judea and outside of Judea to hear him. What he could have said to hold them spellbound for long periods and long distances from home, we can hardly even conjecture. I have proposed in my first book that he was quoting from the prophets in the Old Testament and from John the Baptizer, trying to make those teachings warm and personal to all his hearers.

5. He chose 12 men to be his "disciples", but he was followed by many others and especially by many women.

6. He liked to speak in "parables", little stories containing some allegorical advice or truth. At one point he is reported to have given a long discourse in parables on the kingdom of God, or as I prefer to translate the Greek word "basileia", on the reign or kingship of God or living under the rule of God.

7. Many people were healed in his presence, and a few not in his presence. However, he nearly always told those people NOT to tell anyone that he had healed them, and often told them that it was their FAITH that had healed them. More than once he told people that his mission was PREACHING, and he NEVER told his hearers that any of those healings were signs, or even important to his mission; in fact, when he was asked to give a sign, he stated unequivocally, No sign shall be given unto this generation, except my preaching.

8. Finally, after travelling everywhere in Palestine, he made a trip to Jerusalem for the passover, with the intention of challenging the priests and scribes and Pharisees. He outwitted them on several occasions, and finally gave two long discourses, one against the scribes and Pharisees, and the other on events of the future.

9. He was finally arrested, tried on charges of sedition against Rome, and executed. Three times he had clearly spelled out to his disciples that he would be killed by the chief priests and elders, but we are told that the disciples didn't seem to understand that at all.

10. His last discourse about events of the future was given in Jerusalem, in answer to a remark by one of his disciples, in which he predicted that temple and all the other buildings and the walls of the city would be knocked down and Jerusalem would be destroyed with "not one stone left upon another". This actually happened in 70 CE. This prediction is confirmed by his three lamentations, as i have shown below at item #12. But his immediate followers all assumed that this was a prediction of a "Last Judgment", when bad people would be punished and good people would be rewarded.

11. After his death his disciples began to claim that he had risen and that they had seen him again. This eventually became one of the dogmas of Christianity, that he had risen from the dead. But just as with Lazarus, we have to assert that it is improbable in the highest degree that his corpse came back to life. It must have been hallucinatory experiences by the disciples, the more so since the gospels do not agree on who he appeared to or where or for how long or how long it was until he disappeared into the skies. Nor do any of the appearances listed by Paul in the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians (I Cor. 15:5-8) agree with those in the gospels.

12. There is no support for the belief that he intended to found a church or to start a religion. His overriding concern, as proven by what I have called his three lamentations, was to persuade his people to leave off trying to defeat the Romans. I have shown these all together in Chapter XVIII: the first when he was still in Galilee, and had been threatened by Herod; the second on his arrival in sight of Jerusalem, when he wept over its failure to "understand the things of peace"; and the third while he was on his way to be crucified, when he responded to the women weeping over his fate by telling them: "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your children..." (Luke 23:28-31)