Up to now, the Canonical Gospels have a relatively consistent narrative in the retelling of Jesus's life and ministry. Determining the future shaping of that story, and how it will be interpreted. The accepted order in which the gospels were written is Mark, then Matthew, then Luke, then John. As for John - well - crikey! - more on that later.
The Apostles as writers of the gospels, as discussed previously, is a mere literary contrivance. But there is, nonetheless, a quite distinct individual authorial voice and literary style to the writing within them all.
Mark as his travelling companion, is often thought to be the mouthpiece for Peter's account. He gives you the basic kernel of the events with minimal embellishment. No sense of the background, of where Jesus came from. Mark quickly skips over the resurrection as though that were a minor coda. Its short, direct, written in a contained but lively manner.
Matthew, was an apostle who was present with Jesus at the time. Borrows wholesale from Mark, but introduces a preface of stories about Jesus's birth and childhood, and puts more detail on the bones of the ressurection and aftermath. He writes in plain factually perfunctory language, as if he might have to read all this as a police statement in court, so he'd better stick to the exact known details. Even what is 'miraculous' is related in a passive matter of fact manner. Matthew's Gospel, paradoxically, can be a comparatively dull gospel to read. Mainly as a result of the way it's written, but also its compendious length.
Luke, known as the Evangelist, takes less directly from Mark. He writes in a significantly more commited, energetic style. Filled with an engagement with his subject matter, so that his own verve is infectious, lifting the stories off the page. He too, includes fuller origin stories from before John the Baptist, and inserts significant detail on the disciples encounters with Jesus after the resurrection. Its almost as though he looked at Mathew's gospel and thought, you know, I can do a much better job than that. And then he does.
Until John comes along. Reported to have been one of the youngest of Jesus's Apostles. A highly impressionable youth perhaps. But boy, does he take his retelling to another level. Imagine this as the same story as the previous three Gospels, but with the help of hallucinogenics. Intoned by a large theatrical and rhetoric infused voice. It uses big cosmic language, florid and mythic to its very muscles and bones. Its as though, gone is any need for maintaining strict factual accuracy, what we need here is a vivid sense of the importance of it all. The meaning of Jesus bringing God's kingdom to earth lunges at you off the page.
John could have been thinking of the future, to when those who'd actually met Jesus were beyond living memory. What then? Facts, they are OK, but what needs to be communicated is Jesus's significance on an emotional level. John may have been responding to the contentions of his time around the true meaning of Jesus's ministry. When you bring to mind the Gospels today. the tone of St John's Gospel tends to be what you hear.
We are presented with the full biblical baroque from a truly visionary writer. It's meant to knock you for six with its richly embellished vocabulary and style, and it does so in spades. Communicating a vision of the potency and spirit of Jesus's revelation. Aimed more directly at the certainty of your heart, than the doubting, questioning mind.
Sources for those early life stories of Jesus must have originated from within the twelve Apostles. There was at least one brother of Jesus, James, with Thomas* an outlying possiblilty of being another.
* ( John's Gospel really has it in from Thomas, providing three instances of negative portrayals, after being only a listed name in the previous gospels. Elaine Pagels suggests John may have been writing these directly to dish some dirt on the writer of the Gospel of Thomas, with its self proclaimed 'secret teachings' of Jesus.)
If one believes that the immaculate conception is how it actually happened, then the details of The Annunciation story could only have come via Mary the Mother of Jesus. One can imagine how the retelling of the oft repeated family story might go :-
Jesus, yes, he was always a bit of an odd one, that son of mine. But that I had him at all was entirely the angel of the Lord's fault. Well, Joseph was away from home at the time, so I thought why not? Lets try giving birth to the Lord's anointed'
If not this, then we are left with a story arising of the Virgin birth, as a fever dream in the imagination of its writer. In short, someone entirely inventing the whole angelic visitation and pre-nup agreement.
What is noticeable, is that the New Testament stories concerning Jesus and the twelve disciples, are so resolutely blokey. One can sense a lot of youthful testosterone and competitiveness flying around, with a big religiously infused bromance going on right in the middle of it. Young men to this day like to brace a challenge, a sense of testing and pitting themselves against themselves and the world. You can imagine just how intoxicating being around someone they thought of as the Messiah would be, particularly to the macho idealism of ardent young men.
As soon as we delve into Jesus's early life and the resurrection, then those female figures previously kept in the background, take up a more significant role front stage. Elizabeth, John the Baptist's Mother, and Mary the Mother of Jesus in the Nativity story. And Martha and Mary Magdelene at the Resurrection. They have to appear because attending to children and to the bodies of the dead, would traditionally be viewed as a woman's duty.
Biblical researchers suggest that Mary Magdelene may actually have been a central close disciple of Jesus. Someone who also provided money to financially support Jesus and his disciples in their ministry. Also, she is one of the first to see the vision of the risen Jesus, and goes to tell the initially disbelieving male disciples.
In the Non Canonical Gospel of Mary Magdelene, both Andrew and Peter testily dismisses the validity of her prophetic gospel testimony, largely on the basis of her gender alone. Unfortunately this does ring true. Particularly when you consider the inherent misogyny at the heart of Roman Catholicism, and Peters role in that as its mythic founder.
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