APPENDIX 3 - Jewish Biographical Conventions
APPENDIX 3
Jewish Biographical Conventions
Penned in Greek probably to Diaspora audiences, the canonical Gospels reflect Greco-Roman rather than strictly Palestinian Jewish literary conventions.1 That is, as Diaspora works they share more external characteristics with Diaspora or aristocratic Palestinian Jewish biographies in Greek than they do with many of the Palestinian works composed in Hebrew or Aramaic. Such a statement does not detract from the Jewishness of the Gospels; Jewish historical writing in Greek generally adopted Greek historiographic conventions.2
In contrast to other Greco-Roman biographies, however, the Gospels, like Diaspora Jewish historical texts, retained considerable stylistic and theological influence from the Greek version of the Old Testament. Further, the Gospels vary among themselves as to the degree of their Palestinian character: Matthew and John, whose ideal audiences apparently have closer continuing ties with Palestinian Judaism, probably reflect more Palestinian literary influences than Mark and Luke do.3 Because of Palestinian Jewish influences in some of the gospel material, we should examine some forms of Palestinian Jewish literature (though apart from Josephus’ hellenistic autobiogaphy, none of these are precisely biography).