Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Here we have, as the popular motto goes, "The Greatest Story Ever Told." The description is as familiar as any Hollywood classic; but it is oddly misleading. Each gospel is as gripping and dramatic as any story we could hope to hear. But each storyteller portrays a strikingly different version of the same person and events, working from different angles and agendas.
The stories of the Rabbi, the Rebel, the Chronicler and the Mystic are neither histories nor biographies. Rather, they aim for nothing less than to reveal one strange man's divinity to their readers. Such "unveiling" was as difficult to grasp in the storytellers' troubled times as it is now.
Confronted with all four gospels, we might think of ourselves as detectives. To understand the depositions before us, we need to know who these witnesses are, what makes them tick, what needs and purposes shape the evidence they offer.
In The Four Witnesses, a whole empire comes before our eyes: from rural Galilee to Rome itself; from Jewish fishermen to the Emperor himself. When the cast of this drama comes alive, so, too, can these stories come alive as not one, but as "The Four Greatest Stories Ever Told."
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