Gospel Genre + 2:1077-1079 Vorster, Willem S.

GOSPEL GENRE. ―Gospel‖ as a designation for genre refers to a variety of early Christian writings
both inside and outside the canon. The term is not used in this sense in the NT, and the present
superscriptions of the four canonical gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did not form
part of the original manuscripts. Although these writings are commonly referred to as ―gospel‖ as an
indication of genre, this practice probably originated in the 2d century C.E. (cf. Did. 15.3–4; 2 Clem. 8.5;
Mart. Pol. 4.1) and was only established by the 4th century. Several writings outside the canon, some of a
totally different content and text type, came to be known as ―gospels.‖ It is normally argued that
noncanonical gospels were called ―gospels‖ in view of the titles given to canonical ―gospels.‖ Thus,
according to some scholars, the noncanonical gospels are apocryphal and therefore fictional and inferior.
The question of ―gospel‖ as genre is often, in view of this, restricted to the text type of the four canonical
gospels. It is not correct to make canonical versus noncanonical a priori a norm for the discussion of the
gospel genre. On the other hand, there seems to be sufficient reason to regard the canonical gospels as a
distinct class of texts.
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A. Can One Speak of a Gospel Genre?
1. Canonical Gospels
2. Noncanonical Gospels
B. Gospel, a Unique Genre?
1. An Evolutionary Model
2. Analogical Explanations
C. What Then Is the Gospel Genre?
———
A. Can One Speak of a Gospel Genre?
Genre can be described either by comparison of generic types and subtypes (for example, drama, epic,
lyric, novel, biography, sonnet, and so on) or in terms of the organization of the material in a given text
(for example, narrative, argument, exposition, description, and listing). Until recently, discussions about
the gospel genre were restricted to the first method of classification of texts, and the gospel genre was
regarded as sui generis; that is, unique. On the other hand it is clear that the canonical gospels are
narratives and thus comparable to other narrative texts of antiquity. Not all ―gospels,‖ however, are
narratives; nor do they all share the same features. This gives rise to the question of whether one can
speak of a gospel genre?
1. Canonical Gospels. It is maintained in many circles that the author of the gospel of Mark created a
unique genre in writing his gospel. By making use of oral and written sources he created a text of
exceptional character. It is regarded as a passion narrative with a long introduction. Some scholars assert
that, contrary to the other gospels, Mark‘s gospel does not only contain preaching (kerygma) but that it is
also kerygma. It is maintained that, in comparison to the other canonical gospels, Mark‘s gospel is unique.
Matthew made use of Mark in the compilation of his gospel but laid far more stress on the teaching of
Jesus. The gospel of Matthew is a composition of halachic and apocalyptic discourses in a narrative
framework. John‘s gospel is a composition of semeia (signs) and revelatory speeches, and Luke wrote a
vita (life), or history, of Jesus. According to this view, Mark‘s gospel is the only true ―gospel.‖ This
makes it hardly possible to speak of a gospel genre. It is clear, however, that the foregoing argument is
based on the idea that Mark‘s gospel is unique and that it presents a different genre because it is regarded
as kerygma. This view does not account for the fact that all four gospels are narratives, albeit narratives of
which the character and arrangement of material are in many respects different. Once the narrative
character of the gospels is taken seriously, there seems to be little reason to argue that they are not of the
same genre.
2. Noncanonical Gospels. Neither from the point of view of literary character nor from the perspective
of content is it possible to regard as of the same genre all the noncanonical texts which are called gospels.
These texts include collections of sayings of Jesus, infancy and miracle stories, post-Resurrection
discussions between the risen Lord and his disciples, speculative dialogues, meditations, and theological
and ethical treatises. The corpus of gospel texts originating from the 2d century and later has been
expanded by the discovery of the ―gospels‖ of Nag Hammadi. Although there is often a very clear
relationship between the NT and these texts (cf. Gospel of Thomas and the hypothetical sayings collection
of Q), the differences in genre are obvious. In view of these and other noncanonical texts, however, some
scholars argue that one should broaden the definition of ―gospel genre‖ by including independent sayings
collections, revelatory speeches, aretalogies (stories of miracle workers), and narratives such as the
canonical gospels. This would make ―gospel genre‖ a contradiction in terms, since no genre could consist
of such dissimilar text types. It might be possible to trace back to the canonical and precanonical gospel
traditions the origin of the different texts which now belong to the so-called gospel-literature, but that
does not mean that all of them should therefore belong to the same literary genre as the canonical gospels.
The Gospel of Thomas, for example, is clearly not a narrative. The Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of
Philip are also not related to the same genre, even though they have material in common with the
canonical gospels. The canonical gospels are narratives about the life, deeds, and words of Jesus, while
most of the noncanonical narrative gospels are narratives about an aspect of his life.
In view of the great variety of texts that are called ―gospels,‖ it seems necessary not to confuse the term
gospel genre with the name gospel, which has been given to texts of different genre. The canonical
gospels are narratives, and in this regard it would be possible to speak of a subgenre of narrative as gospel
genre.
B. Gospel, a Unique Genre?
In view of the language and style of the gospels, it has been argued that it is impossible to compare
them to literary texts from the Hellenistic and Semitic world of the same period or earlier. The gospels are
folk literature, it is argued, and therefore should not be compared with contemporary literary texts.
Because Justin and Papias, for example, incorrectly regarded the gospels as literature of the same quality
as contemporary Hellenistic and Semitic texts, they compared the gospels with these writings. It is for
apologetic purposes that Justin (1 Apol. 66.3) calls the gospels apomnemoneumata, that is ―memoirs‖ (of
the Apostles). He probably wanted his readers to believe that the gospels were of the same quality as the
Hellenistic memoir literature (cf. Xenophon‘s Mem.). According to some scholars, there seems to be no
reason to believe this. Papias‘ remarks about the literary character of Matthew and Mark are in no way
more credible (cf. Eus. Hist. Eccl. 3.39.15). In the light of this, the question arose as to whether there is
any text type of antiquity which has the same genre characteristics as the gospels. The answers given to
the question are basically of two kinds: On the one hand, the gospel genre is explained in terms of an
evolutionary model; on the other, it is explained in terms of analogy.
1. An Evolutionary Model. The evolutionary model has dominated discussions about the gospel genre
for the greater part of the 20th century. This was the result of the rise of form criticism as a tool in biblical
criticism. Convinced by the idea that the gospels were folk literature and not biographies, as some
maintained, some scholars asserted that the gospels developed from cult legends and narratives, or the
basic outline of the Christian kerygma. The early Christians were storytellers, and they used the stories of
and about Jesus for cultic purposes. Mark collected some of these traditions and wrote a gospel. Except
for other folk literature, there are no parallels to the gospel genre which Mark created. This form has no
literary genealogy. Through a process of development which was influenced by the emphasis on the death
and resurrection of Jesus, on missionary activities of the early Church, and on its eschatological
expectations, these traditions grew or developed into the gospel form. Mark, the first person to write a
gospel, was more of a collector than an author. Within the evolutionary model, various solutions have
been given to the problem of gospel genre. All of these solutions are related to the idea of evolution of the
gospel material and its form.
In the first place, some postulate that the gospel genre is the end product of a process of development of
the primitive kerygma, which proclaimed the passion, death, and resurrection of the incarnated Lord (cf. 1
Cor 15:1–17). The gospel genre presents the final phase in the evolution of this early Christian kerygma.
A form of literature which is sui generis developed from the cult legend about the death and resurrection
of Jesus. According to this view, the absence of biographical detail about the birth, education,
development of personality, background, and character of Jesus is explained by the fact that the gospel
originated from this cult legend and not from the life story (biography) of Jesus. The gospel genre evolved
from the traditional core of beliefs of the Christian community without any literary concerns. One should
therefore not be surprised that the gospel genre has no literary parallels. Contrary to biographical
literature, the contents of the gospel text focus on the passion and resurrection of Christ. A gospel is in
this view kerygma—the kerygma about the Passion with an extended introductory narrative.
Closely related to the previous explanation of the uniqueness of the gospel form is the theory of an
original outline or framework from which the gospel genre developed. The framework serves as the basic
structure or skeleton for the gospel material. For example, it can be found in Mark 1:14–15 and Acts
10:34–43. Traditional material, which included more than material about the death and resurrection of
Christ, was inserted into this framework. It also contained the idea of fulfilled Scripture and the return of
the Lord. Other scholars found other frameworks (such as the so-called Hellenistic myth in Phil 2:6–11 or
the Hellenistic-Jewish-Christian credo in Rom 1:3–4) that form the base into which other traditions were
inserted. In this way a unique literary form, the gospel genre, evolved out of a kernel of cult beliefs.
Although it was an individual person who wrote down the traditional material in the form of a gospel,
the creative power behind the gospel genre was the primitive Church as a cultic community. In this
argument, the individual as author is replaced by a collective group that was responsible for the origin of
the literary form. According to this view there is no place for the creativity of the mind of an individual
author. It is only since the rise of redaction criticism that more attention has been given to the individual
editors of the different gospels and that the idea of the gospel as a unique literary form without parallel in
contemporary literature has come to be questioned. Although the idea of the development of the kerygma
explains the growth of tradition, it cannot explain the characteristics of genre. There are only a limited
number of ways in which any communication—that is, any text—can be arranged, and the organization of
material in a text determines its genre. In the light of this, many attempts have been made to determine the
place of the gospels in the history of literature and to explain the text type ―gospel.‖
2. Analogical Explanations. Before the rise of form criticism, it was customary to compare the gospels
with the Hellenistic vitae (ancient biographies) and memoir literature like the Memorabilia of Xenophon,
Arrian‘s Epictetus, and Philostratus‘ Life of Appolonius of Tyana. In recent years the search for literary
parallels of the gospel genre was reopened, and scholars made fresh attempts to find possible parallels
either in Hellenistic or in Semitic literature. In the search of an ancient genre which could have served as a
model for the first author of a gospel, analogies of many different types of texts have been found in
ancient literature. In addition to the Hellenistic vitae and memoirs of the rulers and philosophers, other
kinds of texts have been taken into account, such as aretalogical biographies, tragedy, tragicomedy, and
Socratic discourses. From the Semitic point of view, the gospels have been compared with apocalypses,
the legend of Ahikar, Exodus, the book of Jonah, a Passover Haggadah, Midrashim, and the Mishnah.
What is remarkable about these comparisons is that most of them were based on an explanation of the
gospel genre derived by form criticism and not on their own merit.
The gospels have been associated with biographies in various ways during the past. In recent years the
conviction has grown that the gospels reveal features of ancient biographies. Recognizing the differences
between the gospels and ancient biographies, as well as the diversity in the different types of biography of
the ancient Greco-Roman and Semitic worlds, a growing number of scholars maintain that biography is
the only generic text type with which the gospel genre can be compared. Taking into account the
objections raised against the comparison, it nevertheless appears that although the gospels fall short in
literary style and language usage, they are nothing less than biographies. It has been argued, for example,
that the gospel genre comes closest to the type of biography in which the purpose is to praise a person by
accentuating his life, works, and teachings. This type of biography is called encomium, or ―laudatory
biography,‖ and examples of it can be found in the writings of Polybius (cf. Hist. 10.21.8), Cicero
(Fam.5.13.3), Lucian (Hist. conscr. 7), Cornelius Nepos (Pelopidas 16.1.1), and—according to this
view—also in the gospel genre. Closely related to this view is the search for aretalogical biographies in
the Greco-Roman world as possible models for the gospel genre. From a Semitic perspective, the gospel
genre has been compared with the ―biography of a righteous person‖ found in the Prophets. The purpose
of such a biography is to portray paradigmatically the suffering of a righteous person. Jesus is portrayed
in such a manner in the gospel of Mark, which served as a model for the other evangelists when they
wrote their gospels.
In all these studies it is not so much a particular biography, which served as an analogy for the first
author of a gospel, that is emphasized as it is the generic type of text—or more specifically a story—about
the life, works, and teachings of a person. In the analogical approach, the uniqueness of the gospel genre
as genre is denied in view of the features this text type shares with other texts of the same generic kind.
C. What Then Is the Gospel Genre?
In conclusion, the question of the gospel genre is complicated enormously by the general confusion
surrounding genre in literary criticism and by the role which the origin and growth of the gospel materials
play in discussions about the matter. If it is granted that genre can be described in terms of the
organization of material in a given text and by comparison between generic types, it is clear that all four
canonical gospels are narratives and that they reveal features of ancient biographies despite the fact that
they are not of the same literary standard. In view of this it would be possible, for the sake of
convenience, to speak of a subtype of narrative as gospel genre. Based on these assumptions, it is
unnecessary to regard the so-called gospel genre as sui generis. The question of who wrote the first gospel
is immaterial to the question of how to define the gospel genre. The first is a historical problem; the
second is a literary one.
The implication of defining the genre of the gospels as a subtype of narrative is that very few so-called
noncanonical ―gospels‖ would qualify to be called ―gospels‖ simply because they are not narratives.
Bibliography
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Guelich, R. 1983. The Gospel Genre. Pp. 183–219 in Das Evangelium und die Evangelien: Vorträge vom Tübinger Symposium
1982, ed. P. Stuhlmacher. Tübingen.
Köster, H. 1980. Apocryphal and Canonical Gospels. HTR 73: 105–30.
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WILLEM S. VORSTER