I have been studying the gospels and the period in which they were written for the past four weeks. Both my understanding and perspective have changed in regards to the gospels, and as a result my faith in what they proclaim has also been strengthened. A lot of the questions that I had about discrepancies between the different gospel accounts have been answered by looking at the gospels in their context. Each gospel writer is writing to a specific audience at a specific time in history, and each chooses to focus on different aspects of the Christ story in order to communicate their purpose to their readers.

My perspective on Christianity and the scriptures as a whole has also changed since I have been here. I knew before that there were many connections between the Old and New Testaments, but now I believe that the gospel writers did not exactly write their gospels with the intention that there was going to be a New Testament at all. They did not think they were writing a New Testament so much as they were writing a continuance of the Jewish scriptures, showing that Christ had come to make all things new and complete the Law. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all tell the same basic Christ story, but each one focuses on different aspects of that story. They all incorporate Jewish themes and Old Testament themes to a certain extent in their gospel. Each wrote his gospel 30 or more years after Christ ascended to heaven, and each writer wrote from the perspective of a church that was facing many challenges between Judaism and the emerging religion of Christianity. The gospel writers did not necessarily intend for Christianity and Judaism to be two distinct religions. One of the intentions in writing their gospels was that they meant to show how Christ came to complete the law and radically reinterpret Judaism. This can be drawn out of the gospels because we see that Christ did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17) and by all of the Jewish themes that are in the New Testament. In its earliest forms, Christianity was indistinguishable from Judaism, and it wasn't until Christ was largely rejected as the messiah by mainstream Judaism that Christianity emerged as its own distinct religion.

This is an attempt at a brief summation of what I have been learning thus far. I sometimes struggle to articulate effectively what I have been learning, so I hope this makes sense.
Cheers.