Why Bíos? On the Relationship Between Gospel Genre and Implied Audience (Library of New Testament Studies | LNTS)

by Justin Marc Smith

Publisher:

Bloomsbury

, 2015

Overview

Justin Marc Smith argues that the Gospels were intended to be addressed to a wide and varied audience. He does this by considering them to be works of ancient biography, comparative to the Greco-Roman biography. The earliest Christian interpreters of the Gospels did not understand their works to be sectarian documents. Rather, the wider context of Jesus literature in the second and third centuries points toward the broader Christian practice of writing and disseminating literary presentations of Jesus and Jesus traditions as widely as possible.

Smith addresses the difficulty in reconstructing the various gospel communities that might lie behind the Gospel texts and suggests that the ‘all nations’ motif present in all four of the canonical Gospels suggests an ideal secondary audience beyond those who could be identified as Christian.

Key Features

• Addresses the challenge of reconstructing ancient communities on the basis of individual gospel texts
• Argues that the gospels were intented to have a wide audience
• Sguggests that proposes focused on the sectarian nature of the gospels are wrong headed

Contents

• Assessing the Relationships between Gospel Genre and Audience
• Proposing a New Typology for Graeco-Roman Biography: Genre, Sub-Genre and Questions of Audience
• cRafting Authority in the Patristic Reference to Gospel Origins: Authoritative People, Authoritative Places, and Authoritative Gospels
• Avoiding Cross-generic Comparisons: The Role of Genre inn Assessing Audience in Non-Canonical and Canonical Gospels
• Defining Gospel Audiences: Gospel Communities, Gospel Audiences and ‘Focused’ B???
• Evnisaging Gospel Audiences in Space and Time: ‘Contemporary’ B??? and the Gospels for ‘All Nations’

Product Details

• Title: Why Βίος?: On the Relationship between Gospel Genre and Implied Audience
• Author: Justin Marc Smith
• Series: Library of New Testament Studies
• Volume: 518
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Print Publication Date: 2015
• Logos Release Date: 2017
• Pages: 256
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Church history › Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600--Sources; Bible. N.T. Gospels › Criticism, interpretation, etc
• ISBNs: 9780567656605, 9780567656612, 0567656608, 0567656616
• Resource ID: LLS:WHYBSRLTMPLDDNC
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T03:48:54Z

About Justin Marc Smith

Justin Marc Smith is assistant professor at Azusa Pacific University.