The Gospels are the first four books of the New Testament in the Christian Bible, namely Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They provide a comprehensive portrait of Jesus from four different perspectives, allowing readers to see his central place in the scheme of redemption. The Gospels are not biographies, but rather a kind of religious advertisement that proclaims the individual authors interpretation of the Christian message through the device of using Jesus of Nazareth as a spokesperson for the evangelists position. They are a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus, culminating in his trial and death and concluding with various reports of his post-resurrection appearances. The Gospels are historical narrative motivated by theological concerns, and their intention is to convey accurate historical material about Jesus and also explain and interpret these events. The Gospels share the same basic outline of the life of Jesus, but they present different versions of these events, portraying characters from different perspectives, sometimes using the same event to highlight something different about Jesus. The Gospels are unique because they arose in the context of the needs and concerns of the early Christian communities, and they weren’t written to memorialize the teachings of a great leader. Instead, they were written to proclaim the good news of salvation and to call people to faith in Jesus Christ, the risen Lord and Savior. The many apocryphal gospels arose from the 1st century onward, frequently under assumed names to enhance their credibility and authority, and often from within branches of Christianity that were eventually branded heretical.