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1 - What Is a Gospel?

from Part I - Approaching the Gospels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2021

By
Loveday Alexander
Edited by
Stephen C. Barton  and
Todd Brewer
Stephen C. Barton
Affiliation:
University of Durham
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Summary

Identifies some of the defining characteristics of the gospel genre by comparing them with other genres such as folk tales, memoirs, biographies, scriptural narratives and martyrologies. The analysis leads to the significant conclusion that the gospels are in some sense sui generis – written versions of early Christian teaching and preaching about Jesus.

Keywords

gospel genrefolk talesmemoirsbiographiesmartyrologies
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to the Gospels , pp. 9 - 28
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Bauckham, Richard, ed., The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998)Google Scholar
Bauckham, Richard, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels As Eyewitness Testimony, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017)Google Scholar
Bockmuehl, Markus, and Hagner, Donald A., eds., The Written Gospel (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burridge, Richard A., What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography, 3rd ed. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018)Google Scholar
Edwards, M. J., and Swain, Simon, eds., Portraits: Biographical Representation in the Greek and Latin Literature of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)Google Scholar
Eve, Eric, Behind the Gospels: Understanding the Oral Tradition (London: SPCK, 2013)Google Scholar
Horsley, Richard A., Draper, Jonathan A. and Foley, John Miles, eds., Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory, and Mark (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2006)Google Scholar
Jaffee, Martin S., Torah in the Mouth: Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE–400 CE (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar
Kelber, Werner H., The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul and Q (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983)Google Scholar
Kelber, Werner, and Byrskog, Samuel, eds., Jesus in Memory: Traditions in Oral and Scribal Perspective (Waco, TX: Baylor, 2009)Google Scholar
Stanton, Graham N., Jesus and Gospel (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yassif, Eli, The Hebrew Folktale: History, Genre, Meaning (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999)Google Scholar

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