Friday Review: Hurtado 8, Chapter 5, Part 1

Chapter 5 of Larry Hurtado's, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, is a monster 88 pages. It is called "Jesus Books" and principally deals with the Synoptic gospels. I wonder if the chapter on Q started out as part of this chapter. And I wonder if this chapter was written before some material we've already read.

Anyway, the first part of the chapter that I will briefly review today (259-82) deals mainly with the shared features of the Synoptics and their likely genre.

Introduction
Hurtado begins with a general discussion of "Jesus books," a term he uses so that he does not presume any conclusions from the start on exactly what a gospel might be, for example. H prefers to call Q a "sayings collection" rather than a gospel. Further, he notes that the Gospel of Thomas lacks even the narrative structure of Q. He will cover second century non-canonical works like the Protoevangelium of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, or the Gospel of Peter in a later chapter, as he will John.

Shared Features of Canonical Gospels
The second part of the chapter then looks at shared features of the canonical gospels, which he considers to be earlier than any of the non-canonical gospels mentioned above. They all share a recognizably similar narrative framework. In all of them (as in Q), Jesus is "paradigmatic and uniquely authoritative in his teachings and actions" (263). Jesus is the key issue of the gospels and the polarizing force. All four gospels agree in the basic honorific terms they use of him.

One of H's strong contributions in this part of the chapter is to point out the extent to which the four gospels locate Jesus in specific historical, cultural, and geographical settings, something Hurtado refers to as "local color" (265-66). "He is not some timeless symbol, not a mythical figure of a 'once upon a time,' but instead very specifically a Jew whose life and activities are geographically and chronologically located in a particular place and period of Jewish history in Roman Judea" (266). By contrast, "From Thomas we would not even know that Jesus was Jewish and that his activities were in Roman Judea!" (267).

Finally, all the canonical gospels point to a larger narrative world that reaches back to the Old Testament and look forward to eschatological events. It is this aspect that might be considered "mythic," although in the nuanced sense of scholarship, not the popular but uninformed "it didn't happened and isn't true" sense (that's my targum on n. 20, p. 269).

Literary Genre
The final part of the chapter I want to summarize today examines the question of the gospels' genres in concentric circles--first as early Christian literature, then in relation to Jewish literature, and finally in relation to Greco-Roman literature.

H thinks the gospels reflect in some sense the form of early Christian proclamation. He is thus not surprised that Q had a narrative structure too. I want to say again that the claim that Q had a narrative structure is plausible but somewhat suspicious. After all, Q is an abstraction largely from a Lukan order of material, and Luke has a narrative structure. I'm sure this has all been addressed, but how do we know that the supposed narrative structure of Q is not to a large extent a function of Luke's narrative structure?

Nevertheless, Hurtado considers Mark "a significant development in literary genre" (272). It and the other gospels represent "the 'literaturization' of prior oral discourse and written expressions about Jesus" (here building on David Aune's work). Meanwhile, each gospel is a dstinctive literary work with its own emphases. They were a new kind of Christian writing (274).

Secondly, there is nothing comparable in rabbinic literature, a fact that seems christologically significant. A rabbinic work like Pirke Aboth includes the sayings of many different rabbis. But none of them are treated as inerrant or uniquely authoritative, and this collection does not center on one rabbi in particular. "[T]he composition of the canonical Gospels, which he [Richard Burridge] properly fits within the genre of ancient biographical writings ..., represented 'an enormous christological and theological claim'" (275).

Hurtado does mention Philo's biographies of Abraham, Moses, and Joseph, as well as Josephus' autobiography. But these biographies follow the "Greek notion of biography as the presentation of characters who are exemplary of the qualities prized by those for whom one writes" (276). The Gospels, however, do not treat Jesus as "a paragon of general virtues" (277). Jesus is rather "the unique envoy of God who announces and brings the kingdom of God in his own person and actions in an unparalleled way" (277).

Finally, Hurtado considers the Roman-Era literary environment. While he respects those who have argued that the gospels are a unique genre ultimately incomparable to the Greco-Roman bios (e.g., Fitzmeyer), H thinks it is still the best way to categorize them. "To associate a writing with this or that genre does not mean that it is the same in all respects as other examples of that genre" (279). The question is whether a reader would come to the gospels with certain expectations because they would categorize it, roughly speaking, in that way.

Hurtado's placement of the gospels in the biography category comes because he believes they demonstrate certain expectations of the genre, particularly Luke. He does not at this point, at least to me, seem to give many specific examples. For Mark, for example, he mentions a disposition on Mark's part to present Jesus in heroic terms (281).

I have no reason to question the current consensus that places at least Matthew, Mark, and John in the biography category (Luke-Acts it seems to me, is more like history). But I am not sure at this point that it affects my interpretation. In general I think ancient history writers or biographers were more interested in advancing particular truths than in historical certitude, despite frequently strong protests to giving the real scoop (I find Josephus' bombastic claims comical). Thucydides actually apologizes for not being more sensational like other historians. And yet he doesn't bat an eye to tell us that he has made up some of the speeches in his account.

This pattern could impact how we took the gospels and Acts, if we concluded that it applied.

More tomorrow, hopefully...