Sportswriter Red Smith once told a story about novelist and film writer, Laurence Stallings. Though he was not a sportswriter, Stallings took an assignment to cover a football game between the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Illinois.

The year was 1925. The brilliant halfback Red Grange was on the field that afternoon and he was dazzling. On a muddy field he broke loose for three touchdowns and set up another. The old hands in the press box were pounding away at their typewriters.

Not Stallings, however. He was in a tizzy. He paced up and down the press box with his hands clasped to his head. "I can't," he wailed. "I can't write it! It's too big." (1)

The writers of the four gospels probably felt that same emotion as they put quill to parchment to tell the last chapter …