The assertion that we should rank the words of Jesus as more important than the rest of the New Testament seems problematic to me, especially given the fact that the only reason we have the words of Jesus recorded is because those who wrote the rest of the New Testament are the one’s who recorded the words of Jesus in the first place…!
The writers of the New Testament…the one’s who were eyewitness…provide the very basis for the authoritative New Testament claims about Jesus’ life (including the resurrection). They followed Jesus for two to three years and eventually documented their eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings, and their decisions to write down what they witnessed are the only reason we have the four Gospel’s (including the words of Jesus) at all.
These eyewitnesses, especially those who were Apostle’s, documented not only Jesus’ teachings and His deeds…in addition to the words that He spoke…but also the meaning and the context of it all for those who came after them. So how do we separate the words of Jesus from the other eyewitness testimony…? To detach His words from their context and apply em’ to our lives in whatever way suits us seems more than a little bit disingenuous to me.
These New Testament writers were likely in a way better position to understand the context of Jesus’ words than we are. They were His students and His friends, and they understood the Aramaic language that He spoke. John’s Gospel makes it crystal clear that we don’t have all of Jesus’ words; not even close. It’s likely that Jesus told more parables, preached more, and gave further instructions to these eyewitnesses that we know nothing about.
To diminish what they wrote about Jesus, in deference to our interpretation of ‘just’ the words of Jesus (which ‘they’ also recorded for us), seems thoughtless and reckless to me. We sure as heck don’t have a better understanding of Him and His will for us than they did. Many people believe that God Himself moved these writers to document and testify to ALL of what they wrote (not ‘just’ the words of Jesus).
Unfortunately, nothing is that simple or straightforward.
For instance:
"The genre of the gospels is essential in understanding the intentions of the authors regarding the historical value of the texts.
New Testament scholar Graham Stanton states that "the gospels are now widely considered to be a sub-set of the broad ancient literary genre of biographies."[31]
Charles H. Talbert agrees that the gospels should be grouped with the Graeco-Roman biographies, but adds that such biographies included an element of mythology, and that the synoptic gospels also included elements of mythology.[2]
E.P. Sanders states that "these Gospels were written with the intention of glorifying Jesus and are not strictly biographical in nature."[19]
Ingrid Maisch and Anton Vögtle writing for Karl Rahner in his encyclopedia of theological terms indicate that the gospels were written primarily as theological, not historical items.[32]
Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis notes that "we must conclude, then, that the genre of the Gospel is not that of pure 'history'; but neither is it that of myth, fairy tale, or legend. In fact, 'gospel' constitutes a genre all its own, a surprising novelty in the literature of the ancient world."[3] - Wiki
