This book offers a different way of reading the Gospels. It is a way which treats seriously the fact that they are manuscripts. We use the verb ‘to pen’ as a description of authorship. The Gospels were ‘penned’ for a millennium and a half. The reader is invited to see what the consequences are of starting with that fact.

The way in which this undertaking has been set out is to bring together things which are too often kept separate. In the first place, the book has been written as an exploration of the textual criticism of the Gospels. The attempt has been made to assume as little, and to explain as much, as possible. The approach is a practical one, introducing the discipline by the study of examples. It follows that the information is generally provided in order to illuminate a specific point. As a result, some of the material included in the established handbooks of the discipline is absent here. The reader who wants to find out more is directed towards them.

The book has been written with the growing conviction that, once the present approach has been adopted, much else in our understanding of the Gospels requires revision. What I have written differs from many introductions (I mean introductions generally, not those in this discipline) in that it is not a summary of the current state of affairs.