Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels

Description

Demonstrates the reliability of the canonical gospels by exploring the genre of ancient biography The canonical gospels are ancient biographies, narratives of Jesus’s life. The authors of these gospels were intentional in how they handled historical information and sources. Building on recent work in the study of ancient biographies, Craig Keener argues that the writers of the canonical gospels followed the literary practices of other biographers in their day. In Christobiography he explores the character of ancient biography and urges students and scholars to appreciate the gospel writers’ method and degree of accuracy in recounting the ministry of Jesus. Keener’s Christobiography has far-reaching implications for the study of the canonical gospels and historical-Jesus research. Table of Contents: Introduction Part 1. Biographies about Jesus             2. Not a Novel Proposal             3. Examples and Development of Ancient Biography             4. What Sort of Biographies Are the Gospels?             5. What Did First-Century Audiences Expect of Biographies? Part 2 Biographies and History             6. Biographies and Historical Information             7. What Historical Interests Meant in Antiquity             8. Luke-Acts as Biohistory             9. Sources Close to the Events Part 3. Testing the Range of Deviation             10. Case Studies: Biographies of Recent Characters Use Prior Information             11. Flex Room: Literary Techniques in Ancient Biographies Part 4. Two Objections to Gospels as Historical Biographies             12. What about Miracles?             13. What about John? Part 5. Memories about Jesus: Memories before Memoirs             14. Memory Studies             15. Jesus Was a Teacher             16. Oral Tradition, Oral History             17. The Implications of This Study Title Page Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations 1. Introduction 1.1. Jesus in Ancient Historians 1.2. What Can Be Known about Jesus? 1.3. Why Historical-Jesus Research Needs the Gospels 1.4. Default Expectations and the Gospels 1.5. We Know More about Jesus Than We Think: Ancient Biography 1.6. We Know Less about Jesus Than We Want: What History Remembers 1.7. My Procedure 1.8. Conclusion Part 1. Biographies about Jesus 2. Not a Novel Proposal 2.1. Coming Full Circle 2.2. Implications for Historical Information 2.3. What Were Ancient Biographies? 2.4. A Unique Genre? 2.5. Hysterical History or Knowledgeable Novels? 2.5a. A Romantic Jesus? 2.5b. Novelistic Biographies or Historical Novels? 2.5c. The Cyropaedia, Life of Apollonius, and Alexander Romance 2.5d. The Fabled Aesop 2.5e. Entertaining Novel Hypotheses 2.6. The Lives of the Poets 2.7. Errant Aretalogies? 2.8. Fictionalized Elements in Historical Biographies 2.9. Conclusion 3. Examples and Development of Ancient Biography 3.1. Protobiography and Early Greek Biography 3.1a. Isocrates’s Euagoras 3.1b. Xenophon’s Agesilaus 3.1c. Xenophon’s “Memoirs” about Socrates 3.1d. Aristotelians and Aristoxenus 3.1e. The Hellenistic Era 3.2. Nearly Nepotism: Cornelius Nepos 3.3. Biographies in the Empire 3.3a. Philo’s Life of Moses 3.3b. Josephus’s Historiography 3.3c. Josephus’s Autobiography 3.3d. Tacitus’s Agricola 3.3e. Plutarch’s Lives 3.3f. Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars 3.3g. Lucian’s Demonax 3.3h. Philostratus’s Lives of the Sophists 3.3i. Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 3.4. Later Biographies and Hagiography 3.5. Lives of the Prophets 3.6. Other Early Jewish Sources for the Biographic Form? 3.7. Conclusion 4. What Sort of Biographies Are the Gospels? 4.1. Kinds of Biographies 4.1a. Leo’s Lineage for Biographies: Chronological versus Topical 4.1b. Talbert’s Types, Burridge on Biographies: Functions and Purposes 4.1c. Typologies with Historical Concerns 4.2. Biographies of Sages 4.3. The Reliability of Diogenes Laertius’s Biographies 4.4. More than a Sage 4.5. Conclusion 5. What Did First-Century Audiences Expect of Biographies? 5.1. Adaptations in Biographies 5.2. Biographic Biases 5.2a. Rhetoric and Personal Commitments 5.2b. Biases and Information 5.2c. Bragging or Ragging on Biographees: Balancing Biases 5.2d. The Gospels Honor Jesus 5.3. More Morals, Not Less Lessons 5.4. Interpretations and Information 5.5. Characteristic Care for Character 5.6. Chronic Chronology? Ancient Biographies Were Not All Chronological 5.7. Anecdotes and Chreiai 5.8. Structural Issues 5.9. Plot 5.10. Conclusion Part 2. Biographies and History 6. Biographies and Historical Information 6.1. Default Expectations 6.2. Biography as a Form of Historical Writing 6.2a. Biography and Historiography 6.2b. A Range of Flexibility 6.3. The Gospels as Historiography? 6.3a. History More than Biography? 6.3b. Biography More than History? 6.3c. An Overlap More Significant than the Difference 6.4. “Biographic Features” Missing in the Gospels? 6.4a. Applying Appearance 6.4b. Background, Birth, and Upbringing 6.5. Can a Biography Take the Form of an Extended Passion Narrative? 6.6. Use of Sources 6.7. Conclusion 7. What Historical Interests Meant in Antiquity 7.1. Concerns for Rhetorical Presentation 7.2. Speaking of Rhetoric . . . 7.3. Balancing Readers’ Enjoyment and Truth 7.4. Buying into Bias? 7.5. Inferring Motives 7.6. History and Agendas 7.6a. Political and National Agendas 7.6b. Historians’ Moral Agendas 7.6c. The Value of Moral Examples 7.6d. Historians’ “Theology” 7.7. Editorial Perspectives and “True” History 7.8. Concerns for Historical Information 7.8a. Historians’ Concern for Accuracy? 7.8b. Investigation 7.8c. Peer Review: Developing Consensus Standards 7.9. Historians Used Sources 7.9a. Examples of Source-Usage 7.9b. Critical Use of Historical Sources 7.9c. Historians and Critical Thinking 7.10. Conclusion 8. Luke-Acts as Biohistory 8.1. A Special Case: Is Luke’s Gospel Historical Monograph or Historical Biography? 8.1a. The Mixture 8.1b. Luke’s Preface 8.1c. Luke’s Claim of “Thorough Familiarity” (Luke 1:3) 8.1d. Luke’s Predecessors 8.1e. Confirmation (Luke 1:4) 8.2. Luke’s History and Rhetoric 8.2a. Luke’s Rhetorical Level? 8.2b. Parallelism 8.3. Apologetic Historiography 8.4. Conclusion 9. Sources Close to the Events 9.1. Legends Rising Early, Retiring Late 9.2. Distrusting the Distant Past? 9.3. Wits about Witnesses 9.4. Reasoning about Recent History 9.5. Narrowing the Gap for Earlier Figures 9.6. Valuing Some Historical Distance for Contemporary History 9.7. The Gospels and Recent Information 9.8. Conclusion Part 3. Testing the Range of Deviation 10. Case Studies: Biographies of Recent Characters Use Prior Information 10.1. Minimizing Minimalism? 10.2. How to Evaluate Particular Biographies 10.3. Other Comparisons 10.4. The Most Useful Analogies? 10.5. Lives of Otho 10.5a. Objectives and Methods 10.5b. Omitting Omissions 10.5c. Listing Parallels and Some Differences 10.5d. Samples of Differences 10.5e. Differences because of Genre 10.5f. Points of Contact 10.5g. Use of Sources 10.5h. Conclusions regarding Otho Material 10.6. Comparing Other Greek and Roman Biographies 10.7. Comparing Diaspora Jewish Works 10.7a. Josephus versus the Septuagint 10.7b. Josephus versus Josephus 10.8. Conclusion 11. Flex Room: Literary Techniques in Ancient Biographies 11.1. Flexibility in Ancient Biography 11.2. Flexibility in the Gospels 11.3. Acceptable Differences: Philo, Josephus, Plutarch 11.3a. Adjustments in Philo 11.3b. Adjustments in Josephus 11.3c. Adjustments in Plutarch 11.4. Surveying Some Literary Techniques 11.5. Expanding and Abridging 11.6. Composition Practices 11.7. The Degree of Adaptation in the Gospels 11.8. Conclusion Part 4. Two Objections to Gospels as Historical Biographies 12. What about Miracles? 12.1. Paranormal Experiences in Ancient Sources 12.2. The Early Christian Worldview 12.3. Evidence for Jesus as a Healer 12.4. A Nonbiographic Alternative? 12.5. Miracle Reports Can Come from Eyewitnesses 12.6. Conclusion 13. What about John? 13.1. John’s Distinctiveness 13.2. John versus Mark 13.3. John not-so-versus Mark 13.3a. The Overlap 13.3b. The Differences 13.4. Conclusion Part 5. Memories about Jesus: Memories before Memoirs 14. Memory Studies 14.1. Fixity and Fluidity 14.2. Everyday Assumptions about Long-Term Memory 14.3. Reconstructive Recollection 14.3a. Nixing Dean’s Faculties? A Neisser Reading 14.3b. Memory Frailties 14.3c. Suggestibility 14.3d. Bias 14.3e. Time Zone Out: Chronological Conflations 14.3f. What Such Limitations Mean 14.4. Verbatim Is Verboten 14.4a. Verbatim Recall Is Very Rare 14.4b. Except for Exceptions . . . 14.5. Functional though Fallible 14.5a. Memory Usually Refers to Something 14.5b. Kinds of Memories Preserved 14.5c. Rehearsal 14.6. Transience and the Longevity of Memories 14.7. Conclusion 15. Jesus Was a Teacher 15.1. Eyewitnesses 15.1a. Evangelists Would Heed Eyewitnesses 15.1b. Apostolic Connections? 15.1c. How Accurate Is Eyewitness Memory? 15.2. The Collective Memory of Eyewitnesses 15.2a. Experiments and Experiences 15.2b. A Telephone Game? 15.2c. Strengths and Weaknesses of Collective Memory 15.2d. Collective Memory and the Overall Portrait of Jesus 15.3. The Sage and His Disciples 15.3a. Passing On Teachings 15.3b. Extraordinary Memory in Antiquity 15.3c. Memory in Ancient Education 15.3d. Ancient Jewish Memory 15.3e. Re-re-re-repeating 15.3f. Taking Note of Note-Taking 15.3g. So What about Jesus and His Disciples? 15.4. What about the Witnesses’ Illiteracy? 15.4a. Was Everyone in the Movement’s First Generation Illiterate? 15.4b. Did They Need to Be Literate to Pass On Information? 15.4c. Memory among Nonelites: General Considerations 15.4d. Memory among Nonelites: Ancient Reports 15.5. What Should Genuine Memories Look Like? 15.6. Conclusion 16. Oral Tradition, Oral History 16.1. Critically Reforming Form Criticism? 16.2. Oral Tradition: Connecting Past and Present 16.3. But a Past Actually Happened 16.4. Examples of Distorted Oral Tradition 16.5. Examples of Tenacious Oral Tradition 16.6. Just the Gist 16.7. Traditional Middle Eastern Memory 16.7a. Some Examples 16.7b. The Role of Prominent Tradents 16.7c. Ancient Mediterranean Memory 16.8. Living Memory 16.8a. Some Eighty Years of Living Memory 16.8b. Mark Comes from the Period of Living Memory 16.9. Expect Variations 16.10. Reticence to Invent Jesus Tradition 16.11. Examples of Early Judean/Galilean Traits 16.12. Memorable Forms 16.13. Sayings Reflecting Jesus’s Environment 16.14. Implications 16.15. Conclusion 17. The Implications of This Study Bibliography of Secondary Sources Cited Index of Authors Index of Subjects Index of Scripture References Index of Ancient Sources