Community: Gospels

In the four Gospels we can find traces of the individual identity of the various communities.

From the Gospel of Mark there are indications that the Christian community is beginning to separate itself from the Jewish community. There are also indications that a certain persecution took place on the part of this Jewish community (see for instance Mark 4:17).

Matthew writes for a typically Jewish, teaching community. His readers sometimes seem to be completely Jewish (for instance in Matthew 5:17-19) and sometimes more or less detached from the Jewish community (for instance in Matthew 28:5).
Matthew is the only evangelist who uses the word ekklesia for the local community (Matthew 18:17) or for the Church in a universal sense (Matthew 16:18).

Luke places a lot of emphasis on the Jewish origins of the Jesus movement. In Acts he justifies the inclusion of non-Jews; in his Gospel he may also be trying to remind them of their Jewish roots.

From the Gospel according to John it seems that there was a serious quarrel with “the Jews”, who banished the members of the community from the synagogue. John 21 points to tension between the line taken by Peter as leader and the group associated with “the disciple that Jesus loved”. The latter disciple is responsible for the Fourth Gospel’s distinctive character.