Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

I think the main challenge is to find a genre for the gospels that is a better fit that Greco-Roman biography. You said:

In any case the matter of genre has no bearing that I can see on the historicity or reliability of the gospels. Something presented as biography is no more or less likely to be either factual or fictitious than something presented as, say, a romance, or an adventure.

Originally Posted by radius

The points of similarity are very generic: both the gospels and bioi cover a person's birth, career and death, and are written in prose. Among many rather obvious observations (often a characteristic of PhD theses!) Burridge reports that person to be the subject of many verbs. (At this generic level one might more usefully note a significant dissimilarity in word-count).

The points of dissimilarity are more fundamental matters of texture and content: most notably in the bioi there is a strong sense of the person. They focus on the individual as a player in history, they are up-close and personal. The early attempts to describe the subject's physical appearance is just the most obvious example of this. So, for example, we learn from Suetonius that Caesar was "said to have been tall, with fair skin, slender limbs, a face that was just a little too full, and very dark, piercing eyes". Plutarch adds that he was slightly built; and of course contemporaneous sculpture and coinage also show us what he looked like. Plutarch tells us about Cicero’s smiley face, the faint dent at the end of his nose, what languages he spoke, and how he sounded. I remember the first time I read Plutarch being struck by his description of Sulla's pale complexion and glaring blue eyes – and the before-he-was-famous tittle-tattle: I was able to imagine the person behind the terrible tyrant of the history books. This sense of the person appears to be fundamental to the ancient bios – and completely absent from the main character of the gospels.

This is in line with Plutarch's own declaration that "it is not Histories I am writing, but Lives" – that he is interested in personal shows of virtue and vice, in slight things like jokes or phrases that might show the character of the man.

The bioi are also explicitly conscious about being historical bioi - commenting frequently on whether something is likely to be true or not, distinguishing between what is said and the author's own account, referring to sources etc; and likewise about their subject, depicting their characteristics and attitudes in some detail. We are given precise dates for the subject's birth, and other significant events. There is for example a precise date-by-date account of Alexander's final illness and death – for which Plutarch gives a written source. We are given incidental detail and relatively trivial anecdotes (e.g. conversations about the weather) – purely out of interest in the character or his colleagues. The approach and content are entirely different from that of the gospels.

Also significantly different - the bioi use a thin layer of the supernatural on top of specific historical detail, while the gospels' primary content is predominantly supernatural topped by a thinner layer of disjointed events and historical characters in unlikely roles. The bioi may report mythical elements attached to the births and deaths of emperors (e.g. Suetonius' Divus Iulius refers briefly to the fact of his deification and that the common perception concurred with it), while the supernatural content of the gospels is both central and pervasive. In this respect the gospels are more similar to an ancient novel such as The Golden Ass (Burridge might also find that Lucius is the subject of a lot of verbs there, and that a lot of space is given over to significant periods in his life!).

It is interesting, BTW, that the elements of ancient bioi which are clearly mythical are often passed off under cover of arguments from authority: Plutarch knows that Alexander was descended on his father's side from Hercules, mother's side from Achilles because "so much is accepted by all authorities without question"!

In any case the matter of genre has no bearing that I can see on the historicity or reliability of the gospels. Something presented as biography is no more or less likely to be either factual or fictitious than something presented as, say, a romance, or an adventure.

Originally Posted by bacht

When I read about Elijah and Elisha in the book of Kings it doesn't seem much different from the gospels (at least in English translation).

There were apocryphal works like Tobit and Judith that recounted stories of Jewish heroes.

There were Lives of the prophets in circulation.

There was all sorts of apocalyptic material to look at.

I'm not sure Mark really needed to look outside the Jewish tradition for models.

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

No disagreement.

Originally Posted by bacht

The one I forgot was Josephus. If Jewish War was published in the 70s why couldn't we see that as some sort of inspiration or model for Mark?

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

I don't know what the arguments are for such a connection, but I would find it improbable that Jewish War was available to the author of gMark directly after Josephus wrote it. It may follow from your model of whoever the author of gMark was (somebody in the ruling class?), and you can go ahead and run with that.

Originally Posted by spin

Claiming that a gospel is a biography, as illustrated in the works of Plutarch, Suetonius, Cornelius Nepos and Tacitus with his Agricola, is a species of "legitimization", even though as you note a biography needn't contain factual information (as in the obvious case of Romulus, for example). By being able to put a gospel into a quasi-historical genre gives the work a veneer of the real world.

Originally Posted by radius

Yes, it should be obvious that fiction (and evangelical narrative) can be presented in biographical format. That both truth and intention are easily decoupled from things such as style and presentation.

Yet I've seen the 'fact' that the gospels are ancient Graeco-Roman biographies presented as self-evidently supportive of their historicity. This is not far removed in terms of sheer naivety from the assumption that the gospels are historical because they mention historical characters like Pilate and Tiberius. Or from the idea that gospel overlapping with Josephus' histories - or any apparent influence on the gospel writers by a historian such as Josephus or Plutarch - lends historicity to other aspects of the gospels.

Notwithstanding the apparent insignificance of the hypothesis however, (and out of interest), I do not understand how anyone can actually read, say, Plutarch's Lives of Alexander and Caesar - then read any of the gospels - and honestly think that they have much in common.

Originally Posted by radius

Yes, it should be obvious that fiction (and evangelical narrative) can be presented in biographical format. That both truth and intention are easily decoupled from things such as style and presentation.

Yet I've seen the 'fact' that the gospels are ancient Graeco-Roman biographies presented as self-evidently supportive of their historicity. This is not far removed in terms of sheer naivety from the assumption that the gospels are historical because they mention historical characters like Pilate and Tiberius. Or from the idea that gospel overlapping with Josephus' histories - or any apparent influence on the gospel writers by a historian such as Josephus or Plutarch - lends historicity to other aspects of the gospels.

Originally Posted by radius

Notwithstanding the apparent insignificance of the hypothesis however, (and out of interest), I do not understand how anyone can actually read, say, Plutarch's Lives of Alexander and Caesar - then read any of the gospels - and honestly think that they have much in common.