EDIT: I admit that this is a tough problem... I'm not trying to oversimplify this very complex history -- it just seemed to me that your divorce between the subject (Jesus?) and the text was a bit too clean.
Understood.
We have oral traditions that go back very early. I doubt these were his real disciples who more then likely fled to Galilee after his death. All the gospels sort of portray them as cowards. But early none the less. We may have Hellenist eyewitnesses who do have a place in the gospels, I do not deny this possibility. My break has in context to do with that of Aramaic Judaism and the inner circle, and what actually happened.
So what we see is Hellenist in the Diaspora who have collected these pieces and used them for possibly decades before compilation.
It is just my opinion, but the Galilean movement died the day he did. After his death he was martyred and mythology developed and people returning home all over the Diaspora took these legends and some early mythology with them.
We see Paul a Hellenist hunting in the diaspora and not a peep about Galilee, which leads me to believe Paul only hunted Hellenist.
Hellenistic Judaism had long wanted to divorce Judaism, and this was the perfect movement that absorbed it.
Are you thinking that all of the Gospel writers were Hellenists?
How can there be any doubt? These were all Koine books. Mark writing to a Roman audience perverting Judaism, Luke and Matthew copies of Hellenist traditions perverting Judaism. John so late but very Hellenistic.
So we have Matthews book that as I see it by the time of completion of his compilation, was a sect of Hellenist who held more traditional values in Judaism then other Hellenist who may have had numbers of gentiles.
Part of the issue here is just defining Jewish, or Judaism. Hellenistic Jews were Jews. Even people who swore of pagan deities were considered Jews. It really depended on who was calling who a Jew. Im sure the Hellenist were much more liberal with their definition, as to say Galilean Aramaic Judaism. Also night and day different to Judaism practiced in Sepphoris.
I see the gospels as products of the Diaspora.
If say we had more transliterations showing Aramaic primacy, I might be more liberal myself.
Then we have a few early traditions in Paul himself, albeit a Hellenist
Exactly.
And all coming out of the Diaspora. Its where the mythology was generated in my opinion.
Everyone thinks Paul wrote these alone, we know it was a community effort.
We also know there were other teachers and scripture as Paul tells us this. He sets up a few pater familias and his community has debates with their communities which he visits with the movement full swing all around him. He did not spread the movement through the Diaspora, he joined the movement in the diaspora.
and we know that the Gospel does not borrow Paul's source.
I don't think so either but I don't rule common sources out.
I think the martyrdom spread the message and mythology with half a million people at Passover with the movement growing each year as people brought more to the oral traditions traded at Passover.
I think the 12 disciples is myth, I think he had his inner circle of Aramaic peasant fishermen who fled after his death.
I still do not believe the Jerusalem house contained the Aramaic fishermen. I think it was a Hellenistic house with people rhetorically using the word disciple and lord brother who held on to Judaism much more tighter being in Jerusalem then Hellenist in the Diaspora like Paul was.
Paul used a lot of rhetoric and we don't even know if he could have communicated with Aramaic Jews, or visa versa.
That's how I stand on it all, it could change tomorrow
