The Fourfold Gospel: A Theological Reading of the New Testament Portraits of Jesus. By Francis Watson.

Within the last three years, Francis Watson has produced two books dealing with the gospels of the New Testament. Both books have engaged the issue of the fourfold gospel, and both books have dealt in a serious way with the question of how the canon of Scripture affects, and is affected by, the four gospels of the New Testament. And yet Watson has written two very different books, despite the common topic. His earlier tome, Gospel Writing (2013, Eerdmans) engaged the gospels at the most detailed level, examining composition, interrelationship, the possible use or direction of non-canonical gospels, and the development of the canon itself. It was deeply immersed in the historical-critical enterprise of source and redaction criticism. The more recent book which is the subject of this review, The Fourfold Gospel, eschews the normal historical-critical methodologies used to analyse the gospels in favour of exploring theological issues. And yet even here Watson uses history to illuminate our four gospels profitably, but in a very different way than in his earlier volume.