Gospel Fictions : Read the book, don't wait for the movie

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NANCY

> I would recommend that you read Randal Helms's _Gospel Fictions_.

> It is a slim tome, but quite an eye-opener.


BRUCE
I picked up a copy at the library yesterday.  I've opened it to a few
pages at random, but haven't seen anything particularly eye-opening.

>From what I've seen, the book looks like a typical exercise in

redaction criticism.  (Its style, in fact, reminds me of Richard
Elliott Friedman's _Who Wrote The Bible?_, which deals mainly with the
Torah.)

Given Helms' definition of fiction, "A narrative whose purpose is less
to describe the past than to affect the present", I would have to
agree that the gospels are fiction.  This does not mean that they
contain no historical information, but that historical concerns are
subordinate to theological ones.  The writers were less interested in
preserving the past than in provoking a response by the reader.  This
is made explicit in the gospel of John: "Now Jesus did many other
signs in the presence of his disciples, which are written so that you
may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and
that through believing you may have life in his name."

-- 
Bruce Alderman                   baa@southwind.net
OK, I'm weird!  But I'm saving up to be eccentric.

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