The genre of the gospels.

What kind of text is a gospel?

Refer also to my page on the four gospels.

Charles H. Talbert, What Is A Gospel?, page 42:

It would seem, therefore, that early Christians were aware of the Mediterranean myth of the immortals and utilized it in one way or another in their proclamation of Jesus. When they employed this myth in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke-Acts as a principle by which to order the Jesus materials, they were doing what pagan and Jewish writers had already done and were doing. The sweeping statement that Graeco-Roman biographies were not mythical is inaccurate. The mythology of the immortals was used by some as the frame for their story—as do the synoptic gospels.

Charles H. Talbert, What Is A Gospel?, page 78:

If no Graeco-Roman biographies, even if controlled by myth, employed the kabasis-anabasis mythology [found in the gospel of John], what does this fact imply for our genre discussions? It seems to me that it is the fact that John, like the synoptic gospels and certain Graeco-Roman biographies, is ordered by myth that is important rather than which myth is employed. First, it is customary to regard Mark and John as belonging to the same genre, whatever it is, even though they are structured in terms of different myths. If the rule applies to these two gospels, why not to the mythical biographies? Second, Clement of Alexandria in his Miscellanies 6:15 verbalized a Mediterranean conviction.

If then, according to Plato, it is only possible to learn the truth either from God or from the progeny of God, with reason we, selecting testimonies from the divine oracles, boast of learning the truth by the Son of God, prophesied at first and then explained.

Given this mentality, both myths (immortals and descent-ascent) would function in similar ways. They would serve to underwrite the divine authority of the subject so described. Finally, it must be remembered that genres are not wooden, static entities.

Robert M. Price, Deconstructing Jesus, page 213:

[T]hanks to Koester, Robinson, and Talbert, the gospels' similarity to and probable dependence upon the aretalogy genre are being more and more recognized. But something seldom noticed is the striking fact that the gospels also match certain features often found in a related genre, that of the ancient romance novels. This should not surprise us, since these genres (like all genres) are not airtight. The ancient romances and the aretalogies tend to shade over into one another. For example, The Alexander Romance and Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana have equal elements of both types.

Richard Burridge compares the gospels with Greek and Roman βιοι, loosely translated as biographies, across four main points and a variety of subpoints in his influential work, What Are The Gospels?. He lists these points in chapter 5 (pages 105-123):

  1. Opening features.
    • Title.
    • Opening formulae, prologue, or preface.
  2. Subject.
    • Analysis of verb subjects; which nouns appear in the nominative case most frequently?
    • Allocation of space; how much space is used for the birth, for the death, or for important events?
  3. External features.
    • Mode of representation; poetry or prose?
    • Meter (offered hypothetically; not found to be present or significant in most βιοι).
    • Size and length; number of words and of scrolls required.
    • Structure or sequence; chronological or topical arrangement?
    • Scale; how broad a canvass does the author paint on?
    • Use of literary units; anecdotes, songs, dialogues, maxims, et cetera.
    • Use of sources; written and oral.
    • Methods of characterization; how does the author characterize his subject?
  4. Internal features.
    • Setting.
    • Topics (topoi) or motifs; ancestry, birth, childhood, words and deeds, death.
    • Style; high brow, educated, popular.
    • Atmosphere; tone, mood, attitude, and values.
    • Quality of characterization.
    • Social setting and occasion.
    • Authorial intention and purpose; encomium, example, information, entertainment, preservation of memory, instruction, apologetic or polemic.

Richard A Burridge, What Are The Gospels?, page 136:

Even Satyrus has a summing-up phrase to introduce the death: 'These were the things which happened to Euripides while he was alive; as for his death...' (Frag. 39.XX.22-26). Momigliano sees this as a definite indicator of genre: 'The text of the papyrus, with its clear transition from a section dealing with the life to a section dealing with the death of the poet, seems to make the biographical intention unmistakable.*

* Momigliano, [The] Development [of Greek Biography], p[age] 80; see also, Stuart, Epochs [of Greek and Roman Biography], p[ages] 181-3.

Richard A Burridge, What Are The Gospels?, page 136:

The one exception [to the rule that biographies include a death account] is Isocrates, who concludes with an evaluation of Evagoras, exhorting Nicocles to follow his father, but with no mention of his death. Aristotle tells us that Evagoras was murdered (Pol. 1311b) and in a rhetorical encomium such embarrassing, nonlaudatory material was often omitted; thus we have a clear reason for our one exception of a βίος ending without the death.

Richard A Burridge, What Are The Gospels?, pages 137-138:

Satyrus has been criticized for this predilection [to recount anecdotes]: 'Evidently anecdotes amused Satyrus and facts, as such, did not. He cared about literary style, but he neither cared nor knew about history.'1 Other fragments of Satyrus preserved in Athenaeus also show this liking for anecdote, particularly if sensational or outrageous.2

1 G. Murray, Euripides and His Age, [seco]nd ed[itio]n (O[xford] U[niversity] P[ress], 1965), p[age] 10.
2 See Tronson, 'Satyrus the Peripatetic', J[ournal of] H[ellenic] S[tudies] (1984), p[age] 118.

Close examination reveals that these literary forms are present in all the βίοι, forming the stuff of their narrative. Evagoras betrays its rhetorical influence through units of formal oratory: pooimion, comparison, exordium, apostrophe. On the other hand, units which might be classed as 'legends' or 'miracle-stories' are found in the Moses [by Philo].

Richard A Burridge, What Are The Gospels?, page 139:

In the Hellenica, Xenophon shows that he knows, and disapproves, of certain aspects of Agesilaus' conduct (such as his dealings with Pharnabazus of Sphodrias); these are absent in Agesilaus itself: 'He was clearly aware of failings which he felt it his duty, as a biographer, to suppress.'*

* J. K. Anderson, Xenophon, p[age] 168; for full details, see p[ages] 167-71.

Richard A Burridge, What Are The Gospels?, page 144:

Isocrates is clear: 'everyone knows that those wishing to praise someone must depict him with more good qualities than he really has, while his attackers must do the opposite' (Busiris 4). .... Stereotype is common in character analysis: Nepos' account of Atticus' loyalty and economical attitudes (e.g. Att. 13) is too good to be true....

Richard A Burridge, What Are The Gospels?, page 161:

However, in addition to his literary purpose, Plutarch has a moral problem: the principle of divine retribution dictates that bad men's lives and deaths show that crime does not pay and good men's the reverse. An ignominious death after Cato's apparent failure to stop the evil against which he was fought all his life has to be balanced: 'His attempt to prove that the good are rewarded, by relating elaborate funerals for the unjustly afflicted, also seems contrived.'* So Cato is declared to be 'Saviour'(σωτῆρα) by the immediate gathering at his door of 300 senators and the people of Utica (71.1). Great honours, decoration and a procession are given to the body, and it is buried near the sea 'where a statue now stands, sword in hand'—a romantic, yet victorious image (71.2). Even his enemy, Caesar, is brought on to speak well of him (72.2). All of this contrives to give a triumphant end to the βίος.

* F. E. Brenk, S.J., In Mist Apparelled, p[age] 270.

.... Geiger demonstrates the similar pattern in the deaths of Cato here and of Thrasea Paetus in Tacitus' Annals: both deaths are consciously modelled on the death of Socrates, as is shown by Cato's last reading of Socrates' final dialogue (Phaedo).*

* [Joseph] Geiger, 'Munatius Rufus', Athenaeum, 1979, p[ages] 61-5.

Richard A Burridge, What Are The Gospels?, page 177:

The qeustion of stereotype arises here too; Agricola's character [in the Tacitean work about him] is sometimes thought to be overdone, almost too good to be true....

Richard A Burridge, What Are The Gospels?, page 238:

It is possible that Acts, like the gospel [of Luke], is linked to the βίος literature, either as a list of the Lives of the main subject's followers,* or as a βίος of the church, in the manner of Dicaearchus' biographical work on Greece, Περὶ τοῦ τῆς Ἑλλάδος βίου, mentioned above.

* As Talbert suggests, Literary Patterns, Theological Themes and the Genre of Luke-Acts, p[ages] 125-43; What Is a Gospel?, p[age] 134.

Richard A Burridge, What Are The Gospels?, page 70:

Diogenes also makes use of material from Dicaearchus of Messene; his work, Περὶ βίων, may have been a collection of βίοι, and there is an interesting use of the word βίος in his account of the development of Greek civilization entitled Περὶ τοῦ τῆς Ἑλλάδος βίου.*

* For the influence of Dicaearchus upon the late Republic at Rome, especially on Atticus, Nepos and Varro (who followed the idea of βίοι of a people with his De vita populi Romani), see Elizabeth Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Republic (London: Duckworth, 1985), p[ages] 101-3.