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Course 7 · Lesson 3.1

The gospels and ancient biography

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 7 outline

Module 1: The World of the New Testament

  1. Second Temple Judaism in the time of Jesus
  2. Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and other movements
  3. Rome, the Herods and the province of Judea
  4. Hopes, protest and revolt in Jewish political life

Module 2: Jesus in History

  1. Sources for Jesus: Christian, Jewish and Roman
  2. The quests for the historical Jesus and their methods
  3. Criteria of authenticity and their limits
  4. Historical results and Christian confession

Module 3: The Gospels as Books

  1. The gospels and ancient biography
  2. Traditions of authorship and the arguments about them
  3. The synoptic problem: the evidence of agreement and difference
  4. Solutions: Markan priority, Q, Matthean priority and others
  5. Four portraits of Jesus: the distinct emphasis of each gospel

Module 4: Acts and the Spread of the Church

  1. Pentecost and the Jerusalem church
  2. The mission to the Gentiles and the council at Jerusalem
  3. Paul in Acts and in his own letters
  4. Acts as history and as theology

Module 5: Pauline Theology

  1. Paul and his letters: occasion, authorship and order
  2. Gospel, faith and righteousness in Romans and Galatians
  3. Christ, the Spirit and the body of Christ
  4. Reading Paul: traditional, new perspective and other approaches

Module 6: Johannine Theology

  1. The Gospel, the three letters and Revelation: authorship questions
  2. Word, light, life and love in the Gospel of John
  3. The signs and the I am sayings
  4. The Spirit, the community and the Johannine letters

Module 7: Hope, Authority and Church Order

  1. The kingdom of God and last things in Jesus and the apostles
  2. Ways of reading New Testament eschatology
  3. What an apostle was and how apostolic authority worked
  4. Offices and order in the first churches
  5. How Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches read the evidence

Module 8: The Testaments Together

  1. Fulfilment and continuity: how the New Testament uses the Old
  2. Law and covenant across the Testaments
  3. Comparing Paul and John: a method
  4. Shared convictions and meaningful differences

All courses

Program / Course 7: New Testament Theology and History / Lesson 3.1

What you will learn

  • Explain what ancient biography (bios) was and how it differed from modern biography.
  • Describe the features that the gospels share with Greco-Roman lives and the ways they differ.
  • Summarize the debate over whether the gospels belong to this genre.
  • Explain why genre affects how a reader should expect the gospels to handle history.

The big idea

Genre is the kind of writing a text is, and it tells readers what to expect. A recipe is not read like a poem. For much of the twentieth century many scholars held that the gospels were a unique kind of writing. Since about 1990, a majority have argued that they belong to the ancient genre of biography, called bios in Greek. Ancient biography aimed at portraying character through deeds and sayings, and it allowed arrangement and summary. This helps readers expect the gospels to be both historical and shaped by purpose.

Key terms

Genre
A category of writing with its own conventions, such as history, letter, poem or biography.
Bios (plural bioi)
The Greek word for life. It names the ancient genre of biography, which told the life of a notable person.
Gospel
From Old English for good news, translating the Greek euangelion. It first meant the message about Jesus, and later named the written books.
Historiography
The writing of history. Ancient historiography aimed at truthful accounts of the past, often with speeches composed to fit the occasion.
Encomium
A speech or writing of praise for a person, which often shaped ancient biography.
Evangelist
A writer of a gospel, from the Greek for one who announces good news. It names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Pericope
A short unit of text, such as a single story or parable, which the gospels arrange into longer accounts.

Background

Mark opens with the words ‘The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’ (Mark 1:1). Here ‘gospel’ means the good news, not yet the title of a book. Soon after, Christians began to use the word for the written accounts. The question for the modern reader is what kind of book Mark and the others are. Are they histories, biographies, sermons, myths, or something new?

Rudolf Bultmann and others held in the early twentieth century that the gospels were a new form that arose from the church’s preaching, with no real parallel. In 1992 Richard Burridge published a study comparing the gospels to a large sample of ancient lives. He argued that they share their main features, and his view has been widely accepted, though not by everyone. Scholars who agree on the genre still disagree on what it implies about historical reliability.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: What ancient biography was

Greek and Roman writers such as Plutarch, Suetonius, Nepos and Tacitus (in his Agricola) wrote lives of famous people. They were written in prose, of moderate length, and focused on one person. They often began with the subject’s name and origin, and moved through his teaching and deeds to a notable death. They were meant to show a person’s character, and to teach readers how to live, or in some cases to defend or praise the subject.

Ancient biographers did not feel bound to strict chronology. They grouped material by theme, summarized long periods, and reworked sayings in their own words. They were expected to tell the truth, and some criticized others for fabrication, but they did not follow modern conventions such as exact quotation. They often relied on sources and eyewitnesses where available.

Step 2: How the gospels resemble the genre

The gospels focus on one person, Jesus, and record his words and deeds. Mark has no birth narrative, and begins with his public career. Matthew and Luke add accounts of the infancy. All four spend a large share of their length on the last week of his life and the death. About a third of Mark and more than a third of John concern the final days. This is a pattern found in some ancient lives, which stress the death of a noble person.

Luke’s opening sentence (Luke 1:1 to 4) resembles the preface of ancient historians, with a mention of earlier writers, a claim to have followed events carefully and a stated purpose. Luke 3:1 dates the start of John the Baptist’s work by naming rulers, as historians did.

Step 3: How they differ

The gospels are also unlike Greek lives. They are anonymous in their original form, and the traditional names were attached later. Their language reflects the Septuagint, and they quote the Hebrew Scriptures heavily. They are written for communities of faith, and they present their subject as the Messiah and Son of God, whose death and resurrection are the center of the story. Their style is plainer than that of educated Greek authors, though Luke is more polished.

Scholars who stress these features, such as Adela Yarbro Collins, describe Mark as a distinct case: an account that blends biography with Jewish apocalyptic and the biblical history of God’s saving acts. John may differ more than the others, since it has long discourses and a prologue about the Word.

Step 4: What genre means for reading

If the gospels are ancient lives, readers should expect them to be about a real person, to rest on sources, to arrange material to make a point, to paraphrase speeches, and to differ on details. The differences between the gospels, such as the order of events, would not necessarily mean that one of them is wrong. A careful reader asks what each writer is doing with his material.

Genre does not settle every question. Ancient biographies varied in how much they gave history and how much legend, and scholars differ about how reliable the gospels are on the details. Some argue that the biography label makes the gospels stronger evidence for history, and others note that ancient biographers could include legendary matter.

  1. How would you expect a recipe, a news report and a poem to be read differently?
  2. What features of Mark suggest that the writer is interested in the identity of Jesus and not only in a list of events?
  3. Why does the large space given to the passion matter for the question of genre?
  4. What might be the risk of reading an ancient life by modern standards of exact quotation?
  5. If an ancient biographer paraphrases a speech, does that make the speech false? Why or why not?
  6. In what ways do the gospels fit poorly into the category of Greek biography?

Examples

Plutarch on his method

At the start of his life of Alexander, Plutarch says that he is writing lives and not histories, and that a small act or saying often shows character better than a great battle. This is an ancient biographer stating the goal of revealing the person.

The same event, differently told

Mark 4 tells of a storm on the lake and Matthew 8 retells it with different emphasis on the disciples’ faith. In a biography, such shaping to bring out a point is normal and does not by itself show that the event was invented.

A modern comparison

A modern authorized biography of a founder written by devoted followers would contain real history and also admiration, selection and interpretation. The comparison is imperfect, but it helps show that a purposeful account can still report real events.

Different perspectives

Scholarly consensus and debate

A majority of scholars now classify the gospels as bioi in a broad sense, following Burridge. Some, including Collins, prefer to see them as a new kind of writing that draws on several forms. Scholars debate what the genre implies about historical reliability.

Catholic view

Catholic teaching, in Dei Verbum, holds that the evangelists selected from the oral and written traditions, reduced some to a synopsis, and explained some in view of the situation of the churches, always telling the honest truth about Jesus. The genre question is thus left to scholars.

Orthodox view

Orthodox tradition receives the gospels as the church’s books, and reads them in worship and in line with the Fathers. Orthodox scholars generally accept that they were written with purpose and in forms of their time, and stress that their central truth is the person of Christ.

Protestant view

Evangelical scholars such as Craig Blomberg and Darrell Bock have used the biography finding to argue for the reliability of the gospels. Other Protestants, including more critical scholars, accept the genre but hold that the evangelists freely shaped traditions. Both appeal to the same research.

Why it matters

Misunderstanding genre leads to misreading. Readers who expect a modern stenographic record may be disturbed by differences between the gospels, and those who expect a mere devotional story may miss their historical claims. Knowing the genre helps a student ask better questions and recognize what the writers were trying to do.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: If the gospels are biographies, they must be accurate in every detail.

Correction: Ancient biographies allowed arrangement and paraphrase. The genre points to an interest in real events, but it does not settle accuracy in details.

Misunderstanding: If the gospels have a purpose, they cannot be history.

Correction: All ancient history had a purpose. Having a viewpoint does not make an account untrue, and historians test such accounts.

Misunderstanding: The gospels are myths like stories of the gods.

Correction: Most scholars note that the gospels name real rulers and places, and are written within living memory of the events, unlike the timeless setting of myth. Some scholars still compare certain stories to legendary material.

Misunderstanding: The word gospel always meant a book.

Correction: The word first meant the message about Jesus. The use of the word for written books came in the second century.

Knowledge check

What was an ancient bios?

A prose account of the life of a notable person, usually focused on his deeds, sayings and death, written to show his character and to teach or praise. It allowed thematic arrangement, summary and paraphrase of speeches, unlike modern biography.

Name two ways the gospels resemble ancient biography.

They center on one person’s words and deeds and give a large share to his death. Luke’s prologue and its dating by rulers also resemble the conventions of ancient historians. Together these features support classifying them as bioi.

Name two ways they differ.

They are anonymous, steeped in the Septuagint and the Jewish Scriptures, and written for communities of faith to proclaim Jesus as Messiah and Son of God. Some scholars therefore describe them as a distinct kind of biography.

What does the biography finding imply for the differences between gospels?

It suggests that differences in order, wording and emphasis are expected in ancient lives and need not mean error. Readers should ask what each writer intends. It does not by itself settle which details are historically exact.

Who is associated with the modern argument for the biography genre?

Richard Burridge, whose 1992 study compared the gospels with many Greco-Roman lives and argued for the genre. Many scholars follow him, while others, such as Collins, stress the gospels’ distinct character.

Think it through

  1. How does knowing the genre change the way you read a story such as the stilling of the storm?
  2. Which genre did you assume the gospels belonged to before this lesson?
  3. Does it trouble you that ancient biographers could arrange material by theme? Why or why not?
  4. What other books do you read in a way that depends on knowing their genre?

Independent assignment

Reading an opening

In your own notebook, write 300 to 450 words. Read the first verses of Mark, Luke and John (Mark 1:1 to 8, Luke 1:1 to 4, John 1:1 to 18). For each, note what the opening tells the reader to expect, and compare it to the opening of a modern biography you know. Close with a paragraph on how the genre question affects your reading. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study