Why does the genre of the Gospels matter? Limits and potentials of the current debate about the Gospel's genre and its possible contribution to the historical Jesus research
2023
Abstrakt
The primary aim of this study is to assess whether the contemporary consensus on the genre of the Gospels has contributed to a deeper understanding of early Christianity and the historical Jesus. I demonstrate that many modern scholars tend to understand the classification of the Gospels as biographies only as a matter of taxonomy, overlooking the broader implications of this perspective, namely in the areas such as the purpose of the Gospels, study of Jesus's self-understanding and chronology of his life.