Before reading this book I would have never questioned anything in the Bible, especially the Gospels, like we have in this class. Growing up and going to church every Sunday this isn’t the type of stuff that you will hear about at a typical church service. I really enjoyed how the book questioned everything and how Norm made me feel like I was taking this quest with him. It was definitely a rewarding experience to step outside of my beliefs and look at how things might not be the way we think they are. We are generally always taught to see the very caring and loving Jesus and rarely taught about his rebel side. Through this historical Jesus study I have learned that the way Jesus is portrayed by present Christianity is very different than the way he would be portrayed by earlier Christians.
I have learned that with the historical Jesus studies and the Gospels that there is no clear answer about some of the things that happened in Jesus’ lifetime. With that being said, for everything written in the Gospels I have learned two things. The first being that the passages could have been shaped to earlier writings in the Old Testament, or they could have been completely made up to try and reach out and gain new followers for Jesus. Through this book I was introduced to intertextuality, and the criteria of embarrassment and multiple attestation. Knowing more about these ideas it really made it easier to be able and compare the different Gospels to one another. The topics that I enjoyed looking at most to try to understand the different ideas were Jesus’ resurrection and the virgin birth.
Overall I took from this book that we all form our own image of Jesus and that we have to understand that each Gospel writer was doing the same thing. So when we read the Gospels we need to understand that they each formed their own ideas, just like we do. To sum this all up, the Man who traversed the land and the One who strides the Gospels has many faces (266).
I have learned that with the historical Jesus studies and the Gospels that there is no clear answer about some of the things that happened in Jesus’ lifetime. With that being said, for everything written in the Gospels I have learned two things. The first being that the passages could have been shaped to earlier writings in the Old Testament, or they could have been completely made up to try and reach out and gain new followers for Jesus. Through this book I was introduced to intertextuality, and the criteria of embarrassment and multiple attestation. Knowing more about these ideas it really made it easier to be able and compare the different Gospels to one another. The topics that I enjoyed looking at most to try to understand the different ideas were Jesus’ resurrection and the virgin birth.
Overall I took from this book that we all form our own image of Jesus and that we have to understand that each Gospel writer was doing the same thing. So when we read the Gospels we need to understand that they each formed their own ideas, just like we do. To sum this all up, the Man who traversed the land and the One who strides the Gospels has many faces (266).
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