Episode Details

Did decades of apostolic teaching of a cosmic divine universal Savior influence the eyewitness accounts — recorded in the Gospels many decades later — of a very human Jewish Messiah?

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at how the first century Christian church evolved its understanding of Jesus. To do that, we’re going to rely heavily on what they said and did about Jesus. But our only source of that kind of information comes from the Gospel accounts and the Book of Acts. So before we start that part of the conversation, we’ll want to look at how that eyewitness testimony itself evolved over the course of many decades.

We’re going to hear from a New Testament scholar — Dr. David Carr — about how the first Gospel account of Jesus was written a couple decades after Paul had been writing and preaching about Jesus being a cosmic divine Savior (and that the story that Mark wrote about was yet another decade or two in the distant past before Paul even began teaching this new narrative). And that the next two Gospel accounts (Matthew and Luke) were recorded after yet another decade or two of more apostolic teaching and further theological development of this new view of Christ. And then finally John’s Gospel — the one who easily portrays the most cosmic, divine portrait of Jesus — was written after yet another decade or two of that apostolic teaching.

A lot can change over the course of even just one decade, especially when the whole cultural zeitgeist around you is changing. Think how your memories and impression of any politician, or rock star, or favorite actor from ten years ago has changed. Now try to remember someone from forty or fifty years ago.

So imagine yourself as one of those people who had walked and talked with this person who was very much human, but now for the past forty or fifty years everyone was saying was very much a cosmic divine being. Wouldn’t that shape your recollection and interpretation of events when some interviewer/writer comes throu