ABSTRACT
Asking the question about the historicity of Jesus one naturally first turns to the Gospels. Also, their physical placement as the beginning of the New Testament invites this. However, the fact that the Gospels contain the story about the beginning should not be allowed to hide the fact that the oldest Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, was written 35–40 years after the death of its story’s main figure, Jesus of Nazareth. This means that the Gospels belong to a later stage in the history of reception, as do the genuine letters of Paul. If we at least consider the later Gospels as examples of the genre ‘rewritten Bible’, it becomes obvious that they are theological elaborations of the Jesus tradition. This, however, is already so with the Gospel of Mark. 1 As such, the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and John all identify, in one way or another, their earthly Jesus with the risen and exalted Christ. Only the relatively late Gospel of Luke, which was, according to my understanding, written around 120–130, also allows its Jesus to be a historical person of the past, with the apostolic church replacing him as the authority. 2 This change in perspective could be one reason why the interpretative tradition stopped expressing itself in the writing of Gospels.
