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Ferguson 1
Matthew Ferguson
November 13, 2015
The Certamen of Homer and Hesiod and the Gospels of the New Testament:
A Comparison of Biographical Genre
What is a gospel? Few questions in New Testament Studies have posed a greater
challenge than situating the canonical Gospels within the broader context and corpus of
other Mediterranean literature from the first and second centuries CE. While the New
Testament gospels depict the ministry, passion, and resurrection of Jesusand in the
case of Matthew and Luke, his genealogy and birthscholars continue to debate what
genre of literature they belong to. A further difficulty also arises from the fact that the
gospels are products of multiple Mediterranean culturesdrawing elements from both
earlier Jewish literature, as well GrecoRoman literature. While it is obvious that the
gospels were heavily influenced by the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament
scriptures, which they cite frequently, it can often be more challenging to find a literary
antecedent and parallel within GrecoRoman literature.
Around the mid20th century, Moses Hadas and Morton Smith proposed that the
gospels are aretologiesa type of biography focused on the subject’s supernatural birth,
miracles, martyrdom, and postmortem vindication.1 The classification of aretalogy,
however, has been challenged by scholars such as Howard Clark Kee, who questions
whether aretologies constituted a formal genre in antiquity, and likewise rejects the
classifications of origins myth, biography, tragedy, and martyrology, opting instead for
comparisons with apocalyptic literature, such as the book of Daniel.2 Charles Talbert has
1
Hadas and Smith (1965: 3).
2
Kee (1977: 17).
Ferguson 2
argued that the gospels are similar to philosophical biographies, such as Xenophon’s
Memorabilia
and Porphyry’s ,3 whereas Mary Ann Tolbert has argued
Life of Pythagoras
that the gospels constitute a blend of genresincorporating elements of history, drama,
and apocalypsealong with an episodic structure, which is similar to novelistic
biographies from antiquity, such as the
Alexander Romance
and Xenophon of Athens’
.4 For the classification of the New Testament gospels as GrecoRoman
Cyropaedia
identified a number of structural features that the the gospels share with a broad range
of ancient biographical literatureincluding biographies of politicians, poets, and
philosophers.
While scholars continue to debate what type of ancient biography the gospels
belong to, or whether strict classifications of biographical types can be made at all, a
general consensus has nonetheless been reached that gospels are biographical in some
sense. The greatest challenge of classifying the gospels as ancient
bioi
arises from the
difficulties of defining the genre itself. As
T
omas Hägg explains, biography did not “form a
‘genre’” in antiquity “in the same way as, say, the novel ... in spite of its many varieties
and subgenres.”7 The surviving biographical literature that we possess from antiquity is
diverse in both its length, scope, and content. Some ancient
bioi
were extended works,
which consisted of multiple books, such as Philostratus’
Apollonius
of Tyana
and Philo’s
3
Talbert (1977: 1335).
4
Tolbert (1989: 65).
5
Burridge (1992).
6
Frickenschmidt (1997).
7
Hägg (2012: 2).
Ferguson 3
Moses
, whereas other biographical literature could be much shorter, such as Plutarch’s
Galba
, which consists of only one book spanning twentynine chapters, or Suetonius’
Horace
, which is only five chapters, or roughly five paragraphs long. Likewise, different
biographical texts could depict their subjects in a variety of different ways. Suetonius’
Caligula
and
Nero
are notorious for being critical biographies that expose the vices of
their subjects. In contrast, Tacitus’
Agricola
or Philostratus’
Apollonius
are clearly
biographies that praise their subject. Other biographical literature could fall somewhere
in between, such as Plutarch’s
Alexander
, which both praises and critiques its subject.
Due to the diverse range of biographical texts that have come down from antiquity,
some scholars have sought to define the genre only by its minimal components. Arnaldo
Momigliano, for example, argues, “An account of the life of a man from birth to death is
what I call biography.”8 This definition should seem simple enough: a biography tells the
story of man’s life from cradle to grave. Even this highly general description, however,
fails to account for all of the biographical literature from antiquity. Plutarch’s
Cato Minor
,
for example, makes no mention of its subject’s birth, despite spending three chapters
devoted to the subject’s childhood (13). One of the biggest arguments against
classifying the gospels Mark and John as biographies is the fact that they include neither
a narrative of Jesus’ birth, nor his genealogy. Instead, both gospels are almost entirely
focused on Jesus’ adult ministry and crucifixion. In fact, it has become a common joke
among New Testament scholars to refer to the Gospel of Mark as “a passion narrative
with a lengthy introduction.” Most GrecoRoman biographies from antiquity, however,
8
Momigliano (1993: 11).
Ferguson 4
spent considerably more space on the subject’s childhood, family, and education than
what is found in these gospels. Then again, Plutarch’s
Galba
is a biographical text that
focuses almost entirely on the illfated emperor’s role in the Roman civil war of 69 CE.
This biographical scope, spanning only about one year, is about the same chronological
length that is depicted in the Gospel of Mark, and even less than that of John.
It can be reasonably said, therefore, that simply categorizing the Gospels as
GrecoRoman biographies does not account for the diverse features of ancient
biographical literature, nor does it predict many of the specific features within the
Gospels themselves. For this reason, Classical scholars such as Tomas Hägg have
critiqued the criteria used by Richard Burridge for classifying the gospels as
GrecoRoman biographies. As Hägg argues:
“There is a great diversity within each of the two groups, the four gospels
and the ten ancient biographies; and it is this very diversity, we should note,
that makes it possible always to find a parallel in one or several of the ten
Lives for each feature occurring in one or more of the gospels. What is
proven is that the investigated features of the gospels are not unique in
ancient biographical literature; but no control group is established to show
which features may be regarded as significantly typical of this literature.”9
Other scholars have sought to identify more specific subcategories of ancient biography.
Friedrich Leo, for example, argued at the turn of the 20th century that there were two
basic types of biography in antiquity: 1) peripatetic biography and 2) Alexandrian
biography.10 The peripatetic type is concerned with giving a chronological narrative of a
famous king, politician, or general, such as Plutarch’s
Parallel Lives
, whereas the
9
Hägg (2012: 155).
10
Leo (1901).
Ferguson 5
Alexandrian type is more scholarly and encyclopedic, and less concerned with providing
a chronological narrative, such as Suetonius’
Caesars
.
These simple classifications, however, have long been challenged by subsequent
scholarship. Klaus Berger, for example, has expanded upon Leo’s biographical types by
including, in addition to peripatetic and Alexandrian biographies, encomium biographies,
which were derived from the custom of giving funeral orations after an individual’s death,
such as Tacitus’
Agricola
, as well popularnovelistic biographies, which included large
addition to these, Charles Talbert has offered multiple subcategorization of philosophical
biographies, distinguishing between biographies that provide readers with a model to
copy, versus those that correct false teachings about a teacher, or those designed to
whether these subcategories were actually used in antiquity, or if they are modern
scholarly inventions, such classifications can still shed considerable light on the literary
context of the gospels. As Hägg argues:
“Works of the type of Burridge and Frickenschmidt are important, not for
‘proving’ that the gospels ‘are’ biographies – that remains a matter of
definition, no more no less – but for studying them as literature in context.
They show that ancient biography is a manifold entity and that the gospels
are not more deviant or special than many other biographical texts of
GraecoRoman antiquity.”13
11
Berger (1984).
12
Talbert (1977: 948).
13
Hägg (2012: 155).
Ferguson 6
It may be the wrong question to ask, therefore, what genre of literature, or even subclass
of biography, the gospels ‘belong’ to, rather than what body of literature offers the most
fruitful comparisons for understanding the literary context in which the gospels were
written and circulated.
One distinction that can certainly be made, regardless of how many types of
ancient biographies we break into categories, is the fact that some
bioi
were published in
more sophisticated literary circles than others. The biographies of Plutarch and
Suetonius, for example, whether they be classified as peripatetic or Alexandrian, are both
scholarly and critical literary works, which were published in elite literary circles. Likewise,
both Plutarch and Suetonius wrote in a unique, individual style, which granted
considerably more authorial control in how they incorporated their source material into
their narratives. While Plutarch and Suetonius may be some of the most famous
biographers known from antiquity, however, there were also many less sophisticated
biographies in antiquity, which circulated in more popular literary circles. As
Hägg
e
xplains:
“Simultaneously with the emergence of a bookish form of biography in the
late classical and Hellenistic periods, vital biographic traditions were in
progress at an oral or subliterary level, concerning in the first place
legendary figures of great popular appeal … In contrast to the Lives ...
which are ... works of distinctive authors [and] largely remain under authorial
control, these are anonymous; and they are ‘open texts’, with regard to
origin as well as transmission.”14
These popular
Lives
, which have also been called novelistic biographies by Berger and
Tolbert, include the
Alexander Romance
, as well the
Life of Aesop
. These
14
Hägg (2012: 99).
Ferguson 7
popularnovelistic biographies can be distinguished not only by their legendary elements,
and emphasis on a hero cult, but also by how they operated as ‘open texts’ with regard to
origin and transmission. The
Life of Aesop
, for example, is an anonymous text that
survives in many versions, and incorporates large amounts of diverse material as an
‘open text,’ which can better be described as an edited compilation, rather than the
unique work of an individual author. The comparison of the
Life of Aesop
with the New
Testament gospels has also been made by a number of previous scholars, in particular
Lawrence Wills15 and Whitney Shiner.16
Today I will be discussing another novelistic biography from antiquity, which has
received less attention among New Testament scholars:
The
Certamen of Homer and
Hesiod
. The
Certamen
is a sort of dual biography, which describes the birth, career, and
deaths of the epic poets Homer and Hesiod, as well as a famous contest between the two
at Chalcis in Euboea. Our extant version of the
Certamen
survives “in a single fourteenth
century manuscript in Florence, known as the Laurentianus, LVI, 1, from which
Stephanus made the copy which is now in Leyden.”17 From a reference to the Roman
emperor Hadrian early in the text (3),18 philologists can date this current version of the
Certamen
to the early 2nd century CE. Scholars have long conjectured, however, that
the original version and sources of the
Certamen
actually derive from much earlier in
antiquity. Friedrich Nietzsche in a pair of articles from 1870 and 1873 argued that an
earlier version of the
Certamen
was written by the sophist Alcidamas in the 4th century
15
Wills (1997: 2350).
16
Shiner (1998: 155176).
17
Winter (1925: 121).
18
All citations of the
Certamen
are to
WilamowitzMoellendorff
(1916).
Ferguson 8
BCE.19 This argument was based in part on the fact that Alcidamas’
M ouseion
is explicitly
cited in the
Certamen
(14) regarding the details of Hesiod’s death.
Since making this argument in the late 19th century, two subsequent papyrus
discoveries have lent strength to Nietzsche’s hypothesis. The Flinders Petrie papyrus
XXV, which belongs to the 3rd century BCE, consists of fortyeight lines which
proves that the
Certamen
was not first composed during the age of Hadrian, but had
previous versions that were written several centuries earlier. The University of Michigan
papyrus 2754, which dates from the 2nd3rd centuries CE, contains the end of our
current version of the
Certamen
, with the subscript [Ἀλκι]δάμαντος περι Ὁμήρου, lending
weight to the authorship of Alcidamas.21 As Neil O’Sullivan summarizes, “All these facts
are most easily explained by the assumption that Alcidamas, in his
M ouseion
, wrote a
version of the
Certamen
essentially the same as the extant one, and that the papyri are
part of his version.”22
The fact that the
Certamen
had multiple versions, and lines that were added to it
from as late as the 2nd century CE, with the mention of the emperor Hadrian, is an
important feature for distinguishing this style of biography. As Hägg notes,
popularnovelistic biographies operated as ‘open’ texts, which incorporated and redacted
large amounts of earlier materials: “In a process of ‘segmentary composition’, various
independent traditions attached to the hero, historical or legendary, are combined
19
Nietzsche (1870 and 1873).
20
O’Sullivan (1992: 64).
21
Winter (1925: 126).
22
Ibid. 64.
Ferguson 9
without much effort to accommodate them to each other or the resulting whole.”23 A
consequence of this style of composition is that different manuscripts contain multiple
variations of the same text, and later interpolations were added much more frequently
than with other biographical texts. As Hägg explains, “their original character of
agglutinative, anonymous works continued to invite additions, subtractions, and
transpositions all through Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.”24 Here we see a major
parallel with the Gospels. As Bart Ehrman estimates, there are between 200,000 –
400,000 variants in our surviving manuscripts of the New Testament.25 Most of these
variations are minor spelling variations, however, the Gospels also include large
interpolations of added material. For example, the extended endings of Mark 16,
including both the shorter (16:8) and longer variations (16:920), is a famous
textualcritical example of large interpolations adding a new section to the narrative.
While New Testament textual critics work to discover the ‘original’ text of the Gospels, it is
important to keep in mind that novelisticbiographies, which operated as ‘open’ texts,
likewise have textual variations similar to the Gospels. When Christian scribes added
interpolations to the Gospels, therefore, they may have been engaging in a form of
textual redaction which was not atypical of this genre of literature.
Beyond textual variations, the structure of the
Certamen
likewise shows signs of
deriving from earlier source materials. In its current form, the
Certamen
consists of a
tripartite structure, with part I (sections 15) consisting of the ancestry and place of birth
23
Hägg (2012: 100).
24
Hägg (2012: 100).
25
Ehrman (2005: 90).
Ferguson 10
of the two poets, and part III (sections 1418) consisting of the fate and deaths of the
subjects. Part II (sections 613) features the famous
ἀγών, or “contest,” between Homer
and Hesiod, from which the text is named.26 This ἀγών at the center is probably the
earliest version of the text. Barbara Graziosi argues that the contest section may have
been composed by Athenian rhapsodes in the 5th century BCE, which would even add
an oral component to the text’s composition.27
The sources for the poets’ deaths in Part III likewise betrays earlier materials.
N.J.
Richardson has pointed out that the account of Homer’s death was known to Heraclitus
(22 B 56 DK) and that a century later Thucydides (3.96) was aware of the account of
Hesiod’s death.28 Likewise, the synchronicity of the poets living during the same time
period, in order for the contest to take place, is a conscious choice of the editor in
choosing between the various source materials for Homer and Hesiod’s lives. The editor
of the
Certamen
(5) even notes that only τινὲς … φασὶν (“some say”) that Homer and
Hesiod lived during the same time period. Maarit Kivilo argues, “In the oral tradition which
almost certainly was the ultimate source in the present case, the supposed ‘fact’ of the
contemporaneous living Homer and Hesiod, whether historically authentic or not, must
have been transmitted in connection with some story which tied the poets together.”29
Between the different sections of the
Certamen
, therefore, we can tell that the editor has
stitched together the current version using various sources about the contest and lives of
the two poets.
26
Jensen and Heit (2014: 13).
27
Graziosi (2001: 67f.).
28
Richardson (1981: 13)
29
Kavilo (2010: 22).
Ferguson 11
This compilation of source material is very similar to the structure of the Gospels.
Scholars have long known, for example, that a lost QSource, which was an early
collection of Jesus’ sayings, lies behind sayings traditions in Matthew and Luke that are
not found in Mark. Likewise, Gerd Theissen has proposed that an earlier Passion
Narrative lies behind the Gospel of Mark, to which the author has added earlier materials
about Jesus’ ministry.30 Other scholars have likewise argued that a Signs Gospel lies
behind the structure of our current Gospel of John, providing an outline of miracles
around which the author has constructed his gospel. This combination of earlier
materials, some which are even shared verbatim between the Gospels, is very similar to
how other novelisticbiographies, such as the
Certamen
, were composed. As Hägg notes,
these popular biographies operated as ‘open’ texts, which combined large portions of
earlier materials.
The structure of the
Certamen
also betrays another crucial feature for identifying
this style of biography. It is obvious that the main focus of the text is on the contest at the
center in Part II. The material in Part I about the poets’ genealogy and in Part III about
their deaths is largely peripheral, and is used as a framing device for the famous
ἀγών.
In this way, the biographical features are largely formal, and are used for introducing and
concluding the ἀγών, by providing only a limited scope for other details of the poets’
lives. As was noted above, Mark and John do not even include genealogies or infancy
narratives in their gospels. While the Gospel of Matthew (12) and Luke (23) do discuss
these details, they are relatively brief and only include limited details about Jesus’ early
30
Theissen (1998).
Ferguson 12
life. Matthew 2:1323 includes Joseph’s temporary flight into Egypt, and Luke 2:4152
includes a brief account of the twelve year old Jesus conversing with the religious
teachers in Jerusalem. Apart from these brief exceptions, however, the bulk of Matthew
and Luke are devoted to Jesus’ ministry and crucifixion, with the biographical details of
his ancestry and childhood largely being peripheral. This semibiographical structure
could even explain
the titles of the Gospels themselves. The Gospels are not called a
βίος, but instead an εὐαγγέλιον, or “good news.” Likewise, the
Certamen
is not called a
βίος either. The fourteenth century manuscript of the
Certamen
includes the title
περὶ
Ὁμήρου καὶ Ἡσιόδου καὶ τοῦ γένους καὶ ἀγῶνος αυτῶν (“On the ancestry of Homer and
̔
Hesiod and the Constest of Them”). Although this title is found in the relatively late
Laurentianus codex, the word
ἀγών likewise plays an important structural role in the text.
The word ἀγών is found both before the section including the famous contest (6) and
after the contest (13), bracketing Part II of the narrative. When both the
Certamen
and
the Gospels are compared to GrecoRoman biographies, therefore, it should be
remembered that these texts bear titles that do not explicitly call them biographies, even
though they have biographical elements that frame the narrative.
Near the end of the
Certamen
, Hesiod’s death takes place when a group of young
men in the Greek city of Oenoe kill the poet and cast his body into the sea. Shortly after
this, however, Hesiod’s body is carried to the shore by dolphins on the “third day” after
his death (14), not unlike Jesus’ resurrection on the third day (Luke 24:7). In making a
comparison of genre between the Gospels and the
Certamen of Homer and Hesiod
, I
have noted the following similarities between the texts: first, both the
Certamen
and the
Ferguson 13
Gospels were edited compilations, which combined large portions of earlier materials.
Likewise, this style of ‘open’ text was frequently changed by later scribes adding
Hägg has noted,31 our manuscripts for popularnovelistic biographies
interpolations. As
contain multiple variations from Late Antiquity up through the Middle Ages, similar to
interpolated passages that New Testament textual critics identify in the Gospels. While
both the
Certamen
and the Gospels tell a large portion of the subject’s life, the
biographical features are more peripheral, and are used to frame the central story of the
text. The author of Mark likely took an earlier Passion Narrative, and added additional
details about Jesus’ ministry, just as the editor of the
Certamen
likely took an earlier
account of an
ἀγών between the two poets, and tacked onto it additional information
about the their ancestry and death.
Novelistic biographies written in this way include not only the
Certamen
, but also
the
Alexander Romance
and the
Life of Aesop
, which previous scholars have also noted
have similarities with the Gospels. In discussing these examples of popularnovelistic
biographies, I have only discussed GrecoRoman parallels. It should be noted, however,
that the Gospels were also modeled after Jewish literature, such as the Book of Daniel.
Since parallels with GrecoRoman literature are of great interest to New Testament
scholars, however, I have proposed novelistic biographies as the closest parallel texts in
Pagan literature that can be compared with the Gospels. While this comparison may not
explain all the features in the Gospels, hopefully it will shed more light on how these texts
operated within a broader Greekspeaking culture.
31
Hägg (2012: 100).
Ferguson 14
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10311432.
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