What is it about the Gospel texts that I find so amazing?

The Bible contains four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Each gives an account of the life and teaching of Jesus. There are many questions that we can and should ask about these literary texts. Indeed, over the past two thousand years, many people have explored questions and engaged in debates about authorship, historicity, divine revelation, moral authority, textual reliability, and the (im)possibility of miracles. 

In this post, I want to put aside these questions for now, and just focus on the Gospels as texts and public information. In a sense I am taking an empirical scientific perspective, viewing the texts as like scientific data, that is publically available. Everyone has access to this data. There is really little room for debate about what the data is. The debate is about how to analyse and how to interpret the data. 

Over decades I have read and re-read the Gospels and read what a range of people, both Christian and non-Christian say about them. Here I want to state some of the things that I think are truly amazing about these texts.

There is an incredible literary depth. Each Gospel interweaves different stories about Jesus, his teaching, and quotations and allusions to the Jewish scriptures (Old Testament). After two thousand years, they are still considered some of the best literature ever produced and still attract intricate and subtle analysis from literary scholars. In this regard, they are in a different league to any other literature unlike any other literature from two thousand years ago, including Christian literature.

I find the most amazing thing to be the teachings of Jesus. They are radical, counter-cultural (then and now), comforting, and challenging. Jesus' teaching provides an insightful description of reality: money, power, pride, evil, human nature, human dignity, relationships, forgiveness, competing values, and self-righteousness. Although sometimes abstract and difficult to interpret, Jesus' teaching provides a very down-to-earth and practical guide for daily living. Jesus' life also illustrates what this "good life" should look like.

I delight in the creativity and profundity of the paradoxes presented. The first will be last. The last will be first. The humble will be exalted. Become great by being a servant. Save your life and you will lose it. Lose your life and you will find it. The Kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus is an upside-down kingdom, in stark contrast to the kingdoms of this world where money, power, privilege, and social status are exalted and determine who rules.

Jesus' upside-down kingdom is illustrated and embodied in his embrace of the marginalised: tax collectors, prostitutes, the poor, widows, orphans, Samaritans, cripples, and "sinners." This makes the empathetic part of my soul sing. There is hope. And, it challenges me as a child of privilege, to follow Jesus' example.

                                      Christ on the Cross by Rembrandt

The centrepiece and climax of the Gospel narratives are the Cross: the death of Jesus by crucifixion. He is publically humiliated and executed as a criminal and social outcast. There are many dimensions to what the Cross represents: an embrace of suffering, identification with the weak, and atonement for sin, ... It is the ultimate embodiment of the upside-down kingdom as it is about power through weakness, and wisdom through foolishness. For the time and place of Roman-occupied Palestine, the Cross is about as counter-cultural as possible. Jesus' death defines a model for how he wants his followers to live.

In the midst of a messed-up world, both then and now, the Gospels present me hope, through the resurrection of Jesus and the promise of a forthcoming just judgement. Evil will be punished. Those who have suffered unjustly will experience deliverance.

I have not encountered any other literature, from any age, or of any genre that compares to the richness and inspiration I find in the Gospels.

The impact of the Gospel narratives is amazing. The early church went from being a small rag-tag band of followers to a cultural force that ultimately transcended and outlasted the mighty Roman empire. This incredible influence has been well-documented by authors such as Tom Holland and Rodney Stark.

The Gospels exhibit an amazing universality in particularity. They were written in ancient Greek at a particular time, in a particular place, and in a particular religious, political, cultural, and economic context. Despite their particularity the relevance and impact of the Gospels are enduring, transcending time, space, language, context, and culture. They are "translatable" in every sense of the word. They are accessible to all, being both profound and simple.

These amazing things raise many questions for me. Why do the Gospels have such an impact on me and on others? What is it about them that makes them so unique? Why are the Gospels so superior to other literature, both past and present? Why do they resonate? inspire? comfort? transform people? 

Taken together all the features I have noted provide hints of transcendence. Perhaps the Gospels are something more than great literature and words on a page. Could they be a living word? And who was the person Jesus described in the Gospels? Was he something more than the creation of some great literary minds, or more than an extraordinary man? Could it be that the Gospels describe what actually did happen? Could Jesus' teaching actually be true?

J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were two of the most creative literary minds of the twentieth century. They considered the Gospels to be the greatest story ever told. Here are some of Tolkien's reflections.

Of course I do not mean that the Gospels tell what is only a fairy-story; but I do mean very strongly that they do tell a fairy-story: the greatest. Man the story-teller would have to be redeemed in a manner consonant with his nature: by a moving story. But since the author of it is the supreme Artist and the Author of Reality, this one was also made . . . to be true on the Primary Plane. (Letters, 100–101)

 ‘this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused’ (‘On Fairy-stories’, 63).