Deck 5: From Oral Traditions to Written Gospels

Question 1

Using a specific example from the New Testament Gospels, discuss the evidence that Christians changed stories about Jesus.

Answer 1

Since students (presumably) have not read the Gospels yet, they might choose to discuss the example from the textbook: the day of Jesus' death in the Gospels of Mark and John.

Question 2

Recently, many scholars have agreed that the New Testament Gospels are a form of ancient biography. Why do they think this? What do Gospels have in common with other ancient biographies? How are they different? Do you agree with this categorization of the Gospels?

Answer 2

Although some earlier New Testament scholars believed that the Gospel writers created a new genre to talk about Jesus, Ehrman points out that a completely new genre would be impossible to understand. Readers must bring some expectations to a text in order to interpret it. For the most part, the New Testament Gospels follow the conventions of ancient biography: they focus on one central character around whom all action revolves, they emphasize miraculous events accompanying Jesus' birth and death as well as his own miraculous deeds, they contain divinely inspired teachings, and they present Jesus' personality as constant. Unlike most ancient biographies, though, the Gospels emphasize Jesus' death, an element that typically was not a subject of extended narrative. In addition, Jesus was not a political, military, or philosophical leader; he was not even a very important religious leader during his lifetime. On the contrary, he was a poor itinerant teacher who had only a few followers and was relatively unknown among pagans until almost a century after his death.

Question 3

The Gospel of Mark was written within a decade of Jesus' life.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

The New Testament Gospels all have Jesus getting crucified at the same time of day.

Question 5

The New Testament Gospels were written anonymously.

Question 6

Ancient biographies tended to portray the protagonist's character as constant rather than in a state of development.

Question 7

The New Testament Gospels are best understood as ancient biographies.

Question 8

Scholars think Jesus died around:

A) 30 B.C.E.
B) 30C.E.
C) 50 C.E.
D) 70 C.E.

Question 9

What feature typically accompanied the stories of religious or powerful political figures in ancient Greco-Roman biographies?

A) The miraculous
B) The mischievous
C) The sublime
D) The expression of the human condition

Question 10

What is the term for a category of literature in which texts share a range of conventions?

A) A genre
B) Prose
C) An editorial
D) A collective

Question 11

Did the authors of the Gospels claim to be eyewitnesses to the events that they narrated?

A) Yes
B) No
C) Some did, some didn't
D) No one knows

Question 12

One of the most popular pagan authors of the second century, Plutarch, wrote fifty biographies of prominent Greek and Roman men. His main aim in these accounts was to:

A) Accurately record the events in their lives
B) Reveal their characters
C) Damage their reputations
D) Entertain

Question 13

What ritual was necessary for new converts to Christianity to undergo?

A) Baptism
B) Circumcision
B) Spiritual cleansing
D) Confession

Question 14

What genre do the Gospels most closely fit?

A) Apocalyptic literature
B) Greco-Roman autobiography
C) Allegory
D) Greco-Roman biography

Question 15

Which of the following is not among the characteristics ascribed to Peter and John in the New Testament?

A) They were fishermen.
B) They were uneducated.
C) They were from Galilee.
D) They could read and write in Greek.