>>938734022
>Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
that's what ol' JC said, but it turned out he was wrong
he thought God was going to intervene in human affairs, free the children of Israel from the Romans, and institute justice and righteousness in his kingdom on earth, over which Jesus would rule
but the Romans didn't like him stirring up trouble, so they crucified him, and probably left his body to rot on the cross as a warning to others, until they took it down and buried it in a common grave
his followers had to make sense of their teacher's brutal death, and some of them experienced visions that led them to believe he had been raised from the dead, and that his death and resurrection had transcendent meaning
Paul came along, preaching a very different message from Jesus, and it's notable that the Jesus movement pretty much died out in Judea, but spread among non-jews throughout the Roman empire
decades after Jesus' death, heck, even decades after Paul's death, the gospels were written
they are not eyewitness accounts
Mark was written first, and Matthew and Luke copied from Mark, sometimes word for word, sometimes changing things they didn't like
Matthew and Luke also had material that Mark either didn't have or chose not to use, probably a list of sayings of Jesus that didn't survive independently
John is way out in left field, and probably contains very little historical material
