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Published uniquely here, this book is an effort to read the gospels with minimum theological hindsight. It takes the gospels as a quite separate tradition from Pauline teaching, and as more primitive. A Gospel Reading: Believing Jesus of Nazareth 1 THE DISCIPLINE OF READING When a literary reading of the gospels attends to gaps, codes, and enigmas, it need not infringe the integrity of the text and may aspire to recover aspects of a significance that no previous reading, or no text, has ever completely expressed. The gospels move towards, not from, a developed Gospel. 2 THE ACTS OF JESUS The miraculous deeds were a medium of communication and a message, performed with studied deliberation to specific audiences. The death is scarcely interpreted by the gospels; Jesus was not so much overcome by a fate he was unable to resist, as submitting to a purpose yet to be explained; and while the Resurrection, like the death, was predicted, that in itself does not account for either event. 3 THE TEACHING OF JESUS As a cosmic solution, the Kingdom is qualified by the parables, some pointing to realisation, transcendence and resolution, others to cost, hiddenness and deferment. In The Lost Son a scene set for judgement becomes one of reconciliation and joy. Love, derived from the Father and the Son, is an aspect of discipleship, and includes compassion, obedience, even testimony. Jesus’ mission activity, and that of the apostles, is a structural and thematic feature of what he did and taught. 4 WHAT HAPPENED TO THE GOSPEL? Raising more questions than they themselves answer, the gospels carry densely coded information and signs pointing reader-disciples to other texts for interpretative illumination. The terms kerygma, gospel and Gospel are to be distinguished. The Gospel was a proclamation under development, its message different at the end from the beginning. Jesus maintained secrecy about his role: ‘Son of Man’ standing in for the Messiah until the truth could, from the time of the Passion, be made public. For the death, Isaiah provided keys to understanding such as the idea of sacrifice. The Last Supper’s New Covenant is a figure of forgiveness, renewal and anticipation. A Gospel Reading is in PDF format (823KB) which can be viewed using Acrobat Reader Version 5 and above. The Contents page items and the footnotes are dynamically linked to the text. Words and phrases can be located with ‘Find’. |
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