The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel

Abstract

Since the 1992 release of Richard Burridge’s What Are the Gospels? the view that the Gospels belong to the genre Greco-Roman biography has achieved something close to the rare status of a consensus. Though the ground gained by Burridge has been fortified in various ways over the ensuing three decades, Helen Bond contends that few have sought to extend the gains. This impressively argued book constitutes a robust attempt to remedy that shortcoming. Her thesis is that Mark’s choice of this genre reflects a desire “to extend the Christian ‘gospel’ so that it was no longer limited to the death and resurrection of Jesus, but included his ministry as well” (p. 5). His purpose in doing so was to form “a distinctive Christian identity based on the countercultural way of life (and death) of its founding figure” (p. 5).Bond begins her study by surveying the field from the view afforded by Burridge’s high ground and attempts to account for the failure of NT scholarship to move on from there. As Bond sees it, the conclusion that the Gospels are bioi put a hard stop to form-critical approaches that reduced the Gospels to snips of tradition whose real significance lay not in their final, awkwardly redacted forms but in their history of transmission. On that understanding, the Gospels were regarded as sui generis, of interest primarily for the access they provide to the beliefs of early Christian communities and to the Jesus of history. But if the work of Burridge helped lay that approach to rest, the study of the Gospels quickly moved in other directions—the renewal of the quest for the historical Jesus, a focus on the Gospels’ use of prior Scripture, and, most especially, the rise of narrative criticism.One might have expected narrative critics to be especially attentive to the question of genre. However, this turned out not to be the case—or at least it turned out not to be the case in the right way. Concerned as it was with the use of contemporary categories and methods to study the Gospels, narrative criticism did not prove to be terribly interested in the study of an ancient genre. To get at the distinguishing characteristics of ancient bioi, Bond draws together the findings of a growing body of literature on ancient bioi both inside and outside biblical studies. Though the genre was flexible and varied, ancient bioi primarily attempt to draw moralizing lessons from the lives they commemorate. In contrast with contemporary biographies, character development in the individuals they depict was much less important than the development of character in the readers they address. In part at least, this explains the particular focus on death in ancient bioi, inasmuch as death was regarded as the “supreme indicator” of a person’s character and way of life. As such, the drawing out of the subject’s character trumped historical veracity, though “untruthful tidying and improvising is never extensive” (p. 68).After considering what the choice of this genre tells us about Mark and his readers, Bond turns her attention to the implications for reading the Gospel. Her reading of Mark unfolds over three chapters that consider in turn Mark’s presentation of Jesus’s life, the role of other characters, and the significance of Jesus’s death. The results should stimulate a lively response. While her reading may not dampen the enthusiasm of many narrative critics, it may serve to chasten their more speculative claims. For instance, the chapter on other characters in Mark draws attention to the significance of minor characters in bioi generally. Unlike studies that attempt to draw from these characters Mark’s theology of discipleship, Bond argues that Jesus alone serves as the model of discipleship. In accordance with well-established generic conventions, “the purpose of virtually every actor (or group) is primarily to enhance a particular quality exhibited by Jesus” (p. 168). This leads her to part ways from many narrative critical approaches to characterization. Thus, for example, the relatively negative portrayal of the twelve disciples is not in itself significant but simply serves to highlight various aspects of Mark’s depiction of Jesus.In the final chapter on Jesus’s death, Bond’s understanding of the genre leads her to conclude that Mark’s interest in Jesus’s death lies primarily in the way that it exemplifies and commends the life and teaching of Jesus. This accords with the generic expectations of bioi in which the manner and nature of the subject’s death serves to validate and confirm the significance of the subject’s life. As such, Mark’s interest in the saving significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection is minimal. Instead, Mark’s primary focus is on the manner of his death and the way that it contributes to Mark’s concern to hold up Jesus’s life as a model for emulation.It is important to note that Bond begins with a notional understanding of early Christianity. An earlier strand of historical-Jesus scholarship claimed that the earliest form of Christianity focused on Jesus’s life and teachings and had little or no awareness of his death and resurrection. Bond assumes the reverse. Since early Christian awareness of Jesus was limited to his death and resurrection, the key to understanding Mark’s bios is not to see it as the good news of God’s saving act in the Messiah. Rather, the key is to see it as the expansion of the term gospel to include the moral exhortation that comes from holding Jesus’s life up for imitation.Though Bond’s reading of Mark certainly enhances our understanding of how Mark functions as bios, it is less clear how Mark’s bios functions as the good news it purports to convey. In considering Jesus through the lens of Greco-Roman biography, there are times when Jesus seems to become a Greco-Roman figure—an exemplar of Greco-Roman virtues of philanthropy, modesty, and the like. Similarly, though she acknowledges Jewish precursors to Jesus’s designation as the Son of God, the adoptionist overtones that she perceives in the title are rather more at home in the Greco-Roman world. Presumably, Bond would say that this is Mark’s doing, not hers. Still, the result is a certain effacement of Jesus’s Jewishness and a blurring of the fact that Mark is not simply giving us ancient biography but using the form to stake a claim that in this particular biography the purposes of God for Israel and the world had come to climax. No book can do everything, but the minimal attention paid to Mark’s use of Israel’s Scriptures comes at a cost. These Scriptures make heavy use of biographical sketches to tell the story of Israel. Attending to Mark’s use of Scripture may have created a greater sense that from beginning to end Mark’s intent is to narrate the arrival of God’s saving rule over Israel in the life, death and resurrection of the Messiah. On Bond’s account, Mark receives a gospel without a biography, but what he produces is a biography with very little gospel.