''Ancient biography'', or ''bios'', as distinct from modern biography, was a genre of Greek (and Roman) literature interested in describing the goals, achievements, failures, and character of ancient historical persons and whether or not they should be imitated.
Genre
Ancient biography, or ''bios'', as distinct from modern biography, was a genre of
Greco-Roman literature interested in describing the goals, achievements, failures, and character of ancient historical persons and whether or not they should be imitated.
Authors of ancient ''bios'', such as the works of
Nepos and
Plutarch
Plutarch (; grc-gre, Πλούταρχος, ''Ploútarchos''; ; – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for hi ...
's ''
Parallel Lives'' imitated many of the same sources and techniques of the contemporary historiographies of ancient Greece, notably including the works of
Herodotus
Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer
A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society ...
and
Thucydides
Thucydides (; grc, , }; BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His '' History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of " scienti ...
. There were various forms of ancient biographies, including:
# philosophical biographies that brought out the moral character of their subject (such as
Diogenes Laertius
Diogenes Laërtius ( ; grc-gre, Διογένης Λαέρτιος, ; ) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Nothing is definitively known about his life, but his surviving ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a principal sour ...
's ''
Lives of Eminent Philosophers'');
# literary biographies which discussed the lives of orators and poets (such as
Philostratus
Philostratus or Lucius Flavius Philostratus (; grc-gre, Φιλόστρατος ; c. 170 – 247/250 AD), called "the Athenian", was a Greek sophist of the Roman imperial period. His father was a minor sophist of the same name. He was born probab ...
's ''
Lives of the Sophists'');
# school and reference biographies that offered a short sketch of someone including their ancestry, major events and accomplishments, and death;
# autobiographies, commentaries and memoirs where the subject presents his own life;
# historical/political biography focusing on the lives of those active in the military, among other categories.
The Four Gospels
The consensus among modern scholars is that the gospels are a subset of this ancient genre of ''bios'', or
biography
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...
.
Gospel of John
The consensus of modern scholars is that the Gospel of John was written in the genre of Greco-Roman biography.
[Burridge, Richard. ''What are the Gospels?'' Cambridge University Press, 2004, 213-233.] John contains many characteristics of those writings belonging to the genre of Greco-Roman biography, a) internally; including establishing the origins and ancestry of the author (John 1:1), a focus on the main subjects great words and deeds, a focus on the death of the subject and the subsequent consequences, b) externally; promotion of a particular hero (where non-biographical writings focus on the events surrounding the characters rather than the character himself), the domination of the use of verbs by the subject (in John, 55% of verbs are taken up by Jesus' deeds), the prominence of the final portion of the subjects life (one third of John's Gospel is taken up by the last week of Jesus' life, comparable to 26% of
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars.
The surviving portions of his two major works—the ...
's Agricola and 37% of
Xenophon
Xenophon of Athens (; grc, Ξενοφῶν ; – probably 355 or 354 BC) was a Greek military leader, philosopher, and historian, born in Athens. At the age of 30, Xenophon was elected commander of one of the biggest Greek mercenary armies o ...
's Agesilaus), the reference to the main subject in the beginning of the text, etc.
[Kostenberger, Andreas "The Genre of the Fourth Gospel and Greco-Roman Literary Conventions," in Porter, Stanley E., and Andrew W. Pitts, eds. Christian Origins and Greco-Roman Culture: Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament. Vol. 1. Brill, 2012, 445-463, esp. 449.]
References
Sources
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Further reading
*Brian McGing & Judith Mossman (ed.) (2006, ''The Limits of Ancient Biography''
*Edward Swain (1997), Portraits: biographical representation in the Greek and Latin literature of the Roman Empire
*Francis Cairns & Trevor Luke (ed.) (2018), ''Ancient Biography: Identity through Lives''
Greek literature
Ancient Roman culture
Gospel Books