It's not a big leap to think that he would have told his wife, and she passed the event to the apostles. I don't consider the gospels of a given apostle to be 100% eyewitnessed account by that specific apostle.
Just saying that we've gone from "eyewitness" accounts to presumably secondhand sources...
Some of it has to be back-filled from secondary sources like Mary or other witnesses or given by Christ or Spirit post resurrection. And if you meet God, you probably have a personal interest in backfilling as much of the story as you can. Take the story of the Samaritan woman at the well:
7 There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink.
8 (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.)
This whole story seems to happen while He is alone with her. So who is writing it down? They have to come by the story after the fact.
Funny thing about that story -- it occurs in the beginning of John's Gospel, and fits an interesting pattern.
I've discussed this in other threads, so I hope you'll excuse me for cutting and pasting...
You've probably noticed that John's Gospel doesn't exactly "mesh" with the other three -- the synoptic gospels. That's no accident; that's good narration.
Look at some of the events that John uses to open his narrative:
In
John 2:13-21 Jesus clears out the moneychangers from the temple. First, you'll note that while the other Gospels put this event later in Jesus' ministry (as the "last straw" which sets the Pharisees after him), John has it happen towards the beginning of Jesus' public life.
Now notice:
[
19] Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.
[
20] Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?
[
21] But he spake of the temple of his body.
Next event:
John 3:3-4 --
[
3] Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
[
4] Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?
Now,
John 4:9-15 -- Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well:
[
9] Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.
[
10] Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.
[
11] The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water?
[
12] Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?
[
13] Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:
[
14] But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.
[
15] The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.
Later on, the disciples catch up to him (literally, but never figuratively). Still in
John 4:
[
30] Then they went out of the city, and came unto him.
[
31] In the mean while his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat.
[
32] But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of.
[
33] Therefore said the disciples one to another, Hath any man brought him ought to eat?
What do all these events have in common?
First, aside from the Temple,
all of these events are unique to John's Gospel -- there's no mention of them anywhere else. And even the Temple incident is strange because of the timing, as I pointed out.
But what's important is the recurring
theme: At every one of these unique events, Jesus is trying to explain something important -- first the the people of Jerusalem, then to a Pharisee, then to the woman at the well, and finally to his own disciples, and not one of them understand him. And why not?
Because they all were taking him too literally, they missed the point.
Do you think John was trying to tell us something? I do.
He did everything but hold up a big ol' neon sign... but to this day, literalists blunder through with their blinders securely in place.
One of my favorites is Mark 13:14
So when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
It might be a matter of bad translation into english, but did Jesus just pause mid-sentence in a verbal conversation and say "(let the reader understand)"? For a Gospel that hasn't been written yet? He breaks the 4th Wall there and addresses the audience directly, for the next 2000 years.
Of course not -- the author of Mark decided to add in his own commentary -- not the first nor the last time that happens in the Bible.
Does that mean that sometimes, divine inspiration isn't good enough? How odd...
