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Undergraduate Courses (2): Introduction to the New Testament (Part 2)
Once students have come to see what the contents, characteristics, and emphases of each of the Gospels are, and have recognized that the Gospels cannot be taken as historically reliable accounts of what “really” happened in the life of Jesus, both because of their many discrepancies and because of historical implausibilities (as just two examples: Luke’s “census” that gets Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem; or the Triumphal Entry, where Jesus is publicly acclaimed messiah by the massive crowds and the authorities do nothing about it) – once students have recognized this, they are in a position to consider the criteria that scholars use to ferret out from sources such as these bona fide historical information. I stress with my students that the literary questions one brings to the Gospels are different from historical questions. The literary questions are the ones we ask about the Gospels as works of literature: what they want to teach and what message they want to convey. The historical questions are ones we ask about the Gospels as sources: what they [...]