That’s right, y’all. I just finished reading John, and now that I’ve read all the gospels twice, I feel confident that they are ready for my ironclad heirarchy.

But Nolan, the haters are saying, there are more gospels than just the canonical ones. What about the Gospel of Thomas? of Judas? Just so you know, haters, I don’t read the Apocrypha for one weird reason. I don’t want to open my ears to the seduction of Satan.

Just kidding–I’m always available for literary seduction, and I trust myself to keep my feet on the ground, so to speak.

The real reason is this: my Bible does not have Apocrypha in it.

This is a photo from the Amazon page for Thomas Nelson Bibles–I went with the black leather version (admittedly, not the choice for vegans) on the top. Here is a link: they are selling for 45 bucks right now and I found it to be easy to read and even easier to look at while it sits on my desk. No mistake, this is a pretty book.

45 bucks sounds like a lot of money for a book that you could easily find for free. But that was the point: I tricked myself into reading the Bible by spending more than I could afford. After that, it wasn’t just a matter of reading the Bible because I had set the goal to do it; it was a matter of getting a good return on my dollar. The point is, if you want to read the whole Bible, I recommend you fork out the cash for an edition and translation you like (I prefer the version I have, as the prose matches my literary taste, and the cover pairs well with my Leather Daddy aesthetic).

On to the rankings!

Number 4: The Gospel According to Luke

Introduction: I wanted to rank Luke higher than this. Luke is traditionally the author of both this gospel and Acts of the Apostles. And Acts is AWESOME! Probably the most novelistic book of the Bible. Acts features shipwrecks, snakebites, speaking in tongues, and the conversion of Saul, which is just classic. As an experiment, I read Luke and Acts together, as though one were the sequel of the other (which it kind of is).

Mission: Luke’s agenda in writing this was to describe the trajectory of Christianity as something preached to the Jews, then to the gentiles, then to all the world, according to Dr. Dale Martin, in his Open Yale Course. If you’re interested in the historical context of the New Testament, I strongly recommend checking out Dale’s course. Unlike my Bible, Dale’s course is free.

Justification: Why do I put Luke in last place? Because to me, the prose here is the clunkiest, and the Jesus of Luke feels less human than any Jesus except John’s.

Number 3: The Gospel According to John

Introduction: What are you doing Nolan? the normies are crying, John is everyone’s favorite!

The normies have reason to protest. The other three gospels are synoptic–they see together. Though Matthew, Mark, and Luke each have different agendas, they record roughly the same events. John is quite different, both in the character of Jesus and in the claims it makes of Jesus. It has some of our favorite verses: “For God so loved the world….” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….” and of course, “Jesus wept.”

Mission: The writer here is asserting the divinity of Jesus, and that Jesus and God are the same, but somehow separate, but somehow in one another.

Justification: For one thing, I don’t want to pick everyone’s favorite gospel as my favorite. I’m not like other girls.

For another thing, in the synoptic gospels, when Jesus performs miracles, he always tells the witnesses to keep them quiet. In John, however, Jesus is performing miracles as a spectacle. It comes across like he is doing magic tricks to convince people to believe, and I’m sorry, in a second-hand account, this doesn’t look great. I do give John points for Jesus turning water into wine (only appears in this gospel). Not only does he turn the water into wine, he turns it into good wine. The guest at the party remarks, “Normally, people bring out the good wine first, and switch to the cheap shit once everyone is drunk. But y’all saved the good wine until now!”

Also, Jesus comes across pretty badass in his trial against Pilate. When Pilate says, “Don’t you know I have the power to let you go?” Jesus says, “You don’t have the power to do anything that my Father hasn’t already ordained.” Not gonna lie, it’s pretty cold-blooded.

Number 2: The Gospel According to Mark

Introduction: Mark is the shortest and first Gospel–probably, it’s hard to claim anything about these books with a certainty.

Mission: Mark was probably written in response to Roman oppression. In 70 AD, Roman soldiers destroyed the temple of Jerusalem. Mark was probably written just before this, when the writers knew that Roman soldiers were surrounding Jerusalem, and had bad intentions, but they didn’t yet know exactly what Rome would do to them.

Mark may have been a comfort to Judeans living under Roman rule. Mark’s Jesus predicts the end of the world as they know it, and urges them not to worry. “You will hear wars and rumors of wars….”

Justification: Mark is a candidate for favorite gospel. It’s Dale Martin’s favorite. Mark’s Jesus feels perhaps the most human. He knows he is going to be taken up by the Romans, but it seems that he doesn’t realize how badly he will suffer. On the cross, John’s Jesus says, in triumph, “It is finished!” Mark’s, by contrast, says “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Luke’s Jesus also bears the crucifixion quite stoically. The man getting crucified to the right of Jesus says, “Do people who believe in you really gain eternal life?” to which Jesus responds, “Verily, I say unto thee, this day, you will be with me in paradise.” Mark’s Jesus has no such assurance.

Another huge point for Mark is the original ending. The ending in my King James Version is fake. At some point, a scribe tacked on about ten verses (one verse, in fact, claims that followers of Jesus will be able to take up serpents and will be immune to most poison. Snake handlers cite this verse as justification for playing with cottonmouths in church–which I admire–but this verse, and surrounding verses, were almost certainly added later by an unknown hand.)

Before the tacked on parts, this is how Mark ended: Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James, and Salome come to anoint Jesus’s body. They found the tomb open and the body gone. A strange man (angel?) is in the tomb, and tells the women to spread the good news: Christ is risen, and he has gone to Galilee. The last line of the original book was: “And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.”

The oldest versions of Mark end like this. You can see why a scribe, somewhere along the line, said “Damn, this is way too ambiguous and uncomfortable. I’d better tack on an ending where the resurrected Jesus actually talks to the disciples.” But if you know me, you know I love discomfort and ambiguity, and I think its pretty incredible, and probably closer to historical truth, that the first gospel ended without Christ’s resurrection. Did someone steal the body? Was the guy in the sepulchre an angel or just perpetrating a hoax? If Jesus’s teachings are sound, does it even matter if he came back from the dead? (The answer to the last is “no”.)

All these sticky points give Mark huge literary value in my eye. But I give the nod to….

Matthew, My Favorite Gospel

Introduction: Matthew was written to convince Jews that Christ is, in fact, the Messiah, and that Christ came not to abolish Mosaic law, but to make it stricter.

Justification for that Number One Spot: Matthew wins because it has the wise men and the Nativity. So does Luke, but Luke’s Nativity is not as entertaining. In Matthew, King Herod discovers that a bunch of people are making a pilgrimage to see a King born in Bethlehem, and he says, “Oh really? I’d like to see this King, too.”

Now at this point, if you’re used to Bible stories, you know that Herod wants to kill the baby Jesus. But Matthew doesn’t tell us this right away. He makes us sweat for about a chapter until one of the wise men advises Mary and Joseph to take Jesus and run.

Herod is particularly devilish in Matthew, it goes without saying. Matthew also features the Beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit; for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted,” and etc. The poetry of Matthew, particularly of the Sermon on the Mount, is incredible. Now, Luke has some of the same passages that I love so much in Matthew, but let’s compare them side-by-side, and maybe you’ll see why I put Luke in last place.

Matthew 6:28-30: “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?”

Compare to Luke 12:27-28: “Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothe the grass, which is to day in the field, and to morrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith?”

Now this is subtle. The only difference is “of the field,” and “neither do they spin,” and, “which today is, and to morrow is cast into the oven,” in Matthew. But I think those subtle differences create a great difference in the melody of this passage. Luke’s is not bad, but Matthew’s, to my ear, is a song. Let’s look at one more example, which is maybe my favorite Bible verse ever:

Matthew 16:26: “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Against Mark 8:36: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

Against Luke 9:25: “For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?”

In this case, Mark’s might be my favorite. But to my ear, Luke’s clunky, and the prose throughout Luke is just as clunky. Of course, you can judge yourself which Gospel you think sounds the best, which is part of the reason I put these passages in question side-by-side for you.

No doubt, there is a flaw in my methodology, as these are works in translation. In the original Greek, John probably sounds the best, though I don’t know, as I can’t read Greek (yet.) As an additional disclaimer, I paraphrased a lot of verses and moments from the Bible in the post, and if I got something wrong out of laziness, I sincerely apologize. I recommend to y’all check out Dale Martin’s course on the New Testament, and Christine Hayes’s course on the Old Testament (here). Those folks are much more knowledgeable than I am.

What do you think about these rankings? Am I way off base? Do black leather King James Bible’s suck? Please tell me off in the comments. Love, Nolan.