The Gospels as docudramas

Docudrama is a genre of modern television and videos that provides a useful lens for viewing certain narrative parts of the Bible, preeminently the Gospels.The techniques used in docudrama include the following: straightforward factual information or reportage as stated by the narrator of the documentary; commentary from the narrator; interviews with eyewitnesses or written statements by them; quotations from the writings of the subject of the documentary; video clips of speeches delivered by the subject of the documentary or excerpts from written copies of speeches; video clips that show the subject of the documentary interacting with other people (including both crowd scenes and scenes in which the subject interacts with an individual); and video clips of the physical places and landscapes in which the subject of the documentary performs important or customary actions.

Obviously there are no video clips of events that transpired in Bible times, but the genre of the docudrama is a helpful analogy to what we find in the Historical Books of the Bible and in the Gospels. These writings contain purely verbal versions of the ingredients that find their way into the docudramas that we view on television or in informational videos.  L. Ryken, A Complete Handbook of Literary Forms in the Bible (Crossway 2014), 63-64.