Why did early christian writers invent the gospel form to express their views?

Answer 1

The earliest Christians had direct contact with people that had known Jesus, so they saw no need to write down the story of Jesus. They sent letters to each other encouraging them to continue their Christian practices, but saw no need to write an actual biography of Jesus. In addition, they believed that Jesus would return to end the world in their lifetime, in a few months or years or so. But as the years passed, the people who had known Jesus died off, and people began to speculate that Jesus's return might not be for many more years, if at all. Thus, they saw a need to write down the story of Jesus while it was still possible (there were still some people alive who had known Jesus), so that future generations could see the story of Jesus and act appropriately. That is why the Gospels were written. It is notable, as you wrote, that each gospel writer presents his stories with a different main viewpoint, or stress. Matthew stresses that Jesus is the expected Messiah, who will bring a spiritual rather than a physical kingdom. He also addresses (and often criticizes) various aspects of the ancient Jewish culture. Mark stresses Jesus's death as the main event of his life, saving mankind from sin. Luke stresses Jesus's love and service to the little people of the world, including gentiles. John stresses that Jesus is the Son of God. So yes, each gospel writer displays his views in his gospel, and does this through describing the life of Jesus, embellishing the story to show his particular viewpoint. Why? Well, we don't know. We don't even know who the gospel writers were. Some possible explanations are 1) The gospel writers just wrote down their feelings about Jesus, not trying to do anything more than that; 2) The Gospel writers wrote their gospels to criticize Christians who disagreed with them on their views; or 3) The Gospel writers wanted future Christians to understand Jesus in the way that they understood him; thus, they expressed their understanding of him through their writing styles and emphasis. Any of those three, or a combination of them, could be true. They chose to show their viewpoints through depicting the life of Jesus probably because it shows Jesus as having the same viewpoint as the gospel writer, which would be an extremely important matter for anyone writing about Christianity.