introduction carefully composed in a manner appropriate to introduce the narrative as a whole. All writings, of course, have some structure; otherwise they would not be intelligible. But many documents are composed rather randomly and lack a particular, intentional “strategy of communication built into the form of the text” (Craddock: 20). Their elements could be arranged in other ways with no significant difference in the meaning intended by the author of the text. During the era when Gospel studies
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