Understanding the Gospels

I wrote this to help my New Testament Students understand the compilation of the Gospels better:

 Basically, the early church was all Jewish. Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi. The Q document is a theory that someone recorded some of the sayings of Jesus in Aramaic. It could have been someone from the Essenes. The Essenes were lead by John. The name John the baptist is probably inaccurate. The Essenes practices ceremonial washings in preparation for the Messiah. John's disciples, the Essenes, followed Jesus after the death of John. The Greek word for ceremonial washing is baptizimo, and this gets carried over into the New Testament as simply Baptism, without explaining the term.  From this community, they likely developed the Q document. The Gospels did not come together until much latter when Christianity began to flourish. Mark, was not a disciple. His work came first since he was the interpreter and scribe for Peter. He probably came across a copy of Q that Matthew and Luke used as a source. John was an Elder at Ephesus, and he taught people. After he tied, his disciples put his sayings together and this became the Gospel of John, that is why it is different and not in chronological order, however, we still believe that it is inspired.