As we begin our study of the four Gospels, you may want to think of those Gospels as “literary artworks.”
Each Gospel presents a portrait of Jesus that is distinc- tive from those of the other three. The temptation for Bible readers is to combine all four portraits in order to obtain as complete a picture of Jesus as possible. But doing that causes us to miss the particular image that each Gospel writer wanted to present. The goal of Gos- pel study should first be to recognize the four separate portraits that these individual books offer (see box 4.1).
When we focus on any one Gospel, and on that Gospel alone, what is the image of Jesus that emerges? This is the image that the author (a literary artist) wanted to show us. Once we see that Jesus, we may go on to another Gospel and obtain a second image, and then a third, and a fourth.
83 Genre Lives of Eminent Philoso-
phers by Diogenes Laertius and Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus.
Understanding the Gos- pels as ancient biographies is helpful, but at least five more things need to be said in this regard.
1. They are compila- tions. Although the Gospels as finished products may be identified as an- cient biographies, they include other genres of literature within their pages:
genealogies, hymns, parables, miracle stories, speeches, pronouncement sto- ries, and others.
2. They are influenced by Jewish literature.
All four of the Gos-
pels are written in Greek, the language of the Greco-Roman world, but by persons well versed in the scriptures of Israel.
Those scriptures also contain semibiographical narra- tives of people such as Abraham, Moses, and Elijah. Even though our Gospels were written for the Greco-Roman world, their authors knew these Old Testament stories and were influenced by them.
3. They are ancient biographies, not modern ones. The Gos- pels make no pretense of offering objective or balanced perspectives on Jesus’ life. They do not reveal their sources or offer any way for readers to check the reliability of what they report. Their treatment is far from comprehensive:
they offer little insight into Jesus’ personality or motiva- tion; they provide almost no information about his early
Fig. 4.1. The Four Evangelists. The authors of the four New Testament Gospels are called “the four evange- lists” because the word evangel (from Greek, euangelion) literally means
“gospel” or “good news.” Near the end of the second century (about a hundred years after the Gospels were written), Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, suggested that they be sym- bolized by the four “living creatures”
mentioned in both Ezekiel 1:4–14 and Revelation 4:6–8. This became standard practice in Christian art throughout the centuries. Matthew is portrayed as a man, Mark as a lion, Luke as an ox, and John as an eagle.
(Bridgeman Art Library)
life; they do not even bother to describe his physical appearance. They also lack the sort of data—references to names, dates, and places—that would be standard for any modern biography: the Gospel of Mark tells us that Jesus healed a man in a synagogue (3:1–6), but it does not give us the man’s name or tell us when this happened or what happened next (Was the healing permanent? Did the man become a follower of Jesus?
Did he continue to attend the synagogue?). Though it may seem strange to us, audiences in the ancient world did not expect such questions to be addressed in biographies. The point of ancient biographies was to relate accounts that portrayed the essential character of the person who was the subject of the work. Indeed, the purpose of the biography was to define that person’s character in a manner that would invite emula- tion. The anecdotal style of ancient biographies, furthermore, allowed events to be related without much concern for chronology. Events were not necessarily reported in the order in which they happened; rather, they were recounted in a sequence likely to have a particular rhetorical effect on the book’s readers. This characteristic may explain why our four Gospels often relate events in different sequences (e.g., the account of Jesus overturning tables in the Jerusalem temple is found near the beginning of John’s Gospel but comes near the end of the Gospel of Mark).
4. They employ a fictive (“fictionlike”) style of narrative. In many ways, the literary style of the New Testament Gospels is closer to that of modern fiction than it is to modern historical reporting. To say this is not to cast any aspersions on the accuracy of what is reported: scholars who regard Box 4.2
Characteristics of Ancient Biographies
• no pretense of detached objectivity
• no concern for establishing facts (e.g., by citing evidence or sources)
• little attention to historical data (names, dates, places)
• little attention to chronology of events or development of the subject’s thought
• no psychological interest in the subject’s inner motivations
• anecdotal style of narration
• emphasis on the subject’s character and defining traits
• consistent focus on the subject’s philosophy of life
• strong interest in the subject’s death, as consistent with philosophy of life
• presentation of the subject as a model worthy of emulation
• depiction of subject as superior to competitors or rivals
• overall concern with the subject’s legacy, evident in followers who carry on the tradition
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