The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel
Overview
What difference does it make to identify Mark’s gospel as an ancient biography?
Reading the gospels as ancient biographies makes a profound difference to the way that we interpret them. Biography immortalizes the memory of the subject, creating a literary monument to the person’s life and teaching. Yet it is also a bid to legitimize a specific view of that figure and to position an author and his audience as appropriate “gatekeepers” of that memory. Biography was well suited to the articulation of shared values and commitments, the formation of group identity, and the binding together of a past story, present concerns, and future hopes.
Helen Bond argues that Mark’s author used the genre of biography to extend the gospel from an earlier narrow focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus so that it included the way of life of its founding figure. Situating Jesus at the heart of a biography was a bold step in outlining a radical form of Christian discipleship patterned on the life—and death—of Jesus.
- Surveys the history and attributes of ancient biographies
- Examines how biographies were used to articulate shared values and commitments
- Argues that Mark uses the genre of biography to extend the gospel to include the way of life of its founding figure
- Mark as a bios
- Ancient bioi
- Mark the Biographer
- A Life of Jesus
- Other Characters
- The Death of Jesus
Top Highlights
“If we are to understand a text, particularly one from a distant culture, we need to be attuned to its historical context. Any piece of writing contains far more meaning than that expressed solely by the words on the page. Texts assume and evoke cultural knowledge, and without this any reading is hazardous.” (Page 8)
“My own view, in contrast, is that reading the gospels as ancient biographies makes a profound difference to the way that we interpret them.” (Page 4)
“The difficulty for any modern interpreter of Mark’s bios, of course, lies in what is ‘unsaid,’ the vast store of cultural assumptions that Mark’s audience instinctively brought to bear on their understanding of his work. We cannot hope ever to be able to put ourselves in the position of those earliest audiences, but it is possible to say some things about Mark’s general setting.” (Page 8)
“elastic—a ‘flexible set of expectations,’ ready to be molded in a variety of ways by a creative author” (Page 32)
“The reason why no one in the early church describes the earliest lives of Jesus as bioi is presumably because from very early on they became known by a term that had quickly acquired theological significance within Christ-following circles—that is, ‘gospels.’” (Page 17)
- Title: The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel
- Author: Helen K. Bond
- Publisher: Eerdmans
- Print Publication Date: 2020
- Logos Release Date: 2020
- Pages: 317
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Bible. N.T. Mark › Criticism, interpretation, etc; Jesus Christ › Biography--History and criticism; Classical biography › History and criticism; Biography as a literary form
- ISBNs: 9780802874603, 0802874606
- Resource ID: LLS:FRSTBGRPHYJSS
- Resource Type: text.monograph.biography
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T00:05:42Z