Jesus says....

[smoothmoniker]

There's another tool we have at our disposal.

In addition to Jesus being a teacher in a culture, in a tradition, there is good evidence that whatever he said or did while he we walking around Judea had a transforming effect on some people within that culture.

The earliest records of the church indicate an egalitarianism, a disregard for class and wealth, an inclusion of both men and women in worship, an idea of spiritual life as separate from political life ... all of these things are changes in the cultural current, departures from both Judaism and Roman Hellenism as they were practiced in that period. All happened very soon after the life of Jesus, in the communities of those that self-identified as his followers.

So, in addition to doing some critique on what cultural baggage the authors of the various texts might have brought to their task, we should also consider how those early church communities stood in contrast to their surrounding cultures, and consider how that might match up with some of the teachings left behind in the written record.