Gospels as "slow action replay"

This quote is taken from Donald A. Hagner, "Interpreting the Gospels: The Landscape and the Quest," Jets 24:1 (March 1981) p. 23-37.

"We are the richer because our gospels are what they are. If the gospels were the written equivalents of videotapes that is, the results of a kind of flat, disinterested reporting of “the bare facts” we should be immeasurably impoverished. Comparatively, Jesus would be enigmatic, his words obscure, his intent confusing, his ministry bewildering. (Of course we should still do quite well—better than the disciples—in making sense of it all, since we would be reading these accounts from our post-resurrection perspective.)

What we have in the gospels as they are is perhaps analogous in some ways to the “slow-action replay” that we encounter in television coverage of sports events. In these replays the action can be dramatically slowed down so that one is able to see much more than one was able to see in the action as it actually occurred. If one is given the full treatment—close-up, slow-action, forward-and-reverse, split-screen, the same scene from several perspectives, and with the verbal commentary and interpretation of an expert superimposed—one has a fair analogy of what the evangelists do. The correspondence is striking especially in that this kind of replay is in one sense what actually occurred, but in another sense is quite different from what occurred (not only in speed but also in what one individual is capable of perceiving). One might add to the force of the analogy by pointing out that the true significance of certain plays can only be known after the game is over. Now they are often seen in a new light, their true meaning dependent on what subsequently transpired. The gospels are like slow-action, analytical replays with expert commentary seen after the conclusion of the game. The gospels are truer portraits of Jesus than they would have been had they only given us “the bare facts.” The irony is that to the extent that the evangelists go beyond “the bare facts” they give us what in the last analysis is a more accurate portrait of Jesus and his significance. Since the evangelists know with full certainty the meaning of what transpired, there is an authority in their presentation of the story that is unmistakable. Their creativity in its own way not only demonstrates that authority but also paradoxically amounts to the honoring of the tradition.“ The tradition is preserved as it ought to be—intact and yet enhanced by the insight of a mature perspective."