Story Outline

I wonder if any of you have surmised the outline of the story being narrated by Secundus. We are just a few pericopes in. Tim critiqued with accuracy of the ear my naming of the gospel. I have found in my unlinked archives my first attempt to get Secundus to name these books:

I have been given four differing copies of - what shall I call these books - the reminiscences of the apostles of Jesus. And I have more than one copy of some parts, sometimes with variations such that I cannot tell what the first writer might have written. It is a stretch to find a name for these writings which point clearly to the pre-eminence of Jesus ...

For some reason I purged much of my early writing - many layers of compost.

Secundus was not deaf in this early version! I think depriving him of the obedience sense will cause us to hear better. His image-ination of conversation is of course, imaginative!

So where are we: we began with Praefatio, where there is one pericope, the prologue. The gospel portion is here: Prologus. We have just begun the Exordium which begins with the gospel portion: Annuntiatio nativitatis Ioannis.

We jumped ahead (or behind) if you like with Matthew and Luke's Genealogia. This is part of the Exordium.

I intend that the story will follow the order of the Synopsis of the Four Gospels, Greek-English Edition of the Synopsis Quattuor Evangelium, Edited by Kurt Aland (6th edition). It is like imagining being in the mind of a 2nd century person who wanted to write a harmony of the Gospels. I have enough smattering of modern music to know how to sing in semitones - so harmony is not my intention, but a cluster of ideas and a stimulus to thought - or so I hope.

It is possible that some flashbacks, excursus, and flash forwards may provide interest - and not force me to deal necessarily in sequence always. So we have had one already on Jerusalem - and one on Gospel. Jerusalem was written several years ago at 4 am in the morning, one of those given hours where getting up early is OK. (To see all the bits of the story bottom up, click on the 'story' tag on the left panel. To see the whole outline and all the gospel portions one at a time in glorious colour, go here.)

Secundus was born in 62. So he is about 55 years old in 117, the last year of Trajan. Prima was 3 years his senior, and as we read, she died in 113 at age 54. I try to keep myself straight from this timeline. Bits and pieces of his first book are also linked there in chronological sequence. I will reference them if they seem relevant - and I may not, for there are lots of other books to read.

Warning - easy to get lost for a while in the old pages. Others have done this, but I haven't seen a story emerge from their critiques yet.