Bond stresses the difficulty in trying to distill historical information about Jesus from the gospels. She writes:

Thus the many chreiai in the Gospels are not primarily repositories of oral tradition, but fundamentally literary creations, crafted to take their place in a larger biographical work… There is most likely some historical fact at the core of these stories, though extracting it from its present literary context would be next to impossible. Other chreiai may have no historical roots at all. Examples might be the so-called nature miracles, such as the accounts of Jesus feeding the multitude (appearing first in Mark 6:32–44). As the early Christ followers compared Jesus to great figures like Elisha and Moses, it would not have been a great leap to move from a belief in a Jesus who could supply sustenance once again to a story in which he actually did so. We might expect the story to draw on both the account of Elisha in 2 Kgs 4:42–44 and the manna in the wilderness (Exod 16:1–36; Num 11:1–9) with elements of the Eucharist thrown in too. The resulting account might be apocryphal to us (in that it didn’t actually take place), but it would be told and retold within the gospel context because it perfectly captured a number of important things that followers wanted to say about Jesus and his relationship to both God and the story of Israel. In a similar vein, Philo flattered Augustus with the claim that he could calm storms and cure pestilence (Legat. 144–145); it would not be a huge move to create stories to illustrate those beliefs. Soon after Mark wrote, stories told of Vespasian’s abilities to restore sight and limbs (Tacitus, Hist. 4.81–82; Suetonius, Vesp. 7.2; Dio Cassius, Hist. rom. 65.8), and Martial and other poets told how nature itself recognized the divinity of the Flavian emperors (Sp. 17; 30.1–4; Epig. 1.6; 8.21).24 The late first century was a world where such stories were frequently associated with great men. What mattered wasn’t their basis in historical fact, but what they said about the character and abilities of the subject… Mark wrote in a colloquial style because he intended his work to be read out to a largely uneducated audience. Quintilian advises students that they may need to adapt material for people with little education (Inst. 3.8) and the grammatical handbooks advise prepon (or aptum), a “propriety” or “appropriateness” that considers both the content of communication and the audience. A straightforward and engaging style was likely to have been appreciated by many early Christ followers… Above all, the gospels are literary creations, ancient biographies written to present the life of Jesus to new generations. They undoubtedly contain some level of historical accuracy, but it is virtually impossible at this distance to isolate historical event from theological coloring. Helen K. Bond “Biography” in Crossley, James; Keith, Chris. The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus (p. 109-129). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition, 2024.