The Gospels

In this reading, I especially took notice to Cosby’s idea of intentionally trying to notice what the authors of the gospel intentionally leave out, and what they believe needs further explanation. This can help you gain a better idea of what audience they were writing for, and will certainly help with interpretation in general. Furthermore, I find it interesting that the Book of Matthew uses circumlocutions for God and that this Jewish tradition of indirectly referring to God has stayed in the culture to this day. Going along with the idea of repetition being important, Matthew often repeated that Jesus was fulfilling prophecy. This must have been an important idea to him. It is also to see how the authors of the gospels had different writing styles. For example, Mark has bad grammar in his writing, while on the other hand, Luke uses writing conventions of the highly educated. These authors, like all people, come from different upbringings which influences the way they see Jesus and the world. I also find it interesting that the book of Mark was written for a gentile audience, and Cosby says this is so because Mark explains the Jewish customs in detail for those he assumes are not aware. Furthermore, what I found interesting is that Luke arranges the events in Jesus’ life topically, rather than chronologically. This seems like a good way of organizing for the intention of deriving meaning, but since his book is also the one that focuses on history, writing like this can be a little challenging to read. It’s important to keep this background information in mind when reading the gospels, so that we can understand the writer’s biases and try to throw our own out the door.