Helen Bond’s The First Biography of Jesus– Part Eight

Last updated on: May 24, 2020 at 1:10 am by Ben Witherington

Helen Bond’s The First Biography of Jesus– Part Eight 2020-05-05T15:14:03-04:00 Ben Witherington

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

BEN: Though a little tangential to our focus on Mark, one of the things I learned from reading various classics scholars who were experts in the literary and educational character of antiquity is that when the ancients read documents of their age, they normally counted on discovering both what kind of document they had just picked up and what it’s subject matter was from the first few lines of the document itself not least because it was in scriptio continua! On this showing, Mark could be seen to be a document about a special person Jesus, who was the Christ and Son of God right from the outset, in short some sort of ancient biography. But a person reading Luke’s preface, and then the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth which immediately followed would never have guessed in a million years this was a biography of Jesus! To the contrary, Luke’s work would have been seen as some sort of history account of ‘the things that have happened among us….’ In short, about events… a narrative continued in his second volume Acts. Even granting the flexibility of the bioi genre, I found Burridge’s arguments about Luke’s Gospel not very convincing, especially in light of such things as Luke’s historical synchronisms early on in the Gospel etc. I’d be very interested in your comment on this.

HELEN:
Yes, Luke . . . I think it’s fairly clear that Mark and Matthew are the best examples of biography in the NT. Although we always need to remind ourselves that biography in antiquity was as flexible as it is today, and that the early imperial age was a time of great innovation in many areas, these two works are quite easily identifiable as bioi. Matthew saw what Mark was doing and added birth/conception stories and ‘finished’ off his Markan source with the promised appearance of Jesus in Galilee. John, too, follows his Markan model closely; his high Christology starts to cause difficulties (especially in the area of imitation), but his work is still recognizably biographical. Luke, though, is more difficult. Like Matthew, he adds birth stories, drawing on the common technique of synkrisis to elevate Jesus above the Baptist; he even adds our one story of Jesus as a young man in the Temple, and again like Matthew finishes off with appearance stories. But the main problem is the existence of Acts! I’m reluctant to assign each book to a different genre – so that the gospel is a biography and Acts is a history. My colleague in Glasgow, Sean Adams, has argued that the work is a ‘collected biography’, starting with a biography of Jesus himself and then following on with biographies of his followers – specifically Peter and Paul. This has a lot going for it, though I’d also want to note that history writing itself often veered towards biography in this period (largely because of the magnetic pull of the emperor on all history writing), so I’d be equally happy in calling Luke-Acts a history with a strong tendency towards biography.

Just on the question of how these texts circulated, I found some interesting suggestions in Tore Jensen’s work on Latin Prose Prefaces that manuscripts would often circulate with some kind of a note about the work (perhaps a bit like the description of the contents and the author on modern dust jackets). Clearly in the case of Mark any such description was lost in antiquity and we know virtually nothing about the author now, but it does make a lot of sense to imagine that the first audiences of Mark’s Gospel (which, like Richard Bauckham, I assume travelled intentionally quite widely) had some idea about who had written the book, from where it originated, and that it was a life of Jesus that other Christ-following groups had found useful. I can’t believe that these texts were simply going the rounds without people asking where they’d come from – and perhaps more importantly who had written them.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

May 23, 2020

Biblical Theology--- Goldingay's Review

Next Post

May 25, 2020 Helen Bond's The First Biography of Jesus-- Part Nine

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz