Seeking, but not finding
I think I have been searching in the wrong places for the origin of the Jesus figure in our New Testament writings. Of course it would be easiest to assume that there is some truth to the gospel narratives and that there was a historical preacher by that name who was crucified and whose followers believed he rose from the dead and went to heaven. But then I would be unable to explain why the earliest uncontested and independent evidence we have for that person does not appear until a full hundred years after his time and without a hint about how that life, so rich in allusions to mythical acts and persons, came to be known. Or I could conjure up an explanation that involved ordinary (generally illiterate) persons passing on ever more imaginative “oral reports” about the person but that would be letting my imagination fly in the face of studies that tell us that’s not how fabulous tales about historical persons originate. (They are composed from the creative imaginations of the literati.)
I used to fuss fruitlessly over trying to understand what might have led to the first gospel, widely believed to have been the Gospel of Mark. I liked the idea that that gospel portrayed a Jesus who could readily be interpreted as a personification of an ideal Israel, one who died with his nation in the catastrophe of 70 CE (the destruction of the Jewish Temple by Titus along with myriads of crucifixions of Jewish victims) and rose again to establish a new “spiritual” Israel in the “church”. But that idea did not explain the kinds of Christianities (there were many types) that swelled and plopped like bubbles in a vast Mediterranean hot mud spring. Not even if we moved the gospel to a later time so that it had the Bar Kochba war (132-135 CE) in mind.
An old door reopened
Nina Livesey (re)opened a door to a room for me that maybe I should have investigated more thoroughly before. In the book I recently discussed, Livesey speaks of a multiplicity of “Christian” schools comparable with the many philosophical schools in Rome. They usually centred around a prominent teacher, attracted an inner circle of disciples while also holding open public sessions, and would not be averse to publishing both trial and final versions of tracts illustrating some point of their teachings. Livesey revives the idea that the letters attributed to an apostle named Paul were published by one such school, one led by Marcion. Marcion was also reputed to have produced “a gospel”, one that many in later antiquity and since have considered to be an early form of our Gospel of Luke.
Let’s pause there and collect our thoughts for a moment.
Marcion was not the only “Christian” teacher in Rome around the middle of the second century. Other teachers or school heads (not all in Rome) around the same period include Apelles, Basilides, Cerdo, Heracleon, Justin, Marcion, Saturninus/Satornilos, Tatian, Valentinus . . . You get the idea. There were many competing teachings. Some of them came to be dismissed as a consequence of being labelled as “gnostic”. But they were there from the beginning — at least if by “the beginning” we insist on appealing only to independently verifiable sources.
Now when Marcion published “Paul’s letters” some other schools picked them up and used them as foils through which to teach their own doctrines. Multiple interpretations and textual variants were the result. That’s how the schools worked: they would be open to engaging with each others’ teachings, either with modifications, elaborations, or outright rejections. So it is difficult from our perspective to always know what the original teachings of some of these schools were: they were capable of changing over time.
Back to the gospels. When Marcion wrote up a life of Jesus, he was using that figure of Jesus as a means of promoting his (Marcion’s) view that “Christianity” was an antithesis of the Jewish religion. Marcion’s Jesus was not even real flesh and blood but a spirit being in the appearance of flesh and blood: the antithesis even in this respect to the physical ordinances of Moses.
Schools opposing the biblical narrative
But other schools had other ideas about Jesus. More than that, they had ideas about the origins of the Jewish religion and even of humanity itself that we today would find quite bizarre. There were multiple ideas about god and creation. Many of these ideas were borrowed from Greek philosophy, some from Greek literature and myths, as well as from the Jewish Scriptures. Some said that the god who created this world was a god lower than, and ignorant of, the ultimate “Good God”; some said the serpent in the Garden of Eden was actually a benefactor of humankind and the god who punished him (according to the Book of Genesis) was the wicked god; some said that the line of Cain (depicted in Genesis as the first murderer) was the righteous genealogy; some said Jesus first appeared in the form of Adam’s third son, Seth. Indeed, Jesus held different positions among these various schools. He might be seen as one of a number of spirit beings who were “born” in the earliest moments of time. Or he was a human, fathered by Joseph, who was possessed by a spirit being called Christ. Some saw him as hating the laws of the god of Moses and promising deliverance to all whom the Jewish god had condemned.
I suspect it is impossible to ever find a way to reconcile all of these teachings. They span events from time before creation right through to the present and beyond. One thing they all seem to have in common, though: they are all opposed to the orthodox understanding we have of the Jewish Scriptures, or the Old Testament. Not all of them, as far as we are aware, include a place for Jesus. But of those that do, Jesus has a role that is opposed to the Mosaic Law and traditional Jewish Temple. (Not unreasonably, given that Jesus is derived from the name Joshua who was originally understood as the successor to Moses.)
In other words, what I am imagining here is a situation that we can with reasonable assurance place as early as the opening decades and middle of the second century — a time when a find a multiplicity of schools with various notions proposing narratives that contradicted those we read in Genesis and those of the “orthodox” interpretation of the Jewish bible more generally.
Where did those ideas come from?
An Anti-Jewish/Judean time
I am tempted to begin with the beginning of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) as proposed by Niels Peter Lemche and in some depth by Russell Gmirkin. This takes us back to the beginning of the Hellenistic era (from the time of Alexander the Great’s conquests) when Samaritans and Judeans, with the aid of Greek writings, collaborated to construct a narrative of origins that we read today in the books from Genesis to Deuteronomy or Joshua. Genesis in particular has retained hints that its authors were trying to incorporate multiple gods whom later readers would equate with Yahweh. Most scholars have seen multiple hands and schools of thought going into the final product of the Pentateuch. It is not difficult to imagine some intellects associated with the production of the first bible continuing to raise alternative ideas that were infused with Greek philosophy and myth or to imagine that some of this kind of divergent thinking continued through to the Roman era. What are surely critical turning points, however, are the calamities that befell the Jews (or Judeans) first under Vespasian and Titus (the first Jewish war of 66-70 CE), the uprisings and widespread massacres of Jews a few decades later under Trajan and then the “final solution” by 135 CE under Hadrian when the Jews were forbidden even to set foot in Jerusalem.
The bloody times coincided with the emergence of “Christian schools” in Rome. Let’s take a step beyond Nina Livesey’s specific focus on the letters of Paul appearing at this time. Let’s suggest that it is these times that witness the emergence of schools teaching the “end” of the Jewish laws. These times further witness teachings declaring the falsehood of the narrative of creation by the Jewish god, or at least teaching that this creation was evil or less than “good”. Imagine that this is the time when we see the namesake of Moses’ successor, Joshua/Jesus, promising deliverance from the judgment of that lesser god of the Jews.
If we can imagine all of that, we are, I think, confining ourselves to what the evidence in our second century sources allows.
But how does any of that explain the Christianity we recognize today?
It doesn’t. If that’s all we had, no doubt those negative teachings of Marcion, of Valentinus and others would have fallen by the wayside in time.
From antipathy to antithesis to … fulfilment
But something happened after Marcion released his story of Jesus, a Jesus who was an “antithesis” of the best that the god of the Jews could offer.
Another school, perhaps one associated with the “church father” Justin, or with Basilides in Alexandria (I don’t know and can only surmise), responded with an opposing narrative about a Jesus who was less an “antithesis” of the Jewish god than a “fulfilment” of all that the Jewish god had hoped for but had failed to achieve hitherto.
If that happened, we have a revolutionary moment. We no longer have a negative response to “the Jewish religion and scriptures”; rather, we have a way of capturing and finding new and enriched meaning in that old religion and its hoary sacred writings.
What if Jesus could be transformed from an anti-Moses or anti-Yahweh figure into a ‘higher than Moses’ figure, a fulfilment of the higher ethics of god who was henceforth to appear as a newly discovered deity, or as the old deity whose true character was only being seen clearly now for the first time — or as the “one sent to reveal” that newly understood deity?
Such a Jesus had the power to enrich and so preserve with new meaning texts that had long been revered (even among non-Jews). Allegorical reading could infuse them with new meanings. The old was discarded, yes, but it was also retained and revivified as throwing the “new” into 3D relief by its shadows: Joseph and Moses and David and Elijah (and so on) of the Old Testament prefigured the Jesus of the New — at least if read with a little imagination. A gospel could depict Jesus as a personification of an ideal Israel, healing others but suffering unjustly only to be raised up and bring all humanity to salvation. Another gospel could present Jesus as a new Moses delivering a “higher law” in the Sermon on the Mount. And so on.
I suggest that once one or some of those schools (probably in Rome but not necessarily confined to there) discovered a way to both reject and embrace with new meaning the old Mosaic order of things, they were on a winner, as we might say today.
Such a Jesus, just like the other original Jewish writings and again like the writings of “proto-Christian” (including “gnostic”) schools, drew upon the inspiration of Greek myths and philosophy to flesh out their teachings. The Jesus with us today drew upon one additional source — the Jewish Scriptures — and found as a result a longer-lasting heritage. Various “schools” may have competed for the most outstanding way to oppose and supplant the religion of the Jews who from 70 to 135 CE were suffering the calamities of Vespasian, Titus, Trajan and Hadrian. The form of Christianity that became a religion that could boast of a “higher fulfilment” and stronger appeal to literati and hoi polloi alike was the one that learned how to infuse venerable texts and the experiences of their advocates with new meaning and build on their foundation. Rejection of the Old, in way, yes, like the teachings of other schools … but with one important twist.
Neil Godfrey
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YAHWISM vs JUDAISM and Jesus: recent scholarship by Gad Barnea (Yawhism in the Archaeminid empire) and Yonnatan Adler (both archeologists) suggests that Yahwism was a worship of Yahweh that spanned across the Mediterranean, Persia, Egypt up to the British isles! This was different from Judaism which was a product of the Hasmonean Empire; The Septuagint, composed primarily representing the latter (for purposes of the Alexandrian Library) was also used for worship of Yahweh, but also included a diverse array of scripture that originated from all across the Mediterranean. Dr Margeret Barker in her “The Great Angel” has done a great job of identifying Yahweh the first born son/Angel/ high priest/logos (like Philo describes) of El the Transcendental God: and that the first Christians eg Mark, Luke, Mathew & John conceptualise Jesus as Yahweh incarnated eg Mark 1:3 refers to “prepare the way for the LORD (Yahweh)”; or “before Abraham was I am” in John 4:58 or Paul in 1Cor10:1-4 as the Cloud& spiritual rock that followed the Israelites in the desert.
Margeret Barker also identifies Yaweh as “descending through the heavens” in the Ascension of Isaiah (date of origin 80CE -120 CE) which may have been pictured Yaweh being killed prior to the Gospels (proper) being written in the 2nd century. Why was Ascension of Isaiah written? It is unclear- perhaps Yahweh was identified through synchretism as a dying and rising Messiah? Or maybe in response to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70CE.
But Mark could have been euhemerizing Yahweh as Jesus and then triggered the cascade of the Gospels? Marcion and Mark could have been in the same school (Heresis)?
I have discussed the works of Barnea, Adler and Barker on this blog — do a search on their names in the “Search” box near the top of the right margin on this page. Cult sites for “Yhwh” have been found throughout Syria and down to the areas around Edom, but I don’t think any of them extend the cult throughout the Mediterranean or to the British Isles. Barker poses some interesting interpretations but care needs to be taken to sift interpretation and argument from clear “fact”. It is quite possible that the Ascension of Isaiah is a late work. Again, we have debates but little certainty.
The model I have in mind places Mark as a response to a gospel that was associated with Marcion. But Mark was not the first appearance of a Jesus as a fulfilment teaching.
Barnea refers to the Elephantine evidence with regards to the presence of Yahwism (have heard him refer to British Isles in an interview); I agree with your take on MBarker. But philo’s description of Logos as son of God/ arch angel/ high priest of Gods heavenly temple indicate he most likely aligned with platonsitic ideas and Deuteronomy 32:8. The references in Mark& the Gospels, Paul’s letters and Jude etc indicate they were perceived Jesus as Yahweh incarnated
“Now I desire to remind you, though you are fully informed, once and for all, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.”
Jude 1:5 NRSVUE
https://bible.com/bible/3523/jud.1.5.NRSVUE
It also has explanatory power for where Jesus (Yahweh Ho Shua- Yahweh the Saviour) comes from- otherwise he does not have any reasonable OT presence. Regards
Love your work
I meant to add Elephantine evidence signifies Yahwism in Egypt
It is possible then, Jesus was invented from whole cloth?
Not as a deliberate synthetic fiction and/or a conspiracy, but as normative human sociological/religious impulses which includes religious syncretism, mimesis, intertextuality.
I think it is worth taking a closer look at the other forms of Christianity that we can identify in the same time period as the gospels — on the assumption that they are all second century. I doubt many would think that the Jesus in the “non-orthodox” Christianities owed anything to a historical figure.
OP: “There were many competing teachings. Some of them came to be dismissed as a consequence of being labelled as “gnostic”. But they were there from the beginning — at least if by “the beginning” we insist on appealing only to independently verifiable sources.”
“[47:10] The Gnostics [i.e. Chrestians NOT proto-orthodox Christians] were dying in that amphitheater as bravely as members of his own congregation . . . Irenaeus believed that true Christianity, was his Christianity [pseudo-orthodox Christianity]—he thought that the Gnostics were holy anarchists. He wanted to show the world an organized and universal Church, not a secret sect. [47:51]” –TESTAMENT with John Romer. Part 4 – Gospel Truth?”. YouTube @ https://youtu.be/dFPPGgYzhH0?t=2836
The gospel of Marcion priority puts into the spotlight Lord Chrest…
“No text in the entire world ever says Christ – although plenty of them say Chrest.” –Martijn Linssen
“Gospels, Epistles, Old Testament: the order of books according to Jesus Chri st” Amazon Kindle Edition @ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKFD5J98
I don’t make as big a deal about the “Chrest”-“Christ” divide that some do. It was a common enough pun that made no difference to the underlying theological ideas. I have been meaning to post about it — drawing in particular on a work by John Moles.
The Book of Revelation offers us a very Jewish Jesus. He’s a savior, a Messiah of Davidic descent, a warrior. The name “Jesus” (or Joshua) means a savior, and in that sense is like the term “Christ.” The latter term identifies the particular savior. Saviors are rampant in Greco-Roman times, looks like. John of Patmos addresses 7 churches. He’s familiar with 7 Christian churches, but not with Paul or Paul’s letters, and not with a gospel. That alone is enough to make me question the traditional dating of both letters and gospels. It also suggests the Jewish nature of (First Century?) Christianity. Well, we knew it was originally a Jewish sect. Along come Cerdo and Marcion, and now you have an Antithesis and the letters of Paul as the proposed basis of the sect. Let’s sweep away the Jewish demi-urge (Yahweh) entirely! Then you get reaction: Justin, Irenaeus. Justin focuses heavily on Jewish scripture, distorting it from its more obvious meanings every chance he gets, in favor of the fulfillment of prophecy idea. The Jews never understood what they were about, apparently! We’re going to explain it to them! But to do it we must suppress these heretical Antitheses. What are we talking about? Jesus Christ, of course. And what is our focus? Is it on who his family was? Is it on his childhood and upbringing? His education? His physical appearance? His political loyalties? His personal mannerisms?No, it’s on what kind of god he is. Jewish? Anti-Jewish? Greek? Meek & mild? Warlike? His mother was a goddess, by the way, one of those virgin mothers of the ancient world. Father was God. This process appears to me to describe a literary creation of the 2d C. arising originally out of a Messianic sect of an oppressed people in the First.
Yes, the Jesus in Revelation is indeed one who is at odds with the Jesus promoted by “those who teach permission to eat meat sacrificed to idols” etc. And if Thomas Witulski is right, then the Jesus of Revelation is even hoping for a Bar Kochba victory over Hadrian’s legions. Paul-Louis Couchoud pitted the Jesus of Paul and the Jesus of John as figures in conflict. Is not the Jesus of Revelation a prophesied conquering Messiah rather than a “fulfilment that replaces” kind of idea, though?
You speak of an oppressed people. Along with them, I wonder, are the gentiles who converted and others who sympathized. They were the ones caught squarely in the middle of two worlds and needed to justify their place to both. Marcion himself may have been a Jew or at least a proselyte (he knew a lot about the Scriptures) and proposed antithesis as the way forward. But whether antithesis or fulfilment, a major feature was the message to the non-Jews.
But yes indeed, the Jesus of Revelation is very much like a part 2 of the “Son of Man” in Daniel.
John of Patmos=Jewish Jesus
Marcion=Non-Jewish Jesus
Justin=Post-Jewish Jesus
Gospel John= Anti-Jewish Jesus?
I missed this added comment of yours when I edited my first reply. Yep —
John of Patmos = “Jewish Jesus” = Daniel “Son of Man” in the spirit of apocalyptic conqueror.
The Gospel of Mark then inverts Daniel’s Son of Man, as we know.
Wonderful envisioning. If founded in reality, proof positive that Jesus was a narrative being constructed, or rather cobbled, from imaginary bits.
I think it explains a lot — including why the search for “an original Jesus” always been obliged to rely upon assumptions hanging in mid air.
I share your desire for a model of Christian origins that explains the diversity that seems to have existed almost immediately. The solutions to me are either an earlier starting point, perhaps with figures such as the Teacher of righteousness or others, which allow more time to have for these developments, or what I like to call a ‘soft start’.
The keystone concept IMO is the ubiquitous ‘second power theology’ shared in some form by diverse Hellenized Judaism, so-called Gnostics and the proto-orthodoxy. The idea that God Most High had ‘sons’, aka agents/angels/holy spirit that were emanations of the deity. Some of whom proved unable or unfit for the roles they were assigned. Without spending too much time on that, suffice to say, the schools as diverse as the Valentinian, Philonic, and Justinian have as a foundational tenet the concept of emanations of God. Given the ethereal/philosophical nature of this concept, we are unlikely to discover a single point of origin for them all in common. Rather than a diffusion of sects, it seems simpler to assume a fusion. This is what I mean by a ‘soft start’, no single event but the interplay of existing sects and concepts, eventuating after centuries into a dominant orthodoxy.
As to the idea of an historical Jesus, the Philonic Alexandrian school had suggested ancient figures such as Melchizedek or Aaron were in reality the Logos in humanlike form. It’s not difficult to believe the same was believed of a later person in some of the tributary sects while others retained a purely ‘spiritual’ concept. That seems to have been an issue very early.
This is the second time posting this. If I have not done something right, please advise.
New posters (and sometimes older ones for some reason) have their comments sit in limbo until I or Tim check them first. It’s an unfortunate necessary step.
Yes, there were the “endless genealogies” of some of the gnostics and I see those as attempts to replace a cosmic history – the one implied in the Jewish Scriptures – with a more philosophical system. But my point is that they were all aimed at replacing or denying the Jewish Scriptures and fundamental Jewish religious ideas (the Temple, Creator God and Lawgiver, the Patriarchs). Then one day some teachers found a way to both “replace” and “honour with higher meaning”. That was the winning ticket.
I am still inclined to (or unwilling to give up) the idea that Marcion’s gospel was the gospel of Mark.
Marcion’s use of the term ‘antithesis’ may provoke the concept of a complete divorce from Jewish customs, but I have in mind that Marcion is a clever theologian, and far more subtle than we give him credit for. The fact that his ‘Paul’ creation survives is a testimony to his ability to craft theology and narratives that bridge the divide.
I am not saying Marcion personally wrote gMark or the ‘authentic’ Pauls, I still think it is possible Marcion is the curator of works he brought from Asia Minor or Antioch. His Rome school no doubt continuing the Paul legacy.
I am thinking of the verse in Mark where Jesus says “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
It might be seen as Jesus testing the gentile woman to see her demonstrate her faith, but I think it might be actually a window into the original Jesus who was just a human carrying a divine spirit. The human Jesus is still a bigot who thinks his mission is to only help Jews. This Jesus is confronted by the faith and humility of the Gentile woman, he is surprised (how do you surprise an all knowing god-man?) and he is the one humbled here. We tend to project our ‘perfect divine Jesus’ into the story to try to explain this away, but if Mark is an earlier gospel, then Jesus does not have to be perfect.
This human Jesus is still learning on the job, and I can imagine that he could be the antithesis of the Jewish Messiah, as he progresses towards becoming the ultimate self-hating Jew when he prophecises against the temple and even rejects his own messianic destiny and his own body.
It would be interesting to re-evaluate the gospel of Mark to see if it really is anti-Marcionite. I tend to think the examples where Mark is said to be anti-Marcion often rely on a very literal interpretation of how Marcion’s theology is perceived, especially the supposed docetism model.
One little hitch to this idea is that no witness to the contents of Marcion’s gospel include the Syrophonician woman episode. Tertullian would appear to explicitly complain that Marcion “cut it out”.
I know some scholars say Mark’s Jesus is more human than the others — losing his temper, using spit and dirt to heal, healing in two stages — but they do so by ignoring the symbolic message of the healings and the fact that god himself (as well as good Stoics) could be quite entitled to express righteous anger. And walking on water is surely nothing less than a god-act.
As for the survival of Paul’s letters, I can’t see that they would have survived at all if they did not come with the gospels. They are a rather painful and scarcely coherent read on their own, don’t you think?
Yes, it is a problem if Tertullian says he ‘cut it out’.
Everything about Tertullian is a problem I think. I recall an article (which may have been on this site?) that argued that Tertullian did not even have a copy of Marcion’s gospel, and that he just inferred what Marcion ‘cut out’. I am not sure whether the same can be said about Epiphanius?
(I won’t link to the thread on that forum out of respect, but I note it is discussed there)
I think the whole missing gospel is in itself weird. The letters of Paul survived, but this Gospel didn’t? That in itself is not a big issue, if it weren’t for the supposed history of Marcionism surviving and flourishing for centuries after Marcion himself. Yet, I wonder if that is true also? Perhaps mistaken identity? Epiphanius seems to suggest they are still using this gospel? But even if they are direct descendants of Marcion’s cult, why would we assume they haven’t adapted their gospel since Marcion’s time? Maybe they did expurgate Luke and use this, but that could have happened a long time after Marcion, and Marcion’s original gospel had become obsoleted.
As for Paul’s letters having to exist with a gospel, I think there is something to that, especially with references to the gospels in the text. I wonder about “Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified”. Which to me suggests a gospel presented as a Greek drama. Obviously the writer has to infer the Galatians were not educated and had to have it this way, but there is no reason to think the schools themselves could not have used theatre as a means of communication as well. However, I think the limited references to an Earthly Jesus in Paul’s letters are still a hole for now. I imagine the writers of Paul’s letters do have a gospel in mind, but it is still a primitive gospel. That might be an argument for a primitive Marcion gospel.
I think the whole NL thesis does elevate the Marcion gospel as a crucial issue, as it must surely be a core work that somehow shaped the gospel evolution, even if it was superseded so quickly by what became Mark.
By the way – I am not saying Mark’s Jesus is not a god-man, but that he receives the spirit, so he was not born a god.
I have to confess: I find it a lot easier to believe there was an historical Jesus who died by crucifixion, and that some came to believe he’d been raised from the dead, and that this series of events happened in the early first century, and it was this Jesus that Paul was writing about in (roughly) the 50s CE.
Then what happened? Same thing that happens today, same thing that is happening in this thread: As time goes on, people start “revamping” an existing story so it says something they’d like it to say. I mean, in this thread alone, how many different ideas are we seeing?
Now, about this: “As for the survival of Paul’s letters, I can’t see that they would have survived at all if they did not come with the gospels. They are a rather painful and scarcely coherent read on their own, don’t you think?”
Paul’s letters are hardly a “rather painful and scarcely coherent read on their own” if the people that Paul was writing to already had “background info” concerning what Paul was writing about. Now, if I didn’t know anything at all about somebody named “Jesus” who died by crucificixion, and was believed to have been raised from the dead, then, yeh, reading Paul’s letters could prove to be difficult to comprehend. It would be like stepping into the middle of someone else’s conversation about something I know nothing about in the first place. But, if Paul was writing to already-established “churches” that had formed around the belief that there was a “real Jesus” who died and was raised from the dead, then, no, those letters wouldn’t, by any necessity, be difficult for those recipients to understand.
Just a thought…
Unfortunately it goes against all we know about how stories about historical persons grow. Further, the view you present asks us to believe the most unlikely: that Jews would over time come to believe that a crucified prophet was god incarnate. Further, it goes against all the norms we have for determining this or that person or event was historical: the story is not independently confirmed until a century after the time of Jesus and it provides no assurances of its historicity. This is not how we determine the historicity of any other event or person in ancient (or modern) times.
As for Paul’s letters having some meaning for their original audiences, of course they would be meaningful for them (but see the posts on Livesey’s book). But my point is that they would not be preserved and held in esteem to anyone else without the context of the gospel stories — and Acts.