Quotes About Elaborations

Such elaborations of the story necessarily added extensively to the Gospel narratives and their realism would have stimulated strong responses in an audience, prompting them to weep, even cry out in outrage. The tendency to confuse the drama with reality often aroused anti-Jewish prejudice when they presented the crucifixion as a perfidious plot of Jews against Christ.

I see Mark's passion story as the earliest. Matthew and Luke each had a copy of Mark, and I see the additions that they made to Mark's passion story as imaginative elaborations.30 I have no opinion about whether John's passion story shows knowledge of Mark or whether it is completely independent. Thus I see Mark as the foundational narrative, and I turn now to comments about the main elements of his story of the passion.

Various sources force us to assume that the so-called earliest childhood recollections are not true memory traces but later elaborations of the same, elaborations which might have been subjected to the influences of many later psychic forces. Thus, the childhood reminiscences of individuals altogether advance to the signification of concealing memories, and thereby form a noteworthy analogy to the childhood reminiscences as laid down in the legends and myths of nations.