what is a gospel

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Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 20071 What is a gospel?loveday alexanderJesus said to his disciples: Make me a comparison, tell me what I amlike. Simon Peter said to him: You are like a righteous angel.Matthew said to him: You are like a man who is a wise philosopher.Thomas said to him: Master, my mouth will not at all be capable ofsaying what you are like. Gospel of Thomas 13What is a gospel? In many ways the question echoes the one posed by Jesusin the gnostic Gospel of Thomas: Make me a comparison, tell me what I amlike. Peter and Matthew both take the question at its face value. They look forpoints of comparison in the two intersecting cultural worlds of the gospels.MatthewÕs comparison uses the categories of the Greek world: Jesus is aphilosopher, a kind of intellectual holy man, a guru. PeterÕs answer belongsto the culturalworld of the Bible, invoking a model of holiness that is at oncemoral (faithful to the Law) and supernatural: Jesus is a righteous angel, amessenger sent direct from God. But Thomas resists the temptation to lookfor cultural analogies. For him, Jesus is sui generis, he is simply himself;he is not ÔlikeÕ anyone else. And ThomasÕs reward is to be taken aside andgiven an insight into the hidden wisdom that Jesus whispers to the chosenfew. The only trouble is, the secret gnoøsis he gains is so extraordinary, sofar removed from human categories of understanding, that he will never beable to communicate it to anyone else: ÔNow when Thomas came back tohis companions, they asked him, What did Jesus say to you? Thomas saidto them, If I tell you one of the words that he said to me, you will take upstones and cast them at me, and a fire will come forth from the stones andburn you up.ÕThe story encapsulates neatly some of the dilemmas of contemporarygenre criticism of the gospels. There are those who stress their Jewish character,their continuity with biblical narrative patterns. There are those (inincreasing numbers) who want to locate their comparisons in the culturalworld of the Greeks and Romans, and who therefore look for analogies to13



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 200714 Loveday Alexanderthe gospels in Greek literature. And there are those, like Thomas, who stressthe uniqueness of the gospels, their sui generis character, and refuse to makeany comparisons at all with other literary genres. This means that they riskThomasÕs fate of achieving understanding at the cost of cutting off channelsof communication with the rest of the world; for if the gospel is to communicate,it must find some cultural common ground with those outside thecharmed circle of the already convinced. But even though ThomasÕs solutionmay be risky, it is surely the right place to start. Before we can begin to askwhat the gospels are like Ð that is, what literary genres they resemble Ð weneed to make an attempt to understand them in their own terms. We needto ask what shape they are, what they are about, how they are put together,how they work. And that is where we begin.what are the gospels?The four canonical gospels (which I use here as the basis for a workingdefinition1) have many individual characteristics. But they also have muchin common, so much so that their traditional titles present them as onegospel in four forms: the gospel according to Matthew, Mark, Luke andJohn.2 In generic terms, it is this common core that we need to analyse, ifwe are to arrive at a working internal definition of gospel as a genre.All four New Testament gospels are prose narratives of monographlength, about the amount that would fit into a single scroll in the ancientworld (Luke alone adds a second volume). All are focused intensively onthe person of Jesus. MarkÕs opening, ÔThe beginning of the gospel of JesusChrist, the Son of GodÕ (Mk 1.1) seems to be paradigmatic in this respect;later Christian texts retain the title ÔActsÕ for stories of apostles and othercharacters, ÔGospelÕ (euangelion, Ôgood newsÕ) for stories focused on Jesus.And the focus on Jesus is much more than skin-deep. Richard Burridge notesthat an unusually high proportion of verbs in all the gospels have Jesus astheir grammatical subject.3 The proportion is even higher at the level of thepericope or individual episode. In the ÔministryÕ section of MarkÕs gospel Ðthat is, the main narrative before the passion Ð Jesus is the narrative subjectof virtually every episode. Where he is not the subject of the action, he is its chief object, increasingly so during the passion narrative. In MarkÕs gospel,there is only one episode where Jesus is completely Ôoff-stageÕ and that isthe account of HerodÕs execution of John the Baptist, a narrative filler putin to bridge a gap where Jesus and his disciples are temporarily separated(Mk 6.14Ð29). Thus in structural terms, Jesus comes across as the hero of



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007What is a gospel? 15the core gospel story to an unusually high degree: he is the centre not onlyof the story as a whole but of virtually every individual episode.The Herod episode illustrates another important structural feature. Thepresence of the disciples as observers is somehow necessary for the narrativeto proceed. When the disciples and Jesus are apart, there is nothing to report.In this sense, Jesus can scarcely be said to have a ÔprivateÕ existence inthe gospels. Although the evangelists speak as omniscient narrators, thereare relatively few points where they claim the privilege of omniscienceto report the inner psychological states of their characters. Occasionally,private thoughts are externalized as overheard soliloquies (e.g. Jn 12.27Ð29;Lk 10.18Ð22). Peter, James and John sometimes function as select witnessesfor the more private moments in JesusÕ life (Mk 1.36; 5.37; 9.2; 14.33). Butin general, the core gospel narratives concern public events, theoreticallyavailable to public view.4This story is linked in specific but not detailed fashion to a particulartime and place. In MarkÕs version, Galilee and Jerusalem, Herod and PontiusPilate provide the barest anchor-points in the geography and history of theancient Mediterranean world. Matthew extends the storyÕs horizons eastand south (Matt 2.1Ð18), and ends with a vision of worldwide mission(Matt 28.20). LukeÕs horizons look west, to Rome, with the consciousnessof Empire providing both a political and a chronological framework forhis narrative (2.1Ð2; 3.1Ð2) Ð a framework which becomes progressivelymore explicit in Acts. John adds more internal precision, both geographicaland chronological. But the core gospel narrative seems to be able to subsistwith a minimum of geographical and chronological information. Lk 3.23gives JesusÕ age as Ôaround thirtyÕ at the point where he emerges on to thepublic stage as an itinerant preacher. From this point on, the narrative isepisodic but continuous. Individual episodes are loosely linked, but precisetime-notes are few and far between: only Luke anchors his story into worldhistory with a real date (Lk 3.1Ð2).The shape of the story is broadly biographical, tracing the heroÕs publicministry in a roughly chronological sequence covering three years of hislife at most, and culminating in his trial and death. Only two of the gospels,Matthew and Luke, have birth stories, and neither has much informationabout his childhood (and the two birth narratives, though they agree inthe names of JesusÕ parents and the place of his birth, have little else incommon). Structurally, then, we could say that the story of Jesus can betold without a birth narrative or a family history, whereas the baptism byJohn (with which all four canonical gospels begin) is somehow essentialto the story.5 The story itself falls into two uneven parts: JesusÕ ministry



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 200716 Loveday Alexander(based in Galilee), and the events leading up to his death (in Jerusalem).The ministry is narrated via a loose-knit series of anecdotes of JesusÕ actions(many but not all miraculous), combined with samples of his teaching:parables, sayings, discourses. The amounts and arrangements of teachingmaterial vary: Matthew and Luke share a lot of teaching which is not inMark (though they arrange it differently); John has fewer episodes overalland a distinctive type of meditative discourse. But it is artificial to drawtoo firm a distinction between action and teaching: even Mark has someteaching (chs. 4, 7, 13); and many of the ÔactionÕ stories in all four gospelsare structured around a didactic or theological point (e.g. Mk 3.1Ð6). SoLukeÕs description of his first volume as an account of Ôall that Jesus beganboth to do and to teachÕ (Acts 1.1) is a fair summary of the content of thecore gospel narrative. Finding a more precise narrative structure withinthat loose framework is difficult. All the synoptic gospels put the call ofthe disciples near the beginning, and mark some kind of turning-point atCaesarea Philippi (Mk 8.27Ð30 and parallels), and in all there is a noticeableincrease in hostility as the narrative progresses. But individual episodesare connected to this outline in a flexible manner which suggests that theevangelists felt free to exercise a certain amount of individual licence in theoverall construction of their narratives.Things are very different when we get to the passion narratives. In allfour gospels, the last week of JesusÕ life occupies a disproportionate amountof narrative space Ð a quarter of the whole book in Luke and Matthew, upto a third in Mark and John. Here the pace slows down in an intense andhighly dramatic presentation of a series of linked scenes in which Jesusprogressively moves from active to passive mode until the final moment ofhis death. Throughout the narratives, prediction and dramatic anticipationhave prepared the reader for this final scene (though dramatic and personaldetails may vary). And all the gospels agree that JesusÕ story does not endwith his death. All have descriptions of his disciples and friends visiting histomb after his death and finding it empty, and all except Mark add storiesin which the resurrected Jesus appears to his friends and talks with them.6The narrative focus has now moved from Jesus to his associates and theirvaried experiences of sorrow, disbelief and joy.Our first definition, then, could be something like this: a gospel is aloose-knit, episodic narrative relating the words and deeds of a Galileanholy man called Jesus, culminating in his trial and death in Jerusalem, andending with discrete and varied reports of resurrection appearances. Andthere is one more fact that has a fundamental impact on the way the gospelswork, and that is the fact that there are four of them: four accounts of



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007What is a gospel? 17the same series of events, with large degrees of overlap and repetition,but also large degrees of variety.7 Sometimes all four (more commonlythe three ÔsynopticsÕ, Matthew, Mark and Luke) tell the same episode inmore or less the same words. At other times, they will narrate similar butdistinct episodes, recognizably the same kind of story, but with a differentlocation, or a different audience, or a different punchline. The order ofevents, particularly in the first part of JesusÕ story, his Galilean ministry,seems to be flexible: episodes can be arranged in different ways withoutmaking much difference to the story; teaching can be inserted at differentpoints. John takes more liberties with the order and selection of individualepisodes, so that his gospel ends up with a quite distinct narrative texture(as well as a distinct chronology), though the overall shape is essentiallythe same as that of the synoptics. Whatever way we look at it, the fourfoldgospel, recognized and valued by the church from early on, is a significantliterary phenomenon in its own right. If the writers of the four gospelshad no contact with each other, the similarities are remarkable: if they didknow each other, the differences are remarkable. Either way, any analysis ofthe individual gospels must also take account of the relationship betweenthem, with its peculiar combination of fluidity and fixity, coherence andindividuation.the gospels as oral traditionalliteratureMany of the features we have observed in gospel narrative can be paralleledin the narrative structures of the folktale. Vladimir Propp, in hisanalysis of the Russian wonder-tale, notes a number of ways in which theconstruction of folk narrative differs from that of the literary novel.8 ÔInfolklore,Õ he suggests, Ôthe story is told only for the sake of the events.Õ Folknarrators and their audiences Ôare interested only in the action and nothingmoreÕ. Descriptive details about the outward appearance of the charactersor their surroundings do not form part of the story unless they play a rolein the action: ÔForest, river, sea, steppes, city wall, etc., are mentioned whenthe hero jumps over or crosses them, but the narrator is indifferent to thebeauty of the landscape.Õ A similar descriptive economy can be observedin gospel narrative. Mark Allan Powell, for example, notes the remarkablyÔreservedÕ use of spatial description in the gospels: ÔSpatial settings are presentedwith only scant notation: ÒJerusalem,Ó Òa mountain,Ó Òthe temple.ÓThe reader is given no information about such places that is not directly relevantto the plot.Õ Similarly, Ôthere is a paucity of sensory data. If the gospels



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 200718 Loveday Alexanderwere more like modern novels we would probably read about the sound ofÒwaves lapping at the shore of the Sea of GalileeÓ and the feel of Òcoarse,dry sand trod underfoot in the Judean desert.Ó Such luxury of narration isnot to be found. Textures, sounds, smells, and tastes are usually left to ourimagination.Õ9As in the gospels, the narrative structure of the folktale is focusedto a remarkable degree on the hero: ÔAction is performed in accordancewith the movement of the hero, and what lies outside this movement liesoutside the narrative.Õ10 This narrative focus on the Ôempirical spaceÕ thatsurrounds the hero at the moment of action means that Ôin folklore two theatresof action do not exist in different places simultaneouslyÕ (a phenomenonwe have already noticed in Mk 6.1ff.). And, as in the gospels,action in the folktale is essentially public: ÔAction is always performed physically,in space. Psychological novels based on the complexity of humaninterrelations, with dialogues, explanations, and so on, do not occur infolklore.Õ11 FolkloreÕs preoccupation with Ôempirical spaceÕ means that thereare no facilities to depict the hero as a romantic figure pursuing his destinyin psychological isolation. The action proceeds through a series ofencounters between the hero and the groups or individuals with whom heinteracts, and it is through these public interactions that his personality isdefined:The result of the exceptional dynamic quality of action is that onlythose persons who contribute to the development of the plot figure inthe narrative. Folklore does not deal with persons who are introducedfor the sake of a milieu or a society . . . In folklore everyone is assigneda role in the narrative and there are no extra characters. All will act,and only in terms of their actions do they interest the listener. For thisreason folklore tends to have only one protagonist. One character iscentral, and around him and his actions are grouped other people, hisopponents, his helpers, or those whom he saves.12ProppÕs distinction between the folktale and the literary novel is a helpfulone because almost all our assumptions about how to tell a story aredefined by the history of the literary novel Ð including the assumptions offilm-makers and fantasists. The contrast between the two types of narrativestructure can be readily illustrated from the popular English Robin Hoodcycle, which exemplifies many of the structural features Propp describesin the Russian wonder-tale. At the core of the Robin Hood story lies atraditional cycle of encounter tales, building up a fluid but coherent pictureof a folk hero located securely if imprecisely in time (King John) and



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007What is a gospel? 19space (Sherwood Forest). He has his trademark activity (Ôrobbing the richto help the poorÕ), and a strong popular support base.13 He has his faithfulband of followers (Little John, Maid Marian, Much the MillerÕs Son), andthe implacable enemies who finally bring about his downfall (King John,the Sheriff of Nottingham). His story is told, in the ballads that make up theearliest surviving literary record, through a disconnected series of encounterswith Ôhis opponents, his helpers, or those whom he savesÕ: ÔRobin Hoodand Little John,Õ ÔRobin Hood and Friar TuckÕ. The connections between theindividual episodes in the cycle are unclear Ð some naturally come near thebeginning (encounter with Little John), others at the end (stories of the outlawÕs death) Ð but for most of them, the sequence is not important. Over thelast two centuries, novelists and film-makers have made numerous attemptsto produce an overarching narrative of the Robin Hood story, providing thecentral character with precisely the features modern readers miss in thismode of narration: psychological depth, romantic interest, genealogy andfamily history, links with ÔrealÕ social and political history. This literary andfilm tradition then takes on an intertextual life of its own Ð as when MelGibsonÕs Robin acquires a Saracen companion who completely deconstructsthe Crusader theme of earlier retellings.It is not too difficult to parallel this process in the development ofthe gospel tradition. Gospel films and Ôlife of JesusÕ novels create a metanarrative which tries to supply the kind of psychological information orbackground detail that is lacking in the canonical gospels. This process canbe seen in embryo in the gospels themselves. Matthew and Luke already feelthe need to supply Jesus with a miraculous birth, a family history, and, in thetemptation stories, a rare example of a private spiritual conflict. The writtengospel shape comes into being by imposing order and sequence on anessentially fluid, episodic cycle of traditional units which have a life of theirown, both before and after they are taken up into the literary tradition.As we have seen, narrative sequences within the gospels (apart from theobvious sequencing of the passion narratives) are treated as essentially provisional,and can be readily abandoned and re-formed by successive writers.But the core gospel tradition lying behind these varied literary forms has astrong character of its own, which imposes its own rhythms on the writtengospels. It is not simply a random series of recollections but a structuredoral cycle which builds up a vital and coherent picture of the hero througha series of encounters with Ôhis opponents, his helpers, or those whom hesavesÕ.The totality of the gospel tradition, with its duality between oral andwritten, fluidity and fixity, thus exemplifies many of the features of oral



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 200720 Loveday Alexandertraditional literature as described by Propp and others. The study of folkloreand oral traditional literature has been important in the developmentof gospel studies since the beginning of the twentieth century, and wasa major influence on the pioneers of form criticism such as Gunkel andDibelius. Such cross-cultural analogies have obvious pitfalls, but they alsohave great potential in allowing us to articulate and analyse the dynamicsof oral tradition in a variety of cultures outside the Bible. One of themost significant is Albert LordÕs 1978 study of ÔThe gospels as oral traditionalliteratureÕ, which draws on insights gained by Homeric scholars fromthe study of contemporary oral epic poetry from Yugoslavia, Turkey andFinland.14 Lord points out that oral tradition should not be thought of simplyas a series of unconnected units. The individual episodes presupposethe existence of a connected narrative, a cycle of tales related to a particular individual: ÔIf the gospels, all or any of them, in whole or in part, are oraltraditional narratives, they must belong to a tradition of oral life story orbiography. Such a tradition presupposes the existence of both tellers andaudience as well as of stories told.Õ15 As with Robin Hood, this Ôlife storyÕis rarely told in the form of a single, unidirectional narrative from birth todeath: Ôthe separate elements or incidents in the life of the hero form individual poems or sagasÕ.16 Nevertheless, the ÔlifeÕ is in some sense implicit inthe individual episodes Ð even, in broad outline, the sequence from birthto death. There are a variety of ways in which such units may be joinedtogether in oral performance (e.g. in flashback), and different performerswould tend to create their own combinations.17 Written versions of thesestories could be produced Ôby people who were linked to the oral traditioneither by actually being a part of it, or, perhaps more probably, by beingclose to itÕ Ð that is, Ôby people who heard the traditional stories but did notthemselves tell them: for example, a learned or semi-learned person whohad heard the tales all his life but never had written the traditional storiesor the traditional styleÕ.18But Ôoral traditional literatureÕ is a mode of composition and performance,not a genre, and, though cross-cultural analogies may help us tounderstand how such traditions tend to operate, they cannot in themselvestell us what kind of tradition the gospel is. Lord invokes a number of ÔmythicpatternsÕ from ancient epic as potential parallels to the liminal events ofJesusÕ life (birth, childhood, investiture, death and resurrection). But manyof his closest parallels are from biblical narrative Ð which we know to havebeen a major influence on the composition of the gospels without the interpositionof Ômythic patternsÕ Ð and, as he admits, the so-called ÔpatternÕ isonly imperfectly realized even in Matthew and Luke.19 It is much harder



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007What is a gospel? 21to find parallels in epic for Ôthe major deeds of the mature hero, which inJesusÕ case would be the events and teachings of his ministryÕ. In fact, aswe have seen, the folktale patterns identified by Propp suggest some rathermore helpful folklore parallels to the narrative structures of the gospels.Nevertheless, it remains true that ÔJesusÕ deeds are not like the deeds ofmost mythic heroes but are sui generis: the actions and words of a miracleworker and teacher.Õ20 To find comparative material for this kind of narrativein literature contemporary with the gospels we need to look at a verydifferent kind of tradition.the gospels as school traditionThe earliest witnesses we have to the gospels already testify to the dualitywe have noticed between written and oral, between the fixed formsof the written gospels and the living voice of oral tradition. Justin Martyr,writing in Rome in the mid-second century, quotes gospel materialfrom Ôthe memoirs [apomneømoneumata] of the apostles, which are calledgospels [euangelia]Õ, and describes how these texts are used in Christianmeetings:On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the countrygather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or thewritings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then whenthe reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts tothe imitation of these good things.21The two names Justin uses for the gospels are revealing. They arecalled, he says, euangelia, Ôgood newsÕ. This word was used in a varietyof secular contexts, including civic decrees authorizing the celebration ofthe emperorÕs birthday, but there is no record that it was ever the nameof a literary genre anywhere outside Christian circles.22 But Justin himselfcalls them apomneømoneumata, that is, the reminiscences or memoirsof the apostles. It is a term which nicely encapsulates the duality of thegospel tradition. At its heart is the root mneømeø, ÔmemoryÕ: these are storieswhich are based (or claim to be based) on apostolic memory. But the verbmneømoneuein means more than the mental act of remembering: it involvesthe actualizing of memory though public speech, the act of mentioning orrecounting what one remembers. Thus apomneømoneumata are not simplyrandom memories but memoirs, reminiscences, memory codified, structuredand articulated: an apomneømoneuma (in the singular) is an anecdote, an ofttoldtale focused on a particular individual. As a title for a written text, then,



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 200722 Loveday Alexanderthe name apomneømoneumata means a collection of anecdotes more or lessartistically assembled into a unified text Ð though not necessarily into aunified narrative.Papias, the bishop of Hierapolis in the early second century, displaysthe ambiguities of the word-group well. Papias himself is conscious thatthe apostolic generation is dying out, and that he himself belongs toa third generation, Ôneither a hearer nor an eyewitnessÕ. So he takes stepsto bridge the gap: he seeks out and questions chance visitors, collects andpasses on traditions about gospel authors and tradents (Eusebius, ChurchHistory, iii 39.2Ð5). For Papias, therefore, it is important that Mark, whowas not an apostle himself, is connected to Jesus at one remove via Peter.And what Mark committed to writing was PeterÕs apomneømoneumata, hisstore of anecdotes, his stories of JesusÕ words and actions already shaped asunits of teaching material (didaskaliai) formulated for specific needs (prostas chreias).23 If Papias seems slightly apologetic about this, it is preciselybecause MarkÕs written gospel preserves the essentially oral form of PeterÕsapomneømoneumata. Mark wrote the stories up Ôjust as Peter recountedthemÕ, without turning them into a proper syntaxis, a real literary composition.Clement of Alexandria adds a few circumstantial details to thepicture: it was PeterÕs hearers in Rome who begged Mark to put Ôthe unwrittenteaching of the divine proclamationÕ into writing, Ôso that they mighthave a written record (hypomneøma) of the teachings (didaskaliai) handeddown to them in wordsÕ.24 All ClementÕs language underscores the continuitybetween the oral tradition, shaped by constant repetition for thepurposes of teaching and preaching, and the written record: hypomneøma isanother word used of a text only one stage removed from oral composition,whether studentsÕ notes or scholarÕs commentary.From the earliest recorded stages of church tradition, then, the writtengospels had a dynamic, two-sided interface with oral performance. Theywere seen as the deposit of oral teaching and preaching; and they were usedas the basis for ongoing oral instruction in the early church. The link withparticular apostles (or their disciples) is not simply a claim to be recordingapostolic ÔmemoriesÕ. It implies that behind the written gospels lies structuredteaching tradition of oral material shaped by repetition and in accordancewith the rhetorical needs of particular situations. In other words, theapomneømoneumata already embody the gospel as euangelion, Ôgood newsÕ.They stem from a preaching tradition focused on Jesus, honing and treasuringstories of his life and death because they conveyed the good news aboutJesus, the euangelion. Hence the traditional titles: as soon as the gospels have titles at all, so far as we can tell, they are known as the ÔGospel according



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007What is a gospel? 23to MarkÕ, or ÔJohnÕ, an odd phrase which seems to imply one gospel takingmultiple forms.If we take this early church tradition seriously, then, we have anotheranswer to our question: a gospel is the written deposit of oral preaching andteaching about Jesus. It is worth noting that this early testimony reflectsboth a literary judgement and a historical one Ð that is, it embodies a claimboth about the origin of the gospels and about their literary form. For antignosticwriters like Irenaeus, there was a clear polemical motive for linkingthe canonical gospels with the teaching of the apostles: which is why manyscholars are inclined to be suspicious of the historical claim to apostolic origin.But the patristic testimony also reflects a literary judgement. Whetheror not we accept the connection between Mark and Peter, the picture thesewriters paint of the transition from oral teaching to written text is entirelyconsistent with what we know from other ancient writers; and this in turnhas some bearing on the question of genre.25Papias also reveals another important fact about the gospel in the earlychurch. Even when there were written gospels, the oral tradition continuedto carry weight: ÔI did not supposeÕ, he says, Ôthat information from bookswould help me so much as the word of a living and abiding voice.Õ26 Thereis every reason to believe that this was not just an antiquarian quirk onPapiasÕ part.27 It is surprisingly hard to identify clear quotations of individual gospels as written texts during the second century: Christian preachersand teachers continue to refer to Ôthe gospelÕ (or Ôthe LordÕ) as a living, unifiedtradition long after it is written down, and without troubling themselves toomuch about the viewpoints of the individual evangelists.28 It is as if eachwritten text represents a particular performance of Ôthe gospelÕ, the goodnews about Jesus, and, however much it is valued and respected, it retainsits ÔprovisionalÕ character as a performance, as one possible instantiation ofthe gospel. Contrary to what we might expect, it is the underlying story thathas solidity, while the particular performance in which it is embodied Ð likea particular Robin Hood film Ð has a more ephemeral quality.The distinctive language used by Justin, Papias and Clement suggeststhat we do not have to look nearly as far afield as ancient epic to find parallelsto the way the gospel tradition operates. Oral teaching was the normin the ancient world, and the transfer of oral teaching material to writtennotes iswell attested in a number of teaching traditions, including medicine,rhetoric and philosophy.29 Many of the medical, rhetorical and philosophicalhandbooks surviving from antiquity are based on notes (hypomneømata)taken by students from their teachersÕ lectures, and their format betraysthe relative fluidity and provisionality of this form of writing: these were



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 200724 Loveday Alexanderuser-books, Gebrauchsliteratur, designed not as a fossilized record of a particularoral ÔperformanceÕ but as a base for constant glossing and updating.Ancient teaching methods were heavily focused on the memorizationand adaptation of short, pithy tales and adages, from gnomic, one-sentenceaphorisms to longer and more complex tales focused around the tellingword or action of a particular teacher. The generic term for these sayings ischreiai, and large numbers of them survive in the rhetorical handbooks andin the biographical compilations of the philosophical tradition.30 JustinÕstitle apomneømoneumata, in fact, belongs precisely here. The rhetorical handbooksdefine the chreia as Ôaword or deed relating to a defined individualÕ (asopposed to a generic maxim), differing from the apomneømoneuma or ÔreminiscenceÕchiefly in length; 31 and it is these ÔbiographicalÕ anecdotes thatform the backbone of the ancient biographical tradition. Diogenes Laertius,writing his Lives of the Ancient Philosophers in the third century ce, quotesscores of them. But the existence of a vigorous tradition of biographicalanecdotes does not necessarily imply the existence of a written biography.Anecdotes can be combined in an almost infinite number of ways, manyof them thematic rather than ÔbiographicalÕ: putting them into a chronologicalsequence to tell a philosopherÕs story from birth to death is not asobvious a solution to the ancients as it is to us. What the anecdotes doimply, as Lord noted with the epic cycles, is an underlying story, acting asa mental frame of reference for assessing the significance of a particularanecdote.This pattern can be seen particularly clearly in the anecdotal traditionrelating to Diogenes and Socrates. Significantly, these are philosophers whowrote nothing (so the anecdotes are the main carriers of their teaching) andwhose lifestyle was as important as their words (so the anecdotes servean important teaching function). Significantly, too, both served as iconicfigureheads for communities of disciples who had an abiding interest inmodelling their own lifestyle on that of the master: so the anecdotal traditionis a focus of loyalty, with a clear ideological function in the ongoinglife of a network of disciple-groups. As in the gospels, these stories tendto be structured as encounters: the teacher meets and responds to a disciple,or an enquirer, or a patron, or a hostile official. With Socrates, thisanecdotal life-cycle builds up to a full-scale paradigm of the philosophiclife, starting with the philosopherÕs divine calling and culminating with histrial and martyrdom.32 The story of Socrates acts as a cultural hypotextwhich was profoundly influential in the Greco-Roman world. But there isno single ÔBiographyÕ of Socrates which tells this story Ôfrom birth to deathÕ:iconography and lifestyle were sufficiently nourished by the anecdotal



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007What is a gospel? 25tradition, together with the Apomneømoneumata of Xenophon and the Platonicvignettes of his death.Anecdotal tradition also played an important part in the rabbinicacademies. Birger Gerhardsson pioneered the study of the dynamics of oraltransmission in the rabbinic schools as a possible model for the transmissionof gospel tradition.33 The rabbinic texts contain a number of significantparallels to the type of material contained in the gospels in the form of controversiesand biographical anecdotes focused on particular sages.34 Likethe Greek anecdotal tradition, much of this is structured around encountersbetween the sages and their disciples, opponents, enquirers and (predominantly)each other: the prime locus of teaching in the rabbinic schools is thehalakhic debate. The rabbinic tradition also contains a number of (ratherambivalent) anecdotes about healing encounters. But what is striking hereis that, although there is ample material for putting together a life story ofat least the major sages, rabbinic tradition never takes this step: there isno rabbinic ÔgospelÕ of Johanan ben Zakkai or Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. Oneobvious reason is that Ôneither Eliezer nor any other Sage held in RabbinicJudaism the central position that Jesus held in early Christianity. The centreof Rabbinic Judaism was Torah; the centre of Christianity was the personof Jesus, and the existence of the gospels is, in itself, a testimony to thisfact.Õ35 Rabbinic tradition provides some important generic parallels to thegospel tradition, but it cannot help us to identify a genre for the writtengospels.the gospels as written textsSo there is no shortage of material from the cultural worlds of thegospels, both Jewish and Greek, to provide generic analogues to the anecdotalgospel tradition. Justin, Papias and Clement, as we have seen, stressthe continuity between tradition and text: for them, the task of the evangelists was simply to reduce the apostolic teaching to writing, and the namesthey choose for the gospels reflect this continuity. The form critics of theearly twentieth century, though working from different premises, came toessentially similar conclusions: the gospels were little more than compilationsof pre-existent units of traditional material, arranged and selected likepearls on a string. More recent narrative approaches to gospel criticism havedemonstrated conclusively that the evangelists are much more than mereÔeditorsÕ or compilers. But this insight does not in itself necessarily conflictwith the perception that the gospel tradition is a form of Ôoral traditionalliteratureÕ.Within the framework of folklore studies, it is not too difficult to



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 200726 Loveday Alexanderunderstand our gospels as four individual performances of the gospel, eachtailored with skill and artistry for an individual audience but not claimingto offer an exclusive or definitive rendition of the tradition; and in manyways this seems to be how the early church saw them. Nevertheless, writinga book is not the same thing as giving an oral performance; and, thoughrecent studies suggest that the polarity between oral and literate modes ofdiscourse maywell have been overstated, it remains true that the move fromoral performance to book is by no means inevitable, and that the literaryforms it engenders are far from predictable.36 So our final question is: whathappens whenwe move from oral tradition to written text? What is a gospelwhen it is a book?On the Greek side, there is an emerging consensus that the best place tolook for a parallel genre for the gospels is Greek biography. In his influential 1992 study What Are the Gospels?, Richard Burridge points out that theGreek bios or ÔlifeÕ is typically a monograph of similar length to the gospels,focused on the life story of a famous individual from birth to death, where(just as in the gospels) the subject of the biography is also the grammaticalsubject of a high proportion of verbs. Nevertheless, there are some puzzlingfeatures in the comparison. Reading the Greek biographical traditionas a whole, it is not at all obvious that if you put together a collection ofanecdotes about a particular individual you will end up with somethingshaped like the canonical gospels, with a flowing, connected narrative tracingthe heroÕs life from birth (or commissioning) to death. Diogenes LaertiusÕgreat collection of anecdotes about the philosophers is arranged on thematicrather than chronological lines, and there is little attempt to provide narrativecoherence.37 And what is most obviously missing in this tradition isthe good news aspect that is essential to the gospels. Many Greek biographiesare hostile, polemical or simply sensationalist: biographers are thepaparazzi of the ancient world. And the encyclopaedic pattern embeddedin the biographical tradition means that comparison is built into the genre;most Greek biographies bear little resemblance to cultic or kerygmatic narratives.Within the Greek philosophical tradition, the figure who best parallelsthe role of Jesus is Socrates, subject of innumerable anecdotes, dialogues,martyrdom stories, and fictitious letters; but no-one ever put this materialtogether to produce a coherent biography of Socrates.Nevertheless, the appearance of the gospels coincides with whatArnaldo Momigliano calls a Ônew atmosphereÕ in biographical writingaround the turn of the eras: ÔThe writers of biographies created a meaningfulrelationship between the living and the dead. The wise man, themartyr, and the saint became central subjects of biography, in addition to



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007What is a gospel? 27the king, the writer, and the philosopher.Õ38 Signs of the new mood canbe seen in second-century texts like TacitusÕ Agricola or LucianÕs Demonax,affectionate portraits of well-loved individuals based on personal recollection, following a broadly narrative outline, and designed to foster imitationas well as memory.39 The shift from biography to hagiography is epitomizedin the story of Apollonius of Tyana, a Pythagorean wonder-workerfrom first-century Syria whose life story shows remarkable parallels to thestory of Jesus, and is allegedly based on the contemporary reminiscences ofApolloniusÕ disciple Damis. A number of scholars have suggested that theLife of Apollonius falls into a special genre, ÔaretalogyÕ, which provides analternative genre for the gospels.40 But the existing biography of Apolloniuswas written in the third century ce by Philostratus; it is much longer andmore elaborate than the gospels, and bears the rhetorical imprint of theSophistic circles Philostratus moved in. DamisÕ reminiscences, on which itclaims to be based, may be no more than an elaborate fiction;41 and, bythe third century, when Philostratus is writing, we have to reckon with thereal possibility that the story of Apollonius is being consciously marketedas a pagan rival to the gospels.42 Motifs found in the gospels can be paralleled with greater or lesser degrees of precision in pagan Greek literature,43but the precise literary form adopted by MarkÕs performance of the Jesusstory is hard to match in the Greek biographical tradition. Indeed, a recentstudy of biographic writing in the classical literature of the imperial periodconcludes that Ôthe Gospels are almost unique as multiple, contemporaryaccounts of a single lifeÕ.44Does the search for a genre for the gospels fare any better on the Jewishside? Rabbinic literature, as we have seen, offers ample parallels to the anecdotalJesus tradition, but no connected rabbinic biography. But if rabbinicliterature stops short of fully fledged biography as a literary genre, there isample precedent for biographical narrative elsewhere in Jewish literature.The Hebrew Bible itself is much more deeply prone to Ôbio-structuringÕ thanis classical Greek historiography.45 Much of the narrative of the HebrewBible is built around biographical Ôstory cyclesÕ like those of Samson or Elijah,cycles in which individual tales of the heroÕs prowess Ôare so arranged toencompass his entire life, from birth to deathÕ.46 Moreover, in the HebrewBible these tales are subordinated to the overall narrative style and goalsof Ôa purposeful religious, ethical, and national workÕ which was to determinethe character of Jewish folk traditions for generations to come.47 Itis to the biblical tradition, surely, that we should look for the origins ofthe Ôreligious intensityÕ of the gospel narratives and their rich ideologicalintertextuality with the biblical themes of covenant, kingdom, prophecy and



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 200728 Loveday Alexanderpromise Ð all features hard to parallel in Greek biography.48 The evangelistsÕmove from disjointed anecdotes and sayings to connected, theologicallycoherent narrative is most easily explained with reference to the narrativemodes of the Hebrew Bible.Nevertheless, we still need to explain the precise narrative structurechosen by the gospel-writers; and here two contemporary developmentsin Jewish (specifically, Jewish-Greek) writing of the Second Temple periodare worth considering. The first is in Philo, the first-century AlexandrianJewish writer whose allegorical expositions of the Bible in Greek contain anumber of single treatises devoted to individual Bible characters. PhiloÕs OnAbraham and On Joseph (and the lost On Isaac and On Jacob) are ÔbiographicalÕin the limited sense that they collect together the separate incidentsrelated to each character in the Bible and arrange them in chronologicalorder as a coherent narrative. The treatment of the characters, however,is allegorical rather than historical: the patriarchs represent the history ofthe soul, and they are described as living prototypes of the ethical principlesembodied in torah.49 PhiloÕs Life of Moses, on the other hand (theonly one of his works that actually bears the title bios: cf. Moses 1.1; 2.292), has a much more obviously biographical character, beginning with MosesÕbirth and ending with his death, and compressing into a single connectedaccount the bulk of the biblical Moses narrative Ð though still arrangedthematically under the headings of king, lawgiver and high priest. This isone of PhiloÕs most accessible works, and the one that has the best claimto be addressed to outsiders. It suggests at the very least that biographicalnarrative provided a point of cultural contact between Greek and Jew, a flexible and readily comprehensible framework that could be moulded withoutdifficulty to reflect the ideology and cultural values of a particular ethicaltradition.The second development is in the area of martyrology. In the Greekbiographical tradition, Socrates was the model for philosophic resistanceto tyranny.50 But Jewish tradition had its own prototypes for the martyrÕsdeath, and there are a number of texts from the first century and earlierwhich highlight martyrdom as the proper closure to a life lived in obedienceto God Ð and therefore allocate significant narrative space to the death of themartyr.51 Many of the key motifs are already present in the book of Daniel,written in the period of Antiochus Epiphanes in the second century bce,and it is this period that provides the setting for one of the most enduringparadigms of Jewish martyrdom, the Maccabean martyrs. The stories of thetorture and death of the aged Eleazar and the mother and her seven sons for



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007What is a gospel? 29refusing to eat the forbidden foods pressed on them by the tyrant are toldin a multiplicity of literary forms, from the plain narrative of 2 Maccabees(second century bce) to the sophisticated philosophical encomium of 4 Maccabees(first or second century ce). Martyrology is not of itself necessarilybiographical (one of the odd features of the Maccabean martyrs is that weare told nothing of the martyrsÕ previous lives). But the so-called Lives ofthe Prophets, almost certainly dating from pre-70 Palestine, combine intensiveinterest in the manner of the subjectsÕ death with concise informationabout their lives.52 These brief and schematic life stories (nothing so grandas a full biography) are subordinated to details of the manner in whichthe prophets died and the miracles associated with their graves. The Livesmay have been some kind of pilgrim guidebook recounting the cult legendsassociated with the tombs of the saints. Whatever we call them, it is clearfrom a glance at these brief biographical notices that they cannot ÔsolveÕ theproblem of the gospel genre by themselves. Nevertheless, their existenceadds another strand to the variety of biographical forms in first-centuryJewish literature, and acts as a forceful reminder of the many possibilitiesfor cultural interchange between Jewish and Hellenistic literature in SecondTemple Judaism.the gospels as good newsSo are we left with ThomasÕs answer, that the gospels are unique? Theanswer in the end is probably, Yes and No. Many of the motifs that appear inthe gospels can be paralleled in contemporary texts, especially in the anecdotal material which acted as a prime carrier of school traditions both inthe rabbinic academies and in the Greek philosophical schools. The way thetradition works is certainly not unique: folklore studies suggest a numberof fruitful analogies. But what may be unique is the particular form thistradition takes when it is written down, a form whose external shape isstrongly reminiscent of the Greek bios but whose narrative mode and theologicalframework (connectives, narrative structure, use of direct speech,intertextuality) owe much more to the Bible. This could explain, incidentally,why the psychological characterization of the gospels is wholly withinthe biblical framework, and shows no sign of being influenced by the philosophicalethos tradition which so dominated Greek biography; and why thegospels show no awareness of the normal distancing mechanisms routinelyemployed by Greek historians and biographers to keep the supernatural atbay.53



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 200730 Loveday AlexanderIf this seems inconclusive, it may be because we have been asking thewrong kind of question. Gospel criticism for most of the past century hasbeen dominated by the search for a pre-existent genre to explain (or explainaway) the gospels, as if we were hoping to find the mould into which Mark(or whoever was the first to write the gospel down) poured his Jesus story.Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), no such genre has been discovered:and that suggests that it may be time to change the way we configurethe question. The gospels came into being at a time of profound culturaltransformation, andwere themselves active agents in that transformation.54That may be one reason why it is so hard to pin them down Ð though thesame could be said of other texts and genres of the period. Certainly thereis no evidence elsewhere for euangelion as a generic title: and for thatwe probably have the earliest preachers to thank. They were the ones whoshaped the Jesus tradition as good news, focused on the encounter withthe Christ whom they believed to be alive. They were responsible for givingthat tradition its characteristic shape, which persists through writtenforms and out again into the ongoing tradition of life-giving stories carriedwithin the community, in its iconography, its liturgy and its daily life ofprayer.Notes1. For a full discussion of the term ÔgospelÕ in second-century texts, see HelmutKoester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (London:SCM Press, 1990), ch. 1. Koester points out that the so-called ÔGnostic GospelsÕdiscovered at Nag Hammadi do not claim the title ÔgospelÕ for themselves: seeespecially ¤1.5.2. Cf. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.8.3. Richard A. Burridge, What are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-RomanBiography (SNTSMS 70; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).4. The obvious exceptions are the temptation stories of Matt 4 and Lk 4, whichhave no human observers but are still structured as a dialogue with an externalcharacter (Satan) rather than an internal psychological process.5. Cf. also Acts 1.22; 10.37; 13.24.6. Mk 16.1Ð8; Matt 28.1Ð10, 16Ð20; Lk 24.1Ð11, 13Ð35, 36Ð49; Jn 20.1Ð10, 11Ð18,19Ð29; 21.1Ð23. Luke alone has Jesus ascend to heaven: Lk 24.50Ð3; Acts 1.1Ð11.7. Cf. Stephen C. Barton, ÔMany Gospels, One Jesus?Õ, in Markus Bockmuehl, ed.,The Cambridge Companion to Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2001), 170Ð83.8. Vladimir Propp, Theory and History of Folklore (Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress, 1984), 21.9. Mark Allan Powell, What is Narrative Criticism? (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990),71.10. Propp, Folklore, 22.



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007What is a gospel? 3111. Ibid.12. Ibid.13. Cf. ProppÕs ÔdonorsÕ: Folklore, 24: ÔBesides the protagonist there are helpers,donors, the heroÕs opponents, and persons whom he saves or rescues.Õ14. Albert Lord, ÔThe Gospels as Oral Traditional LiteratureÕ, inWilliam O.Walker,ed., The Relationships Among the Gospels: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue (SanAntonio: Trinity University Press, 1978), 33Ð91.15. Ibid., 38.16. Ibid., 39Ð40.17. Ibid., 41Ð44.18. Ibid., 80.19. Ibid., 44Ð58.20. Ibid., 45.21. Justin, First Apology 67; cf. 65Ð6; Dialogue 105, 106.22. On the history of the term, cf. Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, ch.1.23. Eusebius, History, iii 39.15. PapiasÕ hosa emneømoneusen should be translatednot Ôwhat he [Mark] rememberedÕ but Ôwhat he [Peter] recountedÕ.24. Eusebius, Church History, ii 15.1Ð2; cf. iv 14.5Ð7.25. See further Loveday Alexander, ÔAncient Book-Production and the Circulationof the GospelsÕ, in Richard J. Bauckham, ed., The Gospels for All Christians:Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 71Ð111.26. Eusebius, Church History, iii 39.4.27. Cf. Samuel Byrskog, Story as History Ð History as Story (WUNT 123; T¬ubingen:Mohr Siebeck, 2000), and the literature there cited.28. Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, ¤1.4; ch. 5.29. Loveday Alexander, The Preface to LukeÕs Gospel (SNTSMS 78; Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1993).30. Texts in Ronald Hock and Edward OÕNeil, The Chreia in Ancient Rhetoric, i:The Progymnasmata (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986); examples in Vernon K.Robbins, Ancient Quotes and Anecdotes (Sonoma: Polebridge, 1989).31. Hock and OÕNeil, Chreia, 82Ð3; 109Ð10.32. Loveday Alexander, ÔActs and Ancient Intellectual BiographyÕ, in BruceW.Winterand Andrew D. Clarke, eds., The Book of Acts in its First Century Setting, i:Ancient Literary Setting (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1993), 31Ð63.33. Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmissionin Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity (repr. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,1998). See also now Martin Jaffee, Torah in the Mouth (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 2001).34. P. S. Alexander, ÔRabbinic Biography and the Biography of Jesus: A Survey ofthe EvidenceÕ, in Christopher M. Tuckett, ed., Synoptic Studies: The AmpleforthConferences of 1982 and 1983 (JSNTS 7; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984), 19Ð50.35. Ibid., 41.36. Werner H.Kelber, The Oral and the Written Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983)argues for a radical disjunction between oral and literate modes of discourse.Recent folklore studies are more inclined to approach literacy and orality asÔnot incompatible but reciprocal paradigmsÕ: cf. Eli Yassif, The Hebrew Folktale:History, Genre, Meaning (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), ixÐxi.



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 200732 Loveday Alexander37. Plutarch provides better parallels to the narrative coherence of the gospels; buthe shares DiogenesÕ conviction that the isolated saying or anecdote providesthe most telling revelation of the subjectÕs ethos or moral character. Suetoniusprefers a purely thematic arrangement, and Arrian presents his recollectionsof the teachings of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus simply in the form of ÔDiscoursesÕwith no narrative at all.38. Arnaldo Momigliano, The Development of Greek Biography (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 1993), 104.39. Tacitus, Agricola ¤46; Lucian, Demonax ¤2. On the new biographical mood ingeneral, cf. M. J. Edwards and Simon Swain, eds., Portraits: Biographical Representationin the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1997).40. E.g. Morton Smith, ÔProlegomena to a Discussion of Aretalogies, Divine Men,the Gospels and Jesus,Õ JBL, 90 (1971), 174Ð99.41. E. L. Bowie, ÔApollonius of Tyana: Tradition and RealityÕ, ANRW, ii.16.2 (1978), 1652Ð99.42. Edwards and Swain, Portraits, 28 n. 74.43. F. G. Downing, ÔContemporary Analogies to the Gospels and Acts: Genres orMotifs?Õ, in Tuckett, Synoptic Studies, 51Ð65.44. Edwards and Swain, Portraits, 33.45. Edwards and Swain, Portraits, 27: ÔThe Gospels obviously have close culturalconnections with Jewish historiography, which is centred around prominentindividuals to an extent that is alien to Greek historical writing.Õ46. Yassif, Hebrew Folktale, 31.47. Ibid., 37.48. Edwards and Swain, Portraits, 27Ð8.49. Philo, On Abraham, ¤4Ð5.50. See further, Loveday Alexander, ÔAncient Intellectual BiographyÕ.51. Tessa Rajak, ÔDying for the LawÕ, in Edwards and Swain, Portraits, 39Ð67.52. D. R. A. Hare, ÔThe Lives of the ProphetsÕ, in J. H. Charlesworth, ed., The OldTestamentPseudepigrapha (New York: Doubleday, 1985), ii, 385Ð99; Anna MariaSchwemer, Studien zu den fr¬uhj¬udischen Prophetenlegenden Vitae Prophetarum,i, ii (T¬ubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995).53. Loveday Alexander, ÔFact, Fiction, and the Genre of ActsÕ, NTS, 44 (1998), 380Ð99.54. It is always worth considering the possibility that the generic influence maywork in the opposite direction: cf. G.W. Bowersock, Fiction as History (Berkeley

:University of California Press, 1994), 143. Apollonius of Tyana is a clear caseinpoint.Further readingAlexander, P. S., ÔRabbinic Biography and the Biography of Jesus: A Survey of theEvidenceÕ, in C. M. Tuckett, ed., Synoptic Studies: The Ampleforth Conferencesof 1982 and 1983 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1984), 19Ð50Bauckham, Richard, ed., The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996)



Cambridge Collections Online © Cambridge University Press, 2007What is a gospel? 33Bockmuehl, Markus, and Hagner, Donald A., eds., The Written Gospel (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2005)Burridge, Richard A., What are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).Byrskog, Samuel, Story as History Ð History as Story (T¬ubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000) Jaffee, Martin S., Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 bceÐ400 ce (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)Kelber, Werner H., The Oral and the Written Gospel (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983)Koester, Helmut, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development(Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990)Niditch, Susan, ed., Text and Tradition: The Hebrew Bible and Folklore (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990)Stanton, Graham N., Jesus and Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2004)Yassif, Eli, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 1999)



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