Abstract

For the gospel passages too, as for any other historical document, it is impossible to interpret their meaning correctly without knowing their context, without therefore assigning them a precise place and time. The scholar of Christian origins is well aware that for the gospels the operation is considered to be mostly impossible, but he cannot resign himself to saying that the original context is irretrievably lost. There are, in fact, a few ways of attempting to recover it. One of these is to try to identify who the recipients of Jesus’ words really were; to try in particular to understand to whom Jesus was addressing himself when he said "you". Some gospel pericopes allow this operation.