Oral stories of Jesus and his crucifixion were the building blocks to the Gospels and the stories that they revealed. Many of the Gospel writers have the same stories that Paul shares through his letters which gives way to the belief that they were in fact a part of the oral tradition. These stories include the last supper, Jesus’ crucifixion, Jesus’ ascension, and much more. The Gospels take on the oral stories of Jesus, which was limited, and added on to them. They tried to “fill ‘gaps’ in the story or resolve differences between earlier versions of the oral tradition” (White 124). This filling included what the Gospels were trying to accomplish in writing their “own apologetic agenda”. An example, from Luke, was making Jesus appear innocent by having Pilate send Jesus to Herod for judgment. This second trial brings the major theme of innocence to Luke’s Gospel which appears again when Pilate washes his hands and when the criminal defends Jesus.

Because the Gospel writers want to stick to their agendas they want to make sure that they don’t harm their ideas in any way. This meant that Luke had to omit the story that Pilate flogged Jesus because it would have made it seem that Pilate actually thought Jesus was guilty. You don’t flog someone if you think they’re innocent (which was Luke’s agenda). Now it is possible that Luke did not have this story, and it also is possible that this never happened but was assumed by all the other gospels because of the nature of Pilate.

All gospels have the agenda that Jesus was the Messiah. The Gospel writers would search the Old Testament for anything that would be in support. This was done through what White calls “proof texting” where Gospel writers selected certain passages from the Old Testament and adapted it to Jesus’ life. Gospel writers took from the psalms and from the prophets. The purpose of this was to bring more light to the pubic that Jesus himself was the Messiah. He was the person that the Old Testament was prophesying would come and is the savior of Israel. We see this in Mark when he takes passages from psalms 22 including Jesus’ famous line “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark also drew from Zechariah (Mount of Olives and Jesus riding on a donkey exalted as a king), and Isaiah (The Suffering Servant). His purpose was to allow his audience to see that Jesus lived the life of the Messiah throughout the Passion narrative.

In conclusion, we see that the Gospel writers made a strong effort to stick to who they thought Jesus was. They did this by observing and pulling from both oral traditional stories and Old Testament scripture. These writers used these sources to create a unique story that has its center on Jesus as the Messiah.