The Gospel Story in Sixteen Events

Luke alone narrates the angel Gabriel telling Mary she will conceive; Matthew instead gives Joseph an annunciation in a dream. The feast falls on 25 March, fixed by counting nine months back from Christmas, and the scene is read as the moment of the Incarnation.

Luke also alone tells of Mary visiting her kinswoman Elizabeth in the hill country of Judea. Mary answers Elizabeth with the Magnificat, which entered daily prayer in the West, and the feast was moved to 31 May in 1969 so it falls between the Annunciation and the birth of John the Baptist.

Matthew and Luke tell the birth at Bethlehem in different ways: Luke has shepherds, a manger and a census, Matthew has magi and a star. No gospel gives a date, and the earliest secure record of 25 December as a feast is from the fourth century.

Matthew alone tells of magi guided by a star, but never numbers them or calls them kings. The count of three comes from the three gifts, and the Western church keeps the episode as Epiphany on 6 January.

Luke sets the infant Jesus in the Temple, where Simeon speaks the words the Latin office calls the Nunc Dimittis and Anna gives thanks. The feast falls forty days after Christmas on 2 February, called Candlemas in the West.

Historians count the baptism by John among the best attested episodes in the life of Jesus, partly because the early church would hardly have invented a scene in which its founder is baptised by another. The Eastern churches keep it as Theophany on 6 January.

Mark reports the forty days in a sentence, while Matthew and Luke give three temptations each answered from Deuteronomy, in a different order. The forty days echo those of Moses and Elijah, and Lent takes its length from the episode.

Only the Gospel of John tells of Jesus turning water into wine, the first of the signs by which that gospel orders his ministry. John treats each miracle as a sign disclosing who Jesus is, so the wine is not the point of the story in its own setting.

The synoptic gospels place Jesus on a high mountain with Peter, James and John, with Moses and Elijah beside him. The gospels do not name the mountain; tradition since the fourth century says Tabor, others say Hermon, and the feast is kept on 6 August.

In John, Jesus calls Lazarus of Bethany out of the tomb four days after burial, the last of that gospel's signs and the act that decides the authorities against him. The other gospels do not mention it, and Byzantine practice keeps Lazarus Saturday the day before Palm Sunday.

All four gospels tell of Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem as crowds spread garments and branches, read as enacting the prophecy of a humble king. Palm Sunday commemorates it and opens Holy Week in both Eastern and Western calendars.

Paul's account in the first letter to the Corinthians is the earliest in writing, older than any gospel. The synoptics set the meal as a Passover while John does not, and the two chronologies have never been fully reconciled; the Eucharist rests on this meal.

The execution under Pontius Pilate is counted among the least disputed facts about the historical Jesus, since Tacitus and Josephus both mention it independently of Christian sources. Golgotha lay outside first century Jerusalem and its exact site is not archaeologically settled.

Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15 what most scholars regard as an even earlier creed listing witnesses to the appearances, the earliest surviving testimony. The entry separates what ordinary historical method can establish from what the Christian claim asserts, and does not adjudicate whether it occurred.

Luke and Acts have Jesus taken up from the Mount of Olives, while Matthew and John have no ascension scene and the longer ending of Mark is regarded as a later addition. Acts gives forty days after the resurrection, so Ascension Day always falls on a Thursday.

Acts chapter two is the sole account: the apostles, gathered in Jerusalem for Shavuot, hear a sound like wind and speak in languages the pilgrims understand. Acts reports about three thousand added that day, and the church reads Pentecost as the founding of the community.