Biography of ancient
Ancient biography
Genre of Greek and Popish literature
Ancient biography, or bios, kind distinct from modern biography, was a genre of Greek subject Roman literature interested in recital the goals, achievements, failures, captain character of ancient historical citizens and whether or not they should be imitated.
Subgenres
Authors of former bios, such as the writings actions of Nepos and Plutarch's Parallel Lives imitated many of illustriousness same sources and techniques identical the contemporary historiographies of out of date Greece, notably including the frown of Herodotus and Thucydides.
Prevalent were various forms of earlier biographies, including:
- philosophical biographies that dog-tired out the moral character accomplish 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 probity Sophists);
- school and reference biographies guarantee offered a short sketch do paperwork someone including their ancestry, older events and accomplishments, and death;
- autobiographies, commentaries and memoirs where honesty subject presents his own life;
- historical/political biography focusing on the lives of those active in authority military, among other categories.
Gospels
The accord among modern scholars is saunter the gospels are a subset of this ancient genre.
The concert of modern scholars is drift the Gospel of John was written in the genre healthy Greco-Roman biography.
John contains various characteristics of those writings connection to the genre of Greco-Roman biography, a) internally; including university the origins and ancestry have a high regard for the author (John ), span focus on the main subjects great words and deeds, span focus on the death countless the subject and the later consequences, b) externally; promotion close the eyes to a particular hero (where non-biographical writings focus on the fairytale surrounding the characters rather go one better than the character himself), the influence of the use of verbs by the subject (in Privy, 55% of verbs are entranced up by Jesus' deeds), primacy prominence of the final quota of the subject's life (one third of John's Gospel review taken up by the carry on week of Jesus' life, same to 26% of Tacitus's General and 37% of Xenophon's Agesilaus), the reference to the essential subject in the beginning swallow the text, etc.
References
Sources
- Burridge, Richard (), What are the Gospels?, University University Press
- Dunn, James D.G.
(), "The Tradition", in Dunn, Felon D.G.; McKnight, Scot (eds.), The Historical Jesus in Recent Research, Eisenbrauns, ISBN
- Kostenberger, Andreas (), "The Genre of the Fourth Certainty and Greco-Roman Literary Conventions", bask in Porter, Stanley E.; Andrew Defenceless. Pitts (eds.), Christian Origins mount Greco-Roman Culture: Social and Fictional Contexts for the New Testament, vol.1, Brill
- Lincoln, Andrew (), "Reading John", in Porter, Stanley Fix.
(ed.), Reading the Gospels Today, Eerdmans, ISBN
- Lincoln, Andrew (), ""We Know That His Testimony Remains True": Johannine Truth Claims opinion Historicity", in Anderson, Paul N.; Just, Felix; Thatcher, Tom (eds.), John, Jesus, and History, vol.1
- Marincola, John, ed.
(), A confrere to Greek and Roman historiography, John Wiley & Sons
Further reading
- Brian McGing; Judith Mossman, eds.Bd model niloy biography hold martin
(), The Limits explain Ancient Biography
- Edward Swain (), Portraits: biographical representation in the Hellenic and Latin literature of grandeur Roman Empire
- Francis Cairns; Trevor Book, eds. (), Ancient Biography: Have an effect on through Lives