THE GENRE AND STRUCTURE OF THE GOSPELS AND ACTS

The Chapter at a Glance

Although other theories of Gospel genre have been promoted, it seems most likely that the Gospels and Acts are quite similar to ancient Greco-Roman bioi. The Gospels and Acts creatively present historical events in terms of their theological and pastoral relevance for the church. The narratives of the Gospels and Acts contain other types of literature embedded as subgenres. The Gospels and Acts must be related to the narrative of the Old Testament.

NEW TESTAMENT NARRATIVE GENRE IN GENERAL

"Genre" as an English lexeme derives from French, and in turn from the Latin genus. Typical glosses for the word genre include "type," "sort," "kind," or "class." Plato and Aristotle spoke of literary genre in ancient times. Today, genre theory is a vast area of scholarship as it relates to literature, let alone other communicative endeavors such as spoken discourses, prayers, dramatic performances, and film. Literary genres are abstract mental conceptions of entities one encounters empirically; situations give rise to genres. Genres entail conventional features that readers have come to expect in various situations. Discussions of genre are thus descriptive rather than prescriptive. Taxonomies vary from one theorist to another when it comes to classifying genres, super-genres, and subgenres. Current genre theory emphasizes the social and ideological context of the process or action of writing as well as its end product or form.

The complexity of genre theory aside, it seems clear that the understanding of a text's genre is crucial for its interpretation. As E. D. Hirsch put it, "An interpreter's preliminary generic conception of a text is constitutive of everything that he subsequently understands." One's understanding of what a text means (exegesis) is to a great degree determined by one's understanding of how that text conveys meaning (genre).

Cooperative competence in generic conventions and expectations is necessary for effective acts of literary communication; both the original author and the subsequent readers of a text need to be aware of how such a text should be interpreted, given its internal literary features.

Here is a helpful way of construing genre's role in the interpretive process:

Broad Genre (imprecise, heuristic, open to refinement)

Intrinsic Genre (a set or contract of expectations)

Expectations further refined by reading

Textual meaning (reader shares semantic content intended by author)

VARIOUS VIEWS OF GOSPEL GENRE

Literary scholars present widely diverging approaches to the question of genre. Views range from the idea that every communicative textual act represents its own genre (sui generis) to the approach that insists that all communicative acts are intertextual: Each must of necessity be understood in light of its similarities and differences from other textual communications. Those who believe the biblical account of the creation of Adam and Eve might be inclined to the latter approach, viewing human creation in God's image as enabling effective cooperative communication between God and humans. Such communication is hampered by sin after humans rebel against God (Gen. 3), yet it is still possible by the grace of God.

The question of the genre or genres of the Gospels and Acts has been debated for centuries. Currently the view that the Gospels are to be related to Greco-Roman biographies ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]) has been accepted by many scholars, but through the history of New Testament interpretation many views have surfaced, including the following more prominent ones:

Sui Generis

The view that the uniqueness of the person, teaching, and redemptive work of Jesus Christ necessitates a new and unique kind of literature, the Gospels, is rather common. Kee described Mark as a unique literary creation, "a new genre of literature for which, as a whole, there was no precedent." Among the problems with the sui generis view is the generic resemblance of the Gospels to other ancient forms of literature, including the narratives of the Hebrew Bible and Greco-Roman biographies. Perhaps the most serious problem with the view is linguistic: the necessary interrelatedness of literary genres, what E. D. Hirsch called "the genre-bound character of understanding." A unique genre cannot be imagined by an author, and even if it could be imagined, it would be impossible for a reader to understand it. In the end the sui generis view is a non sequitur, since unique subject matter does not logically require its own unique communicative genre.

Loose Collections of Oral Traditions

Some who held the sui generis view understood the Gospels to be relatively random collections of smaller units of orally transmitted traditions or snippets of written traditions about Jesus. Such vignettes would be arranged somewhat loosely with little or no attention to literary concerns. K. L. Schmidt influentially distinguished the Gospels as naively assembled folk tales (Kleinliteratur) from compositions with literary sophistication (Hochliteratur). Rudolf Bultmann spoke of the Gospels as Kleinliteratur that developed from Christian proclamation. Mark as the first Gospel began a unique literary phenomenon, one so dominated by Christian faith that the Gospels are only with difficulty described as a genre at all. The onset of redaction critical studies of the Gospels, which demonstrated the creative editorial work of the respective evangelists, showed that the Gospels were truly literary documents. The rise of narrative criticism only confirmed what redaction criticism had begun to show. The results of these methods led most scholars to abandon the view that the Gospels were merely loose collections of Jesus traditions.

Aretalogies

Ancient accounts of the exploits and miracles of a heroic divine-human figure ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]) are known as aretalogical literature. In such accounts, the protagonist has been imbued with extraordinary virtue ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]) and manifests divine power through miracles. In ancient times, such works were found in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the wider Greco-Roman world. They included such details as the hero's conspicuous birth, asceticism, wisdom, trials, and martyrdom. A commonly discussed aretalogy is Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana (c. A.D. 225), a work about a philosopher and teacher who flourished in the late first and early second centuries. Morton Smith and other scholars attempted to understand the Gospels as dependent on such works, but several critiqued the association of the two. Clearly the miracles of Jesus were an important part of the Gospels' witness to Jesus, and no doubt some early readers of the Gospels were familiar with aretalogical literature, but there is much debate over what constitutes aretalogy as a genre and whether such a genre actually existed, let alone whether this putative genre served as a model for the Gospels.

Midrash

The term midrash comes from [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], which describes seeking or asking. It has come to refer to a wide spectrum of textual interpretation. Jewish midrashim are typically categorized as halakhic (close textual exegesis of details in Torah texts) and haggadic (a homily based on a biblical text or figure). The origins of midrash are perhaps as early as the Chronicler's reworking of 1–2 Samuel and 1–2 Kings. In terms of the genre of the Gospels, the haggadic or homiletical midrashim are most relevant.

Those who attempt to connect the Gospels with midrash draw an analogy between the imaginative retelling of biblical stories in Jewish midrash and the way in which the Gospels allude to the OT, as well as the way in which (assuming Markan priority) Matthew and Luke use Mark in composing their respective narratives. Similarity of method, however, even if it is granted, does not amount to identity of genre. The Gospels are not as a whole interpretations or elaborations of the OT. Certain scholars argued, however, that individual pericopes within the Gospels were created without historical basis. Goulder argued that pericopes were creatively composed as a lectionary to correspond to the three-year cycle of OT texts read in the synagogue. Gundry held that Matthew created certain pericopes as counterparts to stories found in Mark or Luke. For example, he understood the story of the magi (Matt. 2:1–12) as a fictional embellishment of Luke's narrative of the angelic annunciation to the shepherds (Luke 2:8–20). As an evangelical with a high view of Scripture, Gundry argued that Matthew's audience would have known which parts of Matthew were rooted in historical tradition and which were midrashic embellishments. This contention, however, was unproven, if not unprovable. Gundry's analogy between Jewish midrash on ancient canonical texts and Matthew's use of recent synoptic tradition was not widely persuasive.

Quasi-Old Testament Narratives

Since the authors of the Gospels were familiar with the Old Testament (OT) and viewed Jesus as its fulfillment, it seems plausible that the Gospel narratives would resemble the OT narratives. Further, since the authors of the Gospels viewed Jesus as fulfilling in some sense the roles of Moses and the prophets, it would not be surprising if their accounts of Jesus resembled OT accounts of prophetic figures. Various scholars have written to demonstrate such similarities. Although some OT books contain sections that narrate the lives of noteworthy individuals, there are no clear parallels to the lengthy Gospel narratives as entire compositions wholly devoted to the words and deeds of Jesus.

Apostolic Recollections

The oral testimony of eyewitnesses ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]) and early ministers ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]) of Jesus traditions was important to the author of the Gospel according to Luke 1:2. The early church likewise highly valued such sources. According to Eusebius (c. A.D. 325), Papias (c. A.D. 125) placed higher value on testimony received from contemporaries of Jesus's apostles than from books (Hist. eccl. 3.39.4). Eusebius speaks of the Gospels according to Matthew and John as recollections ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]) written down only after attention was first given to preaching and teaching (Hist. eccl. 3.34.5). Similarly Eusebius cites Irenaeus (c. A.D. 180) to the effect that Mark as Peter's interpreter composed his Gospel from Peter's preaching, and Luke as Paul's companion recorded Paul's preaching in Acts (Hist. eccl. 5.8.3). The oral transmission of Jesus's words and deeds has been much discussed of late, with emphasis on both original eyewitness testimony and subsequent community control of Jesus traditions. Scholars tend to distinguish between an earlier oral period and a later period when written Gospels were produced, but recently Walton and Sandy have argued that oral and written Gospels existed side by side into the second century.

Greco-Roman Biographies

Although previous scholars had drawn attention to the similarities between the Gospels and Greco-Roman biographies, the work of R. A. Burridge has more recently brought this view into near consensus. Burridge compares the Gospels to Greco-Roman biographies, including works earlier than the NT by Xenophon and Isocrates (fourth century B.C.) and works later than the NT by Tacitus and Plutarch. His study compares four generic features of each:

1. Opening features (whether there is a title, nature of the prologue of preface)

2. Subject (how the protagonist is portrayed, verbal subjects, allocation of space)

3. External features (mode of presentation, length, structure, scale, literary units)

4. Internal features (style, tone, quality, content, social setting, purpose)

Burridge concludes that the similarity of all four Gospels to ancient biographies demonstrates that they should be viewed as a subgenre, [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], that has affinities with [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] of ancient philosophers. The differences between the four Gospels are not generic; all four Gospels resemble each other sufficiently to view them as of one genre.

Mark represents the initial stage of the subgenre, with Matthew and Luke as a second stage adding infancy narratives and clearer structure. John with its emphasis on Jesus's discourses and dialogues may also be viewed as part of this second stage. Certain of the noncanonical "gospels" (e.g., the unpreserved "Jewish-Christian" gospels of the Nazarenes and the Ebionites) represent a third stage, while others that lack narrative (e.g., the Gospel of Thomas) represent another genre altogether.

One may grant the impact of the OT narratives on the way the respective evangelists wrote their Gospels. It is also important to note the crucial role played by eyewitnesses and community tradents in passing on reliable testimony of Jesus's words and deeds. Yet as ancient written literature, the Gospels should be viewed as [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]. Others before Burridge argued for this view, and his refinement of the view has merited generally positive reviews. The biographical nature of the Gospels will be assumed in this handbook.

The Genre of Acts

Acts presents generic complexities that continue to divide scholarly opinion. The intentional pairing of Acts with Luke implies some sort of generic unity or at least compatibility of the two books. Their respective plots, points of view, and theological themes are closely related. Yet the books circulated separately, and each can be understood as a discrete composition in its own right. Some scholars have viewed Acts along with Luke as [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.], yet a greater number take it as a history or monograph. Burridge acknowledges that Acts is similar to the Gospels in certain ways, but also notes how Acts focuses on more than one individual and covers a wider scene. On the other hand, it seems clear that the internal linkage of the two books renders any generic differences to secondary importance. Acts presents the sequential exploits of the followers of Jesus, the subject of the Third Gospel's [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.]. Acts is a quasi-biography of the church, a corporate protagonist in literary terms. In a theological sense, Acts presents the ongoing [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII.] of Jesus, who from heaven sends the Spirit to empower his followers, just as the Father had empowered him at his baptism. As Luke's Gospel presented what Jesus empowered by the Spirit began to do and teach (Acts 1:1), so Luke's Acts presents what Jesus continued to do and teach through his Spirit-empowered followers, the church. "The conjunction of the Gospel and Acts in a single work does at least suggest a biographic emphasis in much of the larger historic project."

Relating the Historical, Literary, and Theological Features of the Gospels and Acts

Scholars who view the Gospels as imaginative documents produced to meet the later church's needs rather than to transmit historically reliable Jesus traditions are featured from time to time in popular news accounts. Such scholars think the Gospel stories tend to reflect the situations and controversies of the post-A.D. 70 church rather than the historical Jesus. At the opposite end of the theological spectrum, conservative evangelicals have at times been reluctant to view the Gospels as theologically motivated, because of apologetic concerns over the historicity of the Gospel traditions. Evangelicals have rightly responded in defense of the historical reliability of the Gospels, but stressing historicity alone may diminish the theological import of the Gospels.

Others have neglected the theological witness of the Gospels and derived theology from the epistles of the NT, especially those of Paul. This history vs. theology dichotomy is false, whether in a conservative de-theologizing context or in a liberal de-historicizing context. The Gospels narrate what really happened but do so for theological and pastoral reasons. According to Luke's prologue, Luke did careful research in order to ascertain the reliability of oral and written traditions so that Theophilus might be taught reliable truths about Jesus. If one may extrapolate from Luke to the Gospels in general, their procedure was to transmit the Jesus traditions they had received with a view to meeting the needs of the church, which included the historical basis of faith in Christ.

The Gospels are not comprehensive biographies or exhaustive histories of Jesus. A perusal of any Gospel synopsis or harmony dispels that notion. The Gospels are theological interpretations of selected traditions that the authors accepted as reliable accounts of historical events that occurred during the life and ministry of Jesus. Historical fidelity leads to the overall continuity in the Synoptic Gospels' accounts. Literary creativity and theological selectivity account for the differences between the accounts. If John 20:30–31 provides a model, the theological purposes of the evangelists guided their editing of tradition, leading to literary narratives, not historical chronicles. Their purpose was not to satisfy intellectual curiosity by compiling historical data but to disciple the church by bringing selected episodes from the life of Jesus to bear on the church's needs. The Gospels continue to teach the church today by narrating reliable words and deeds of Jesus. The Gospel authors faithfully present story as history and creatively interpret history as story.