The words used in books can clue us into the focus of the Divinely inspired Biblical authors of those books. When it comes to the Gospel accounts, we can see some of that focus through the percent of the time that word is used in a book (relative to the total times used in the Gospel accounts).
When you look at the percentages, the counts tell the tale of the themes.
The Gospel of John, which focuses on the divinity of Jesus, is the most likely gospel account to use phrases like Eternal Life, Believe, and glory
The Gospel of Luke, who is writing his friend Theopholus to tell him about Who Jesus is and what Jesus accomplished, has the highest percentages for phrases like Savior and Salvation and the Kingdom of God.
Mark, who I’ll jokingly term the Michael Bay of the gospel writers, writes the shortest, most condensed, and action packed gospel account. And the percentages show his book is WAY more likely to use words like immediately, right away, just then, suddenly, or at once as he weaves his way through cutscene after cutscene.
Matthew, who most frequently points toward Jesus as being the Jewish Messiah & the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, has the highest percentages of words like fulfilled and righteousness.
They all tell the same story, but the language helps to highlight the structure and characteristics each author was divinely inspired to present. Knowing words like fulfilled and righteousness are most often used in the Book of Matthew means that whenever we come across one of those words during our study, we should probably pause and reflect on what Matthew is really underlining.
Percentage of the times the word(s) show up in each book relative to the total number of appearances in all four books.
The percentage is based on an average of 6 different translations (with correction for different translations of the same Greek root words). See Gospel Words (parts 1& 2 for additional information about the word count process)
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