moves into a period of early written history and scholars posit that there was a proto matthew, a proto luke - early sources in which people, as a group, began to concretize around jesus's teachings and his events. then we begin to feel the need to write these down. and then finally the third stage is the actual writing of the gospels - matthew, mark, luke, and john - each with their own direction, each to a specific audience. mark, obviously, to an apocalyptic community that felt that the world was imminently coming to an end. matthew presents jesus as the greater teacher, the interpreter of the torah. luke to a more gentile audience, and jesus becomes the savior for all peoples and all nations. and finally john, later, much more gnostic, much more holy spirit-oriented, so that the church becomes the vehicle in which the holy spirit will descend. so again, we have an interesting connection between myth in its earliest form, and how it concretizes into a full religious movement. >> you see how the doctrinal dimension moves in there in terms of the interpretation. i loved it - i figured this