The Literary Reason There Are Four Gospels

Do you ever wonder why there are four Gospels? Why isn’t there just one Gospel? Or why aren’t there seven? Seven is a great biblical, symbolic number, yet we have four.

There are many reasons why there are four Gospels, but there is one literary reason I stumbled upon a few years ago that I find particularly fascinating. To understand it, though, we have to look at how the Old Testament is designed.

The Narrative Spine of the Old Testament

The Old Testament opens with one long story across its first nine books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. This is one continuous narrative. It starts with God’s people in the land He has given them, Eden, and it ends with His people kicked out of the land He gave them at the end of the story—that is, Israel exiled from the land of Canaan.

This is one unified story, and scholars give it a specific name because it is so central: the Primary History. This Primary History forms the main narrative spine of the Old Testament; it is the core storyline.

After that narrative spine, we get a sort of interlude in the books called the Prophets and the Writings. What these books do is function like flashbacks in a movie. They overlay that main history and say, in effect, “There was actually more going on during that story than you knew about; let me tell you.” Through the different prophets, we are brought back to various moments in that history and shown more of what our main character, God, was doing. In this way, the story becomes richer and deeper.

The Story Told Twice

Then, at the end of the Old Testament, we arrive at the book of Chronicles. A quick note here: in most of your English Bibles, you will not find Chronicles at the very end of the Old Testament, because our modern Bibles follow the arrangement of the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. But the more accurate arrangement, I believe, is the traditional Hebrew ordering, which places Chronicles at the very end.

In Chronicles, the author covers that exact same story, that same period of time, that same narrative spine. Chronicles opens with a genealogy that begins all the way back with Adam, and it concludes in exile. It covers the same ground, giving us another perspective and letting us in on more of the actions and characters in the story. Notice how this whole structure is designed: the main storyline of the Old Testament is told twice.

Doubling for Emphasis

When you turn to the New Testament, the main storyline is the story of Jesus. And how many times is that central storyline told? It is told four times—twice as many times as the Old Testament spine.

Whenever an ancient biblical author doubles something, it is almost always for emphasis. The authors are signaling to us the supreme importance of this story. It is as if they are saying: the story of what Jesus is doing and teaching is so important that we are going to tell it double the number of times as that great foundational story in the Old Testament.

That, my friends, is why once again the Bible is art.

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