The Gospels feign Classical Histories (eBook, ePUB)

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Have you read a history that is a non-history and a non-history that is history? At first glance, the question is a riddle wrapped in a contradiction. By customary norms of literature, it is mysterious if not nonsensical. That is, until one has read Jorge Luis Borges and Garcia Marquez, the masters of Magic Realism. Writings in the mode of Magic Realism have the quality of magic. As by a sleight of hand, what is real looks like fantasy and what is fantasy from another angle looks like real. The constant demand on the reader to adjust perspectives is part of the textual presentation in this mode. That is the charm of Magic Realism. Christians had contact with something more advanced than Magic Realism for close to two millennia in the Gospels. They read them and meditated upon them. In all that time, while aware of the mysterious quality of the Gospels, they could not explain what gave these books the rare quality. The Greco-Roman Church explained away the all too apparent mystery of the Gospels. The official Church, insisting that it was serious, spread the story that the Gospels were of a unique genre of 'Sacred Scripture'. The uniqueness was a gift from God, it told the believers. God through His personal intervention inspired the Evangelists to tell their stories as they did with warts and all. Thus divinely planned and humanly executed, the Gospels were free of error and sure guides to our eternal salvation. They were the written 'Word of God'. The Church did not tell their followers that their explanation about the 'Sacred Scripture' was indeed reflecting the quality of Magic Realism itself. That is to say, they were not explanations at all but only seemed like explanations. They were poorly thought out excuses. Whereas Borges and Marquez confined Magic Realism to the presentation of their texts, the four Gospels went beyond. They imaginatively created the contents of their texts and the manner in which they structured them in genre behind genre. It was in 'genres disjunction'. Mark added ironic subtext to the foreground text of the Gospel and added Classical History genre in the background and the genre of monomyths further in the background. Matthew did the same with more details. John had the Gospel in the foreground while Classical History in the background. Luke brilliantly outdid them all. He had a parody of the Gospel in the foreground, with Classical History, and three monomyths with a five-Act tragedy, one behind the other in the background. This study, The Gospels feign Classical Histories discusses the first background texts. It shows that what seem like the Gospels are not Gospels but classical histories. Further studies will show that as the readers' perspectives change the Gospels will appear like something else.

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I had been a secondary school teacher until my retirement in 2000. While planning for life after the gruelling work, I undertook a Masters course in Theology at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia. Graduation in M.Theol. coincided with the beginning of retirement. A course research paper on the Herod Narrative in the Jewish War by Josephus dramatically turned my life around. I'll explain how.

While close reading the Herod Narrative, with my previous acquaintance with Roman literature, I discovered that Josephus had carefully incorporated all the literary conventions of a five-Act tragedy in Seneca's Hercules Furens. That gained for me a high distinction and an invitation to research into the whole of the Jewish War for a Ph.D. That was the year 2000.

I began carefully reading the Jewish War as a history and where it fitted in the spectrum of classical histories. I found that Josephus fell closer to Herodotus than to Thucydides. I also noticed that the Senecan tragedy conventions were also present in the Jewish War side by side with the history. That indeed was an extension of the paper on the Herod Narrative.

The evidence of two texts in one work by Josephus was my discovery. I named it 'Genres Disjunction'. The term explained that it was an example of Quintilian's structual irony. It also clarified that Josephus hid his deep hatred of the Flavian Romans, his benefactors, and secretly asserted his loyalty to the Jewish nation. He made the Flavians the heroes of the history and villains of the tragedy as he changed the Jewish nation from villains of the history into hero-victims of the tragedy.

This is where my life began to change. I was baptized a Roman Catholic and lived a devout life of a Catholic until my reserch began. My curiosity took me from Josephus to the four Evangelists. I found to my utter disbelief that they too had 'Genres Disjunction' in their Gospels. All the Evangelists had the Gospel as the foreground text, but added other texts in the background. Mark had the classical history modeled on Livy's History of Rome. Matthew took Dionysius of Halicarnassus for his. Luke chose the Jewish War of Josephus for his background text and John had Herodotus for his second text.

The more I studied the Gospels the more shocks were in store for me. I found that Mark had a second background text of monomyths in the public life and the passion of Christ. Matthew had the same includ...