Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap.

If you're new here, welcome. We've put all the information you need about our reading plan on the start page of our website, thebibyl recap.com, as well as in the episode

we posted called New Testament Prep. So be sure you check that out if you're brand new. And if you

haven't already, I also want to encourage you to listen to our six prep episodes that will really

help set you up for success as you begin reading through scripture with us. We'll link to all those

in the show notes of today's episode. Today we launch into two of the four Gospels. The four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are narrative accounts of the life of Jesus and they're primarily eyewitness accounts with the exception of Luke. And while maybe Luke did see a lot of these things firsthand, he treats his role more like an investigative reporter who goes around interviewing

all the other eyewitnesses in order to tell the story well. He's kind of like the weather

reporter in the rain jacket who stands in the storm talking to the locals. Since the

gospels are narrative and you're likely to grasp the stories, I'll spend less time recapping the

stories themselves and more time recapping the meaning and underlying implications.

Each as a gospel writers has a unique lens on who Jesus is. Luke's primary lens is Jesus as man,

and John's primary lens is Jesus as God. Since Jesus was 100% human and 100% divine, it's

fitting that we're starting out our study of his time on earth with those

two books today. Luke's Gospel is written roughly 30 to 55 years after the resurrection of Jesus,

and it's actually written as a letter to a Greek man named Theophilus, who probably wasn't

super familiar with Jewish tradition, like many of us. So Luke will do a great job helping most of

us understand things that would

otherwise escape us. He starts out with the story of a local priest named Zachariah and his wife

Elizabeth. Scripture lets us know that they were righteous but infertile, reinforcing that those two things

aren't mutually exclusive despite what the religious culture of the day says. One day,

Zachariah is assigned the rare honor of burning incense in the holy place of the day says. One day, Saccharia is assigned the rare honor of burning

incense in the holy place of the temple. Most priests only get this assignment once in their lives.

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