It’s official, all of my English teachers are right, however much I do not want them to be. The best writers have an audience and write for that audience. You don’t believe me? Let’s take the Bible. Matthew wrote for the Jews who became Christian, while Mark wrote for the Romans who became Christian. We see in several places that they tell the same story, but with different details. One of the ones that I like is the Passion Narrative. For those not familiar with the term the ‘passion narrative’ deals with the crusifixion of Christ.
In Mark he mentions the fact that a Simon comes along and helps Christ with the cross, even mentions who he’s related to, while Matthew just mentions Simon. Mark’s audience would have known the sons of Simon, while the Jews may have known, but they didn’t really care. Matthew focuses later in that same chapter (27 if any of you want to follow along) about the prophicies that were integral to the Jewish custom, while Mark (chapter 15) continues onward through the narrative without that information.
If you are an over acheiver you can see those differenes in all of the text, Matthew validating chrish through the prophicies and Mark just putting down the basics of the story… it’s interesting to see what one puts down for their audience… makes me wonder what my audiences are looking for when they read this, because I have not been writing for any sort of audence while I am writing here… maybe I should look into that…
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