The resurrection (if I may say) of @Longfellow's thread on note-taking set me to thinking.
Whatever the source materials – and the simple fact is they are, at present, a mystery – the Four Gospels are literary compositions.
Mark's is a GrecoRoman bios (βίος), a genre of literary biography, moreover it's written in a style that suggests it should be read aloud, and not in a liturgical setting, but as a preaching – perhaps even enacted – it's a public composition, not written for solitary or silent reading – it's all too dramatic.
In Mark, Jesus simply "enters stage left", as it were. Mark sets the scene with John's baptising in the Jordan, when Jesus rocks up, is baptised without further ado, and we have descending doves and heavenly voices ... the end echoes the beginning, Jesus exists stage right – in fact His exit is offstage, it's the angel who says "He's gone ... "
Matthew uses Mark, but he ditches the theatre and shapes his Gospel to present Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises made to Israel.
Luke uses both, but is closer to Mark. His audience is a more literate type than Mark's populist mob. His is the Gospel of Social Justice.
Q is an enigma.
John, perhaps 'John the Elder', a contemporary of Jesus and known to the Twelve, roots his Jesus in the mystical.
None of them are journalistic notes – what happened precisely where and when is irrelevant to the whole. Rather, the plain fact is Jesus happened, and the four evangelists are four attempts to get across what the author believed happened.
Any question of 'accuracy' then, of the 'historical actuality', misses the point. That's the least important part of it. That misses the crux of the matter, that 'all the world's a stage' as Shakespeare would later say. For the 1st century person on the street, that their lives were determined at the whim of the gods (GrecoRoman), or according to the Will of God (Jews) was a given. That's basic 101 stuff. Factuality is just the remnant of that.
Whatever the source materials – and the simple fact is they are, at present, a mystery – the Four Gospels are literary compositions.
Mark's is a GrecoRoman bios (βίος), a genre of literary biography, moreover it's written in a style that suggests it should be read aloud, and not in a liturgical setting, but as a preaching – perhaps even enacted – it's a public composition, not written for solitary or silent reading – it's all too dramatic.
In Mark, Jesus simply "enters stage left", as it were. Mark sets the scene with John's baptising in the Jordan, when Jesus rocks up, is baptised without further ado, and we have descending doves and heavenly voices ... the end echoes the beginning, Jesus exists stage right – in fact His exit is offstage, it's the angel who says "He's gone ... "
Matthew uses Mark, but he ditches the theatre and shapes his Gospel to present Jesus as the fulfillment of the promises made to Israel.
Luke uses both, but is closer to Mark. His audience is a more literate type than Mark's populist mob. His is the Gospel of Social Justice.
Q is an enigma.
John, perhaps 'John the Elder', a contemporary of Jesus and known to the Twelve, roots his Jesus in the mystical.
None of them are journalistic notes – what happened precisely where and when is irrelevant to the whole. Rather, the plain fact is Jesus happened, and the four evangelists are four attempts to get across what the author believed happened.
Any question of 'accuracy' then, of the 'historical actuality', misses the point. That's the least important part of it. That misses the crux of the matter, that 'all the world's a stage' as Shakespeare would later say. For the 1st century person on the street, that their lives were determined at the whim of the gods (GrecoRoman), or according to the Will of God (Jews) was a given. That's basic 101 stuff. Factuality is just the remnant of that.
Not a believer in salvation/resurrection Christianity, but a believer in the possibility, not proven, just the possibility, of my theory about Jesus and the New Testament. For example, how the gospels were written and where Paul’s Christology came from.