But it is important to remember: these Gospels were written by believers in Jesus decades later who already “knew” that Jesus had been exalted to heaven. As storytellers told the stories of Jesus’s earthly career, year after year and decade after decade, they did not separate who Jesus was after his death—the one who had been exalted to heaven—from who he was during his life. And so their belief in the exalted Jesus affected the ways they told their stories about him.
