Craig S. Keener - Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels

I have long thought that what we need is to be able to place the Gospels much more precisely within the wide spectrum of ancient biographies. Keener has mastered the literature, primary and secondaryas one would expect.

RICHARD BAUCKHAM, Ridley Hall, Cambridge

This is a welcome guide to some of the best recent scholarship on the biographical purpose and composition of the Gospels, taking due account of the impact of memory in their composition. Prof. Keener sensibly concludes that living memory played a meaningful and consolidating role in the formation of these rhetorically constructed but essentially historical narratives about Jesus. A thorough and reliable introduction to this vital yet complex subject!

MARKUS BOCKMUEHL, University of Oxford

Craig Keeners sophisticated knowledge of the classical world is in evidence in his impressive Christobiography. He not only knows the sources; he asks of them the proper questions, such as what first-century readers expected of biographies. Keener rightly focuses on the biographies of the early Roman Empire. He also rightly takes into account the important fact that the New Testament Gospels were composed within living memory of their subject and that this tradition arose from the disciples of Jesus, who by definition were committed to learning their masters teaching and recalling his deeds. Keeners book makes a much-needed contribution to a very important topic.

CRAIG A. EVANS, Houston Baptist University

Another vintage book by Craig Keener! Comprehensive information showing the relation of New Testament Gospels to early Roman Empire biography, embedded in argumentation for historical reliability of most information in the New Testament Gospels.

VERNON K. ROBBINS, Emory University

This work displays extensive knowledge of the major classical texts from around the New Testament period. Keener uses these judiciously and critically, as an ancient historian would do for any primary source, showing awareness of genre and bias and using modern studies of memory and its impact on historiography. Thus he provides an integrated and convincing historical picture.

ALANNA NOBBS, Macquarie University

Keeners ability to read both widely and deeply through an expansive swath of primary literature of the Greco-Roman world, to detect telling evidence and articulate those insights that transform conventional wisdom and reconfigure the terms of the debate, is, quite frankly, without parallel. Through new appropriations of memory studies, biographical history in the early empire, and an illuminating taxonomy of both Greek and Jewish biography, Keener makes an exceptional case that the narration of the story of Jesus in the four Gospels is a thoroughly mixed hybrid of biographical and historiographical concerns such that a new subset of literature emerges, the Christobiography. Keeners opus now forms a new watershed in Gospels genre studies.

DAVID P. MOESSNER, Texas Christian University

Craig Keener argues convincingly that ancient readers of Greek and Latin biographies from the period of the early Roman Empire (e.g., Cornelius Nepos, Plutarch, Suetonius, and Tacitus) had the same expectation as those who read the Gospels, expecting them to preserve the gist of what their subjects had actually said and done. Along the way, Keener provides an up-to-date summary of modern memory studies. In the early Christian community, the eyewitnesses who provided data for inclusion in the Gospels were also disciples who were highly motivated to preserve the legacy of Jesus. Basically, this is a book that sheds light on the epistemology of historical Jesus research. Anyone seriously interested in the historical Jesus will find this book both rich and rewarding.

DAVID AUNE, University of Notre Dame

Christobiography is addressed to both scholars and students interested in Gospels and historical Jesus research and is, to say the least, a very impressive study. The Synoptic Gospels compare well with other ancient biographies as to the reliability of the information they provide. They told the same stories, but often without concern for details extraneous to their point. Not least of interest is the striking summary of the overlap between John and the Synoptics, showing that John is still a historical biography. There is a very helpful chapter on memory and the reliability of oral tradition in the context of Jesuss ministry and his followers, given that it was understood as teaching. The strong and justified conclusion is that Jesuss disciples would have learned and transmitted his teaching no less carefully than most other disciples the wisdom of their teachers. In short, the Gospels compare well with the other biographies of the time as to their historicity, and there is a strong historical probability that the Gospel memoirs have preserved the content and character of Jesuss ministry and teaching. I cannot commend this careful and thorough study too highly.

JAMES D. G. DUNN, Durham University

Christobiography

Memory, History,

and the Reliability of the Gospels

Craig S. Keener

WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY

GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

www.eerdmans.com

2019 Craig S. Keener

All rights reserved

Published 2019

252423222120191234567

ISBN 978-0-8028-7675-1

eISBN 978-1-4674-5676-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

To Richard Burridge, Charles Talbert,
Vernon Robbins, David Aune: pioneers

Contents

I am grateful to my ever-persistent and fast-acting acquisitions editor at Eerdmans, my friend Michael Thomson. When, because of unforeseen logistical circumstances (not matters of content), this book (finished originally for a different publishers deadline of December 1, 2017) needed a new publisher, Michael embraced it immediately. (The same weekend, I had suggested it to an editor at yet another publisher in correspondence; although that editor replied graciously and punctually, by then Michael had already fully convinced me to do it with Eerdmans.) I am grateful also to development editor Trevor Thompson, copyeditor Craig Noll (who was stuck with the tedious task of anglicizing and spelling out my ancient references), and others at Eerdmans who have worked on this book.

I am also grateful to my various conversation partners (in person) at various stages in this books development. Michael Licona and I were discussing these matters together before either of us embarked on our respective books on this subject. Other valuable conversation partners have included Richard Burridge, Helen Bond, Vernon Robbins, Neil Elliott, and my esteemed colleagues and PhD students at Asbury Theological Seminary; as well as members of the Memory, Narrative, and Christology in the Synoptic Gospels Seminar of the Society for New Testament Studies (with additional conversations there, including with Roland Deines, Michal Beth Dinkler, Sandra Hubenthal, David Moessner, Armand Puig i Trrech, Jens Schrter, and Arie Zwiep). Of course my conversation partners hold a range of views, and I remain responsible for views or arguments in this book with which any readers may wish to take issue.