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Biography, History and the Genre of Luke-Acts*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2017

Daniel Lynwood Smith  and
Zachary Lundin Kostopoulos
Daniel Lynwood Smith
Affiliation:
Department of Theological Studies, Saint Louis University, 3800 Lindell Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108, USA. Email: dsmit133@slu.edu
Zachary Lundin Kostopoulos
Affiliation:
Department of Theological Studies, Saint Louis University, 3800 Lindell Blvd., Saint Louis, MO 63108, USA. Email: zkostopo@slu.edu
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Abstract

Genre looms large in contemporary Lukan scholarship. While many scholars are content to label Luke as biography and Acts as history, others argue that both volumes must belong to a single genre. This solution preserves the generic unity of Luke-Acts by shoehorning one or both volumes into ill-fitting categories; such a move only makes sense within an understanding of genre-as-classification. By exploring recent scholarship on genre and privileging ancient practice over ancient theory, we propose reading Luke-Acts as a unified narrative influenced by and modelled after a wide range of Greek prose narratives, rather than representing one genre in particular.

Keywords

Luke-Actsgenregenre theoryhistorybiography
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , July 2017 , pp. 390 - 410
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

We would like to thank the Carpenter Foundation for the grant that supported our initial collaborative work on this project in Summer 2014, as well as the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, who supported D. Smith during the final stages of revision for publication. We are also grateful to the members of the IBR Research Group on Ancient Historiography and the New Testament, who engaged with an early draft of our work presented by Z. Kostopoulos in San Diego, November 2014. Lastly, we would like to express our gratitude to Sean Adams, Michal Beth Dinkler and the NTS reviewer for their helpful and generative feedback at various stages.

References

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2 Aune, New Testament, 77.

3 Porter, S. E., ‘The Genre of Acts and the Ethics of Discourse’, Acts and Ethics (ed. Phillips, T. E.; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2005) 1–15 Google Scholar, at 9.

4 Pervo, R. I., ‘Must Luke and Acts Belong to the Same Genre?’, SBLSP (1989) 309–16Google Scholar.

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11 For ‘collected biography’, see Adams, S. A., The Genre of Acts and Collected Biography (SNTSMS 156; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For ‘apologetic historiography’, see Sterling, G. E., Historiography and Self-Definition: Josephos, Luke-Acts and Apologetic Historiography (NovTSup 64; Leiden: Brill, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See other options in Phillips, T. E., ‘The Genre of Acts: Moving Toward a Consensus?’, CBR 4 (2006)  365–96Google Scholar.

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13 ‘The two volumes of the work dedicated to Theophilus do not belong to the same literary genre’, Marguerat, Les Actes, 24. Earlier, Marguerat notes that Acts ‘est une continuation de l’évangile de Luc’ (17).

14 Dubrow, H., Genre (The Critical Idiom 42; London: Methuen, 1982) 106Google Scholar also warns against viewing ‘genres too deterministically’.

15 Marincola, J., ‘Genre, Convention, and Innovation in Greco-Roman Historiography’, The Limits of Historiography: Genre and Narrative in Ancient Historical Texts (ed. Kraus, C. S.; MnemSup 191; Leiden: Brill, 1999) 281–324 Google Scholar, at 281–2.

16 Marincola, ‘Genre’, 282.

17 Keener, C. S., Acts: An Exegetical Commentary (4 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012–15)Google Scholar i.52.

18 Penner, T., In Praise of Christian Origins: Stephen and the Hellenists in Lukan Apologetic Historiography (ESEC 10; New York: T&T Clark International, 2004) 135Google Scholar.

19 We follow Parsons and Pervo, Rethinking, 8 n. 31, in their useful distinction between an implied author ‘Lukas’ and the Gospel (‘Luke’) that he composed.

20 Though ‘it is clear that ancient writers had a concept of genre and regularly theorised about it’, this concept and related theory revolved around poetry, not prose, pace Adams, S. A., ‘Luke, Josephus, and Self-Definition: The Genre of Luke-Acts and its Relationship to Apologetic Historiography and Collected Biography’, Christian Origins and Hellenistic Judaism: Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament (ed. Porter, S. E. and Pitts, A. W.; Leiden/Boston; Brill, 2013) 439–59Google Scholar, at 443.

21 Geiger, J., Cornelius Nepos and Ancient Political Biography (Historia Einzelschriften 47; Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1985) 12Google Scholar.

22 Plato, Resp. 3 (394c). For nuanced discussion of this passage, see Rosenmeyer, T. G., ‘Ancient Literary Genres: A Mirage’, Oxford Readings in Ancient Literary Criticism (ed. Laird, A.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) 421–39Google Scholar. Rosenmeyer concludes that ‘Plato is not … a literary theorist’ (427).

23 For passing comments on history, see Aristotle, Poet. 9.2–3 (1451a–b).

24 For summaries of Aristotle, Philodemus, Cicero and Horace on poetic genres, see Adams, Genre of Acts, 27–44. According to Rosenmeyer, ‘Ancient Literary Genres’, 429, ‘neither Aristotle nor his Alexandrian and Pergamene successors bothered much with formal subdivisions of prose literature’.

25 Aristotle identifies the three γένη of oratory – deliberative, forensic and epideictic – in his Rhet. 1.3.3 (1358b).

26 Isocrates, Antid. 45. Adams, Genre of Acts, 31–2 observes that Isocrates also catalogues various types of prose discourse in Panath. 1–2.

27 Isocrates, Antid. 46 (G. Norlin, LCL).

28 Relevant material from Plutarch will be discussed below. Lucian marks history off from encomium (Hist. 7), poetry (8) and philosophical texts (17). He does not manifest any awareness of βίος, other prose genres or discrete sub-genres within history.

29 Quintilian notes in the section on Greek historians that Xenophon will be treated with the philosophers (Inst. 10.1.75); Cicero is lauded as the orator par excellence (10.1.105), as well as a philosopher who could rival Plato (10.1.123).

30 Fowler, Kinds of Literature, 37.

31 Farrell, J., ‘Classical Genre in Theory and Practice’, New Literary History 34 (2003) 383–408 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 383. For example, Aristotle describes poets as being motivated to write comedy rather than tragedy κατὰ τὴν οἰκείαν φύσιν in Poet. 4.13 (1449a).

32 See Gera, D. L., Xenophon's Cyropaedia: Style, Genre, and Literary Technique (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993) 1Google Scholar. For Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the work can be classified as historical, though ‘fitting to a philosopher’ (Pomp. 4).

33 Farrell, ‘Classical Genre’, 386.

34 Cicero, Opt. gen. 1.1 (H. M. Hubbell, LCL).

35 Geiger, Cornelius Nepos, 12–13. In his efforts to trace the development of ancient biography, Geiger describes ‘the reconstruction of ancient literary theory’ as a ‘futile path’ (14).

36 Pelling, C. B. R., Literary Texts and the Greek Historian (London: Routledge, 2000) 85Google Scholar. See also Radl, Evangelium, 18, on the diverse practices of ancient historians: ‘Es gibt keine allgemein verbindliche historiographische Theorie. Jeder Schriftsteller geht seinen eigenen Weg.’

37 Momigliano, A., The Development of Greek Biography (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, exp. edn 1993) 102Google Scholar links the origins of biography with history, though Fornara, C. W., The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983) 184–5Google Scholar reaches a different conclusion: ‘Ancient biography developed outside the orbit of history, and its physis, or nature, cannot be understood except with reference to its origin in ethical preoccupations.’

38 Hägg, T., The Art of Biography in Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) xiCrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. Rosenmeyer, ‘Ancient Literary Genres’, 432.

39 Selden, D. L., ‘Genre of Genre’, The Search for the Ancient Novel (ed. Tatum, J.; Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1994) 39–64 Google Scholar, at 43. Selden goes on to remark that ‘there is no evidence that before the modern era the range of texts that we have come to call the “ancient novel” were ever thought of together as constituting a coherent group’ (43).

40 Although comparing Luke-Acts to epic or novel can be a useful enterprise, very few scholars assign Luke-Acts to one of these categories. Sandnes, K. O., ‘ Imitatio Homeri? An Appraisal of Dennis R MacDonald's “Mimesis Criticism”’, JBL 124 (2005) 715–32Google Scholar argues trenchantly against efforts to read Homeric influence into New Testament texts. And though his early work compared Acts with Greco-Roman novels, Pervo, R. I., Acts: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009) 15Google Scholar affirms that ‘Acts is a history’.

41 Aune, New Testament, 77; Porter, ‘Genre of Acts’, 9, 15.

42 Balch, D. L., ‘ΜΕΤΑΒΟΛΗ ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΩΝ: Jesus as Founder of the Church in Luke-Acts: Form and Function’, Contextualizing Acts: Lukan Narrative and Greco-Roman Discourse (ed. Penner, T. and Stichele, C. Vander; Atlanta: Scholars, 2003) 139–88Google Scholar, at 143. See also the similar comments in Aune, New Testament, 30–1; Müller, C. G., ‘Διήγησις nach Lukas: Zwischen historiographischem Anspruch und biographischem Erzählen’, Historiographie und Biographie im Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt (ed. Schmeller, T.; NTOA/SUNT 69; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009) 95–126 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 110; and Penner, T., In Praise of Christian Origins: Stephen and the Hellenists in Lukan Apologetic Historiography (ESEC 10; New York: T&T Clark International, 2004) 6Google Scholar, who considers such lines not only ‘fluid’ but also ‘somewhat artificial’.

43 Adams, Genre of Acts, 57, observes that ‘the ancients, though prescriptively restricting the mixing of genres, actively mixed genre features in their literary works’. Cf. Penner, In Praise of Christian Origins, 135.

44 Fornara, Nature of History, 185.

45 Cornelius Nepos 16.1 (J. C. Rolfe, LCL).

46 Plutarch, Alex. 1.1–2 (B. Perrin, LCL).

47 For a similar approach, see Shuler, P. L., A Genre for the Gospels: The Biographical Character of Matthew (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982)Google Scholar. After reviewing Polybius (Hist. 10.21.8), Cicero (Fam. 5.12.3), Lucian (Hist. 7), Cornelius Nepos (16.1) and Plutarch (Alex. 1.1–3), Shuler points out ‘the dichotomy implicit in the above references’ (40). For critique of Shuler's argument, see Burridge, What Are the Gospels?, 61.

48 Duff, T. E., Plutarch's Lives: Exploring Virtue and Vice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) 17Google Scholar. For an illuminating overview of ‘The Programmatic Statements of the Lives’, see pp. 13–51.

49 Hägg, Art of Biography, 269.

50 Burridge, What Are the Gospels?, 62. While Burridge objects to using Plutarch's confessions as evidence of ‘a clear literary theory of βίος distinguished from other genres’, he remains committed to βίος as a recognisable genre.

51 Pelling, C. B. R., ‘Plutarch's Adaptation of his Source-Material’, JHS 100 (1980) 127–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 135 insists that Plutarch makes ‘one of his clearest programmatic statements’ in Alex. 1.1–2. Yet he admits that Plutarch did not adhere to his own standard: ‘A writer's programmatic statements can sometimes be a poor guide to his work’ (139).

52 On ‘Lives’ that are more historical than biographical, see Pelling, ‘Plutarch's Adaptation’, 139. See also Duff, Plutarch's Lives, 20–1. On the ethical and didactic nature of historical writing in authors such as Diodorus Siculus, see Eckey, W., Die Apostelgeschichte: Der Weg des Evangeliums von Jerusalem nach Rom (Apg 1,1 – 15,35), vol. i (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2011 2) 33Google Scholar; cf. also Penner, In Praise of Christian Origins, 166.

53 See Plutarch, Aem. 1.1. In his LCL volume, B. Perrin has moved this opening chapter to the beginning of Timoleon to introduce the pair.

54 Hägg, Art of Biography, 272. Duff, Plutarch's Lives, 17 observes that, in the prologue to Alexander, ‘[t]he term ἱστορία, here used in a particular sense of “large-scale” history, could be used in a general sense to mean any kind of narrative’. Plutarch also refers to ἱστορία in his Cim. 2.5; Cor. 38.3; Dem. 2.1; Per. 13.12; and esp. Thes. 1.1–2.

55 Stadter, P., ‘Biography and History’, A Companion to Greek and Roman Historiography (ed. Marincola, J.; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) 528–40Google Scholar, at 528 affirms that ‘it is often quite difficult to distinguish history from biography, even with the most careful analysis, nor did the ancients do so consistently’.

56 Polybius, Hist. 8.11.3–4 (W. R. Paton, LCL).

57 For a treatment of ‘biographical history’ starting with Theopompus' Philippica, see Luce, T. J., The Greek Historians (London: Routledge, 1997) 116–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Dormeyer, D., ‘Die Gattung der Apostelgeschichte’, Die Apostelgeschichte im Kontext antiker und frühchristlicher Historiographie (ed. Frey, J., Rothschild, C. K. and Schröter, J.; BZNW 162; Berlin: de Gruyter) 437–75Google Scholar, esp. 461.

58 Penner, In Praise of Christian Origins, 122–9 et passim seeks to demonstrate and illuminate the close relationship between oratory and history.

59 One fragment of book 10 preserved in a Byzantine collection includes the claim that ‘the writing of the lives (τῶν βίων) of the men who have come before us (τῶν προγεγονότων ἀνδρῶν) … profits the common life (τὸν κοινὸν βίον) in no small way’ (10.12.1); see Büttner-Wobst, T., Excerpta historica iussu Imp. Constantini Porphyrogeniti confecta, vol. ii.1: Excerpta de virtutibus et vitiis (ed. Boissevain, U. P., de Boor, C. and Büttner-Wobst, T.; Berlin: Weidmann, 1906) 224Google Scholar. However, the excerpts preserved in this tenth-century ce collection – a collection explicitly devoted to virtues and vices – seem to be more paraphrase than quotation.

60 For another close parallel, compare Diodorus Siculus 17.54.4–5 and Plutarch, Alex. 29.4. For other examples of Alexander's ἐπιείκεια, see Diodorus Siculus 17.66.6; 69.9; 73.1; 76.1; 91.7.

61 Alexander, L., The Preface to Luke's Gospel: Literary Convention and Social Context in Luke 1.1–4 and Acts 1.1 (SNTSMS 78; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar argues that the form of Luke's preface aligns more closely with ancient Greek technical treatises than with ancient Greek historiography. She thus warns against reading the ‘following text in terms of Greco-Roman historiography’ (200). On the other hand, Wolter, M., Das Lukasevangelium (HNT 5; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008) 60Google Scholar acknowledges the formal parallels, yet claims that the content of Luke 1.1–4 makes clear to readers of the Gospel ‘dass sie ein historiographisches Werk vor sich haben’. See Penner, In Praise of Christian Origins, 219–21 for a more detailed rebuttal of Alexander's argument.

62 Ant. rom. 1.5.3 (E. Cary, LCL). See also 1.6.4.

63 Pomp. 6 (S. Usher, LCL).

64 This interest in historically appropriate material recurs in 2.30.1.

65 Plutarch also describes the political and military accomplishments of Rome's founder in his Romulus; see e.g. Rom. 13.1–16.4; 17.1–20.2.  Compare also the multiple accounts of Romulus's death in Rom. 27.3–8 with Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. rom. 2.56.1–7.

66 Burridge, What Are the Gospels?, 131.

67 Burridge, What Are the Gospels?, 315, 318–20.

68 Balch, ‘ΜΕΤΑΒΟΛΗ ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΩΝ’, 143.

69 H. St. Thackeray, J., Josephus: The Man and the Historian (New York: Jewish Institute of Religion, 1929) 56–8Google Scholar proposed that Josephus used the Roman Antiquities of Dionysius as a model. Similarities in title, structure and content support Thackeray's contention that Josephus could be called ‘a second Dionysius’ (56).

70 Mason, S., ed., Flavius Josephus: Translation and Commentary, vol. ix: Life of Josephus (Leiden: Brill, 2001) xiiGoogle Scholar.

71 Mason, Life of Josephus, xv.

72 We might also note that, in Vita 413, Josephus notes that he is omitting details about his military career and Roman captivity, since he has already treated these events in his Jewish War. He does not exclude this material on account of its ‘historical’ nature; rather, he wishes to avoid repeating himself.

73 For a recent contribution to the debate over the genre of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, see DeVore, D. J., ‘Genre and Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History: Toward a Focused Debate’, Eusebius of Caesarea: Tradition and Innovations (ed. Johnson, A. and Schott, J.; Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2013) 19–49 Google Scholar.

74 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 1.1.1. All translations of Eusebius are from K. Lake, LCL.

75 Hist. eccl. 1.1.4.

76 On Origen's childhood, see Hist. eccl. 6.1.1–6.2.15; on his career, see 6.3.1–9; 6.23.1–4; 6.30.1; on his torture and death, see 6.39.5 and 7.1.1.

77 E.g. the short portrait of Bishop Narcissus in Hist. eccl. 6.8.7–6.11.3, or of Julius Africanus in 6.31.1–3.

78 Rosenmeyer, ‘Ancient Literary Genres’, 436.

79 Rosenmeyer, ‘Ancient Literary Genres’, 435. Rosenmeyer overstates his case when he claims that, ‘with the exception of Plato and Aristotle, the ancient critics exhibited no interest in exploring genres' (437). Yet he could have appealed to the fact that Quintilian populates his categories with authors rather than texts (see Inst. 10.1.46–131).

80 ‘… a text cannot belong to no genre … Every text participates in one or several genres, there is no genreless text; there is always a genre and genres, yet such participation never amounts to belonging’, Derrida, J., ‘La loi du genre’, Glyph 7 (1980) 176–201 Google Scholar, at 185; trans. A. Ronell, ‘The Law of Genre’, ibid., 202–29, at 212.

81 Parsons and Pervo, Rethinking, 43.

82 Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition, 350.

83 Adams, Genre of Acts; Lee, D., Luke-Acts and ‘Tragic History’: Communicating Gospel with the World (WUNT ii/346; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013)Google Scholar.

84 ‘The form of a historical monograph with strong biographical orientation’, Reiser, M., Sprache und literarische Formen des Neuen Testaments: Eine Einführung (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2001) 111Google Scholar.

85 Early in his influential monograph on the genre of the Gospels, Burridge, What Are the Gospels?, 21 announces that he will ‘concentrate for the rest of this study upon Graeco-Roman literature’.

86 As Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition, 352, affirms, ‘[i]t is universally acknowledged that the author of Luke-Acts knew the LXX’.

87 Uytanlet, S., Luke-Acts and Jewish Historiography: A Study on the Theology, Literature, and Ideology of Luke-Acts (WUNT ii/366; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014)Google Scholar. Sterling, Historiography and Self-Definition, 363–9 also evaluates possible links between Luke-Acts and particular Jewish historians. Cf. also Rosner, B. S., ‘Acts and Biblical History’, The Book of Acts in its First Century Setting, vol. i: The Book of Acts in its Ancient Literary Setting (ed. Winter, B. W. and Clarke, A. D.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993) 65–82 Google Scholar.

88 Uytanlet, Luke-Acts and Jewish Historiography, 255.

89 Alexander, L., ‘ Septuaginta, Fachprosa, Imitatio: Albert Wifstrand and the Language of Luke-Acts’, Die Apostelgeschichte und die hellenistische Geschichtsschreibung: Festschrift für Eckhard Plümacher zu seinem 65. Geburtstag (ed. Breytenbach, C., Schröter, J. and du Toit, D. S.; Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2004) 1–26 Google Scholar, at 26.

90 E.g. Jervell, J., Die Apostelgeschichte (KEKNT; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998) 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 Downing, F. G., ‘Contemporary Analogies to the Gospels and Acts: “Genres” or “Motifs”?’, Synoptic Studies: The Ampleforth Conferences of 1982 and 1983 (ed. Tuckett, C. M.; JSNTSup 7; Sheffield: JSOT, 1984) 51–65 Google Scholar, at 51.

92 Downing, ‘Contemporary Analogies’, 52 focuses his study on ‘motifs’. Penner, In Praise of Christian Origins, 103 calls for further inquiry into particular ‘features of composition’.

93 Note Alan J. Bale's warning against ‘binary classification’ in his Genre and Narrative Coherence in the Acts of the Apostles (LNTS 514; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015) 93Google Scholar.

94 That is, while we endorse the uniqueness of Luke-Acts from a taxonomist's perspective, we are not at all aiming at the sort of ‘ontological’ or ‘superlative’ claim that Jonathan Z. Smith has warned against in his Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990) 36–53 Google Scholar. We are grateful to James Hamrick for drawing Smith's work to our attention.