Welcome to Day 1371 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomMastering the Bible – Biblical Agendas and Translations – Worldview WednesdayWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, and to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before.


Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase wisdom and create a living legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1371 (https://wisdom-trek.com/captivate-podcast/day-1371/) of our trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical Worldview is essential to have a proper perspective on today’s current events.


To establish a Biblical worldview, you must have a proper understanding of God and His Word. Our focus for the next several months on Worldview Wednesday is Mastering the Bible, through a series of brief insights. These insights are extracted from a book of the same title from one of today’s most prominent Hebrew Scholars, Dr. Micheal S. Heiser. This book is a collection of insights designed to help you understand the Bible better. When we let the Bible be what it is, we can understand it as the original readers did and as its writers intended. Each week we will explore two insights.


Mastering The Bible – Biblical Agendas and TranslationsInsight Fifty-Seven: Each Gospel Writer Had His Own Agenda


There are four Gospels for a reason. Their existence isn’t an accident. The fact that more than one was written suggests that each writer had a slightly different audience in mind. Examining their content validates that hunch.


Unlike other gospels, the Gospel of Matthew nowhere states a specific purpose or occasion for Matthew’s enterprise. Determining Matthew’s audience and objective can only be accomplished by careful reading. Matthew references the Old Testament more than the other Gospels, with a special interest in messianic themes such as establishing that Jesus was the “son of David” and how his life fulfilled Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah. Matthew uses distinctive phrases from Jewish literature (e.g., “Father in heaven”) more than other Gospels. He includes Jewish customs and terms without explaining them to readers (23:5, 27; 15:2; compared to Mark 7:2-4). All of these things, and others indicate that Matthew was writing to a Jewish audience to convince them that Jesus was their Messiah.


One of the unusual things scholars have noticed about Mark’s Gospel is the frequent use (forty-two times) of the Greek adverb euthus (often translated “immediately”). Mark consistently presents Jesus as a man of action—getting things done with expediency. Mark omits Jesus’s birth and childhood, and there is no genealogy. These things don’t matter to Mark’s audience. He writes to people more concerned about what Jesus does than who he is, which is very different from Matthew. These features make Mark’s account conform to Roman cultural values. This is especially important because of the way Jesus died as a criminal by the heinous method of crucifixion. Mark needs to explain why the crucifixion happened to this audience, and so he blends a description of a man they can admire with a defense of the Gospel.


Luke tells us at the outset that he is writing to a Greek friend, Theophilus. Luke (Loukas) is a Greek name. Luke uses Greek terms not found in the other Gospels. He seeks to reach a Hellenized world, not Jews or Romans, with the Gospel of Jesus. His strategy is a lengthy letter—his Gospel—to Theophilus, that he “might have certainty” concerning what he’d heard about Jesus (Luke 1:1-4).


Lastly, we come to John, the Gospel with the most unique material. John’s agenda is nevertheless transparent. His Gospel devotes the most concerted effort to presenting the deity of Jesus...