5.10. Conclusion
What Did First-Century Audiences Expect of Biographies?
Although biographies had historical interests, this does not mean that their only concern was historical information, still less that they meant to present facts randomly without overarching themes. Biographers very much shaped the information available to them to communicate their perspectives.
In what follows, I will comment on ancient biographers’ and historians’ biases (their perspectives, or Tendenz), their commitment to providing morally useful examples, biographies’ focus on their subjects’ character, their variation regarding chronology, their frequent components, and the general structure of full biographies. At the same time, it should become evident that historians and biographers treated such characteristics generally as ways of framing, rather than as features inimical to, historical information.
5.1. Adaptations in Biographies
Mainstream biographies in the early empire depended on historical information (see esp. ch. 6); writers who lacked this interest had other suitable and far less confining genres in which to communicate their agendas. Nevertheless, ancient biographers and historians did not write the way their modern successors do.
A rhetorical handbook dated probably to the first century CE1 advises students to “expand” or “condense” stories by elaborating or abbreviating speeches or descriptive details.2 While an author may add details known from other sources and add some description that is either implicit in the narrative or inherently probable in itself, his example for expanding an account does not substantially alter its essential sense.3 In rhetorical exercises one can elaborate a narrative by offering an encomium on a character; then paraphrasing; then explaining; and so forth.4
Yet adaptations were not always so minor. Readers expected narrators, historically based or otherwise, to provide a cohesive narrative, not simply bare statements of events and inferences. Thus some historians did flesh out scenes5 and conversations,6 sometimes based on inference,7 just as nearly all historians fleshed out speeches.8 They might even reveal a character’s thoughts.9
For one extreme example, Josephus expects his audience not to mind him depicting a scene such as the suicide speech to the Sicarii at Masada,10 for which he lacks potential eyewitnesses,11 though if challenged he might have protested that this represented a special scene rather than a consistent pattern. Similarly, Josephus embellishes Moses’s military exploits, and Philo his intellectual ones,12 though the nucleus of these postbiblical traditions predate them.13 But excessive use of such amplification was deemed to violate the canons of historiography, and developing a mere fiction to entertain one’s readers was judged “culpable,” even by ancient historical standards.14
The Gospels provide little if any rhetorical elaboration and rarely flesh out scenes enough for even modern readers’ dramatic tastes. Still, Synoptic comparisons show that Matthew and Luke plainly availed themselves of some literary liberties accepted in their era. Thus, for example, in Mark supplicants dig through a typical Galilean roof of mud and branches (Mark 2:4), whereas in Luke, adapting the image to be more relevant for a northern Aegean audience, the men removed terra cotta tiles (Luke 5:19).15 (Matthew simply omits the roof part of the account.)
More often noted, in Luke 7:3–6, after a significant sermon by Jesus, local Judean elders and the centurion’s friends intercede for and deliver messages for him; he does not come directly to Jesus. In Matthew 8:5–7, shortly after Jesus’s parallel sermon, the centurion comes directly to Jesus, with no intermediaries. Likewise, Matthew 9:18 omits the messengers mentioned in Mark 5; whereas in Mark these messengers inform Jairus of his daughter’s death after he has asked Jesus to heal her (Mark 5:23, 35). In Matthew this synagogue official simply announces his daughter’s death to Jesus directly.
These are minor changes by the standards of their day and even of ordinary speech in our own; we know that our hearers do not want elaborate explanations of irrelevant details, and so we often omit some. I note these changes, though, because they are fairly obvious and rarely denied. Matthew’s apparent prohibition of sandals (Matt 10:10) is only a minor verbal variation from Jesus’s command in Mark 6:9, although it would feel much more significant for someone who had to walk barefoot on rugged trails.16 Some might find more troublesome Luke’s change of a centurion’s acclamation of Jesus as God’s Son (Mark 15:39) to “This man was innocent” or “righteous” (Luke 23:47), although for Luke (though not for Greek mythology) the latter could follow as a corollary from the former.
More important here, these comparisons illustrate that such changes cannot merely reflect simple ignorance; Matthew and Luke knew their Markan source, and probably many of their hearers had heard Mark’s account as well. They further illustrate that Matthew and Luke did not feel that they were risking their credibility, nor would one have reasons to do so for such adaptations, which probably do not even touch on matters of theology. They simply take for granted, and expect their hearers to take for granted, what we do in ordinary speech. They told the same stories, but often without concern for details extraneous to their main point.
Biographers had biases, and early examples of the genre often exercised little restraint in exhibiting it. In the early empire, however, historiographic valuation of greater objectivity helped restrain some biases. Biographers did not always evaluate characters in the same way (e.g., one might deem a character virtuous, and another deem him vicious), but they generally agreed that one should try to evaluate the characters fairly. The Evangelists, of course, adored Jesus, but we may presume that they believed their admiration to be based on his genuine character.
5.2a. Rhetoric and Personal Commitments
Scholars have noted the encomiastic element in biography,17 but this obviously appears more in some biographies than in others, and it works against accurate historical representation more in some biographies than in others.18 Rhetorical conventions were widespread, though more so in rhetorical biographers like Isocrates than others.19
Opinions about figures influenced and motivated biographic works, with the least restraints in the early period. Isocrates seeks to commemorate Euagoras’s virtues, using them to invite imitation.20 Xenophon’s works on Socrates and Agesilaus cite favorably only sources favorable to his subjects.21 In time, however, historiographic concerns introduced increasing balance to biographic writing. Some scholars associate specifically political biography with historical facts in opposition to encomium,22 but encomia on political figures such as Euagoras or Agesilaus may suggest otherwise.
It is probably more appropriate to emphasize the wider development of more historically oriented biography by the Roman period (see ch. 3). Certainly most biographers became more objective in how they evaluated their sources, even with a fairly encomiastic biography such as Tacitus’s work on his father-in-law.23
Ancient biographers were typically less embarrassed by their commitment to their subjects than are their modern counterparts. Against some earlier scholars, however, the difference in various ancient biographers’ critical acumen does not translate into different genres of ancient biography.24 Even the more historically adept had biases; thus, although multiple motives are possible, Plutarch freely imputes them in the ways that best fit the portraits of characters that he is painting.25 For example, Plutarch plays down a part of Tiberius Gracchus’s character that does not fit his narrative.26 Yet he normally avoids inventing stories to fit his predilections.27
The biographic historian Arrian likewise filters a mass of traditions down to what he feels best communicates his hero’s character.28 He is also ready to supplement eyewitness accounts with other material, not always as trustworthy but nevertheless “worth telling.”29 Still, this less critical approach appears primarily in the epideictic sections, separated from the narrative materials that precede.30
Biographers also could write for apologetic and polemical reasons.31 Certainly, Jewish writers about the past who engaged the wider Greco-Roman world as minority voices often apologetically played down incidents in their history that could appear embarrassing.32 Despite his promise not to omit anything,33 Josephus omits the golden calf;34 Josephus omits and Philo explains Moses killing the Egyptian.35 Josephus explains the destruction of Canaanites in a manner intelligible to Romans; Philo and Ps.-Philo omit that command.36 Philo omits Aaron’s role in the golden calf incident and may focus on Israel imitating an Egyptian bull deity.37 Already, for primarily Judahite consumption, the Chronicler omitted sins of David38 and Solomon.39
The effects of bias on biographers’ deployment of their material varied. Certainly bias would influence one’s praise of an emperor’s virtues, even if one avoided telling any untruths.40 But while ancients were well aware that their affection or respect for a person could bias their judgments, they also believed that such affection could be based on sound evaluations.41 This is likely how Tacitus understood his encomiastic biography of his father-in-law, Agricola.
Naturally one might omit negative perspectives if one genuinely viewed the protagonist favorably (mostly the case in Tacitus’s Agricola) or even as divinely authoritative (the Gospels; later, Iamblichus’s Pythagorean Life). These emphases and omissions are normally cases of perspective, however, rather than of deliberate distortion. Historians themselves recognized the need for selectivity;42 while this concern sometimes reflects what we would call bias,43 it can also reflect their need to focus on the narratives’ primary concerns.44 Honoring his protagonist and guarding his commitment to providing moral exemplarity, Plutarch omits or minimizes Caesar’s affairs.45 Arrian cannot omit Alexander’s worst acts, but he avoids focusing on them.46 Philo and Josephus highlight Moses’s virtue and play down embarrassing elements that their Scriptures readily included.47
The same is true for focus on particular interests. Suetonius may indulge some of his own interests in focusing on imperial administration, given his own involvement there at some point in his career.48 Justin observed that earlier “Greek historians approached their work as specialists, each following his own interests and omitting what did not serve his purpose.”49 Modern historians also have particular interests, for example, military or political history, women’s history, and the like.
Holly Carey notes that ancient biographers had their favorites and presented the best side of their most heroic protagonists.50 Since the Evangelists regard Jesus as God’s Son, their uniformly (or, on some approaches, their almost uniformly) positive depiction of Jesus is not surprising—although, as Carey notes,51 elements that would strike outsiders as negative, such as Jesus’s crucifixion on the charge of treason, are not minimized. Perhaps it is of particular interest that the leading apostolic witnesses, though ultimately viewed as a “foundation” for the church (Eph 2:20; Rev 21:14), never achieve a heroic status in the Gospels.
Outside of formal biographies, Judean haggadic materials52 even attempt to whitewash heroes by adding to the story, although the stories’ original tellers and listeners presumably understood these to be edifying elaborations.53 Negative incidents could be toned down,54 omitted,55 or justified56 in the character’s favor. Nevertheless, these appear in works of a genre quite different from conventional biography, apart from being narratives about the past.
5.2c. Bragging or Ragging on Biographees: Balancing Biases
Polybius, a Hellenistic historian who also wrote encomia in other settings, allows for slanted praise and blame in encomia, but in historiography he requires these verdicts to be consistent with facts.57 In historical writing, he maintains, the appropriate place to praise or blame people’s character was only while recounting their actual behavior.58 Some of his successors embraced more rhetoric in their histories, but they also were not simply composing encomia.
Although partisanship was rife, biographies from the early empire, in contrast to earlier encomia, were generally not uncritical glorifications of their subjects. Honoring one’s subject might influence selection of material, but it did not need to distort the information in that material.59 Roman-period biographers often continued to take sides when evaluating behavior, but this practice differs from inventing behavior not in their sources. Even the oft-criticized Cornelius Nepos usually balances information and agendas.60
Most biographies mixed some measure of praise and blame.61 (For that matter, even epics included flawed heroes.)62 Biographers thus felt free to record negative as well as positive features of their protagonists, when appropriate.63 Thus, for example:
Biographers’ differing treatment of different persons displays not indiscriminate praise but an attempt to assign praise and blame according to what the writers viewed as the preponderance of positive and negative actions—that is, based on an interpretation of, rather than free creation of, information. All memory, whether personal or collective, is interpretive; we lack any literary access to an uninterpreted past.73
Arrian’s biographic history74 avoids focus on Alexander’s worst deeds but cannot avoid reporting them.75 In his epideictic sections, Arrian follows any sources that support his praise of Alexander’s heroism; in his main narratives, however, he follows only the sources he most respects historically.76 Arrian exhibits clearly pro-Alexander bias,77 but it can be overstated;78 he was not fabricating new stories about Alexander.
Different biographers often differed considerably in their assessments of their subjects’ virtues,79 yet ordinarily they did not for this reason invent new incidents. Indeed, they usually draw interpretively on the same pool of information. They simply emphasized the particular incidents, and the particular aspects of those incidents, on which their own assessments rested.
Because biographers had freedom to report both good and harmful actions, those who depicted past figures favorably normally did so based on genuine respect. Isocrates and Xenophon composed their encomiastic protobiographies because they respected the characters about whom they wrote, though clearly not everyone shared their assessments. In the early empire, Tacitus praised his father-in-law, Agricola, and Lucian his mentor Demonax because they respected these figures.
Adherents deemed some teachers exceptional, hence meriting unmixed praise; for example, Xenophon has only good to report about Socrates.80 Likewise, it comes as no surprise that the Gospels uniformly honor Jesus;81 we would not expect early Christians to dishonor or find flaws in one whom they esteemed as their exalted Lord. Even so, the Gospels offer little direct encomium;82 although they praise Jesus, they do so by reporting his words and deeds rather than by listing his virtues abstractly. When followers disagreed with teachers, they normally said so.83 But sincere worshipers usually try to adjust their views to fit those of the one they worship.84
5.3. More Morals, Not Less Lessons
Like other kinds of historical writers, biographers frequently sought to teach moral lessons from their stories.85 Biographic information was meant to be used to instruct learners in virtue through the process of imitation.86 Some ancient biographers emphasize moral lessons in their stories more than do others; some writers, such as Plutarch, vary in their moralizing even from one biography to the next.87 Suetonius is forthright in evaluating characters’ morals,88 but he differs from earlier encomiasts. He cites whatever material is available but is cautious about committing himself, guarding “his credibility as a factual source.”89
In an earlier period, ancients permitted more freedom for encomiastic focus on a persons’s virtues, for the sake of honor, teaching virtue, and inviting emulation, than was appropriate for academic history.90 Biographers could dwell on the virtues of their subject in ways that historians did not; also, they intended their work for less technical audiences.91
Yet the emphasis on moral examples was a feature of historiography as well as biography; the historian Tacitus, for example, is hardly neutral about Nero or Domitian. Ancient historians used history to shed light on their own times, as do many historians today.92 Although Plutarch exploits biography for moral lessons more clearly than do many others,93 his focus on this function is not an innovation; it had long been a practice of historians (see ch. 7),94 as well as biographic writers,95 and biographers such as Nepos and Plutarch probably derived this emphasis especially from historiography.96
Plutarch expressly notes that his interest in moral lessons fits historiographic practice.97 His interests may be particularly moral, but he claims concern for historical verity and “the historical correctness of his sources.”98 His asides often articulate his perspectives;99 yet asides also appear in histories as well as romance.100 Plutarch selects what he feels will benefit his readers,101 but selection is not free invention. Thus, for example, when he needs to pad his life of Coriolanus with more information, he turns to knowable cultural matters only indirectly related to his narrative.102 Plutarch does not typically invent special deaths for his heroes simply for moral purposes.103 Despite exceptions, many of Plutarch’s themes are those of earlier eras rather than his own; he may simply highlight those that he viewed as relevant for all eras.104
5.4. Interpretations and Information
For biographies to be prescriptive does not mean that they were not also descriptive.105 Interest in values is not limited to ancient biography; modern biographies, too, seek to edify as well as inform.106 New Testament scholars have our own biases and naturally focus more on positive traits of characters whom we perceive as generally positive figures. All historians, ancient and modern, write from some systems of values and perspectives, as is often noted.107
Agendas are not intrinsically incompatible with historical information; as modern journalists and other authors recognize, a writer or editor may slant a story by how one tells it rather than by inventing information.108 Indeed, as Geza Vermes has argued, “a theological interest is no more incompatible with a concern for history than is a political or philosophical conviction,” and we can allow for these in interpretation.109
The influence of perspectives is inevitable at every stage of historical tradition. Human brains are hardwired to seek explanations for events, so identifying patterns and learning what to predict, avoid, and embrace.110 Although our knowledge of science is far greater than that of our ancestors, they were no less prone than we to think in terms of cause and effect. For this reason they too arranged their limited data in frameworks intelligible to them.111 Interpretive grids begin even with our initial encoding of memories.112
Yet perspectives do not by themselves make a work fictitious.113 “No fact,” Pelling warns, “is wholly interpretation-free”; even announcing that Athens executed Socrates assumes that this particular incident in 399 BCE warrants our attention more than do others. Yet not all facts are equally “interpretation-laden”; “it is a dereliction of historical duty to assume that every version is as true and every interpretation is as good as any other.”114
5.5. Characteristic Care for Character
Ancient biographers’ emphasis on moral models is inseparable from their focus on their subjects’ character.115 Whereas encomia could list conventional virtues and exaggerate character, historical biography was supposed to be more evenhanded (despite the many biases noted above). Character was, however, a major or even the key focus.116
Plutarch wants to supplement historians’ focus with greater insight into their characters,117 though often inferring these insights from historical sources.118 For him, offhand gestures or comments might reveal more about character than major events.119 Often more than Plutarch, Suetonius focuses on minor personal details that reveal character but were of little interest to historians.120 Such details provided entertainment, but Suetonius was especially interested in revealing character, which from a Roman perspective is important for evaluating the emperor. Suetonius’s work is not for mere “idle curiosity.”121 Lucian offers merely sample anecdotes about Demonax, yet enough to reveal “the sort of man he was.”122 Interests in a subject’s character are not incompatible with historical information, especially when the biographer praising the person knew them personally.123
Although ancient biography was less fond of characterization than are modern biographies or novels,124 characterization does appear. Some works provide direct characterization more than others.125 Because history was usually less focused on a single person, it generally displayed less emphasis on characterization than did biography.126 Characterization does appear in histories,127 but Greek historians usually expected their audiences to learn lessons especially indirectly,128 through characters’ actions and words.129 Biographers likewise could display a subject’s character through his behavior;130 but often they also comment on it directly.131 Often the responses of other characters in a narrative emphasize the hero’s character,132 an observation no doubt of importance also for the interpretation of the Gospels (e.g., Mark 1:22; John 7:15, 43).133
Some scholars see biographers emphasizing moral types134 in biographies, including Plutarch and Suetonius.135 They do not expect to find character development in the modern sense; ancient readers were not interested in personality as conveyed through psychological complexity.136 In many cases, then, the subject’s character remained the same throughout their life, with childhood anecdotes morally prefiguring the character’s later activity.137 Biographers such as Suetonius were normally not interested in why their characters acted the ways that they did.138 Even what sometimes appears to be character development (e.g., in Flaccus)139 might be just his true negative nature coming out.140
Nevertheless, character change does appear in some biographies.141 Readers of ancient biographies can sometimes recognize how early traumas affected characters’ development.142 Indeed, characterization does appear even in histories,143 though sometimes indirectly.144 Likewise, character development appears not only in novels145 but also in histories.146 Moreover, while some viewed character as inborn and not changing,147 others demurred.148 Even a single biographer such as Plutarch could hold both static and developmental approaches to character simultaneously.149
More important to the present point, rarely are characters pure embodiments of virtue or vice.150 Biographees were not flat characters simply invented to play moral roles;151 indeed, other characters within the narratives often offer a range of perspectives on the central biographees, as noted earlier.152
One scholar argues that though the Gospels are “lives,” they differ from Greek lives because they cannot trace moral development in one they regard as God incarnate.153 Whether the Gospels include no character development might be debated (cf. Mark 14:32–42), but that is admittedly not their focus.154 Yet as we have noted, many biographies did not emphasize character development. As for Jesus’s exalted status, later biographers and hagiographers, admittedly probably influenced by Christian models, did find biography a suitable format for speaking of divinely influenced humans.
5.6. Chronic Chronology? Ancient Biographies Were Not All Chronological
Momigliano rightly warns that “ancient biographies did not necessarily follow a chronological order; nor is chronological order a necessary feature even of modern biographies.”155 This disinterest contrasts with the more chronological practice of historians,156 although, in contrast to Thucydides, even most historians tended to follow events to their conclusion and not simply follow a strict chronology.157
Many biographies included a basic chronology of background, life, and death,158 but the large middle section about the life often consisted of anecdotes arranged randomly.159 Thus Plutarch, for example, accidentally repeats material about Alexander.160 Elsewhere he notes that he has anticipated a later event to keep together material on the same topic.161 This freedom to arrange material without respect for chronology was especially true in typical biographies about sages, where the more chronologically ordered histories did not provide significant information.162 Xenophon’s seminal work Memorabilia does not try to trace Socrates’s life more broadly, and chronology is not significant there.163
Some other biographies freely arranged most of their content topically, often around virtues to imitate or vices to avoid.164 This pattern is particularly conspicuous in Suetonius,165 where it proves helpful in highlighting the character of his subjects.166 When interested in chronology, Suetonius cites not biographers but historians.167
Both the chronological and topical forms existed long before the Gospels.168 Apart from birth and death, chronology was of little importance to Hellenistic scholars in Alexandria.169 But as noted earlier, biographic arrangement by chronology or theme does not easily divide biographies into two types, since there was overlap between these concerns, often even in the same biography.170 Even Xenophon’s protobiography Agesilaus has chronological (chs. 1–2) and topical (chs. 3–11) elements.171 Some of Nepos’s biographies are arranged chronologically, whereas others are topical or anecdotal.172 After summarizing some key events of Augustus’s early life, Suetonius turns to a topical treatment in explicit contrast to a chronological one.173
Sometimes elements of chronology were artificial to begin with, a mere literary construct for cohesiveness, even in ancient historiography.174 Subsequent users of earlier works did not always feel constrained by their predecessors’ chronology. Nepos and other biographers also feel free to rearrange the chronology of their sources.175 Arrian’s biographic historical monograph on Alexander likewise rearranges his sources.176 Plutarch arranges his own material differently in different biographies, often to simplify and omit items irrelevant in a different life.177 Late antique biographies were usually topical.178
Like many biographies, the Synoptic Gospels do not provide a clear chronological structure for their anecdotes. Mark’s Gospel follows a logical progression, but his chronology is generally loose;179 Luke usually follows Mark’s sequence,180 whereas Matthew arranges much discourse material topically.181 The Synoptic Evangelists, and most commonly Matthew, freely rearrange some material.182
Thus, for example, Matthew appropriates almost verbatim some material from Jesus’s eschatological discourse in Mark 13:9, 11–13 for his mission discourse in Matthew 10:17, 19–22, though he retains a summary of this paragraph again later in Matthew 24:9. Like any modern preacher, Matthew understands much of Jesus’s teaching as relevant for more than one kind of situation. Matthew does omit the explicit point of Mark 13:10 (the good news being preached among all nations) until Matthew 24:14, because the setting of the mission discourse is explicitly limited to Galilee (10:5–6), though even here he retains hints of gentile mission (10:18). Matthew’s account of the mission discourse extends until Jesus’s return (10:23),183 because Matthew, like any good preacher, wants his audience to understand that the mission Jesus gave his disciples on that day provides a spiritual model for the church’s continuing mission (Matt 24:14; 28:19–20), a point not elaborated in Mark’s more concise mission discourse (Mark 6:9–11).
Such rearrangement can appear even within a pericope, as may be observed from the following simple but conspicuous example:
ARK
ATTHEW
1. Jesus curses the fruitless fig tree (11:14)
2. Jesus challenges the temple (21:12–13)
2. Jesus challenges the temple (11:15–17)
1. Jesus curses the fruitless fig tree (21:19)
3. The next day, the disciples find the fig tree withered (11:20)
3. The fig tree withers at once (21:19)
4. The disciples are surprised (11:21)
4. The disciples are surprised (21:20)
5. Jesus gives a lesson on faith (11:23–25)
5. Jesus gives a lesson on faith (21:21–22)
Did Jesus curse two fig trees over the course of two days, though each Evangelist mentions only one, with one withering at once and the other withering later but the disciples needing precisely the same lesson on faith, in very similar words, each time?
Is is not more respectful to the text as it stands to allow the writers their different adaptations? Mark frames the evaluation of the temple with the fate of a fruitless tree, pointing to the temple’s impending demise (cf. 13:2). By contrast, Matthew, who fairly consistently prefers order, prefers to keep the event of the fig tree together in his narrative, just as he sometimes distinguishes judgments that may be blended together in his sources (contrast Matt 24:3 with the presumably earlier Mark 13:4).
Ancient readers did not expect precise chronologies in ordinary biographies, so they would not demand them from the Gospels.184 Augustine suggested the Evangelists wrote their Gospels as God recalled the accounts to their memory.185 Much earlier, just a generation after the final first-century Gospel,186 Papias claimed that Mark wrote what he heard from Jesus’s disciple Peter, but that Peter did not narrate it (hence Mark did not write it) in order.187 Technically, Papias may refer simply to rhetorically proper biographical order,188 but the random character probably also suggests that Peter did not recount events in chronological sequence.189 The earliest traditions were oral, and oral performance can vary the sequence of events.190
Modern readers sometimes hold the Evangelist to standards that not only deviate from ancient expectations but that modern readers do not follow in ordinary life. One professor puts it to his undergraduates this way: “When you go home for vacation and your parents ask what did you do this semester, nobody gets out their date book and says, I did this on September 1,” and the like. Someone who demands that anecdotes be recalled chronologically might appear “anal retentive.”191
When we read the Synoptic Gospels, we are accustomed to a narrative enlivened with various anecdotes and sayings, followed by an extended account of the protagonist’s end. Ancient hearers familiar with biographies would have recognized such characteristics as familiar from that genre.192 Anecdotes and witty sayings were to biography, as Geiger says, “the raisins that are necessary to render the cake tasty.”193
Anecdotes are widespread in Greco-Roman literature.194 The form by itself was too pervasive to indicate genre; it is certainly consistent, however, with biography. Thus one particularly massive collection of anecdotes from antiquity includes examples from fables, histories, and the Gospels. The genre most often represented, however, is easily non-Christian biography, including biographies by Nepos, Suetonius, Plutarch (many), Lucian, and Diogenes Laertius.195
Any author who could have composed even the shortest Gospel, Mark, would easily be competent to recount anecdotes. Already at the most elementary level, students memorized the sayings of famous people; the next level taught paraphrase and composition of chreiai (Latin chriai; short narratives); the highest, rhetorical level taught narrative composition.196 In the first-century Eastern empire, one sort of chreia was an anecdote.197
Biographers found anecdotes useful for depicting character,198 and anecdotes often dominate biographies of philosophers.199 Such an episodic format also appears in more fictitious biographic traditions such as the Life of Aesop,200 but normally not in novels composed from whole cloth.201
Although not as episodic as Mark’s Gospel,202 Xenophon’s Memorabilia was a thematic “collection of anecdotes or conversations featuring Socrates.”203 Although such anecdotes are more needed in stories of teachers than major political or military leaders, several appear even in Xenophon’s more cohesive encomium on Agesilaus.204 Although many people collected anecdotes even before Aristotle,205 Peripatetics were particularly invested in collecting anecdotes about philosophers, often for interschool polemic.206 Later than our period, vivid anecdotes feature heavily in Diogenes Laertius’s lives of philosophers.207 They continue to appear in later hagiography.208 Anecdotes also appear commonly in third-century rabbinic literature, although they are not chreiai and they primarily support interpretations of Torah rather than exalting individual rabbis.209
Scholars have commented extensively on the numerous anecdotes in Lucian’s second-century Life of Demonax, which, as we have noted, is a full-length biography of a sage.210 After a preface and an encomium for Demonax,211 Lucian turns to fifty, mostly brief anecdotes about Demonax,212 with two more in the story of Demonax’s death.213 These anecdotes, usually sayings with brief contexts, average roughly fifty words each,214 and all but two of them fit ancient definitions of chreiai.215 Lucian intends them not to provide a comprehensive survey of all that is known of Demonax, but as a sample that elucidates for readers Demonax’s essential character.216
The anecdotes are loosely structured;217 while an eye or imagination keener than mine might identify more connections, they appear to be arranged mostly randomly. Many of these anecdotes are quite brief; their climactic point is, as in the Gospels’ pronouncement stories,218 normally Demonax’s quick and witty quip.219 Because Lucian studied with Demonax, and because memorizing sayings and anecdotes was part of ancient education, Lucian may well have provided these accounts from memory, supplemented with others’ analogous accounts.220 Both chreiai and the maxims they contained were ideally brief and easy to remember.221
The Gospels recount anecdotes about their subject just as biographies of other sages do,222 although those in the Gospels are often longer.223 Nevertheless, their treatment is somewhat distinctive because they view their protagonist as distinctive. Thus whereas anecdotes about Demonax reveal his wit and humility about his impending death, like some anecdotes about Jesus, anecdotes about Demonax offer nothing comparable to Jesus forgiving sins or claiming to be Lord of the sabbath (see, e.g., Mark 2:10, 28).224
Gospel anecdotes often participate in a larger narrative than those in the rabbis or Demonax.225 The Gospels also follow a more structured plot than Lucian’s anecdotes about Demonax226 or in Diogenes’s lives of philosophers.227 That is, however, a macrostructural, literary observation rather than one that distances the Gospels from biographies of teachers.228
Still, this macrostructural pattern in the Gospels as a whole brings them closer to conventional biographies of public figures in Nepos or Plutarch rather than to biographies of sages primarily known to their own schools.229 Jesus was a public figure as well as founder of a school, so it is not surprising to find elements comparable with biographies of multiple sorts of figures. For that matter, ancient historians, like others interested in producing literary works, sought to produce cohesive narratives, as noted below.
Scholars such as Burridge and especially Frickenschmidt emphasize that most biographies, or at least those of public figures, were self-contained stories with beginning, middle, and end, like the Gospels.230 Such a structure is of course a typical narrative structure, hardly limited to biographies;231 but this structure reinforces the point that the Gospels are cohesive wholes, like well-designed biographies of public figures about whom more was known, rather than the often sketchy lives of poets or lesser-known teachers.
Even lives of teachers can follow a three-part structure when the author knows enough to provide a full biography. Despite its random arrangement of anecdotes in the large middle section, Lucian’s Demonax (a teacher about whom Lucian knows a great deal) does boast a tripartite structure.232 Biographies also often include a narrative transition explaining the subject’s passage into their career or public life, a feature that also appears in some Gospels.233
In many respects, however, the structures of biographies vary. When Plutarch composes parallel lives, the second component typically offers a complex variation of the first.234 The specific arrangement of elements in Suetonius’s biographies—addressing the subject’s virtues, appearance, habits and so forth—varies among his lives.235
Digressions are common in ancient biographies.236 Some of these are digressions on geography or local customs (cf. Mark 7:3–4).237 Isocrates’s Euagoras, for example, digresses on the history of Cyprus238 and Xenophon’s Agesilaus digresses about Sparta.239 Philo’s Moses treats Egypt’s climate, and Tacitus’s Agricola deals extensively with Britannia;240 Plutarch sometimes digresses to explain customs.241 Arrian’s biographic historical monograph on Alexander also includes geographic digressions.242
Digressions are not, of course, limited to biography, appearing in rhetoric, narratives, and other genres.243 For our purposes, it is relevant to note that historians also commonly employed them.244 For example, Diodorus largely follows one source at a time, except for digressions.245 Livy digresses to discuss what would have happened had Alexander battled Rome.246
Some features of the Gospels are more unusual among ancient biographies. Full-scale ancient biographies sometimes have plots, although this may be usually limited to the three-part structure just noted. Some scholars understand all emplotment of narrative, even historical narrative, as intrinsically fictional.247 Less bound to prior information, novels do have greater freedom to develop plots.248 But while narrative structuring of prior material reflects an author’s interpretive selection, such interpretive selections can be interpretive without making the narrative as a whole fictitious (see the discussion of the meaning of “fictionalization” in ch. 2). Mark’s literary observations may be one characteristic closer to novels than to many biographies, though the anecdotes that he organizes in this manner characterize biographies more than novels.
Plots of a sort do appear even in history and biography. Thus, for example, one could envision a sort of plot in Taylor Branch’s massive and thoroughly researched Parting the Waters,249 but this is because Branch helpfully follows a particular issue in light of the remembered significance of its outcome. All remembering,250 whether individual or collective, involves “narrative emplotment,” or framing.251 This is true of ancient historiography as well.252
The Gospels each follow more developed, coherent plots, which distinguishes them from most ancient biographies. Granted, there are likely developed plots in some other ancient biographies; scholars have combed through the Gospels far more thoroughly than through most other ancient works. Nor can one accuse Plutarch of inattention to literary design.253 Plutarch offers biographies of paired Greek and Roman figures, specifically selected because their stories proved comparable in some ways (e.g., the rhetor Demosthenes with Cicero or the conqueror Alexander with Caesar).254 He claims that he looked hard for the right people to compare with each other.255
But like Lucian’s Demonax, biographies of sages often arrange anecdotes without forming them into coherent plots.256 Historical works on public figures have more chronology and thus something more like a plot when, for example, matters build toward martyrdom, as in the Gospels.257
But even Suetonius’s imperial Lives does not contain cohesive stories; each is simply “a summation of the life,”258 especially in terms of what is relevant for moral instruction. They usually begin with the subject’s background (including family and birth), then his career, and sometimes an outline for the following topics.259 What follows, however, usually gives little regard to chronology.260 By and large the Gospels seem to exhibit greater literary coherence than do even otherwise more sophisticated works by more elite biographers.261 Narrative critics have rightly highlighted how large narrative works like the Gospels strive for largely consistent internal worlds.262
Then again, an Evangelist did not compose his Gospel as a biography on simply one individual among many about whom he hoped to write. Plutarch was composing a series of biographies and had to master an extraordinary amount of information about a range of figures. By contrast, each of the Gospels as foundation documents invited a significant and exclusive investment of attention, and probably a longer process of oral feedback before publication in their final forms.263 Foundation documents may be shaped more by foundational events and less by contemporary events than are more contemporary-oriented works such as letters.264 Whereas foundation stories about the distant, legendary past were inevitably mythical, schools could also preserve information about more recent founders, a more appropriate comparison for first-century Gospels about the recent sage Jesus.
In contrast to a theoretically objective approach, ancient biographers were also concerned with their subjects’ character and value as positive, negative, or mixed moral examples. Their own perspectives shaped how they composed their works. At the same time, responsible biographers shaped information or traditions that came to them, rather than freely inventing new stories.
The genre of bios evolved from a more encomiastic form rooted in historical information to a form more influenced by historiography in the early empire and finally, in late antiquity, sometimes into hagiography. The period from Cornelius Nepos at the end of the Roman Republic and through the late second and sometimes early third century constituted the historiographic high point of ancient biography. Even here, we find a range in terms of historiographic and literary capabilities and in the quality of sources available for various works. Nevertheless, this survey of some ancient biography suggests that the Gospels come from a period when biographers in general were interested in providing historical information.
1. Some even suggest that the formal pattern for elaborating chreiai seems restricted to rhetorical handbooks (Hester, “Blame,” 302n1, citing chreia expert Edward O’Neil).
2. Theon, Progymnasmata 4.37–42, 80–82 (Butts), on fables. If editing fables demanded only minimal tampering with details, one would not expect more when editing historical stories.
3. Theon, Progymnasmata 3.224–40; cf. 2.115–23; also Longinus, On the Sublime 11.1; Hermogenes, Invention 2.7.120–21 (cf. 2.1.108–9; 2.7.120–24).
4. Hermogenes, Progymnasmata 3. On Chreia, 7; Aphthonius, Progymnasmata 3. On Chreia, 23S, 4R; 4. On Maxim, 9–10.
5. To the chagrin of stricter historians such as Polybius (see Histories 2.56.7, 10–11; 3.38.3; 15.34.1).
6. E.g., 1 Macc 6:10–13; 2 Macc 3:37–39; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 19.38–45, 53–58, 78–83; for Tacitus, see Hadas, “Introduction,” xx–xxi; for biographers, see Hägg, Biography, 3; for Plutarch specifically, see De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 167, noting on 178 that this practice in biography was little different from that of ancient historiography.
7. E.g., presumably Josephus, Jewish War 2.319; also Nepos’s additions to his sources noted in Christian, “Themistocles,” 114, 118, 130, 139; Philo’s additions in Hidalgo, “Study,” 287, 300.
8. See Keener, Acts, 1:258–82.
9. E.g., Tacitus, Histories 2.74; Annals 4.38–39; 12.4; cf. Mark 2:6, 8; 5:28; 6:20, 48, 52; 12:15; 14:11; Matt 12:25; 27:18; Luke 2:19, 51; 3:15; 6:8; 9:47; 11:17; 22:6; John 2:24; 5:6; 6:6, 64; 12:4; 13:3, 11; 18:4; 19:28; Arrian, Alexander 7.1.4; Dewald, “Construction,” 97. De Temmerman, “Formalities,” 17–18, defines such amplification as fictionalizing.
10. See discussions in, e.g., Ladouceur, “Masada”; Ladouceur, “Josephus”; Cohen, “Masada”; Cohen, “What Happened?”; Luz, “Masada”; Bauernfeind and Michel, “Beiden Eleazarreden”; Bünker, “Disposition der Eleazarreden.”
11. The two women who survived presumably lacked rhetorical training.
12. Petitfils, “Tale,” 159–63.
13. See sections 3.3a and 10.7a.
14. Fornara, Nature, 134–36.
15. See, e.g., Stein, Luke, 176; Blomberg, Reliability, 163; Liefeld and Pao, Luke, 121–22; Culy, Parsons, and Stigall, Luke, 167; Chen, Luke, 75; Wolter, Luke, 1:236–37; Levine and Witherington, Luke, 144; less politely toward Luke, Leaney, Luke, 124–25. Others object that even in Galilee the roof sometimes could have been tiled (Marshall, Luke, 213; Edwards, Luke, 165), or (correctly) that Luke’s term for clay here need not imply tiles (Bock, Luke, 104–5n), though that is its usual sense in reference to roofs (see BDAG).
16. Matthew more clearly reapplies and thus adapts the mission for missionaries of his own day, including here material that stretches until the eschaton (Matt 10:23). The context in both cases is dependence on hospitality (Mark 6:8–10; Matt 10:9–10), so perhaps the point in Matthew involves extra sandals, but the wording in any case certainly differs from Mark.
17. Shuler, Genre; cf. Penner, Praise, 135 (in Jewish apologetic historiography, Penner, Praise, 229–35); deeds in ancient encomia are in Malina and Neyrey, Portraits, 28–33.
18. It also appears in encomiastic biographies of more recent centuries, which mix facts and fiction; see, e.g., McClymond, Redemption, 1:447–48, 451.
19. See Burridge, “Biography.” But biographies were rarely as partisan as forensic speech, where a primary object was legal victory (e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias 8).
20. Ytterbrink, Gospel, 76, citing Isocrates, Euagoras 4, 76, 80–81. Philo does the same for Israel’s ancestors; see Ytterbrink, Gospel, 100–101, citing Philo, Abraham 4–5, 217, although this is not strictly a biography in the way that his Moses probably is.
21. Alfred, “Valuation,” 79–82.
22. Geiger, Nepos, 16.
23. Alfred, “Valuation,” 79–80, 99–100.
24. Collins, Mark, 25.
25. De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 169, 177; cf. Cox, Biography, 13.
26. De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 177, comparing Appian, Civil Wars 1.17.
27. De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 177, following Pelling, Plutarch and History, 143–70.
28. Bosworth, Arrian, 16.
29. Derrenbacker, Practices, 57–58.
30. Derrenbacker, Practices, 57–59, esp. 59. Others also follow more detailed narratives about figures with sections of eulogistic postmortem epideictic, e.g., Justin, Epitome 25.5.3–6; 32.4.10–12.
31. Burridge, Gospels, 147, 183; for apologetic autobiography, cf., e.g., Josephus, Life 336–67; 2 Cor 11:8–33; Gal 1:11–24; Lamour, “Organisation.” Autobiographic writing in some form appears as early as ancient Egypt (Simpson, Literature, 401–27); on the genre of autobiography, see further Lyons, Autobiography; Aune, Dictionary, 79–81.
32. E.g., Josephus may play down negative elements of the biblical picture of Israelites during the exodus (Cheon, “Plagues”), the horror of the raped concubine (Feldman, “Concubine”), and problematic elements in Gen 18:22–33 and Gen 22 (Niehoff, “Technique”).
33. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 1.17.
34. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 3.79–99, esp. 95–99.
35. McGing, “Adaptation,” 130, on Philo, Moses 1.40–46; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 2.254.
36. See Feldman, “Command”; for Philo, see also Berthelot, “Conquest.”
37. So Feldman, “Calf,” on Philo, Moses 2.161–73 (esp. 2.165, 169), though Feldman may overplay this point.
38. Contrast 2 Sam 11:1–27; 12:9–10; 1 Kgs 15:5.
39. Cf., e.g., Williamson, Chronicles, 236.
40. E.g., Pliny, Letters 6.27.1–2. Pliny’s Panegyric, however, is conspicuously sycophantic.
41. Polybius, Histories 10.21.8; Pliny, Letters 3.3.5. For Polybius’s distinction between treating an individual encomiastically or historically, cf. Farrington, “Action.”
42. Historians themselves sometimes deemed selectivity a major distinction between “history” and “chronicles” (Whittaker, “Introduction,” li–lii, citing Lucian, How to Write History 4–6, 27). Good historians should not focus on points they considered minor (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Thucydides 13).
43. Some accuse of bias, based on omissions, Xenophon (Brownson, “Introduction to Anabasis,” ix–x; Brown, Historians, 95–97, though regarding Xenophon as otherwise mostly evenhanded, 93–94), Arrian (Baynham, “Quintus Curtius,” 428), and Tacitus (Laistner, Historians, 132). For omissions, see, e.g., Josephus, Life 339; Against Apion 1.60–66; Dio Cassius, Roman History 1.1.1–2; for apologetic reasons, Josephus omits the golden calf (Jewish Antiquities 3.79–99).
44. Tacitus frankly admits that he does not treat all Senate business, but only that of moral value for his audience (Annals 3.65). Polybius complains that some writers focus too much of their narrative on irrelevant matters (Histories 15.36.10); he insists that he must omit some matters about Roman customs (6.11.4–6), pleading with his critics that they should attribute omissions to ignorance only when what is recounted contains errors (6.11.7–8). Historians did not regard it as a criticism when someone else testified to the accuracy of what they reported but offered to supply additional information (Josephus, Life 365–67); sometimes hints of information suggest that a historian who omitted it did not lack the information itself (Whittaker, “Introduction,” xlviii–lii, on Herodian).
45. See Beneker, “Chaste Caesar.” Cf. royal apologists and spin doctors in Philostratus, Heroicus 31.5; Long, “Samuel,” 270; apologetic for Socrates in Xenophon and Plato. Josephus’s autobiography is widely recognized as apologetic (with, e.g., Lamour, “Organisation”).
46. See Bosworth, Arrian, 63–64.
47. See, e.g., McGing, “Adaptation,” 129–30 (on Philo, Moses 1.40–46; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 2.254–57), 133; Hidalgo, “Study,” 287–88.
48. Edwards, “Introduction,” xi.
49. Justin, Epitome pref.3.
50. Carey, “Importance,” esp. 320, on Philo, Moses.
51. Carey, “Importance,” 320–21.
52. Haggadic adaptation appears in both midrash and folk literature (Wright, “Midrash,” 129). See further discussion in ch. 11.
53. As noted, even the rabbis themselves probably recognized that midrashic additions were homiletic, distinct from historical reconstructions (Milikowsky, “Midrash”), though one generation’s traditions may have filled another’s historical curiosity. Haggadic elaboration resembles techniques in Greek mythography more than historiography; cf. Maclean and Aitken, Heroikos, li–lii.
54. LAB 12:2–3. T. Job 39:12–13 (OTP) / 39:9–10 (Kraft) and 40:3/4 seem concerned to soften God letting Job’s children die for his test.
55. Jub. 13:17–18; 14:21–16:22; 29:13; T. Zeb. 1:5–7. In Jubilees, see Wintermute, “Introduction,” 35–36; in Josephus, cf. Aune, Environment, 108; in Greco-Roman literature, see Shuler, Genre, 50 (following Cicero, Oratorical Partitions 22).
56. CD 4.20–5.3 (also 11QT 56.18); Jub. 19:15–16; 27:6–7; 28:6–7; 30:2–17; 41; 1Qap Gen ar 20.10–11; Jos. Asen. 23; T. Jud. 8–12 (cf. Tg. Neof. 1 on Gen 38:25; Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Gen. 38:25–26); T. Iss. 3:1 (cf. Gen 49:15); Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Gen. 49:28.
57. Polybius, Histories 3.4.1; 8.8.3–6; 10.21.8; cf. Hägg, Biography, 96–97. Polybius’s contrast in 10.21.8 involves not biography per se but encomium (with Burridge, Gospels, 61). Polybius denounces Timaeus for presenting others too well (12.7.1) or too poorly (12.15.12).
58. Polybius, Histories 10.26.9.
59. Fornara, Nature, 64–65.
60. Hägg, Biography, 189; Ytterbrink, Gospel, 89–90.
61. E.g., Plutarch, Cimon 2.4–5; Cornelius Nepos, On Great Generals 11 (Iphicrates), 3.2; Suetonius, Nero 7, 9; Domitian 3.2.
62. The plot of the Iliad turns partly on the heroically magnified pride of Achilles and Agamemnon; the character of Odysseus in the sequel is flawed in different respects.
63. E.g., Arrian, Alexander 4.7.4; 4.8.1–4.9.6; Plutarch, Cimon 2.4–5; Cornelius Nepos, On Great Generals 11 (Iphicrates), 3.2; more fully, see Ytterbrink, Gospel, 90, 92, 116; Keener, John, 16 (cf. Keener, Matthew, 51n157).
64. See, e.g., Plutarch, Marcus Cato 5.1, 5; 12.4; Hägg, Biography, 260, 265; Lavery, “Lucullus.” Cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Thucydides 1, criticizing the style of a historian he respects. For his moral purposes, Plutarch may employ stock character traits from comedy to critique his protagonists; see Xenophontos, “Comedy.”
65. See Duff, “Ambiguity.”
66. Probably at least partly influenced by Augustus’s autobiography and most sources permitted to survive; see Alfred, “Valuation,” 97, 101.
67. E.g., Suetonius, Augustus 69.1.
68. Suetonius, Nero 19.3 (LCL 2:115). For him listing first the worst emperor’s positive acts, see also Edwards, “Introduction,” xii.
69. Likewise, Suetonius, Julius 52 (like much of the work) is full of scandal about Julius, but there is also praise (53). After recounting his noble deeds (e.g., 73–75), Suetonius concludes that his negative actions “so turn the scale, that it is thought that he abused his power and was justly slain” (76.1 [LCL 1:99]).
70. Fitzgerald, “Lives,” 218.
71. Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.21.602–3.
72. Eunapius, Lives 461; cf. 459–61.
73. See Le Donne, Historiographical Jesus, 38–39.
74. He identifies it as a history; cf., e.g., Arrian, Indica 17, 19, 21, 23, 26, 40, 43.
75. E.g., Arrian, Alexander 4.7.4; 4.8.1–4.9.6; see also Bosworth, Arrian, 63–64, citing 4.9.1; 4.12.6.
76. Derrenbacker, Practices, 57–59, following esp. Stadter.
77. Bosworth, “Pursuit,” 447; Baynham, “Quintus Curtius,” 428.
78. Bosworth, “Pursuit,” 452–53.
79. See, e.g., Davis, “Evaluations”; Ytterbrink, Gospel, 89, 91; Champlin, “Tiberius.”
80. See, e.g., Xenophon, Memorabilia 4.8.11.
81. Cf., e.g., Ytterbrink, Gospel, 227.
82. Pace Shuler, Genre; see Burridge, Gospels, 208; Collins, Mark, 30.
83. See, e.g., Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 8.15.ext.1; Seneca, To Lucilius 108.17, 20, 22; 110.14, 20; Musonius Rufus 1, 36.6–7; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 7.22.
84. Notwithstanding the aberration of segments of Western Christendom and other expressions of cultural religion. Common Judaism, despite its diversity, remained Torah-centered; see Josephus, Against Apion 1.60; 2.282–84; m. ʾAbot. 1:13; 6:5; Qidd. 4:14; t. Ḥag. 1:2; Sipre Deut. 41.6.1; Moore, Judaism, 1:235–50; Goodenough, Symbols, 2:6, 22; Neusner, Beginning, 13; Safrai, “Education,” 945.
85. Pelling, “Adaptation,” 135; Burridge, Gospels, 145–46, 181; Hägg, Biography, 239–81, esp. 274; cf. Dihle, “Biography,” 367–74.
86. Plutarch, Aratus 1.4; on encomia, cf. Proclus, Poetics 5, K58.6–14. Cf. Kurz, “Models,” 182–83, on biography and narrative models for imitation.
87. Burridge, Gospels, 66.
88. See, e.g., Luke, “Ideology”; Wardle, “Augustus.”
89. Power, “Poetry,” 237. Aletti, Birth, 22, finds Suetonius less interested in moral instruction than in presenting both good and bad features of his subjects, “consistent with reality.”
90. So Polybius, Histories 10.21.8 again.
91. Cornelius Nepos, On Great Generals 16 (Pelopidas), 1.1; cf. Pelling, “Biography, Greek,” 242.
92. Aune, Environment, 62, cites esp. Isocrates, To Nicocles 35; To Demonicus 34; Polybius, Histories 1.1.2; Livy, History 1.pref.10–11; Plutarch, Aemilius Paulus 1.1; Lucian, Demonax 2.
93. E.g., Beneker, Statesman, on leaders’ mastery of passion (see, e.g., 8, 16, 70–73, 105, 113, 122–27, 133, 139, 152, 160, 195–206); Duff, Lives, 13–72; Nikolaidis, “Introduction,” xiii–xiv (and more generally, Nikolaidis, Unity); Adams, Genre, 83. For his possible use of patterns from comic invective, see Xenophontos, “Comedy.”
94. See, e.g., Polybius, Histories 1.1.1; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.2.1; 1.6.3–5; Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 2.pref.; Tacitus, Agricola 1; Annals 3.65; Josephus, Against Apion 2.204.
95. See Momigliano, Development, 69; Adams, Genre, 93–94.
96. With Geiger, Nepos, 115.
97. Plutarch, Aemilius Paulus 1.1–2, emphasizes the role of morals in bio (bios), as he does in history (historia), 1.3.
98. De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 175, citing, e.g., Plutarch, Solon 27.1.
99. Hillman, “Statements.”
100. See Sheeley, Asides, 41–78.
101. See De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 166–67, on Plutarch, Aemilius Paulus 1.2; Alexander 1.2.
102. Alfred, “Valuation,” 91.
103. Pelling, “Bounds,” 269.
104. Pelling, Texts, 58.
105. The overstatement in Praet, “Cloak,” 134, may be more applicable to hagiography.
106. Votaw, “Biographies,” 51; see esp. Dillon, “Interpretation,” 164.
107. E.g., Marincola, “Introduction,” 3; Ehrman, Introduction, 133; Enns, Problem, 66.
108. See De Temmerman, “Formalities,” 13, citing, e.g., Pelling, “Truth,” regarding Plutarch’s usual refusal to create “lengthy new stories to fill gaps in source material.” This is not to deny that slanted selection and narration can seriously affect understanding; I find, for example, the BBC more neutral regarding US politics than are many US sources.
109. Vermes, Jesus and Judaism, 19; cf. Levinskaya, Setting, 2; Hemer, Acts, 79–90.
110. Barber and Barber, Severed, 13–14; cf. also Berger, Canopy, 22 (oft-cited, e.g., Turner, Regulating Bodies, 83; Hamilton, Sociology, 165; Wuthnow et al., Analysis, 26; Dann, “Conclusion,” 67n65; Day, Believing, 8; Back and Bennett, Sociology, 136; Brack, Historiography, xiii).
111. Barber and Barber, Severed, 13.
112. Barber and Barber, Severed, 33; Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 330, 334–38, 350.
113. De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 164.
114. Pelling, Texts, 7.
115. Pelling, “Adaptation,” 135; Burridge, Gospels, 65, 171.
116. Cox, Biography, 12; Frickenschmidt, Evangelium, 277, 289–94; Ytterbrink, Gospel, 79–80; Licona, Differences, 5; for characterization in biography, see further Hägg, Biography, 5–6, 11–15, 23, 27–30, 45, 89; for examples, note Cornelius Nepos, On Great Generals 4 (Pausanias), 1.1; Feldman, “Jehoram.”
117. Pelling, Texts, 45–46 (citing Plutarch, Nicias 1.5).
118. Pelling, Texts, 48, 53 (citing Thucydides, History 6.13.1; 6.18.6; 6.24.3).
119. Burridge, Gospels, 171, citing Plutarch, Cato the Younger 24.1; 37.5; Phocion 5.4; Licona, Differences, 4–5, citing Plutarch, Alexander 1.2–3.
120. Edwards, “Introduction,” xiii, comparing Suetonius, Julius 45–75 with Plutarch’s Julius Caesar.
121. Edwards, “Introduction,” xiii.
122. Beck, “Demonax,” 84, quoting Demonax 67; and citing Branham, Eloquence, 58.
123. See Beck, “Demonax,” 95, on Xenophon’s Agesilaus and Lucian’s Demonax.
124. Direct, individualistic characterization is of course more common in modern biography (Burridge, “Review,” 478).
125. Becker, Birth, 73.
126. See Fornara, Nature, 185. Laistner, Historians, 56, views Sallust’s characters as too stark.
127. Pitcher, “Characterization,” esp. 103–4, 106, 117. See, e.g., Marcius as the greatest general of his era, yet with fatal character flaws (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 8.60.1–2; 8.61.1–3).
128. Pitcher, “Characterization,” 105, 107–10.
129. Pitcher, “Characterization,” 110–12; Marincola, “Speeches,” 119 (speeches); Pelling, Texts, 8.
130. Stanton, Preaching, 125; Stanton, Gospel Truth?, 139; Burridge, Gospels, 139, 178–79; in the Gospels, see esp. Burridge, Gospels, 205, 227.
131. Cornelius Nepos, On Great Generals 4 (Pausanias), 1.1; Suetonius, Caligula 44; cf. Matt 21:5; Mark 6:34; Luke 1:32; 7:13; John 3:16; 11:5; 13:1; Ytterbrink, Gospel, 118 (on 228 noting the unusual lack of this in Luke). Many elite biographers were rhetoricians, who could describe a person’s character directly (Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.50.63).
132. Frickenschmidt, Evangelium, 286–89; Ytterbrink, Gospel, 84; Pitcher, “Characterization,” 107–8; De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 168–69 (citing, e.g., Plutarch, Agis 8.6; 10.2; 14.3; Cleomenes 13.3; 18.2; 26.5; Caius Gracchus 6.3); cf. Pelling, Texts, 53.
133. See Keith and Hurtado, Friends and Enemies.
134. For extensive and usually entertaining examples of such types, see Theophrastus, Characters.
135. Momigliano, Development, 13; Cox, Biography, 13.
136. Beck, “Demonax,” 89 (following Pelling, Plutarch and History, 316). Oral tradition normally flattens characters as memorably “monumental” rather than round (Rosenberg, “Complexity,” 87).
137. Edwards, “Introduction,” xvi; cf. again Pelling, Plutarch and History, 316.
138. Edwards, “Introduction,” xvi.
139. Philo, Flaccus 8–11.
140. Philo, Flaccus 1–2.
141. E.g., youth could differ from adult life (e.g., Plutarch, Themistocles 2.5). Note also Burridge, Gospels, 178–79, citing esp. Plutarch, Aratus 51.4; 54.2; Sertorius 10.2–5.
142. See, e.g., Tiberius’s loss of his first wife and his son and Herod’s early experiences of violence.
143. Pitcher, “Characterization,” esp. 103–4, 106, 115–17; see also, e.g., Velleius Paterculus, History 2.18.5; 2.25.3; 2.28.2; Tacitus, Annals 4.54; 6.51; cf. Hadas, “Introduction,” xiv–xv. See now esp. Ash, Mossman, and Titchener, Fame.
144. Pitcher, “Characterization,” 105, 107–10; it may be through actions and words (110–12; speeches in Marincola, “Speeches,” 119) or other characters’ observations (Pitcher, “Characterization,” 107–8).
145. For one attempt to trace character development in Callirhoe, see De Temmerman, “Beauty.”
146. E.g., Pitcher, “Characterization,” 115–17; see also, e.g., Tacitus, Annals 6.51; cf. Tacitus’s clarity on characters in Hadas, “Introduction,” xiv–xv; e.g., Agrippina, in Tacitus, Annals 4.54; character changes in Velleius Paterculus, History 2.18.5; 2.25.3; 2.28.2.
147. Euripides, frag. 1068, from Stobaeus, Anthology 4.30.3; 1113, from Stobaeus 4.29.35; Phoenix frag. 810; Dictys frag. 333, from Stobaeus 4.30.5; Pindar, Olympian Odes 11.19–20; 13.12; cf. Galen, Grief 60.
148. Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 6.9.pref.–6.9.9; cf. 2 Chr 24:17–22.
149. See Duff, “Models,” though attributing one to his philosophic and the other to his biographic approach.
150. Cf., e.g., Duff, “Ambiguity.” Philo tells of even Flaccus’s good works (Flaccus 2–5, 8) before turning to his evil ones, claiming that mentioning these highlights that Flaccus acted not from ignorance of right and wrong but, less excusably, from malice (7).
151. De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 164–65; Burridge, Gospels, 178–79; Keener, Acts, 1:151.
152. See Edwards, “Introduction,” xxv; cf., e.g., Nicolaus, Augustus 20–21, 23, 25, 27, 29 (FGrH 130).
153. Dihle, “Biography,” 379.
154. Strauss, Life, 1:282, rightly contrasts Jesus and most other central biblical figures on this point.
155. Momigliano, Development, 13–14; cf. Thorburn, “Tiberius.”
156. E.g., Thucydides, History 2.1.1; 5.26.1.
157. E.g., Polybius, Histories 2.14; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 16.1.1–2; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Thucydides 9; Letter to Gnaeus Pompeius 3; cf. Trogus in Develin, “Introduction,” 9–10; the alternating blocks of focus in Herodotus noted in Longenecker, Rhetoric, 27. A moralist could note that an event should occur at a certain point in his narrative (4 Macc 12:7) yet choose to recount it later.
158. See esp. Plutarch (e.g., Ytterbrink, Gospel, 108; Konstan and Walsh, “Biography,” 32). Cf. the lives of Aesop, Homer, Secundus, and Herakles in Aune, Environment, 63–64.
159. E.g., Demonax anecdotes (cf. Cancik, “Gattung,” 94–95; Beck, “Demonax,” 82–83, 95) and anecdotes in Diogenes Laertius (Cambiano, “Diogenes Laertius,” 574). The middle section could mix chronology and thematic treatments and could dislocate chronology; Frickenschmidt, Evangelium, 278, 505.
160. Plutarch, Alexander 37.4; 56.1.
161. Plutarch, Cato the Younger 25.5.
162. Cf. Momigliano, Development, 87–88, on literary figures; Konstan and Walsh, “Biography,” 33.
163. Adams, Genre, 75.
164. Cf. also topical arrangement of anecdotes in Valerius Maximus (Rüpke, “Knowledge,” 89, 93). Even sayings could be arranged topically (e.g., Epictetus, Encheiridion).
165. E.g., Suetonius, Augustus 9; Caligula 22.1; Nero 19.3; Pelling, “Biography, Roman,” 243; Görgemanns, “Biography”; Burridge, Gospels, 74; Konstan and Walsh, “Biography,” 32.
166. Beck, “Demonax,” 94, following Pelling, Plutarch and History, 288.
167. Suetonius, Caligula 8.3.
168. Momigliano, Development, 86.
169. Pelling, “Biography, Greek,” 242.
170. Stanton, Preaching, 119–21; Aune, “Biography,” 108; Aune, Environment, 34; Burridge, Gospels, 71–73; Ytterbrink, Gospel, 103 (on Philo, Moses); Smith, “Genre,” 193–96; Smith, βίος, 30.
171. Cf. Beck, “Demonax,” 93.
172. Burridge, Gospels, 73.
173. Suetonius, Augustus 9; with Edwards, “Introduction,” ix (on xv she suggests this emphasis is partly to distinguish his treatment from that of Tacitus).
174. See Licona, Differences, 185–89, citing esp. helpfully Lucian, How to Write History 55; Mellor, Historians, 93; cf. Develin, “Introduction,” 9–10.
175. Ytterbrink, Gospel, 94; Zadorojnyi, “Lords,” 352 (though Zadorojnyi’s citation of Aurelius Victor, The Caesars 11.5, is from the fourth century).
176. Bosworth, Arrian, 60.
177. Licona, Differences, 47 (on Pompey 47.3–48.3; Caesar 14.1–6; Cato the Younger 31.4–32.3).
178. Cox, Biography, 57.
179. Cancik, “Gattung,” 94–95.
180. Though for Luke’s disinterest in precise chronology, see also Licona, Differences, 136.
181. Compare, e.g., Matt 10:25 and 12:24. Topical arrangement was one of the forms of memorable organization (Vatri, “Writing,” 764, citing Plutarch, Advice to Bride and Groom 138c4–6).
182. Licona, Differences, 185–96, esp. 191–96. Granted that it is likely that Jesus used some material on more than one occasion, a completely independent recounting of Jesus’s ministry and teaching would probably include much less overlap among incidents and teachings than in the Synoptics (cf. John 21:25); Matthew overlaps with the vast majority of Mark’s pericopes (some estimate 90 percent; see Hagner, Matthew, xlvii).
183. For the fleeing from any given city in Matt 10:23, cf. flight from Jerusalem under judgment (Mark 13:14–16; Matt 24:15–18). It is ironic that Schweitzer would earlier build his eschatology so fully on this singly attested verse (Quest, 360–61); see the criticism in Heyer, Jesus Matters, 48.
184. Subsuming chronological differences under the label “contradictions” (Ehrman, Interrupted, 7) thus anachronistically imposes modern historiographic expectations on documents written before such expectations existed, using norms quite different from those of the authors and their first audiences. That is not to imply that no one would have treated differences as contradictions if they found this approach polemically valuable; discrepancies concerning chronology could be used to discredit opposing arguments (cf., e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias 15; Acts 24:11; Cicero, Cross-Examination of Vatinius 1.3).
185. Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels 21.51. Cf. Luther in Kolb, Word, 87–88.
186. A date for Papias of 130 remains plausible, but against such later dates once given (sometimes based on unlikely fifth-century evidence), many now date his work to within the first couple decades of the second century, sometimes as early as 110 CE (Shanks, Papias, 92–93) or even “the first decade of the second century” (Crossley, Date, 13; Bauckham, World, 143n2, 147), often based partly on the placement of his treatment in Eusebius (Ecclesiastical History 3.34–39). Papias is early by classical standards (cf. the Lamprias Catalogue).
187. Papias, frag. 3.15 (Holmes) in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39. Black, “Kennedy,” 65–66, notes the influence of a renowned classicist on revival of attention to Papias.
188. Moessner, “Voice,”490–91; see esp. Moessner, “Papian Fragments.” Watson suggests that Papias evaluated Mark by Matthean standards; see Watson, “Survive,” 15.
189. Recollection was easier if in random order (Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 1.pref.4), an observation characterizing memories generally (see, e.g., Larsen, Thompson, and Hansen, “Time,” esp. 153–54; Wagenaar, “Memory,” 187; Thatcher, Why John Wrote, 113–15; Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 326, 333, 344).
190. Eddy and Boyd, Legend, 433–35; Vansina, Oral Tradition, 24, 122, 173–88, esp. 176; Barber and Barber, Severed, 115–17.
191. Terence Paige of Houghton College, November 9, 2017.
192. Burridge, Gospels, 196–98.
193. Geiger, Nepos, 27.
194. See Moeser, Anecdote, 51–106.
195. Robbins, Quotes.
196. Moeser, Anecdote, 54, noting Quintilian, Orator’s Education 1.2–3; 1.9.2–4; 2.4–6. Despite Seneca’s disapproval, even adults sometimes still memorized chreiai (Aune, “Prolegomena,” 95, citing Seneca, To Lucilius 33.7).
197. Moeser, Anecdote, 69–70, following Theon; for other terms for anecdotes in antiquity, see 66–68; in modern secondary literature, 57–62.
198. De Temmerman, “Formalities,” 19.
199. Frickenschmidt, Evangelium, 504 (cf. 283–86); Ytterbrink, Gospel, 117.
200. Karla, “Life of Aesop,” 56.
201. See Burridge, Gospels, 283, arguing against Michael Vines.
202. Freyne, “Gospel,” 66.
203. Konstan and Walsh, “Biography,” 32; cf. Votaw, “Biographies,” 230.
204. Beck, “Demonax,” 92–93, citing Xenophon, Agesilaus 4.6; 5.5; 7.5, 6; 8.3.
205. Momigliano, Development, 72.
206. Momigliano, Development, 71; cf. 76; Chance, “Fiction,” 135; Burridge, Gospels, 69.
207. Frickenschmidt, Evangelium, 183.
208. Cox, Biography, 57.
209. See Moeser, Anecdote, 107–49, esp. 148–49 (also 248).
210. See, e.g., Momigliano, Development, 73; Moeser, Anecdote, 92–105; Beck, “Demonax.”
211. Lucian, Demonax 1–2 and 3–11, respectively.
212. Lucian, Demonax 12–62. Cf. Beck, “Demonax,” 84; Ytterbrink, Gospel, 110.
213. Moeser, Anecdote, 92–93, citing Demonax 64.1–5; 66.1–7.
214. Burridge, Gospels, 168.
215. The exceptions are dialogues (Demonax 13.1–8; 19.4–20.7; Moeser, Anecdote, 95–96, 105).
216. Moeser, Anecdote, 105–6, 247–48; Beck, “Demonax,” 84, on Demonax 67.
217. Burridge, “Reading,” 41.
218. On which, see Alsup, “Function”; Greenspoon, “Pronouncement Story”; Porton, “Pronouncement Story”; Poulos, “Pronouncement Story”; Robbins, “Pronouncement Stories”; VanderKam, “Pronouncement Stories”; concisely Aune, Dictionary, 378–79.
219. See Beck, “Demonax,” 87; Ytterbrink, Gospel, 110. Anecdotes about Demonax outside Lucian are usually less original or humorous moralizing aphorisms; Lucian’s favorites naturally fit his own personality (Beck, “Demonax,” 91).
220. Moeser, Anecdote, 93.
221. Vatri, “Writing,” 758, noting esp. Aelius Aristides, Orations 2.442, on Plato, Gorgias 527C3–4.
222. Moles, “Influence,” 99, compares Cynic lives in Lucian’s Demonax; Diogenes Laertius, Lives bk. 6.
223. Moeser, Anecdote, 245.
224. Cf. Ytterbrink, Gospel, 117, as well as miracles in the Gospels and Philostratus.
225. Moeser, Anecdote, 246.
226. Burridge, “Reading,” 41.
227. Frickenschmidt, Evangelium, 183–84.
228. A community history may include something like a plot (see Le Donne, Historiographical Jesus, 55), as may any account of events retrospectively focused on a theme in light of an outcome. Ideally, plots should be of such length as to make recall easier (Vatri, “Writing,” 756, citing Aristotle, Poetics 1451a3–6).
229. Frickenschmidt, Evangelium, 184, 504.
230. Frickenschmidt, Evangelium, 184, 192–350 (esp. 281). A three-part structure is evident already in Isocrates’s Euagoras (Frickenschmidt, Evangelium, 108–10; Ytterbrink, Gospel, 76); cf. also Xenophon’s Agesilaus (Beck, “Demonax,” 92–93).
231. See, e.g., the episodes in Life ofAesop (Karla, “Life of Aesop,” 56).
232. Beck, “Demonax,” 85.
233. See Rogers, “Baptism,” on Matthew.
234. Pelling, Texts, 58.
235. Edwards, “Introduction,” x.
236. See, e.g., Cornelius Nepos, On Great Generals 16 (Pelopidas), 3.1; Josephus, Life 336–67; Plutarch, Alexander 35.8.
237. Ytterbrink, Gospel, 227, finds none in Luke.
238. Euagoras 19–20 (Ytterbrink, Gospel, 76, also noting Euagoras 66).
239. Ytterbrink, Gospel, 83; cf. 89, 91. Cf. the Spartan custom digression in Plutarch, Lysander 1.2.
240. Ytterbrink, Gospel, 116; cf. Whitmarsh, “Book,” 307.
241. E.g., Plutarch, Pompey 4.4.
242. Atkinson, “Introduction,” xxix. For a different digression in Arrian, see Bosworth, Arrian, 63–64.
243. See, e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias 13; Cicero, On the Ends of Good and Evil 2.32.104; Letters to Atticus 7.2; Orator ad M. Brutum 40.137–38; 43.148; Brutus 93.322; Pliny, Natural History 28.1.1; Quintilian, Orator’s Education 4.3.1–17; Musonius Rufus 1, p. 34.34; Dio Chrysostom, Orations 12.38; 36.1–6; Josephus, Against Apion 1.57.
244. E.g., Xenophon, Hellenica 7.4.1; Thucydides, History 1.24.1ff. (digressing from 1.23.6); Polybius, Histories 1.41.6–1.42.7; 3.2.7; 3.9.6; 3.39.1; 3.59.9; 5.21.7–9; 6.1.2; 6.50.1; 31.30.4; Sallust, Catiline’s War 5.9–13.5; Justin, Epitome 3.7.16–4.1.18; 17.3.1–22; 18.3.1–18.4.1; 41.1.1–41.3.10; 42.2.7–42.3.9; Livy, History 9.17.1–9.19.17; Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 4.8.1 (with 4.7.ext.2b); Velleius Paterculus, History 1.14.1; 2.38.1–2.40.1; esp. 2.59.1; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.224–251; Tacitus, Histories 2.2; Arrian, Indica 6.1; cf. also Eigler, “Excursus”; Aune, Environment, 102 (citing Josh 5:4–7; 1 Sam 9:9; 2 Kgs 7:6–7; 14:6–7; 17:23–41; 1 Macc 8:1–16); Develin, “Introduction,” 7 (noting Trogus’s ethnographic digressions); Broggiato, “Artemon” (including Artemon’s geographic interests).
245. Bosworth, Arrian, 9–10.
246. Almagor, “Narratives,” 67, citing Livy, History 9.17–19.
247. De Temmerman, “Formalities,” 14, summarizing Hayden White; Becker, Birth, 89–90.
248. Thus some later hagiographic composites of biography and fiction, as in Gray, “Monk,” 117.
249. Branch, Parting.
250. Referring here to the conscious act, not to fragments of memories surfacing in isolation.
251. Brack, Historiography, 6, noting among other sources Ricoeur, Time; Phillips et al., Memory.
252. See, e.g., Dupont, “Question du plan”; Betori, “Strutturazione”; cf. Witherington, Acts, 59, citing Mellor, Tacitus, 70. For the importance of literary cohesiveness in historiography, see, e.g., Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 20.1.1, 5. On “rhetorical unity” in Plutarch’s biographies, see Stadter, “Biography,” 537. Suetonius arranges Tiberius’s biography meaningfully (Thorburn, “Tiberius”).
253. At least not usually; sometimes Plutarch did confuse material (see, e.g., Hammond, Sources, 126–27).
254. See, e.g., Plutarch, Theseus 1.2.
255. Plutarch, Cimon 3.1–3.
256. Ytterbrink, Gospel, 112, on Diogenes Laertius. Note also Dillon, “Interpretation,” 159–60, on Porphyry’s Plotinus and other biographies of that period.
257. Cf. Frickenschmidt, Evangelium, 232; Ytterbrink, Gospel, 117.
258. Edwards, “Introduction,” x (without denying something of a plan; see ix).
259. Edwards, “Introduction,” ix, cites Julius 44; cf. Luke 9:51; Acts 19:21; on advance outlines, see the discussion in Keener, Acts, 1:708–9.
260. Edwards, “Introduction,” ix.
261. Ytterbrink, Gospel, 117–18, 228–29. I am also grateful to Vernon Robbins and Fred Long for dialogue on these points on October 4, 2017.
262. See Stibbe, Gospel, 32–34.
263. On publication, see Keener, Acts, 1:43–50.
264. Talbert, “Chance,” 230.