The Archive

Told more than once

Some things happen once and are written down four times. Reading the accounts beside each other shows what each evangelist thought worth keeping, and what he left out.

• Peter's confession

  The hinge of the Synoptic Gospels: the question of who Jesus is, answered aloud, and immediately followed by the first prediction of the passion.

• The call of the first disciples

  All four Gospels tell how Jesus gathered the first disciples, and they do not agree about where or when. John places a first meeting by the Jordan; the Synoptics begin at the lakeside.

• The temptation in the wilderness

  Matthew, Mark and Luke each tell it. Mark gives two verses and no dialogue; Matthew and Luke give the three temptations, in a different order from one another.