The words ‘Jewish-Christian’ and ‘Jewish Christianity’ are used in several different senses within the field of New Testament research. Some scholars—no doubt oneself included on occasion—use them with varying significance in the same article or book, so that the reader is either led astray, or discovers that the words do not have the same meaning every time they occur. The aim of the following is to draw attention to this fact, of which perhaps not everyone is aware, and to attempt to reach a clearer usage of the term Jewish Christianity; and I shall therefore now try to formulate and answer certain questions that may throw light on the conditions described by the terms in question, and on the use of these terms.

For whom and for what, to what audience and to what purpose, were the four Gospels written? This is one of the most elementary questions of New Testament study, and one might think that by now the answers could be given with some degree of certainty and consent. And of the first three Gospels I think this is broadly true. Naturally there will always be room for fresh lines of development and approach, but they are unlikely to modify very radically the conclusions which can be found set out in any text-book. If one had to reduce these conclusions to their barest summary, one could say, without immediate fear of contradiction, that St Matthew's Gospel was evidently written for a Jewish-Christian community, and that its overall purpose was broadly speaking catechetical; that St Mark's Gospel was composed for a predominantly Gentile community and that its primary purpose was kerygmatic, setting out, for the use of the Church, a summary of its proclamation; and that St Luke's Gospel, as he himself indicates, was again addressed, though more generally, to the Graeco-Roman world, and that its purpose was instructional, with the defence and confirmation of the Gospel as a dominant motif.

A l'histoire évangélique telle que la concevait l'Eglise primitive et telle que Marc l'avait raise par écrit, saint Luc a jugé néessaire d'ajouter les récits qui font l'objet du second livre de son ouvrage ‘A Théeophile’. La question de savoir quel a été son dessein en faisant cette innovation reste trés débattue. Les commentateurs s'accordent généralement pour penser que cette intention n'était pas uniquement historique: le plaisir désintéressé de retracer objectivement les origines du mouvement chrétien. D'autres motifs ont dû pousser Luc à entreprendre et â publier son travail.