The genre of the three synoptic Gospels of the New Testament has been a subject of inquiry for much of the past hundred years. A multitude of hypotheses have been presented, ranging from an initial surety that the Gospels were sui generis, a thing unto themselves, to various assertions in the latter half of the twentieth century that they were of such diverse genres as Hellenistic biography, historiography, Hellenistic novels, or wisdom literature. The difficulty in determining a single and absolute genre for the synoptic Gospels is two-pronged, and has resulted in the considerable length and intensity of this debate. First, there is a distinct lack of concrete data concerning the Gospels. We do not know their precise dates of composition, their true authors, the location where they were composed, and above all, the purpose for which they were written. We lack this information not because of an oversight or failure on the part of the scholarly community, but simply because of the paucity of texts available for study and a pervasive ignorance about the literacy and literary habits of the period—which, notably, extends the difficulty of interpretation beyond the Gospels to all of Hellenistic literature. Second, the Gospels themselves contain elements of many genres. They are at various points like biography, historical narrative, Hellenistic novels, etc., and scholars have yet to determine whether this confusion results from the nature of the Gospels or our own understanding of the genres involved.

In order to provide a provisional hypothesis as to the genre of the synoptic Gospels, we must first attempt to reduce the uncertainty to provide a degree of plausibility to any theory presented. This paper will, therefore, only consider the genre of the Gospel of Mark, because of its relative date of composition. Mark is held to be a source for both Matthew and Luke, and is dated to approximately 80 CE. As such, it is the earliest of the canonical texts in the New Testament. Thus, it is reasonable to consider Mark alone as representative of whatever genre the synoptic gospels follow. However, while by chosing a single gospel we can significantly pare down the level of complexity in dealing with this problem, this certainly does not remove the difficulty; Mark is still prey to both the lack of data and the multiplicity of genre characteristics.

The Gospel of Mark tells the story of Jesus, a traveling holy man who collects followers, performs miracles, incurs the displeasure of his government, and is therefore executed. It is written in a dry, relatively simplistic style, contains multiple episodes which in some cases are interchangeable chronologically, involves parables and other commentary on religious teachings, including exhortations on the proper way to live one’s life, and ends with a divine intervention in the mortal world (the Resurrection). While these characteristics could variously be applied to biography, historiography, etc., the best choice of genre for Mark is aretalogy, with certain provisos to that classification.

Aretalogy is defined by Morton Smith and Moses Hadas as “a formal account of the remarkable career of an impressive teacher that was used as the basis for moral instruction.” [1] Aretalogies are the accounts of preternaturally gifted individuals who are held up as examples for readers; they quite often include elements of divinity and miracles, and nearly always end in a martyrdom, where the teacher sacrifices himself for the teaching.[2] It is easy to see how the Gospel of Mark could conceivably be considered an aretalogy, as Jesus takes on the role of the impressive, preternatural teacher. However, upon closer examination, such a quick and dirty fix to the genre question rapidly becomes problematic, both because of problems within the genre of aretalogy itself, and because of difficulties fitting Mark within its boundaries.

What, then, are the boundaries to the aretalogy genre? The word aretalogus appears in Suetonius’s Life of Augustus, in which an aretalogus entertains Augustus’s dinner guests. It also appears in Juvenal, where Ulysses is compared to a “lying aretalogus.” Based on these references, various scholars have determined that the etymological history of the word goes back to the Greek aretai, meaning “miracles.” Thus an aretalogus was a teller of miracle stories, concerning the actions of divine men.[3] Therefore, aretologies—the tales of an aretologus—are in essence miracle stories primarily serving as propaganda for the deity or divine man described. [4] The word aretai can also be translated as “virtues,” and thus we find such phrases as “I shall make him think you a god; I shall recite your virtues” in the Adelphi (based on Menander). [5]

The primary scholarly work on aretalogy, Heroes and Gods, was written by Morton Smith and Moses Hadas in 1965. Aretalogy, according to Smith and Hadas, differs from the canonical Hellenistic biography in several ways. To begin with, aretalogy is concerned specifically with the actions of a spiritual leader and teacher as opposed to a traditionally heroic warrior or ruler. The careers of such teachers are inextricably linked with their teachings; the careers themselves become a vehicle for moral and ethical instruction. Thus, an aretalogy identifies the life of a spiritual leader with the instruction of that teacher, and becomes a literary account of both the life and instruction as one, with the virtues of the teacher emphasized and his failings glossed over.[6] Additionally, Smith and Hadas trace aretalogy back to its inception, which they identify in Plato’s works on Socrates.

Socrates, as portrayed by Plato, is quite nearly an archetypal example of the subject of an aretalogy. The historical Socrates was undoubtedly an extraordinary teacher, but his image as captured by Plato in literature transcends mere human extraordinariness in favor of a godlike persona which “leaves no opening for impugning his wisdom or temperance or courage or whole-hearted devotion.” [7] Additionally, Socrates ends his life as a martyr, and is condemned to death for his teachings. That he died in 399 BCE is undisputed; that his death was the beatific and peaceful martyr’s death that Plato describes is a literary construction. Thus, Plato’s Socratic writings are a remarkably clear early example of how an aretalogy transforms the life and death of a spiritual teacher into an idealized condensation of his teachings, which can then be used to promote those teachings. [8]

Aretalogy was first presented as a possible genre for the Gospels in the 1960s, by Hadas and Smith, though it was prefigured by C.W. Votaw in 1915, who compared Socrates and Jesus as well as Jesus and Apollonius of Tyana (a traveling prophet about whom was written one of the texts most commonly identified as aretalogy).[9] The primary objection to aretalogy as a genre is that it is practically nonexistent in the body of texts to which we have. There are simply no complete texts which can be officially classified as “aretalogies.” [10] This presents a certain degree of difficulty in classifying anything as an aretalogy, as we cannot precisely locate an example to compare possible candidates against. This problem is somewhat exacerbated by the general lack of knowledge about Hellenistic literature; considering the scanty number of texts extant from this period, it is perhaps not unreasonable to assume that we simply have missed acquiring a definitive aretalogy by chance. If so, the genre remains viable, and it may prove highly useful in New Testament interpretation despite a lack of precise examples, because its characteristics shed clarifying light on the Gospels.

The best known example of an aretalogy is Damis’s stories concerning Apollonius of Tyana, and we do not possess this text at all. We only know of it through the writing of Philostratus, who used Damis as a source for his Life of Apollonius. Apollonius of Tyana is historically known as a wandering prophet and holy man who practiced a version of Neo-Pythagoreanism. Philostratus, in his work on Apollonius, mixes narrative events, miracle stories, and wisdom sayings which he attributes to Apollonius; in short, he has written “the life of the hero as a holy man.” [11] Consider, then, Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius as an example of an aretalogy, or at least as close to one as we have access to; then, can we compare it fruitfully to the Gospel of Mark, and thereby confirm that that Gospel can be appropriately designated as an aretalogy?

There are certain obvious comparisons which can be made between the characters of Apollonius and Jesus. Both were teachers of morality who engaged in reform, both performed miracles, both had divine fathers, and both were persecuted by oppressive governments and escaped death via divine intervention. To treat these in order, with direct textual comparison, will prove useful in identifying both where the two texts correspond and where they do not, for while a cursory inspection seems to imply a remarkable degree of affinity between the texts, they subtly differ in style and intent. This difference may suggest a need for a more complicated solution to the genre of Mark.

Philostratus begins his Life of Apollonius by describing the sage’s exceptional birth. Apollonius’s mother, while pregnant with him, receives a visit from the Egyptian god Proteus. Apollonius’s mother responds to this divine visitation as follows: “She, not frightened at all, asked him to whom she would give birth. ‘Me,’ he said. ‘But who are you?’ she asked. ‘Proteus,’ he replied.” [12] This implies that the child will not only be exceptional in nature but will actually possess a divine heritage. Philostratus goes on to describe the events of Apollonius’s birth, which was heralded by portents and signs, such as lightning strikes. Events of this nature were often used in both biographic and aretalogic literature to mark the birth of an important hero or teacher. It is easy to see how this sort of event is paralleled in the Gospels; the Annunciation is a clear example of a divine figure announcing that the impending birth of a child will be unusual, and that the child is descended from the divine. It is interesting to note, however, that the Annunciation does not appear in Mark; it is a feature primarily of the Gospel of Luke, and receives some treatment in the Gospel of Matthew. There is no mention in Mark of Jesus’ birth; the chronology of the narrative picks up at Jesus’ baptism by John. In fact, there is very little early biographical detail of any sort in Mark. However, Jesus is specifically identified as the Son of God in Mark 9:7: “Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’” which is certainly evidence of the aretological quality that its subject is of divine origin.

Apollonius is described by Philostratus as performing a multitude of miracles; this, too, is a quality significant to aretalogy, as the performance of miracles by the divine man evinces his power and worthiness. The miracles of Apollonius primarily involve the casting out of demons. [13] In one case, however, Apollonius resurrects a dead girl being carried towards her funeral. “[H]e touched her and saying something no one could hear, awakened the girl who seemed dead.” [14] Both exorcism of demons and resurrection were common miracles performed by holy men in the Hellenistic world, and their inclusion in aretalogical writing is unsurprising. The subject of an aretalogy must have access to supernatural powers, because he is more than human. Similar miracles are easily located in Mark: Mark 5 shows the exorcism of the demon known as “Legion,” and there is a multitude of healings. Interestingly, there are miracles in Mark which are of a type not found in Life of Apollonius, specifically miracles concerning food. In Mark 8, Jesus feeds five thousand hungry followers in the wilderness. This sort of miracle is not one of the traditional types found in aretalogy.

The concept of the martyrdom of a spiritual teacher for his teachings is also a significant trait in aretalogical writing, and has been from the genre’s inception: Socrates dies rather than renounce his philosophy. The Life of Apollonius contains a record of Apollonius’s near martyrdom at the hands of the Emperor Domitian. While Apollonius does not actually sacrifice himself for his teachings, Philostratus makes it clear that he would be willing to do so if pressed; additionally, Apollonius escapes from the emperor’s clutches by means of a divine intervention (he is spirited away from the court to a small town by the sea where his followers are waiting for him). [15] This sequence parallels that of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus in Mark, up to and including the escape from death via supernatural action. This portion of the aretalogical trope, however, is given far greater importance in Mark than it is in Apollonius; it becomes the central event of the narrative, and it forms the primary basis of evidence for Jesus’ divine nature.

It is key to aretalogy that it conflates the life and teachings; the narrative history of the teacher is presented as an example to others, and his instructions, parables, and morals are expressed as part of the biographical narrative. This is clearly seen in the Life of Apollonius: the sage’s mode of living (ascetic and Pythagorean) is repeatedly described, and in many scenes he exhorts others to follow this paradigm. [16] Even more notable in this regard is a parable found in the second book, wherein Apollonius questions his follower Damis about the relative height of his soul, making reference to traveling through mountains or on plains.[17] In each of these scenes, Philostratus uses the literary form of his narrative to combine the events of Apollonius’ life with the substance of his teachings, until the two are essentially indivisible. It is this aspect of aretalogy which is the easiest to see in Mark; Mark is, in essence, a narrative so interlaced with Jesus’ teachings that it is difficult to separate the narrative portions from the instructional, resulting in a document which provides an didactic version of life.

However, there are some differences even in this respect between Mark and the Life of Apollonius. While both are somewhat episodic, the chronological nature of Mark breaks down in places; it is possible to rearrange some of the events described in Mark without reducing the effectiveness or coherence of the work. This is not true in the Life of Apollonius; here, the narrative relies on the chronology to progress. In this respect the Life of Apollonius is far closer to a traditional Greek biography than Mark is. At times, in fact, the author of Mark seems to pare down the aretalogical trope of the extended lifenarrative, rejecting unnecessary background material and biographical detail in favor of including more teachings. This serves to substantially heighten the impression that Jesus’ life was a continuous and flawless sequence of teachings, and to deemphasize his humanity and fallibility. However, such choices in the composition of the text may give us reason to classify Mark as something other than an aretalogy, though conceivably its genre at least made use of aretalogical concepts.

Clearly, there are many similarities between the Gospel of Mark and Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius. However, there are also substantial differences. It may be possible to explain some of these differences while still holding to the original claim that Mark is an aretalogy. To do so, we will look at another text which is considered to be aretalogical in nature, Philo’s Life of Moses. This text is especially significant in this discussion because it was written by a Hellenistic Jew and specifically addressed to a non-Jewish audience, with intent to convert. Both of these characteristics are most likely shared by the Gospel of Mark, and certainly not possessed by the Life of Apollonius.

Philo was born in 30 BCE and died in 50 CE; he was thus a contemporary of Jesus and Jesus’ disciples. He was a member of one of the wealthiest and most influential Jewish families in Alexandria. Therefore, he received an exemplary Greek education and was also extremely conversant with Jewish literature and theological concerns. His Life of Moses is specifically addressed to a non-Jewish audience; it is a document which is meant to educate about and inspire devotion to the patriarch Moses. [18] Philo states that his source material is the Pentateuch, the Five Books of Moses. The Moses he portrays, however, does not accord precisely with the one in the Old Testament. Instead, Philo attaches quality to his Moses which are characteristic of a divine man, i.e., that he was a spiritual teacher who was touched or otherwise gifted by the divine. In short, Philo sets up Moses as a candidate for the subject of an aretalogy, and then composes that aretalogy, deemphasizing the flaws of the subject (for instance, passing over Moses’ brother Aaron’s involvement in the Golden Calf episode). In fact, Moses is described as a savior figure, whose life is used as an exemplary model and a conduit of his teachings, exactly the characteristics of an aretalogical subject. [19]

Philo’s work is divided into three major sections: a narrative portion, which is the most traditionally aretalogical (telling of Moses’ life, miracles, and teachings), a section on Moses as king, and, finally, a section on Moses as lawgiver. Within the narrative are described Moses’ unusual birth and precocious upbringing, in a tone similar to that found in the Life of Apollonius.[20] Also present are miracles performed by Moses: the parting of the Red Sea, the defeat of the Egyptian magicians, and, most interestingly, the deliverance of manna and water to the Israelites during their forty-year sojourn in the desert. This miracle parallels the feeding of the five thousand in Mark; it is possible that the miracle in Mark alludes directly to this Old Testament story, if not Philo’s text specifically. This would imply Mark deliberately references the Old Testament; this makes sense if we consider that Mark was almost certainly written by a Hellenistic Jew. Such an author would want to legitimize his writing by connecting the actions of the spiritual teacher he is describing with the cultural basis out of which that teacher arose.

We are almost completely certain that Philo, in writing his Life of Moses, was attempting to educate a non-Jewish audience about a Jewish cultural hero. It possible that the Life of Moses was, in addition, intended to persuade Greeks to convert to Judaism. Philo was, after all, an Alexandrian Jew living during the short period where Hellenistic Judaism was both ascendant and open to converts from other religions. Considering this, it becomes extremely interesting that Philo chooses to use aretalogical tropes and methods in composing his Life of Moses. Aretalogy was a Greek genre, which arose out of Greek conceptions of the divine man, and relied heavily on several hundred years of social and theophilosophical development for its efficacy. [21] Aretalogies were in use during the time Philo was writing, both as serious propaganda giving credence to the actions, teachings, and lives of various Greek holy men, and as entertainment for the Greek upper class (as seen in the description of Augustus’ banquet in Seutonius). They were, in essence, a part of the Greek cultural context. [22] Therefore, we can read Philo’s choice to portray Moses in an aretalogical format as an attempt to subvert and make use of this Greek genre for specifically non-Greek purposes: conversion to and education about the Jewish religion.

There is a great deal of evidence that Greek and Hellenistic Jewish literature overlapped and shared a mutual awareness, and also Hellenistic Jews attempted to use Greek language and cultural context to portray Jewish religious ideas. One of the more interesting examples is seen in the Septuagint (which in itself is an example of this overlap, a Greek-language version of the Old Testament): the phrase “to speak the wonders of God” is rendered as aretas legein, which translates as “to speak the virtues [aretai].”[23] This seems to reference directly the way in which Greeks understood arete as “divine virtue.” Additionally, there is evidence of Jewish literature from this time period which both makes use of and transcendes the aretalogical trope of the martyr. This is most easily seen in 4 Maccabees, as Tessa Rajak wrote in her recent book on the interaction of Hellenistic Jews in Greece and Rome. As she argues, 4 Maccabees is a text “in which the Greek philosophy current in the Roman empire is blended with a parade of rhetoric and a serious Jewish ideology.” [24] Additionally, 4 Maccabees is dated to approximately 70 CE, making it contemporaneous with the Gospel of Mark. It is thus entirely reasonable to assume that Jewish authors were making use of Greek philosophy, culture, and politics in their own religious texts, and that the Greek and Jewish conceptions of martyrdom were intertwined. Both Mark and the Life of Moses contain involved martyrdom sections. Both rely on what Rajak describes as primarily Jewish elements of martyrdom: the Law, the Tyrant, and the Nation. Jewish martyrs sacrifice themselves for the Jewish Law (in Mark, this would be analogous to the new teachings of Christ), are persecuted by a foreign ruler (Pilate and by extension the Roman empire in Mark), and ultimately die to save the Jewish nation (to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven). [25]

If we consider Philo’s Life of Moses to be this particular type of aretalogy—a type which is conscious of the genre and deliberately uses it for a purpose beyond its original intent, we can then clarify why the Gospel of Mark seems to be at variance with the aretalogical genre at times by assuming that Mark is also consciously making use of the aretalogical format, for reasons similar to those of Philo.

To begin with, this would explain the pared-down levels of narration in Mark. The author, aware of aretalogy, selects that feature of the genre which he believes would convert and educate most effectively, namely that the life of the teacher and his teachings are conflated. He then discards what he considers to be extraneous biographical information. This is further supported by considering that the author of Mark may have wished to emphasize Jesus’ divinity over his humanity, treating his human life as one of the flaws which an aretalogy necessarily overlooks. Furthermore, Mark emphasizes the aretological concept of the martyr more than the Life of Apollonius does, possibly because the Gospel draws heavily on the Jewish cultural conception of martyrdom, as seen in 4 Macabees. Finally, Mark emphasizes the reformation of laws and customs, while the Greek aretalogies concentrate far more on personal reformation. Similarly, in the Life of Moses, Jewish law consumes an entire third of the text.

In all these ways, the Gospel of Mark cannot precisely be characterized as an aretalogy, as it differs subtly but pervasively in tone and specific detail. It seems extremely plausible, however, that Mark was written with the aretalogical genre in mind, making use of the characteristics of aretalogy while not precisely being an aretalogy in and of itself. Mark is, in this fashion, very similar to Philo’s Life of Moses, which also has many aretalogical aspects but deliberately uses these features to persuade its readers about the validity of Moses and the Jewish religion as respectively a spiritual teacher in the line of Socrates and a legitimate philosophical and theological teaching. Mark functions in much the same fashion; it sets up Jesus in the aretalogical mode and context, making him palatable to Greek thought and drawing Greeks towards conversion.