What is the Bible meant to be?

It's not a matter of fictional or not fictional it's a matter of what were the texts originally intended to be, historico-biographical or theological? It's seem clear they are and were always intended to be the latter rather than the former. Here is a synopsis of what my study has brought me to conclude:

There was a man Yeshu'a Ben Josef who lived in Palestine in the first century who was a cynic style wandering sage and mystic. He had a brief ministry of perhaps 1 1/2 years with a small following and perhaps as many as 3 or 4 traveling companions who were his disciples.

His movement was aimed at a reform of the Jewish Temple Cult system and offered an unbrokered relationship between the Hebrew God and his people.

He raised some sort of fuss in Jerusalem where the temple hierarchy was already aware of his movement and concerned about it. He was summarily, and probably anonymously, executed by the Romans for sedition. It was common during large Jewish religious festivals (this occured during the festival of Pesach) for the Romans to really crack down on anyone who was likely to stir up trouble and Pontius Pilate, who was a vicious and ruthless procurator of the province for the Roman Emperor is known to have regularly had political dissidents or any Jew who looked like trouble executed by crucifixion and he gave his officers carte blanche to do so at there own discretion.

After his execution Jesus' followers scattered and at some point his brother James, how was not involved in his ministry took over along with at least 2 of Jesus' core followers to form the Jerusalem congregation.

Things really take off for Xianity when Saul of Tarsus who was a pharasaic Jew and ruthless persecuter of Xians had a conversion experience. Paul (formerly Saul of Tarus) then begins a program to convert the Gentiles to a reformed sect of Judaism without the authority of the Jerusalem church and regularly has confrontations with that church and its members along with more conservative Jewish Xians who do not accept the legitimacy of Paul's authority or his theological ideas.

Paul turns out to be a brilliant theologian and convincing writer and his program takes off eventually subsuming the original movement of Jesus' brother and followers. Mostly because he accepts Gentiles AND does not require adherence to the Law, Xianity grows quickly.

A number of oral traditions as well as some written copies of sayings material is circulating in Palestine and Asia minor during this period (from roughly 5 to 10 years after Jesus' death to about 70 C.E.)

In 70 C.E. after the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem at the end of the Jewish revolt war of 66-70 an anonymous 2nd or 3rd generation Xian based in Asia Minor (probably Ephesus) compiles the sayings material and oral traditions into a new literary form (now called a gospel) that provides a narrative in which to frame the sayings material as well as additional theological development which has taken place since Jesus' death.

AMk's narrative is in clunky, inarticulate Greek which, though not translational in nature is clearly not his native language. Furthermore AMk seems to demonstrate poor knowledge of Hebrew custom, language and the geography of the area. Furthermore AMk's narrative is very pro-gentile and anti Jewish and lays most of the blame for Jesus' death on the Jewish people. AMk further develops the "messianic secret" perhaps to account for the fact that Jesus' has not yet returned and to explain the failure of Jesus' program among the Jews.

Roughly 10-15 years later or so around 80-85 C.E. an educated Jewish Xian who is much more conversant in Koine Greek and probably knows Hebrew and Aramaic decides to undertake a redaction of AMk's earlier work incorporating nearly 80% of that material. Recall that 80% of the gospel of Mark is contained within the gospel of Matthew, large portions verbatim including redactional glosses. For those unfamiliar with the term a gloss is an inline expansion of the text by the editor as shown in the following example:

AMk's mini-apocalypse in chapter 13 is a midrash on a prophecy in the book of Daniel. Contained within Jesus' speech about the future desolation of the Jewish Temple is a gloss shown in bold below.

GMk 13:14 (cf GMt 24:15)
But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet,
standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains...

Since this occurs both in GMk and GMt at roughly the same point in the narrative, it is clear that there is a literary relationship between the two.

While or perhaps shortly after AMt writes his redaction of GMk another author starts a two volume work also using the Markan material and the written sayings material used by AMt and the result is the Gospel of Luke and Acts of the Apostles. Based on the text it seems like that ALk was a companion and disciple of Paul and that his aims in writing the two volumes were to promote Paul's theology and to try and bridge the differences between the Romans and the Xian church.

In each of the synoptic gospels, then we see each author laying out a particular theological program based on a specific theological foundation. All the texts of the NT are mostly Pauline in their theology (which is not a coincidence) built up in layers upon earlier authentic material from Jesus' lifetime. Each author adds narrative elements to flesh out the sayings material (and/or to correct and revise someone else's earlier work) and further to promote a particular theological aim.

The authorship and dates of the gospels are unknown though we can be reasonably certain of the dates I outlined here as well as the likelihood that the authorial attributions are pseudepigraphical (a common practice of the period where an anonymous text of a follower of a particular philosopher is attributed to that philosopher himself as are many of the works of Plato).

CX