Was Jesus a 'hero' to those who first wrote about him?
What is it about?
Was Jesus a hero to those who first wrote about him in the New Testament gospels? It has been proposed that these gospels are like the biographies of other contemporary heroes. However, this linguistic study of the way that Jesus is appraised in the Gospel of John suggests that this might not be the case. It compares the presentation of Jesus with that of a military/political leader in Plutarch’s Cato the Younger and a philosopher in Lucian’s Demonax. Although, as we might expect, the way Jesus is evaluated in almost entirely positive, it is done in quite a different way from that of the other heroes. Maybe the author of the Gospel of John thought that Jesus was in some way beyond human evaluation?
Why is it important?
This study is a collaboration between specialists in two different disciplines, New Testament Studies and Linguistics. It provides an example of how new insights into the language of ancient written documents can be made using recent linguistic methodologies. It also asks whether the gospels in the New Testament can be considered as biographies in the same way as other writings of the time.