text: Agreed re Markan priority, and indeed "libraries" of scriptural scholarship is heavily dependent on this assumption. 
  
  But re "Jesus did not think of himself as...a human sacrifice," Violet's observation, IMHO, deserves a more thoughtful response than dismissal because she is uncertain of his existence. I know you recognize that even if Jesus were a fictional character, his self-identity in the extant material would be a reasonable topic for scholarship.
  
  More to the point, given that Jesus did exist, and that "he is divine and became human in order that we might become divine," Violet's suggestion that Jesus did not regard himself as a sacrifice is challenging, wouldn't you say? It seems to me that it was early Christians who adopted the notion of Jesus as victim of a sacrifice, in the religious ritual sense of that word, as a way of making sense of the cross? Off the top, I can't for the moment think of any text where Jesus self-identifies as sacrifice. Am I wrong?