Our gospels differ widely; it is far from clear that they are consistent with each other at all. We are confronted, it seems, not with the one but with the four greatest stories ever told. We must dig deeper into the reasons for their distinctive emphases and for the differences between them.

On this site -­ and in far more detail in the book itself --  we survey the gospels one by one. You may well find one of them more intriguing or attractive than the rest. These stories can be read in any order and one by one. There is a thread, of course; and in the long run you may wish to see its route, running through all four gospels and through The Four Witnesses itself. For it is through the combination of the four, above all, that each can at last be understood. At the end of the book itself, with all four stories before us, the reader can see what unites them, the engine that drives them all.

As we thread our path through the gospels themselves, we may well wonder whether our work as detectives will ever bear fruit. To Jesus' question each offers his own answer with conviction and urgency; but the four depositions diverge so widely that an aggressive attorney could discredit them all.

As we look from one gospel to another, however, we find that they are all designed to "unveil" a truth that their story ­ if wrongly heard -­ can easily and tragically disguise. For this is no ordinary truth. It is in the last pages of the gospels that our four witnesses seem most drastically to differ; and precisely here that we find and can turn the key to our mystery.

It is in the stories of Easter that the evidence falls into place at last. The gospels were written not just to be the story of a person, but themselves to function as that person's active presence in the church. Do we find this hard to grasp, let alone to believe? So we should. Our authors have shaped all they say to open up their readers' understanding to this strange, unsettling claim.

As we listen like detectives to our four witnesses, we have good reason to be intrigued; we may well, at moments, be confused.

Who do you say I am? Is there a single answer underlying all our four accounts? In the last scenes of the gospels, in the stories of Easter, our witnesses diverge more widely than ever before. And yet in these closing pages of the gospels -­ and of The Four Witnesses ­- our final, critical clue falls into place. It lies not in what the gospels tell us, but in the way they tell it: in the sort of story that we have been reading all along in each of these "Four Greatest Stories Ever Told."

Previous questions for author Robin Griffith-Jones

You say that the gospels are unlike any other stories -- how are they unique and what is their purpose? What is it about these stories that people find so intriguing and powerful?

Read Robin Griffith-Jones' reply

What do you mean by your claim that the gospels are designed to effect a "revelation" in the reader?

Read Robin Griffith-Jones' reply