It’s the postmodern experimentation of the New Testament that keeps it new

Writers should take heart from the chopped-up texts and genre mash-ups of the gospels – techniques proven to ensure a long literary shelf life

The gospels of the New Testament, compiled somewhere between AD50 and 110, get older every year. They also stay strikingly new, fuelled by a literary experimentalism that keeps them alive not as religious artefacts but as pieces of writing.

The Gospel of John stands apart, with no mention of the nativity or the breaking of bread at the last supper. But even though the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke share many of the same incidents, or “pericopes”, these short, self-contained passages appear in a different order in each one. In Matthew, the pericopes of the Sermon on the Mount, for example, are gathered together in a single block. In Luke, they’re separate. Each gospel is therefore a reworking of predetermined material for literary effect. Sound familiar?

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