There was a TV programme recently in which two artists aspired to make an impressionistic painting of a bit of coastline. Speed was one of the essentials, before the scene changed in front of their eyes, but also a dexterous and swift daubing of the canvas with oil paints to give a realistic 'impression' of their subject. The results were really quite good. The painting by Monet, above, comes from the school of Impressionism of the late 19th and early 20th century, which not only counted painters but eventually also composers, like Stravinsky, who were intending to press forward into new creations of music, breaking the barriers of what was considered traditional and classical art forms.

Now this may seem far fetched - the gospels are, at their heart, impressionistic! There is really only one aim, and that is to give a rounded impression of the figure of Jesus - son of Man, Christ - Messiah, son of God. A whole tradition of the Jewish nation lies behind those narratives but they were the immediate result of two things. First the experience of the apostles of Jesus and that experience handed on in the oral traditions of the various Christian communities in Palestine and Syria. Secondly, in the writing down of those oral traditions thirty years, at least, after the death of Jesus, by some members of the Christian communities - and of them we know next to nothing as individuals.

Paul's letters were written, in the main, before any gospel had been composed. So he had listened to the oral accounts of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. We don't know whether he had even seen Jesus. But his new life as a Christian depended on his claim that the risen Lord had appeared to him. So in the first thirty to forty years after the death of Jesus, before any written accounts had appeared, there was obviously a ferment of Christian thinking about Jesus. That must have been both tremendously exciting and dangerous. Dangers from Jew and Gentile in that volatile region of the Middle East.

In the nineteen hundred years since then, the Christian churches have depended upon the written words of the Old Testament and the New Testament. In some ways this has been unfortunate. Every era has appealed to sayings or letters or codes of conduct in the Bible to support their claim to truthfulness as Christians. It has taken two hundred years - just in recent scholarship - to recover a vestige of the original 'heat' of the gospel writers, their passion for the person of the Lord. As everyone knows, there were no copyright laws in the Middle East and borrowing was a means of filling out what one lacked in substance or nuance. The challenge to sort all the texts out created a new industry based on literary criticism and that is likely to be with us for ever!

It is not only that this fact should make us wary of claiming that the very statements of Scripture are indeed the 'mind' of God for us in our lives but also that to do so tends to obscure the record of the gospels that they seek to highlight, proclaim, the person of the Lord. The figure of Jesus stands out from the pages and helps us to relate to him as our present, transcendent, risen Master just as Paul received the oral traditions and could relate them to what happened to him on the road to Damascus.

In the following quotation from Paul's letter to the Corinthians there is paradox and a certain confusion, to us, between Jesus and Spirit - but perhaps he meant it just like that!! (Just one of the minor problems of these ancient texts ...]

Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds; but when one turns to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord the Spirit. [2 Corinthians 3: 15-18]