To my point of view, somewhat shared by many but still different from all others in some respects, each gospel presents a different understanding of Jesus. Now to me, the two earliest gospels are Mark and John, both of which we have only in an edited form to conceal things the Romans might find troublesome. For Mark it would have been the suggestion of the apotheosis of Jesus and a strong implication that Jesus was the actual conqueror of the world, an act yet to be finalized, while John was originally actively linking Jesus with Dionysus, also a conqueror who overthrew the existing powers. Matthew seems to have wanted to portray Jesus as a new Moses, leading exiles to victory and regaining the Holy Land, yet again something the Romans would not like. Finally, I consider Luke to be the last, actively denying any connection between Jesus and Dionysus while emphasizing that Jesus had no interest in a worldly kingdom and actually liked Romans. Matthew, Mark and John were then preserved to keep the truth of Jesus as an anti-Roman religious leader, while Luke was kept to satisfy Rome that Christianity was not a threat.

The four gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John provide firsthand biographical details about the Lord Jesus Christ in order to furnish a comprehensive and nuanced presentation with respect to the life, public ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. There are differences between/among the gospel accounts; perhaps most notably between the so called synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) and the gospel of John. Concerning the latter, the Johannine prologue (John 1:1-18) contains striking, yet not unwarranted material that reveals the ontological status of the pre-incarnate Word and His distinct role in creation. Although the Logos motif is not original to John, the Apostle does nevertheless infuse the term with new meaning that is wholly appropriate with the revelation that the Word who is God “became flesh and dwelt among us.”1

1 The Gospel of John 1:14. Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

David Ronald Keeling, you claim that "(T)he four gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John provide firsthand biographical details about the Lord Jesus Christ", yet this clearly is not a true statement. In it directly contradicts Luke 1:1-3 in which Luke admits to using hearsay. It also assumes, without clear evidence, that Mark and Matthew were eyewitnesses. The only account that claims to be firsthand in John's, and as someone who has supposedly studied John, you should know that it appears to have been edited from its original form, quite plausibly with secti0ons rearranged and a second ending to include the physical resurrection added.

This is also a potential issue for Mark, as there are clearly multiple endings. In existent manuscripts there are four different endings. The earliest of these four endings concludes prior to any mention of a physical resurrection.

There is clearly a reason that we have four accounts preserved, but the logic for it is not simple. Each writer wished to create a specific message about Jesus, and in keeping with the times, the specific message was more important to be presented than any hindering actual facts, so we need to dig deep enough to determine just what the desired message was and just how that message, in the case of at least Mark and John, was redacted at some early point in time, and why. I personally suspect that Mark and John were originally composed by the mid-50's CE and both heavily redacted post 70-73 CE when Rome gained absolute censorship powers with the end of the 1st Jewish rebellion, meaning if Rome did not like what was written, it was destroyed, and the writer likely subject to execution.