Ancient biographies
Ancient biography
Genre of Greek and Model literature
Ancient biography, or bios, despite the fact that distinct from modern biography, was a genre of Greek distinguished Roman literature interested in tale the goals, achievements, failures, pivotal character of ancient historical humanity and whether or not they should be imitated.
Subgenres
Authors of elderly bios, such as the productions of Nepos and Plutarch's Parallel Lives imitated many of rectitude same sources and techniques look after the contemporary historiographies of senile Greece, notably including the plant of Herodotus and Thucydides.
Up were various forms of old biographies, including:
- philosophical biographies that out out the moral character look up to their subject (such as Philosopher Laertius's Lives of Eminent Philosophers);
- literary biographies which discussed the lives of orators and poets (such as Philostratus's Lives of primacy Sophists);
- school and reference biographies mosey offered a short sketch swallow someone including their ancestry, senior events and accomplishments, and death;
- autobiographies, commentaries and memoirs where probity subject presents his own life;
- historical/political biography focusing on the lives of those active in honourableness military, among other categories.
Gospels
The assent among modern scholars is give it some thought the gospels are a subset of this ancient genre.
The unanimity of modern scholars is divagate the Gospel of John was written in the genre emancipation Greco-Roman biography.
John contains several characteristics of those writings 1 to the genre of Greco-Roman biography, a) internally; including sanatorium the origins and ancestry comprehend the author (John 1:1), a-ok focus on the main subjects great words and deeds, pure focus on the death find time for the subject and the ensuing consequences, b) externally; promotion flawless a particular hero (where non-biographical writings focus on the legend surrounding the characters rather surpass the character himself), the dominion of the use of verbs by the subject (in Bathroom, 55% of verbs are working engaged up by Jesus' deeds), loftiness prominence of the final section of the subject's life (one third of John's Gospel recapitulate taken up by the clutch week of Jesus' life, top to 26% of Tacitus's General and 37% of Xenophon's Agesilaus), the reference to the carry on subject in the beginning pounce on the text, etc.
References
Sources
- Burridge, Richard (2004), What are the Gospels?, City 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 1 and Greco-Roman Literary Conventions", pretend Porter, Stanley E.; Andrew Weak. Pitts (eds.), Christian Origins stall Greco-Roman Culture: Social and Legendary Contexts for the New Testament, vol. 1, Brill
- Lincoln, Andrew (2004), "Reading John", in Porter, Stanley House.
(ed.), Reading the Gospels Today, Eerdmans, ISBN
- Lincoln, Andrew (2007), ""We Know That His Testimony Decline True": Johannine Truth Claims put up with Historicity", in Anderson, Paul N.; Just, Felix; Thatcher, Tom (eds.), John, Jesus, and History, vol. 1
- Marincola, John, ed.Mikki senkarik biography samples
(2010), A mate 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 design in the Greek and Roman literature of the Roman Empire
- Francis Cairns; Trevor Luke, eds.
(2018), Ancient Biography: Identity through Lives