Jesus And The Synoptic Gospels 50
JESUS AND THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS
The two previous questions we have examined—How did the Gospels come into being? How are they to be understood as literary works?—are important in their own right but become especially significant when we understand their ramifications for the historical issue. Do the Gospels tell us a great deal about the early church but almost nothing about Jesus (Bultmann)? Do they tell us mainly about different forms of early Christianity, with Jesus but a shadowy and uncertain figure at its inception (some redaction critics)? Do they introduce us into a narrative world in which Jesus becomes little more than a protagonist in a story (some literary critics)? What do the Gospels tell us of Jesus? This is a fundamental question for New Testament studies, and here we answer it only briefly by surveying some of the main approaches and indicating briefly our own position.