The Genre and Relationships of the Gospels

As works of ancient literature, the canonical Gospels do not fit neatly into any particular genre. Some have stressed their Jewish character, especially their continuity with the narrative traditions and themes of Israel’s Scriptures, while others look for analogies in Greco-Roman literature. Although the oral qualities of the Gospels have been underlined so far, when the story of Jesus was committed to writing in the second half of the first century CE, the authors made use of literary forms available in the culture. Before the Gospel of Mark, the memory of Jesus was preserved and recounted orally in story and ritual. The Gospel of Mark is the first known attempt to render into a cohesive narrative the oral legacy of Jesus. In this respect, the Gospel of Mark signals an important transition in which a more fluid oral tradition was transformed into a more fixed literary tradition that became the standard and primary source for subsequent narrative interpretations of Jesus. Since the Gospels emerged from a Jewish messianic movement, Israel’s Scriptures provided a lens for interpreting the Jesus tradition, and also served as a literary template. At the same time, to communicate the message of and about Jesus to a growing number of followers and would-be followers, it was essential to find some common cultural ground. So there are points of connection with both Jewish and Greco-Roman literary forms.

As Richard Burridge has argued, there are similarities between the Gospels and Greco-Roman biographies (Burridge, 185–211). The structure of the Gospels is broadly biographical, tracing Jesus’ public ministry in chronological sequence. However, the disproportionate amount of narrative space devoted to the last week of Jesus’ life distinguishes it from the typical Greco-Roman biography. Some elements from the ancient biography genre, such as anecdotes and sayings of particular teachers, known as chreiai, bear some resemblance to Justin Martyr’s description of the Gospels as “the memoirs of the apostles,” but, as Loveday Alexander points out, “the precise literary form adopted by Mark’s performance of the Jesus story is hard to match in the Greek biographical tradition” (Alexander, 27). She suggests that the Gospel narratives have more in common with the folktale, which blends some characteristics from biographical tradition with oral traditional literature. The folktale is more a mode of composition and performance than a genre. Like folktales, the Gospels are focused to a remarkable degree on the action of the hero (Alexander, 18). This is especially true of the Gospel of Mark. Alexander cautions against drawing too firm a distinction between action and teaching in the Gospels because many of the action episodes are didactic. Nonetheless, the narratives as a whole give prominence to Jesus’ public activity, and this is different from Hellenistic biographies of the philosopher or poet whose life exemplified virtues to be emulated. The Gospels provide virtually no information about Jesus’ private existence nor insight into his interior life. A counterpart to the Greco-Roman biography in Jewish literature is the “biography of the prophets,” which was concerned with office and function. Helmut Koester has suggested that the Gospel of Mark in particular follows the framework of the “biography of the prophets” because the primary concern in the story of Jesus’ suffering and death is the legitimation of his office (Koester, 27–28).

A strong case can be made for the literature of the Hebrew Bible having the greatest influence on the literary form of the Gospels. Much of the narrative of the Hebrew Bible is composed of biographical “story cycles” that feature the exploits and achievements of key protagonists such as Abraham, Moses, or Elijah (Alexander, 27). The paradigmatic significance of the Moses and Elijah traditions in the depiction of Jesus as a prophet has already been discussed, but another critical aspect of the Hebrew Bible narratives is that the tales of these heroic figures were, in Alexander’s words, “subordinated to the overall narrative style and goals of a purposeful religious, ethical, and national work” (Alexander, 27). Like the biblical narratives on which they are patterned, the Gospels tell the story of Jesus as a continuation of the story of Israel after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. They are organized around key themes from the Hebrew Bible such as covenant, kingdom, exodus, prophecy, Suffering Servant, Messiah, Son of God, son of man, and so on, which were pressed into service to cast Jesus as the divinely appointed leader of the covenant community

Among the various reasons the Gospels were written, the destruction of the temple in 70 CE was a watershed event that profoundly influenced the composition of all four canonical Gospels. There is general agreement that the Gospel of Mark was written shortly after Jerusalem was conquered. The rebellion against Rome that began with the wars that broke out in 66 CE culminated with the burning of the temple in Jerusalem. There is general agreement that the Gospel of Mark was written around this time, either just before or after 70 CE, the date that marks the end of Second Temple Judaism. For more than five hundred years, the temple stood not only as the main religious institution of Judaism but also the axis around which its view of reality revolved. Jews regarded it as the axis mundi, the center of the cosmos, and believed that when the temple liturgy was performed properly it perpetuated a symmetry between heaven and earth. So the end of the temple not only raised theological questions about faithfulness, both God’s and the covenant people’s, but also ignited a debate about the future of Israel.

Mark’s story of Jesus engaged this debate by presenting Jesus as the leader of the covenant people and therefore as the key to Israel’s future after the destruction of the temple. At the beginning of the narrative, at his baptism by John in the Jordan, Jesus is described as being anointed by the Spirit and hearing a divine voice from heaven that declared, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). These words are a conflation of Ps. 2:7 and Isa. 42:1; Psalm 2 is an enthronement psalm acclaiming the newly anointed king as God’s son. So before Jesus even began his renewal movement in Galilee and the surrounding villages, hearers are informed that he has already been designated as the one through whom God will lead the people. (The “son of God” title ascribed to Jesus defines his role as God’s representative who mediates divine power and sovereignty; it should not be confused with later creedal formulations in which language of Jesus as “Son” is interpreted to mean that he has a divine nature.) Mark’s story operates on two levels. On one hand, historical sources are used to recount Jesus’ activity in Galilee and Jerusalem. But the story is told from a post-70-CE perspective, after Jesus, having been executed by that same imperial power that destroyed the temple, is believed to have been vindicated and appointed by God to lead Israel and the nations in the “way of the Lord” (Mark 1:3). The phrase “way of the Lord” comes from Isaiah and is an allusion to the hope and promise of a new exodus. But in Mark, the “way,” as in, Jesus and the disciples were “on the way,” is also a metaphor for the pattern of life taught and modeled by Jesus (e.g., Mark 4:4, 15; 8:27; 9:33; 10:32).

The word that is translated “Christ” (christos) simply means “anointed one.” It has the connotation of “messiah,” and occurs in the opening line of Mark with the other term for political leader of Israel, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mark 1:1). The use of the designation “Christ” or “messiah” is contested in Mark because it was typically associated with a national model of leadership. The turning point in Mark’s narrative is when Jesus begins his journey to the capital city of Jerusalem. At Caesarea Philippi, he redefines the role of messiah for his followers by associating it with his impending suffering and death. Three times in Mark 8–10, Jesus explains that it is necessary for the “son of humanity,” his preferred self-designation, to be delivered to the authorities and condemned, only to rise after three days (Mark 8:31–33; 9:30–32; 10:32–34). However, the main thrust of these predictions of his passion and resurrection is to teach his disciples that his path of rejection, suffering, death, and resurrection is the new paradigm of faithfulness for the covenant community in a post-70 imperial world.

Jerusalem is the setting for Mark 11–16, and the predominance of the temple theme in this section takes on new significance in light of the audience’s knowledge that the temple has recently been destroyed. Jesus criticizes the temple establishment and forecasts the ruin of a temple that for the audience no longer exists. After Jesus is arrested, he is taken before the chief priests and the council who, according to the narrator, bear false witness against him, saying, “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands’ ” (Mark 14:58). Although the testimony is false in the sense that within the narrative Jesus never said that he would destroy the Jerusalem temple and replace it with a temple “not made with hands,” the audience understands that this new temple that will replace the one that has been destroyed is the covenant community. It seems likely that the word “temple” here echoes Paul’s metaphor of the “body of Christ,” which could also be translated “body of the Messiah.” The inscription on the cross that sarcastically acclaims Jesus as “the king of the Jews” also has ironic force because, for the audience, Jesus has been divinely appointed to lead the lead the people of God into a new future and way of life at variance with the imperial power and social order. Finally, as Jesus breathes his last, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom,” and a centurion exclaims, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (Mark 15:38–39). Having a Roman centurion, someone implicated in Jesus’ execution, acknowledge that Jesus is God’s anointed leader portends that gentiles will also be included in the movement as it spreads throughout the empire.