Why do we have four gospels? After all, Jesus Christ is one person, who lived one life. The fact is that none of the evangelists is primarily interested in presenting a biography of Jesus of Nazareth. Each is, in the first place, addressing a Christian community, with the concerns and needs of the community in mind. His readers knew the basic Jesus story as well as the evan-gelist. He makes his point by telling the story in his way.

This book hits on the novel expedient of having Jesus, the dominant character in each gospel, tell his story, in his own words a story that sounds differently in each gospel. The intro-ductory chapter makes clear that the approach, while not aimed at scholars, follows the line of modern scholarly understanding of the gospels.

Wilfrid John Harrington is an Irish Dominican. His theological studies were taken at the University of St Thomas, Rome, and his biblical studies at the Ecole Biblique, Jerusalem. He holds the degrees S.T.M., L.S.S. He is currently professor of Scripture at the Dominican House of Studies, Dublin, senior lecturer at the Milltown Institute of Theology, Dublin, and visiting lecturer at University of Dublin. He has taught summer-school courses in the United States regularly since 1965. He has written extensively on both the Old and New Testament. The Jesus Story is his twenty-seventh book.