Great clip! The Gospels are both simple and complex. On one hand their meaning is obvious; we are to love one another. On the other hand, they are complex documents. They are written in an ancient language that most people today do not understand. They have a complex history. They combine a historical Jesus and a risen Jesus. They make allusions to the Jewish Bible and to the first-century world that are not always apparent to us. They combine memory and metaphor. They are documents that were written within early Christian communities and are human products and the result of developing traditions. Of course, they were written by individuals, but these individuals were not "authors" ...

Great clip! The Gospels are both simple and complex. On one hand their meaning is obvious; we are to love one another. On the other hand, they are complex documents. They are written in an ancient language that most people today do not understand. They have a complex history. They combine a historical Jesus and a risen Jesus. They make allusions to the Jewish Bible and to the first-century world that are not always apparent to us. They combine memory and metaphor. They are documents that were written within early Christian communities and are human products and the result of developing traditions. Of course, they were written by individuals, but these individuals were not "authors" in the modern sense of the term. Modern authors write for people they do not know and seek to be original and creative. The individuals who wrote the gospels were writing their communities traditions about Jesus as they had developed in the decades since his death. Mark is the earliest gospel, written around 70 CE, Matthew and Luke were written a decade or two later. Both used Mark as their primary source for their narrative of Jesus's public activity, and before Mark was written, it is likely that there was a written collection of the teachings of Jesus that scholars call "Q." John is generally thought to be the latest.