The Gospels portray a consistent picture of Jesus peace be upon him.

I begin a brief statement of argument to disagree with the subject title. What I will attempt to demonstrate in this debate is that the canonical gospels we read today in the New Testament - Matthew, Mark, Luke & John - are inconsistent accounts of Jesus' life. One may read the gospels one after the other and find that they are hugely similar, but if we carefully cross analyse all of the four gospels, we can see there are differences between all of them in regards to Jesus. These differences are so clear and obvious that they cannot be missed out on an evidential basis. Some are improvements to Jesus' status; some are changes to a particular event or absence of a particular part from an event in a later gospel. I will go through these differences in more detail. But before I do that, I believe I should provide some specific background information about the gospels for those that are not aware. In the New Testament we find the gospels in the order of: 1st Matthew, 2nd Mark, 3rd Luke and 4th John. Many scholars such as F.F.Bruce[1] have concluded that actually Mark was written first, then Matthew and Luke somewhere in the middle and then John being written last. Since Mark is believed to be the earliest of the synoptic gospels, it is plausible to believe that the writers of Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source for their gospels. If we look at the gospels in this order (Mark being the earliest and John being the Last) we see how the image of Jesus differs and changes throughout the gospels and evolves into a divine character nearer to the latest gospel John. Popular differences such as the date of the crucifixion and the length of Jesus" ministry etc are well documented and debated, for the purpose of avoiding repetitiveness,, I will not be proof texting such common contentions. Instead below are some examples of inconsistency which might be less commonly discussed but of equal importance. a. In Mark 9:5, the story of the transfiguration, Peter addresses Jesus as "rabbi", but in Matthew 17:4 (a later gospel) in the same story we read that Peter calls him "Lord". b. Mark 8:29 Peter"s confession of Christ, Jesus asks him "who do you say that I am?" and Peter replies "you are the Christ". In Matthew Peter gives a bit more in his answer, his reply according to Matthew is "you are the Christ, Son of the living God". c. When Jesus calms a storm he is addressed a "teacher" in Mark 4:38 but in Matthew 8:25, the same event, he is worshipped and addressed as "Lord". d. Mark 10:18, Jesus dislikes the idea of being called good; he said "why do you call me Good? No one is good except God alone". But in Matthew"s account of this event Jesus doesn't refuse to be called good, he simply says: "why do you ask me of what is good? There is only One who is good" - Matthew 19:17. e. The story of the fig tree, in Mark"s account 11:12, wanting some fruit Jesus saw a fig tree from a far only to find no fruit when he went closer to it, Mark is very clear why Jesus found no figs on the tree - "because it was not the season for figs". However the same incident in Matthew 21:18, it does not mention whether it was or was not the season, so to allow room for interpretation because a divine being would know the seasons. Whereas Mark"s account of the story seems like a perfectly human mistake. f. We see edits and alterations and deletions in certain events in the later gospels so to make Jesus seem more divine. For example, we read Mark 12:18, after an interesting discussion about marriage in the afterlife, Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment of all. To which he replied, "The most important one is this: "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with your entire mind and with all your strength."- 12:29. We can turn to Matthew's account of the same story and see it has been slightly changed, the entire story is there but Jesus doesn't say "The Lord our God, the Lord is one" here, this saying has been missed out - 22:34. Why this has been missed out remains to be discussed in the coming rounds rounds hopefully. Moving on to Luke's account of the same story in chapter 20, we see he wasn't even asked about the greatest commandment here, after the discussion on marriage and after life no one dared to ask any more questions according to Luke 20:40. So we see three different versions of the same event among the synoptic Gospels. These are differences which enable readers to adopt particular opinions and interpretations depending on which gospel they read, however. On an evidential basis the differences are there and clear and render Jesus" image in the Gospels inconsistent and therefore unreliable in my humble understanding. As this is an introduction, so far I have kept to a brief start. I hope to build on these points more as the discussion goes further. I do not wish to offend any Christian with this debate, such is not my intention, but a rigorous discussion and respectful intellectual discourse is what I seek. Thank you. ... [1] The New Testament documents - Are they reliable? By F.F..Bruce