Historical Jesus languages spoken, written or signed Jewish Palestinian Aramaic
New Testament sources
Synoptic Gospels
The Synoptic Gospels are the primary sources of historical information about Jesus and of the religious movement he founded. These religious gospels – the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, and the Gospel of Luke – recount the life, ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of a Jew named Jesus who spoke Aramaic and wore tzitzit. There are different hypotheses regarding the origin of the texts because the gospels of the New Testament were written in Greek for Greek-speaking communities, and were later translated into Syriac, Latin, and Coptic.The fourth gospel, the Gospel of John, differs greatly from the Synoptic Gospels and scholars generally consider it to be less historical than the Synoptic Gospels. As James Crossley and Robert J. Myles explain, John "is of limited use for reconstructing the life of the historical Jesus." However, scholars usually agree that John is not entirely without historical value: certain sayings in John are as old as or older than their synoptic counterparts, his representation of the topography around Jerusalem is often superior to that of the synoptics, his testimony that Jesus was executed before, rather than on, Passover, might well be more accurate, and his presentation of Jesus in the garden and the prior meeting held by the Jewish authorities are more historically plausible than their synoptic parallels.Historians often study the historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles when studying the reliability of the gospels, as the Book of Acts was seemingly written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke.
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