Matthew 4:1

KJV
1Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

There's something so formulaic about this, to say what's going to happen before it happened. I suppose it adds a fatalistic tone, which in turn adds to the notion that all of this was prophesied, but I also wonder if this is copying some other form. There's some question about the [i]genre[/i] of the gospels. Is it an entirely new genre? I suppose it is, but one wonders on what genres it is based. As I've said before, they didn't know they were "gospels" when they were written. The "gospel" was probably an oral formulation, a few statements of creed, the "good news" in headline form.

Helmut Koester in his book [i]Ancient Christian Gospels[/i], supports the idea that gosepls are a new genre, especially since they have oral sources, like the formulation mentioned above and sayings sources, which distinguish them from "higher" literary traditions. But this cobbling would require literary elements as well, one of which he mentions is the prophet's biography, as we see in the Old Testament.

To me a line like verse one above clearly harkens to an older literary tradition. One just doesn't write like that unless one is trying to sound like something... something authoritative.

I think it's the strange cobbled-together nature of the gospels and the New Testament in general, that fascinates me so much, particularly since it's proffered as a document directly inspired by God.

God is a collagist! Abba is Dada!

p.s. "led up of the Spirit" is awkward. RSV and other translations have it as "led up by the Spirit." Notice another mention of the Spirit which could easily have been an idiom and have nothing to do with being one third of a trinity.