The gospels, then, were written to invite readers to enter a worldview. In this worldview, there is one god, the creator of the world, who is at work in his world through his chosen people, Israel. Israel’s purpose, say the evangelists, is now complete, and her own long bondage ended, in Jesus. The gospels’ major focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus is not to be explained as the reading back of ‘later Christian theology’ into a story whose ‘biographical’ intent should have kept such reference to a minimum. The evangelists were not downplaying the significance of the life and mission,
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