Joe Hellerman
Defending the Gospel accounts of Jesus
The Gospels read as ancient biography rooted in memory, not as folklore that grew in the dark for generations.
Take with you
- Names, places, and undesigned coincidences look like reportage, not myth.
- The time gap is short. Living memory is not a century of telephone.
- The church did not sand off the awkward edges. That is a mark of restraint.
- If you want a legend, the apocryphal gospels are what legend looks like.
Say this
Read Mark next to a later, fanciful gospel. One sounds like a man telling what he saw. The other sounds like a story that has had time to grow.