jules?

I find it interesting that the available styles for the writers of the day were in the main rejected.
typical histories give dates and are distinctly different in style with the exception of Acts.
Philosophical texts follow Greek dialogue style and again are quite different.
The religious texts are more like Revelation, with a distinctive apocalyptic [visionary] style or sayings like Thomas.
The four are in their own category, and if they are in the style of biography then it appears closer to something like the 12 labours of Hercules.

I know I am stating the obvious but such a wide range of genres appearing in both canon and non canon Christianity indicates a cultural manifestation of the End Time or lack of it.

jules?

AND it would seem inevitable that after a couple of centuries of expectation that the End Time was nigh that Joshua would return to lead [walking across the Jordon] the people back to promised land. It seems probable that the failed rebellion was fuelled in part by prophesy and after such a failure that [new] Judea lite should take off in the eastern empire.

Sheshbazzar

And that seems to be the heart of the matter, when a physical 'Joshua' ("YAH's Salvation") failed to show up, a 'spiritual' Joshua (jebus) was proposed that would lead a 'mixed multitude' of spiritual 'Israelites' into a spiritual Promised Land, of a future 'coming' Messianic Kingdom on earth, or a present but invisible Kingdom of the believers, or an expectation that they would have to die to reach The Kingdom of Heaven.
There seems to have been several different flavors and mixtures of this going around, all jumbled together hodge-podge in the NT texts as they finally were developed.

Even today most Christians do not have any clear concept in mind when they speak of 'going to heaven'.

Some think it happens to believers immediately upon death, others think they have to sleep unconscious in the grave till the Resurrection when Jebus comes to judge the living and dead.
Some think that they are already in The Kingdom of Heaven, and that all they need to do is stuff it down everyone else's throat.
And a few are waiting for John's gigantic 1400 mile square space-cube to arrive from Heaven, outer-space, or some other dimension, so that they can be permanently programed into its hard-drive.

I wrote; -'something- 'like' the Gospel's'...
A little change here or there back when and what came to be called 'Gospel' might well have been named 'Gnosis' or 'HaDrek' ('The WAY').
Whatever, the legend of the mythical Joshua/Jebus the Deliverer successor to Moses -would- have been at the core.