Birth and Early Life of Jesus

  1. Mark - 70s CE

    • most human version of Jesus, left out miraculous birth story

    • fullest range of emotions in Jesus, just does things

  2. Matthew - 80s CE

    • believed to have been produced further east, like Syria

    • teaching, Jesus as a model person, leaves less for readers to interpret

    • creates binaries + dogmatic positions on conflict

    • includes miraculous birth→ most complete biography, has most events but maybe not full characterization of Jesus

    • Jesus at his most adversarial against Jewish elite→ most polarizing of gospels

    • most concerned with judaism

    • starts with Genealogy- 42 generations

      • 3 very important number→ 42/3 = 14→ number associated w/ David

  3. Luke - 85 CE

    • more concerned w/ urban environments

    • nature imagery, tests/difficult

    • Jesus at his most compassionate, more people/characters included

    • spends more time working miracles and helping marginalized/oppressed

    • socioeconomic sermons

    • Genealogy- 76 names

      • not linked to individual but to forgiveness of sin

  4. Infancy Gospel of Thomas - mid 2nd century

    • don’t know much about where it came from but people love it

    • other infancy gospels and this one were more widely circulated than the gospels

    • written later, might not be real

    • not a perfectly virtuous kid→ has lots of power, lots of knowledge, has to learn how to be divine

    • non-perfect Jesus, very humanized, but doesn’t fit very well with other characterizations

    • positions him as transforming Judaism

  • likely separate ways of thinking that influenced each other but ultimately stayed slightly separate

  • interpretations range from actually happened, to fanfiction, anti-fan?fiction

  • maybe they had long enough lives as individual gospels that they were not combined when put together, but writing was expensive→ typically leads to economy of expression but the written texts themselves were seen as significant objects as well as the stories

  • many christians havent read the bible→ christians are supposed to spread the message→ watered down beliefs

  • but maybe believing is more important than knowing?

  • Mark and Luke show reformation of Judaism, Matthew- additions that override Judaism