Mercer Dictionary of the Bible

The first part of the book shows that "precritical, " "critical, " and "postcritical" epochs and attitudes (all alive today) support different sorts of knowledge concerning Jesus (historical reconstructions; historic memory and appropriations; imaginative, poetic, and artistic creations; and theological formulations) and that the Gospels themselves support different sorts of knowledge and approaches. The Gospels were composed by Christians who combined historical information and historic memory in imaginative ways to present a Jesus who was relevant to their congregations as he was to the earliest disciples. The creative contribution that readers of the Gospels make in their reconstructions of Jesus is a recapitulation of the creative activities of the earliest evangelists.