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Among the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke include many of the same passages in the life of Jesus and sometimes use identical or very similar wording. John, on the other hand, expresses itself in a different style and relates the same incidents in a different way, and is often full of more encompassing theological and philosophical messages.
The parallels between the first three Gospels are so telling that many scholars have investigated the relationship between them. In order to study them more closely, German scholar JJ Griesbach (1776) arranged the first three gospels in a three-column table called a synopsis. As a result, the Matthew, Mark, and Luke have come to be known as the synoptic Gospels[[Synoptic gospels]], and the question of the reason for this similarity, and the relationship between these Gospels more generally, is known as the synoptic problem.
Many solutions to the synoptic problem have been proposed, but the dominant view is that Mark is the first Gospel, with Matthew and Luke borrowing passages both from that Gospel and from another, lost source, known as Q. This view is known as the "Two Source" hypothesis. The "Four Source" hypothesis includes two other sources M and L.
