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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Bible, the Qur'an and Science The Gospels : Introduction Many readers of the Gospels are embarrassed and even abashed when they stop to think about the meaning of certain descriptions. The same is true when they make comparisons between different versions of the same event found in several Gospels. This observation is made by Father Roguet in his book Initiation to the Gospels (Initiation à l'Evangile)[^17].

With the wide experience he has gained in his many years of answering perturbed readers' letters in a Catholic weekly, he has been able to assess just how greatly they have been worried by what they have read. His questioners come from widely varying social and cultural backgrounds. He notes that their requests for explanations concern texts that are "considered abstruse, incomprehensible, if not contradictory, absurd or scandalous'.

There can be no doubt that a complete reading of the Gospels is likely to disturb Christians profoundly. This observation is very recent: Father Roguet's book was published in 1973. Not so very long ago, the majority of Christians knew only selected sections of the Gospels that were read during services or commented upon during sermons. With the exception of the Protestants, it was not customary for Christians to read the Gospels in their entirety.

Books of religious instruction only contained extracts; the in extenso text hardly circulated at all. At a Roman Catholic school I had copies of the works of Virgil and Plato, but I did not have the New Testament. The Greek text of this would nevertheless have been very instructive: it was only much later on that I realized why they had not set us translations of the holy writings of Christianity.

The latter could have led us to ask our teachers questions they would have found it difficult to answer. These discoveries, made if one has a critical outlook during a reading in extens of the Gospels, have led the Church to come to the aid of readers by helping them overcome their perplexity. "Many Christians need to learn how to read the Gospels", notes Father Roguet.

Whether or not one agrees with the explanations he gives, it is greatly to the author's credit that he actually tackles these delicate problems. Unfortunately, it is not always like this in many writings on the Christian Revelation.