The lecturer’s axiom—tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; tell them what you told them—has never been more admirably followed than by Simon Gathercole in The Gospel and the Gospels. The compact Introduction (pp. 1-15) states his book’s purpose: “to argue that there are in fact substantial differences of theological content between Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, on the one hand, and most ‘noncanonical’ early Christian Gospels, on the other” and to show “that there is a reason for this commonality among the canonical Gospels: namely, that these four emerge from a context in which a particular understanding of the apostolic ‘good news’ is preached, and so reflect that understanding of the good news in their literary productions” (p. 1). The Introduction proceeds to outline five strategies that will be employed in pursuing the arguments and to sketch the proposed dependence of the canonical Gospels on the kerygma, and concludes with a one-page outline of the book’s three parts and to restate what was said on page one in the form of two theses.

Part One lists the topics of comparison and contains a brief excursus on the relationship of the kerygma to the Acts of the Apostles (p. 71–77). Part Two, “Description,” treats Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Marcion, Thomas, “Truth,” Philip, Judas, and Egyptians [Coptic]) with respect to their understanding of Jesus’ messiahship, death, resurrection, and fulfillment of scripture (addressing the first thesis). This examination makes up the bulk of the book (pp. 79–479). Part Three (pp. 480–502) speaks to the second thesis regarding the reception of the kerygma in the various gospels. The bibliography is massive and the indices thorough.

The ultimate Conclusion (pp. 500–502) affirms both of the theses proposed at the beginning: that the New Testament Gospels share key elements of theological content that distinguish them from most noncanonical gospels, and that their similarity derives from the fact that they “follow a preexisting apostolic ‘creed’ or preached gospel.”

The excursus on Acts (the book with which I am most familiar) addresses the question whether the theology of Acts differs substantially from the kerygma summarized by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, and concludes that it does not. Gathercole concedes that the speeches in Acts are designed to “fit” their projected audiences, as has long been held. Regarding the question whether the author of Acts accords soteriological significance to Jesus’ death, Gathercole concludes (in affirmation of his theses) that Acts agrees with Luke’s Gospel in this regard. He does hedge, however: “As noted at the beginning, even if there were two divergent kerygmas here, this would not affect the overall argument, because the point made in chapters 2 and 3 concerns the antiquity and wide distribution of the message summarized by Paul, not its universal preeminence” (p. 77). In other words: Acts is so late (postdating the canonical Gospels) that it hardly counts. On that point one might well differ.

Aficionados of mystery novels (as, I find, most exegetes are) will find this book distinctly lacking in suspense: we learn the outcome at the beginning. The great interest lies in discovering how Gathercole means to prove his theses, and specialists in the several Gospels (and gospels) will probably focus their attention on the chapters that examine their own subject, as I have with Acts. Agree or disagree on one or two points or on the whole, scholars will surely concur that Simon Gathercole has produced a tremendous work of scholarship.