Sigve Tonstad, “Rereading the Best Gospel”

28 September 2024 |

Our topic for this class is “Rereading the Best Gospel.”

“And which is the best one?” someone will ask. Many scholars believe that Mark was the first gospel. Ninety percent of Mark reappears in Matthew. Why did the author of Matthew use so much of Mark except for his (or her) belief that it would be a better gospel?

And Luke—did he know about Mark and Matthew? If he did, he must have believed that he would write a better gospel, as his introduction suggests.

Then comes John, the fourth gospel. As it is the fourth in order of appearance, we wonder: did the author know of the other three? Did he think that his gospel would be the best—or why he would not have written it?

And then our turn: We will be “rereading the best gospel”—and I won’t tell you in advance which one it is!

Teacher:
Sigve K. Tonstad is Research Professor of Biblical Interpretation and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Loma Linda University. He has worked as a physician and pastor and since 2007 as a faculty member at the School of Religion at Loma Linda University. His books in English are The Scandals of the Bible (Autumn House, 2000), Saving God’s Reputation: The Theological Function of Pistis Iesou in the Cosmic Narratives of Revelation (T. & T. Clark, 2006), The Lost Meaning of the Seventh Day (Andrews University Press, 2009), God of Sense and Traditions of Non-Sense (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2016), Letter to the Romans: Paul among the Ecologists (Earth Bible Series; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2017), and The Paideia Commentary on Revelation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019).