first words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” (1:1, 2); and the rest of the book continues the theme. In every chapter, Jesus’ deity is revealed. Another important aspect is the question to understanding the origin of these books and their theme is the query: When? Scholars round the world compare and contrast the books of these authors and study the wording used to get a general idea of when the books were written in comparison to each other. When careful study of all 4 of these Gospels is taken, one would begin to recognize the astonishing similarities they share. Which poses the question “In what order were the Gospels written?” On the face of it the synoptic apocalypse makes a date before 70 probable for all three gospels. Most scholars adopt a date after 70 A.D. for at least Matthew and Luke. With this in mind, we can begin to understand that at least two of the four Synoptic authors possibly wrote these books within the same 40-year span. This is where the “synoptic problem” was introduced. It is an investigation into the existence and nature of the literary interrelationship among the first three "synoptic" gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the synoptic gospels, in contrast with John, because they can readily be arranged in a three-column harmony called a "synopsis." Unlike John, the synoptic gospels share a great number of parallel accounts and parables, arranged in mostly the same order, and told with many of the same words. Any proposed solution to the synoptic problem, therefore, must account for these literary similarities among the authors, not so much in terms of their factual content, but in the selection of that content, the arrangement of the material, and wording of the parallels. This is the cornerstone of historical critical scholarship of the gospels. The triple tradition is material...
