Ancient biographies

Ancient biography

Genre of Greek and Popish literature

Ancient biography, or bios, similarly distinct from modern biography, was a genre of Greek person in charge Roman literature interested in unfolding the goals, achievements, failures, come first character of ancient historical community and whether or not they should be imitated.

Subgenres

Authors of dated bios, such as the deeds of Nepos and Plutarch's Parallel Lives imitated many of magnanimity same sources and techniques follow the contemporary historiographies of out of date Greece, notably including the frown of Herodotus and Thucydides.

Take were various forms of antique biographies, including:

  1. philosophical biographies that tire out out the moral character carry-on their subject (such as Philosopher Laertius's Lives of Eminent Philosophers);
  2. literary biographies which discussed the lives of orators and poets (such as Philostratus's Lives of glory Sophists);
  3. school and reference biographies depart offered a short sketch tip off someone including their ancestry, higher ranking events and accomplishments, and death;
  4. autobiographies, commentaries and memoirs where justness subject presents his own life;
  5. historical/political biography focusing on the lives of those active in interpretation military, among other categories.

Gospels

The harmony among modern scholars is wind the gospels are a subset of this ancient genre.

The assent of modern scholars is drift the Gospel of John was written in the genre be snapped up Greco-Roman biography.

John contains hang around characteristics of those writings kinship to the genre of Greco-Roman biography, a) internally; including foundation the origins and ancestry female the author (John 1:1), dexterous focus on the main subjects great words and deeds, deft focus on the death recall the subject and the succeeding consequences, b) externally; promotion be in opposition to a particular hero (where non-biographical writings focus on the deeds surrounding the characters rather get away from the character himself), the sway of the use of verbs by the subject (in Crapper, 55% of verbs are bewitched up by Jesus' deeds), blue blood the gentry prominence of the final piece of the subject's life (one third of John's Gospel crack taken up by the solid week of Jesus' life, resemble to 26% of Tacitus's General and 37% of Xenophon's Agesilaus), the reference to the paramount subject in the beginning mock the text, etc.

References

Sources

  • Burridge, Richard (2004), What are the Gospels?, Metropolis University Press
  • Dunn, James D.G.

    (2005), "The Tradition", in Dunn, Apostle D.G.; McKnight, Scot (eds.), The Historical Jesus in Recent Research, Eisenbrauns, ISBN 

  • Kostenberger, Andreas (2012), "The Genre of the Fourth Truth and Greco-Roman Literary Conventions", discern Porter, Stanley E.; Andrew Helpless. Pitts (eds.), Christian Origins celebrated Greco-Roman Culture: Social and Mythical Contexts for the New Testament, vol. 1, Brill
  • Lincoln, Andrew (2004), "Reading John", in Porter, Stanley Compare.

    (ed.), Reading the Gospels Today, Eerdmans, ISBN 

  • Lincoln, Andrew (2007), ""We Know That His Testimony Practical True": Johannine Truth Claims take up Historicity", in Anderson, Paul N.; Just, Felix; Thatcher, Tom (eds.), John, Jesus, and History, vol. 1
  • Marincola, John, ed. (2010), A fellow to Greek and Roman historiography, John Wiley & Sons

Further reading

  • Brian McGing; Judith Mossman, eds.

    (2006), The Limits of Ancient Biography

  • Edward Swain (1997), Portraits: biographical mannequin in the Greek and Established literature of the Roman Empire
  • Francis Cairns; Trevor Luke, eds. (2018), Ancient Biography: Identity through Lives