ℹ️ This corpus has no morphological tagging. Glosses are matched by word form against a dictionary — a match does not prove it is the same word (an inflected form can coincide with another word’s lemma). Verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
With good reason do the evangelists use different beginnings, although one and the same purpose of their preaching is manifest. Matthew, writing as to the Hebrews, wove the order of Christ's genealogy, that he might show that Christ descended from that stock from which all the prophets had foretold he should be born. John, writing to those established at Ephesus, who as coming from among the Gentiles knew not the law, took the beginning of his Gospel from the cause of our redemption; which cause appears from this, that God willed his Son to be incarnate for our salvation. But Luke begins from the priesthood of Zacharias, that by the miracle of his son's birth, and by the office of so great a preacher, he might declare the divinity of Christ to the Gentiles.
Whence Mark too declares that the ancient elements of the prophetic mystery are in keeping with the coming of Christ, so that his preaching might be proved not new, but uttered from of old. Or by this the evangelists were concerned to use that proem which each judged to be needful for his hearers. Nothing contrary, therefore, is found, where, though by diverse writings, one nevertheless arrives at the same homeland.