them, and providing core features of their retelling of the story of that ministry. Not least amazing is the fact that we can discern Jesus’s own understanding of his role, and can do so quite clearly behind what the first Christians subsequently thought of him. Of course, the Gospels portray Jesus as he was seen in the light of all that happened in the climax of his ministry and thereafter. But we have already seen how much of what the first believers said regarding Jesus’s