Which Gospel of the Bible do you feel is the most accurate?

There is no inerrant text of The Christian Bible in existance today. The original texts which were dictated (inspired) by God to the original scribes were lost over 1500 yrs ago. All we have now are copies of copies of translations of copies that have been mucked aroung with by man. It is only by the leading of The Holy Spirit that God's Word and Will can be found in any "modern translation"... I too prefer John... but Luke has the better rendition of "The Christmas story"

If you go from the standpoint of the earliest gospel would be the most historically reliable, then Mark would be it. Mark's was most likely the first of the cannonical gospels to have been written, somewhere after 70 A.D. (this theory is accepted by nearly all Biblical scholars). Matthew and Luke were probably written some 10-15 years after Mark, so developing tradition most likely crept into those gospels and therefore would render them less reliable. John is even later, and while in my opinion the most beautiful of the four, it is most likely the least historically reliable.

There are many though who believe Mark is also corrupted by developing tradition. Written roughly 40 years after the death of Jesus and therefore not an eyewitness account, it is likely that Mark is also historically unreliable. However, these are faith documents, written out of the historical, cultural, and personal biases of the different evangelists.

It appears evident from Biblical and extra Biblical sources that Jesus was a Jewish apocalyptic prophet. This is Mark's portrayal of Jesus, and therefore, at the very least, the essence of what Jesus taught is most likely preserved in Mark.

None of them are accurate... they are all contrived accounts of events that never happened, and their purpose was to perpetuate a fraud.

None of the gospels were written by men who were witnesses to the purported events. Mark was written first, probably just after the beginning of the 2nd century. Matthew and Luke were written well into the 2nd century, using Mark as a template, then adding in imagined venues to create a tableau where they could put 'sayings' into Christ's mouth... sayings that came from the so-called 'Q-document'... a Judaized compliation of wisdom from the Greek cynic philosophy, with a little bit of stoicism mixed in. John was probably written after the others, and he does not seem not to have had access to the 'Q-document' and while he may have referenced Mark or one of the other 'synoptic' gospels, he did not use them as a template... hence, the richer narrative... and the greater the disparities and contradictions between John and the synoptic gospels than there are between the individual synoptic gospels.

Modern biblical scholarship makes a very compelling case for the idea that Jesus never existed... that he was, in fact, entirely fictional.

The Jesus Puzzle

http://pages.ca.inter.net/%7Eoblio/jhcjp.htm

http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/home.htm

Any cop will tell you that if you have 10 witnesses to a crime, you will have 10 different stories of what happened. That doesn't mean 9 are inaccurate.

Our view of events is subject to our experience of life.

So to ask about accuracy is a sort of inaccurate question. Which Gospels speaks most to our individual hearts is a more accurate question.

John was a spiritual person. As such his Gospel is a deeply spiritual and less logical Gospel. Luke was a doctor, if I recall correctly. His Gospel is more factual.

Each is just and true. Both in very different ways.

I don't know what you mean by "accurate" but I will offer mt reactions to your question. I agree with you that John's gospel is incredibly rich, just loaded with sentences of Jesus speaking. I find it a great challenge to read John and try to understand what he is saying - and I usually come away without a definitive answer. I console myself by remembering that this is Jesus speaking, the Son of God is vocalizing His thoughts and I shouldn't be surprised that I don't understand everything He says!

Beyond that it is important to keep in mind that Scripture was not written as an historical document; it is a Faith Statement created to help us in our journey here on earth as we seek knowledge of God. In instances where one synoptic gospel contradicts another, or one includes an incident while anoth leaves it out, we must be aware that individual people experienced Jesus's life in different ways. Four people watching a football game will each describe the game in a different way - just so did the evangelists approach their descriptions of the life of Jesus.

John is the gospel of Love.

Matthew is the gospel of Hebrews.

Mark is the gospel of details.

Luke is the gospel to Gentiles.

They are all accurate, just different perspectives. I agree, John is the most philosophical and yet portrays the romance of heaven to his special creation.

All of them are equally accurate, since there is no false information in any of the Gospels.

However, I also love the Gospel of John for its rich detail. I like Matthew very much, also.

Peace.

I believe the entire Bible is accurate and complete. However understanding the human author and who he was writing to, helps me determine what book I want to read at any given time.

John is a great one. I like Romans, as well. This was written for Romans, and does explain things a bit more than other books.

All are basically the same, just stated from different points of view. All are relevant and important. I like to think of it as watching amovie over and over again. Each time you see it you notice something you did not catch the first time around.

I think they are all very good and accurate, they just look at things from a different point of view and are speaking to different groups of people.