Ancient biography differed from modern biography in some respects, including in how it treated historical information.108 For instance, ancient biographies sometimes differed from their modern namesake by beginning in the protagonist’s adulthood, as in many political biographies,109 the first-century Life of Aesop110 or in Mark’s Gospel.
In contrast to modern historical biography, ancient biographers also did not need to follow a chronological sequence; most felt free to rearrange their material topically.111 This pattern is particularly obvious in Suetonius.112 Some scholars maintain that one kind of biographies were literary biographies ordered chronologically, insofar as was possible;113 they suggest that Alexandrian biographies were arranged more systematically or topically.114 In practice, these types were never followed exactly and chronological biographies appear to have been rare.115 Insofar as we employ such types, however, Luke seems to fall closer to the former category (following the order of Mark virtually exactly except for a few, perhaps two, very significant exceptions), whereas Matthew follows the more common topical format (compare e.g., his five topical discourse sections).
Lack of chronological sequence posed no problems for readers of ancient biographies. Many Jewish interpreters doubted that the biblical accounts of Moses at Sinai were arranged chronologically.116 Nor did early Christians expect the Gospels to reflect chronological sequence: Augustine suggested the Evangelists wrote their Gospels as God recalled the accounts to their memory; 117 as early as the early second century some Christian leaders claimed that Mark wrote what he heard from Jesus’ disciple Peter, but Peter did not narrate it (hence Mark did not write it) in the sequence in which it occurred.118 The earliest traditions were oral, and oral performance can vary the sequence of events.119
Some also argue that ancient biography, in contrast to modern biography or novels, plays down characterization; this distinction, however, is not accurate. Characterization was often developed by how a story was told rather than specific comments,120 but comments about a person’s character do appear in many biographies.121 Certainly ancient narrators in various genres did care about characterization.122 We catch glimpses of even Jesus’ struggles in the Gospels (e.g., Mk 14:32-42). Yet if Jesus is a “flat” rather than multidimensioned character in many Gospel accounts, it may be because he was considered consistently positive, and because the writers esteemed him too highly to tamper with the limited tradition on such matters.123
Ancient biographers were also often less embarrassed by their biases than are their modern counterparts. We shall note in a later chapter Greco-Roman (and Jewish) historians’ emphasis on moral (and often political and theological) lessons. Like other kinds of historical writers, biographers frequently sought to teach moral lessons from their stories;124 one might in a sense learn from great teachers of the past by proxy, as students of their recorded teachings.125
Biographers may in fact have felt a special obligation to provide such moral lessons. Thus the pre-Christian biographer Cornelius Nepos declares that biographers dwelt on the virtues of their subject in ways that historians did not, and intended their work for less technical audiences.126 Ancients permitted biography more freedom to be one-sided in praise than was appropriate for academic history.127 Biographers also could write for apologetic and polemical reasons. 128 Some ancient biographers emphasize moral lessons in their stories more than others do; some writers, like Plutarch, vary in their moralizing even from one biography to the next.129
At the same time, the particular perspectives of such documents do not destroy their historical value for us. As the Jewish scholar Geza Vermes points out, “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. 130 The better historians like Polybius felt that their work should include praise and blame for individuals, but that they should pursue truth and fairness,131 properly evaluating the right distribution of praise and blame.132 Biographers felt free to critique their heroes’ shortcomings,133 and most biographies mixed some measure of praise and blame.134 Plutarch, for example, insists that it is necessary to include failings in the biography of a good person, but to give the right balance.135
Biographers of teachers could include a less than flattering story even about one’s own teacher, though apt to report especially favorable matters about him.136 One could also criticize some activities of other figures one regarded highly.137 Of course some teachers were regarded as exceptional; the earlier writer Xenophon has only good to report about Socrates,138 and it is hardly likely that early Christians would find flaws in one they worshiped.139 But normally disciples respected their teachers enough to preserve and transmit their teachers’ views accurately, even when they disagreed with them, rather than to distort their teachers’ views to fit the disciples’ own.140 (This might be the more true with a teacher they venerated.) Further, when one’s source could not recall the substance of a speech a biographer might not try to reproduce it.141
