What are the Gospels?

By Richard A. Burridge

Subjects: Bible, Biography, Evangeliën, Relation to the New Testament, Biographies religieuses, Greek literature, hellenistic, history and criticism, Classical biography, Language, style, Biografie, Relation avec le Nouveau Testament, Langue, History and Criticism, Biografische Literatur, Bible, criticism, interpretation, etc., n. t., Bibel, Religious biography, Bible, language, style, History and criticism, Histoire et critique, Biographie, Littérature grecque, Griechisch, Biografieën, Littérature grecque hellénistique, Jesus christ, biography, history and criticism, Hellenistic Greek literature, Greek literature, Zeithintergrund

Description: Richard Burridge's acclaimed study of the Christian Gospels is significantly updated and expanded in this second edition. Here Burridge engages the field of Gospel studies over the last hundred years, arguing convincingly for viewing the Gospels as biographical documents of the sort common throughout the Graeco-Roman world. In pursuing the question of his book's title, Burridge compares the work of the Christian evangelists with that of Graeco-Roman biographers. Drawing on insights from literary theory, he demonstrates that the widespread view of the Gospels as unique is false and discusses what a properly "biographical" perspective means for Gospel interpretation. New to this second edition of What Are the Gospels? are a long final chapter detailing the recent paradigm shift in Gospel scholarship -- a shift due in large part to this very book -- a foreword by Graham Stanton, and an appendix on the absence of comparable early Jewish biographies. - Publisher.