man Craig he just came out this book recently crystal biography and I was privileged to admin
sent me a draft of it I don't know about a year ago or something like that and I read
through it almost all of it like wow this is great stuff what what god I mean this is some
groundbreaking stuff that you and your doctoral students have been working on for a while but
my perception correct me if I'm wrong you had people like Richard Byrd's Charles Tyler David
Ani and some others who had been doing some work on ancient biography and arguing giving reasons
to think that the Gospels belong to greco-roman biography or at least they share much in common
with there's a debate on what kind of biography they are and of course there's Jewish flavor into
it and there's debates like over what about Luke and I know Ben Witherington thinks that Luke is
not biography he thinks it's historiography just like Acts they overlap that they do in
fact I think what's kind of interesting and this is the way I see Luke I think it's biography yeah
I think it's be like but it does share a lot in common with historiography or history Christopher
pelling the leading expert on Plutarch has said in his commentary on Plutarch's life of Caesar
that even though it's a life it's a biography he said the typical biography according to Plutarch
is you're focusing on the characters of the main person you know what makes this person who they
are what are they like you know their character but he says that's not what Plutarch does with
Caesar he's more interested in what brings Caesar popularity with the population and so it's a
meshing of history and biography there but it's still it's pretty much fully biography but the
lines are blurred would you agree with that he's got so much information I mean it's that isn't one
of his shorter biographies yeah but but I think the lines are kind of blurred a lot of times in
the Imperial period biography and historiography overlapped more because so much was focused when
you say the Imperial period you're talking a gust this and forward yeah I should say my early early
Imperial period the early Empire Lux Augustus and forward certainly in the first century which is
what Suetonius mostly writes well you know Augustus starting in the first century BCE
but he's from the Giulio Claudian emperors and then the Flavian dynasty that runs through the
first century okay so know some people like might get hung up because we'd say their greco-roman
biography when in some of the cases Matthew John you know they're written by Jews mark perhaps
the written by Jews so why would it be greco-roman biography and I'm I'm thinking well they're really
except for Philo's life of Moses and Josephus is autobiography yeah there are no other biographies
written by Jews in that period and they pretty much but even follows life of Moses goes by a
lot of the same kind of conventions that yes do right so it's like let's not get hung up on
the greco-roman stuff we can just say the gospel share a lot in common with greco-roman biography
or just caught into biography right you know yeah I think that's fair sometimes people want to make
a contrast they say well look how much so how many echoes of the Old Testament you have well
yeah that's that's true I mean this is where the theology comes from and so on but they're
still writing to a Diaspora audience in Greek and they're using literary and rhetorical conventions
the same as same as we would use from from our own day when when we write something or you know
like we could we could be expounding the Book of Isaiah and if we're doing it on video we're using
a modern genre 21st century genre that's true and well the greco-roman authors they would use motifs
and type type ologies from the Homeric epics right just like gospel was used from the Old Testament
scripture so alright so what got your interest in studying this biographical genre you know actually
it goes way back I think it was in the 1980s I think in the early 1980s I wasn't actually in the
class but there was a class I think it was being taught by been a core who was one of my mentors
I think that was who was teaching it and it was just while you're a Duke your dog know this was
this was Bible College oh okay yeah and my and I think he was using a textbook by Grand Osborn
that that or maybe maybe this was from fee and stewards work on special hermeneutics but in that
case looking at different genres and the genre of the Gospels being ancient biography and I I mean
I didn't know that much about I didn't actually read that book but you know I was thinking about
it and actually I was praying about it and feeling like no more needs to be done with this excuse me
it's nothing to sneeze in but anyway so I I was yeah and I read some ancient biography I've read
Stuart Onias I bred Tacitus is Agricola really carefully at that point I hadn't really talked
yet but eventually you know I was working my way through ancient literature Tacitus I read before
I was a Christian I had no idea what I was gonna use it for someday but at that point I was still
catching up on the ancient Jewish sources so so you ready to cast this and so I taught me is how
old are you at the time when I first read Tacitus and maybe I shouldn't say I read all of Suetonius
I don't remember how much was Suetonius area but I mean I was reading some of those cities
around the age of 14 reading Greek playwrights at the age of 14 comedy Aristophanes loser stars
playing pacman at the age of 14 so you know I've never done that so you were ahead of me but like
Sophocles Euripides Aeschylus reading all that stuff but in in and of course Homer Homer was at
the age of 12 but Plato at 13 I remember some of the stuff Tacitus I read at the age of 12 mainly
because it was there was a cheap copy and you in the used book section in the library where
they were selling used books so I read Tacitus and Edith Hamilton's mythology and that that stuff got
me started I think that's impressive so all right so that's kind of background what tell me about
crystal biography tell us about it sure so when I wrote historical Jesus of the Gospels I was taking
for granted if I said this is biography here's what biographies were like and it didn't occur to
me until after the book was almost pretty I mean it was almost in print and in one one reviewer
who was very sharp picked this up not everybody knows what ancient biographies like you know so
Oh so let's write a more than 500 page volume to explain I needed yeah I needed to explain because
people are like how do you know he took my Agha if he wasn't fictitious and that doesn't mean
if you send him an email or Facebook pet message can't keep yeah he's not gonna write a whole 500
but and also there was material that overlapped I mean the work on historiography overlapped with
what I'd done on an ax and I did I did an article on sua Tony's his life of author this was this was
after historical Jesus of the Gospels I said no I need to need to figure out how this works let me
and just do it as objectively as I can because I want to come to the conclusions that it you
know were the evidence points because you know if if the you know ancient biography had a lot
of a latitude I want to know that and maybe the Gospels had a lot of a lot of too - and
I want to know that but if ancient biography well anyway so I compared suet o Gnaeus with Plutarch
and Tacitus where they covered the same material just just to see how much of it was how much you
could say well this can't be them making it up this has to be based on their sources whatever
the sources were and by the time I was done I was like whoa you know every paragraph in Suetonius
on average he's he's basing this on information it's like there's so much there and so to really
test it out I mean I published that article but they really passed to test it out you need more
than one sample so I didn't have you know taking the years if I did that myself but in one of my
PhD seminars for my students I said you could write on whatever you want to but those of you
who would like to here's something that's never been done before yeah let's let's look at you
know somebody can do a paper on this somebody can do a paper on this you know and if if you
guys do good work we'll put it together as a book and they did good work I mean all of them did did
good work some of them are better than others some of them were like out of out of this world
I mean they were so good so so we we published it as a book I mean it wasn't meant to sell lots
of copies but it is what what we could do then we could each build on one another's work giving one
another appropriate credit I don't believe in using people's work and not giving them credit
so the results of that pretty much confirmed what I found I mean there's some latitude with
with there's certain kinds of details but but the storyline is dependent on your sources now that's
not true with all ancient biography and some of them have more latitude especially in the early
appeared in the later period but the the apex of ancient biography was in the period of the early
Roman Empire basically from Cornelius Nepos at the end of the Republic to say the Audry's Lee
urges in the early third century and so and that was that was an unexpected finding because that
actually came is I was reading momiglee on oh another secondary literature and in seeing their
topologies and then and then when I ranked the material chronologically that's when it occurred
to me oh this is the apex of the historiographic character of ancient biography and and then yeah
and then noting where there's latitude and there I could depend on your work and and then dealing
with some of the objections people raised like well if John's nature by there must be lots
of latitude so I dealt with that I mean I was a Janet scholar at first that's what my dissertation
was on my doctoral mentor at Duke was a German specialist who was really interested in history
in John historical information in John and my PhD was technically not just New Testament the
New Testament Christian origins so the historical side of it although I got good teaching and the
literary side of it too and and then the question of miracles which of course I'd already worked on
so with christen biography I want to talk a little about John but we'll do that next video so kind of
wrapping this one up what could someone who's saying someone watching they'd say well let's
suppose you don't want to read the whole five hundred and some pages of christo biography
you'd rather just have a Reader's Digest version or just encapsulate what some of the conclusions
are and if they want thinking that you can get his book what would you say are the ten the big what's
the bottom line takeaway from Krishna biography but by the way the way I try to write books the
more technical ones I try to have the introduction in conclusion of each section with summaries and
then of course the conclusion at the end so and then you you can sample the rest for the details
depending on what you want so they can keep some crystal biography look at the conclusion summaries
at the end of each chapter decide whether they want to read that chapter right but and then of
course read so they the conclusion chapter but so what would you say is the D takeaway from
Christopher Bob Christopher Christopher biography Christopher B some people do have that they do
big in our culture today Krista phobia yeah but Krishna biography is like should be closer to
the opposite of that yeah the Gospel writers were writing biographies that were tweaked to tell the
story have somebody special the story of Jesus and anyway the the summary of it is that first of all
ancient biographies in the early Roman Empire were interested in historical information about
the figure about whom they wrote they depended on sources when those and the the apex was the early
Roman Empire that was when it was most destroyed graphically interested and also the the closest
analogies would be those that deal with figures of the recent past from within living memory all
the Gospels are from within living memory of the all the first century Gospels or by definition
within living memory of the activity of Jesus so the ultimate conclusion is that we actually
know quite a lot about Jesus we don't know as much as we would like to know even we'd love
to find more first century Gospels unfortunately all the other Gospels that we have or later and
they're not from living memory and I'm not very reliable after the canonical yeah after the yeah
so I mean there was no coincidence they canonized the ones that were from the first century to the
closest to the time of Jesus and but there were other things written Luke tells us if I hear you
say it okay so the Gospels they take some stories about Jesus and you said they tweet them some but
overall they provide us with with you know good reports accurate historical report they tell us
a lot about Jesus well yeah exactly we're never seen they tweet but no no now hold on a second
because I know there's a lot of you who want to know what he means by that and I think we'll
save that for the books you know well just this John thing okay I wasn't talking about tweaking
details I was talking about tweaking the genre of biography just to focus on a different kind of
person because you know sage yes yeah biographies of that public figures yet you have biographies
of that but God in the flesh I didn't have any biographies like that yet that we know of yeah all
right cool thanks I hope you enjoyed that we'll come to another video our third one and final one
you