Episode 143: Biblical Genres, Part 6--Gospels

Part biographes, part movie directors, and part street evangelists, the writers of the four Gospels in the New Testament were doing something unique when they compiled the stories, sayings, and signs of Jesus of Nazareth.  They were, for starters, certainly recording the oral traditions that had been circulating by word of mouth by the earliest followers of Jesus, but they were also making choices about where the story moved, what was important enough to include, what scenes and vignettes did or didn't make the cut, and how to lead their readers to interpet and understand who Jesus is.  Sometimes Christians don't spend the time paying attention to the subtle nuances or different emphases that the writers we traditionally call "Matthew," "Mark," "Luke," and "John," bring to their storytelling, but there are important things to learn by exploring them.  So in this episode of their ongoing conversation about the different kinds of literature you'll find in the Bible, pastors Sarah, Erica, and Steve take a look at the Gospels, their likely audiences, the different emphases each brings, and how it might help to think of the evangelists as movie directors.