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The Gospels and Homer: Imitations of Greek Epic in Mark and Luke-Acts
These two volumes of The New Testament and Greek Literature are the magnum opus of biblical scholar Dennis R. MacDonald, outlining the profound connections between the New Testament and classical Greek poetry. MacDonald argues that the Gospel writers borrowed from established literary sources to create stories about Jesus that readers of the day would find convincing.
In The Gospels and Homer MacDonald leads readers through Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, highlighting models that the authors of the Gospel of Mark and Luke-Acts may have imitated for their portrayals of Jesus and his earliest followers such as Paul. The book applies mimesis criticism to show the popularity of the targets being imitated, the distinctiveness in the Gospels, and evidence that ancient readers recognized these similarities. Using side-by-side comparisons, the book provides English translations of Byzantine poetry that shows how Christian writers used lines from Homer to retell the life of Jesus.
The potential imitations include adventures and shipwrecks, savages living in cages, meals for thousands, transfigurations, visits from the dead, blind seers, and more. MacDonald makes a compelling case that the Gospel writers successfully imitated the epics to provide their readers with heroes and an authoritative foundation for Christianity.
In The Gospels and Homer MacDonald leads readers through Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, highlighting models that the authors of the Gospel of Mark and Luke-Acts may have imitated for their portrayals of Jesus and his earliest followers such as Paul. The book applies mimesis criticism to show the popularity of the targets being imitated, the distinctiveness in the Gospels, and evidence that ancient readers recognized these similarities. Using side-by-side comparisons, the book provides English translations of Byzantine poetry that shows how Christian writers used lines from Homer to retell the life of Jesus.
The potential imitations include adventures and shipwrecks, savages living in cages, meals for thousands, transfigurations, visits from the dead, blind seers, and more. MacDonald makes a compelling case that the Gospel writers successfully imitated the epics to provide their readers with heroes and an authoritative foundation for Christianity.
440 pages, Hardcover
First published October 22, 2014
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June 5, 2018
A lot of people I know would be horrified at the premise of The Gospels and Homer: Imitations of Greek Epic in Mark and Luke-Acts. Dennis R. MacDonald has developed the idea of “Mimesis Criticism,” the realization that many ancient authors appropriated language, metaphors, and even narrative structure in alignment with another influence. I know many who would be alarmed at the idea that classical Greek works may have had any influence on the language and structure of the gospels in the New Testament. Yet, scholars who undertake word studies pay attention to the usage of certain vocabulary in the ancient texts to get an idea of the Sitz im Leben (“Setting in Life”) behind the text, so why not expand the concept.
MacDonald knows that some will immediately resent the ground on which his scholarship is set. So, he delineates six criteria to determine the likelihood of one ancient text “imitating” another or “borrowing” from another text. Those criteria are: 1) accessibility (including distribution) of an ancient text to authors of a later period; 2) analogy in that the more a text is imitated, the more likely it is to be imitated by the author being studied; 3) density in the sense of the amount of overlap between the texts; 4) sequencing parallels such that the texts follow the same relative order can be found; 5) terminology rather distinctive to both texts is demonstrated; and 6) interpretability so that If the exercise proves fruitful, something useful to the interpreter should be gained (p. 6). The author also added a seventh consideration after hearing feedback on his earlier works so, “7) Greek readers from one thousand years ago seem to have been aware of similarities between the gospels and classical works.”
MacDonald notes his opposition in Karl Olav Sandnes who claims that “advertised intertextuality” is necessary to claim “mimesis.” (p. 10) I don’t see that as necessary and concur with MacDonald’s observation that Mark expected at least some of his readers to be conversant with Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew (p. 13). To illustrate some of this, MacDonald makes comparisons between Cleopas, meaning “All-fame” and being one of the disciples who recognized (eventually) Jesus on the Emmaus Road as similar to Eurycleia, meaning “Renowned-far-and-wide” and being Odysseus’ old nurse who recognizes him by his scar. Remember Eutychus (“Lucky”) who fell from the second-story window and died, only to be raised from the dead in Acts? Elpenor (“Unfortunate”) died from falling from Circe’s roof at the end of the Odyssey (p. 14). He further strengthens his idea by citing the “centoists” of Byzantium and their understanding of the literature (p. 16).
I picked up the book because this type of “Mimetic Criticism” didn’t seem too dissimilar from the comparisons of Hebrew Psalms with Egyptian and Babylonian poetry. But when MacDonald began to draw his comparisons, I found myself less infatuated. So, let me share a couple that gave me pause. First, MacDonald sees Polyphemus the Cyclops as a model for the Gerasene demoniac in Mark 5 (pp. 198-200, and some of the encounter with Circe in 213-215). In The Odyssey (9.105-107), Odysseus sails to the shore of the Cyclops (as does Aeneas in The Aeneid (3.570)) where an ostracized monster lives in a cave on a mountain (Odyssey 9.113-114) even as Aeneas discovers an ostracized monster who lives in a cave on a mountain (Aeneid 3.618-620). Of course, Jesus sails to the other side of the sea in Mark 5:1 and meets an ostracized, monstrous, possessed man who lives in the tombs (v. 2 – also likely to be caves). But though Legion rips aside his restraints and offers up inhuman howls (vv. 4-5), we don’t see the kind of gore depicted when The Aeneid describes the monster smashing humans until blood and gore oozed and then chewing on the remains (3.622-627) or when The Odyssey describes the Cyclops bashing heads till the brains gushed out and devouring them until neither guts, nor marrow, nor bones were left (9.288-293). But where Odysseus stabs his eye and steals his sheep (9.399-402) and Aeneas flees via a benevolent wind (3.683-691), Jesus releases the demoniac from the evil spirits (vv. 7-13) and Jesus doesn’t sail away until He teaches the man and the herdsmen return with a mob (v. 21).
Yet, in both accounts, the similarities seem superficial to me, and not even the language and dialogue seems close enough to warrant the idea of imitation. Somewhat better was the comparison of Odysseus’ shipwreck in The Odyssey with Paul’s shipwreck in Acts 27. After all, MacDonald quotes both Dionysius of Halicarness and Lucian as indicating that rhetoricians in the ancient world worked the shipwreck scene to excess (p. 169). Both accounts begin with a warm, fair wind. In the former (5.268-271), the god Calypso sends a warm wind from the south. In the latter, the warm wind is identified as the “notos” or south wind in Acts 27:13 (p. 171). The crews of both ships believe that they are going to have fair weather (despite Paul’s prophecy) and Odysseus sails straight on while Paul’s ship hugs the coastline as a defensive measure against foul weather.
Both accounts use the generic Greek word for a storm, but The Odyssey attributes the storm to the clashing of the East and South winds (5.296-298) while Acts calls the turbulence a result of the East and North winds (Interestingly enough, the biblical Greek (v. 14) uses a combined form of the Greek for “East” and the Latin god, Aquilo, associated with the “North” wind (usually Boreas in Greek).) Boreas does make a late entrance in the lines from The Odyssey, however.
Both narratives incorporate the Greek word for “carried” as in “carried along by the wind” or “carried by the sea” in various tenses (5.327, 330-332, Acts 27:15-17). Odysseus believes his destruction is certain (5.305), as does the narrator of Acts and those he was writing about (v. 20). And in both accounts, a supernatural visitor appears just when hope is nearly lost (pp. 172-173). In The Odyssey, it is Ino the daughter of Cadmus (5.333) who promises that if Odysseus will follow her instructions and abandon his ship (5.343-347), it is his fate to escape. In Acts, after Paul has upbraided the crew for not listening to his warning, he states that a supernatural being, an angel, appeared to him (v. 23) and told him not to fear because he was “fated” (without using that term) to stand before Caesar (v.24). Finally, both ships finally find relative safety by seeing the land at the dawn (p. 173). MacDonald furthers his case by noting that Luke’s account uses nautical terminology which is rare in the New Testament, but frequent in The Odyssey (p. 173).
Okay, color me skeptical. It only seems natural to me that common nautical terminology would appear more often in an epic poem about a sea voyage than in a description of events in the New Testament. And, while MacDonald’s argument on these parallels has more substance, it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. It is safe to say that none of the parallels in The Gospels and Homer have me completely convinced, but the discussion forced me to go back to The Odyssey, The Iliad, and The Aeneid for the first time in many years (other than to check the usage of one Greek word or another in different contexts than the New Testament).
Of course, I am even more skeptical of comparisons between Circe’s bountiful feeding of Odysseus (10.476-560) with Mark 14’s narrative of the Last Supper. Did Odysseus’ seduction of Circe while his crew slept inspire the scene in the garden where Jesus’ disciples slept while He struggled with the necessity of death? Or did Odysseus waking up his crew as he needed to go to Hades form a solid parallel with Jesus waking his disciples? (p. 225). It is much easier to agree that the mysterious third-person narratives at this point in Acts were influenced by classical Greek rhetoric (p. 228).
Whereas it is easy to see parallels between Odysseus’ transformation at the hands of Athena in The Odyssey (16.264-265) and the scene of Jesus’ Transfiguration in Mark 9, at least in structure, see Telemachus’ exclamation that his father was a god as parallel to many people thinking that Paul and Barnabas were gods in Acts 14 (pp. 268-269) doesn’t click at all with me. In short, The Gospels and Homer: Imitations of Greek Epic in Mark and Luke-Acts is a thorough work of scholarship It was well worth reading, considering my interest in rhetoric and literary style in the Bible. It was provocative, but not convincing.
MacDonald knows that some will immediately resent the ground on which his scholarship is set. So, he delineates six criteria to determine the likelihood of one ancient text “imitating” another or “borrowing” from another text. Those criteria are: 1) accessibility (including distribution) of an ancient text to authors of a later period; 2) analogy in that the more a text is imitated, the more likely it is to be imitated by the author being studied; 3) density in the sense of the amount of overlap between the texts; 4) sequencing parallels such that the texts follow the same relative order can be found; 5) terminology rather distinctive to both texts is demonstrated; and 6) interpretability so that If the exercise proves fruitful, something useful to the interpreter should be gained (p. 6). The author also added a seventh consideration after hearing feedback on his earlier works so, “7) Greek readers from one thousand years ago seem to have been aware of similarities between the gospels and classical works.”
MacDonald notes his opposition in Karl Olav Sandnes who claims that “advertised intertextuality” is necessary to claim “mimesis.” (p. 10) I don’t see that as necessary and concur with MacDonald’s observation that Mark expected at least some of his readers to be conversant with Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew (p. 13). To illustrate some of this, MacDonald makes comparisons between Cleopas, meaning “All-fame” and being one of the disciples who recognized (eventually) Jesus on the Emmaus Road as similar to Eurycleia, meaning “Renowned-far-and-wide” and being Odysseus’ old nurse who recognizes him by his scar. Remember Eutychus (“Lucky”) who fell from the second-story window and died, only to be raised from the dead in Acts? Elpenor (“Unfortunate”) died from falling from Circe’s roof at the end of the Odyssey (p. 14). He further strengthens his idea by citing the “centoists” of Byzantium and their understanding of the literature (p. 16).
I picked up the book because this type of “Mimetic Criticism” didn’t seem too dissimilar from the comparisons of Hebrew Psalms with Egyptian and Babylonian poetry. But when MacDonald began to draw his comparisons, I found myself less infatuated. So, let me share a couple that gave me pause. First, MacDonald sees Polyphemus the Cyclops as a model for the Gerasene demoniac in Mark 5 (pp. 198-200, and some of the encounter with Circe in 213-215). In The Odyssey (9.105-107), Odysseus sails to the shore of the Cyclops (as does Aeneas in The Aeneid (3.570)) where an ostracized monster lives in a cave on a mountain (Odyssey 9.113-114) even as Aeneas discovers an ostracized monster who lives in a cave on a mountain (Aeneid 3.618-620). Of course, Jesus sails to the other side of the sea in Mark 5:1 and meets an ostracized, monstrous, possessed man who lives in the tombs (v. 2 – also likely to be caves). But though Legion rips aside his restraints and offers up inhuman howls (vv. 4-5), we don’t see the kind of gore depicted when The Aeneid describes the monster smashing humans until blood and gore oozed and then chewing on the remains (3.622-627) or when The Odyssey describes the Cyclops bashing heads till the brains gushed out and devouring them until neither guts, nor marrow, nor bones were left (9.288-293). But where Odysseus stabs his eye and steals his sheep (9.399-402) and Aeneas flees via a benevolent wind (3.683-691), Jesus releases the demoniac from the evil spirits (vv. 7-13) and Jesus doesn’t sail away until He teaches the man and the herdsmen return with a mob (v. 21).
Yet, in both accounts, the similarities seem superficial to me, and not even the language and dialogue seems close enough to warrant the idea of imitation. Somewhat better was the comparison of Odysseus’ shipwreck in The Odyssey with Paul’s shipwreck in Acts 27. After all, MacDonald quotes both Dionysius of Halicarness and Lucian as indicating that rhetoricians in the ancient world worked the shipwreck scene to excess (p. 169). Both accounts begin with a warm, fair wind. In the former (5.268-271), the god Calypso sends a warm wind from the south. In the latter, the warm wind is identified as the “notos” or south wind in Acts 27:13 (p. 171). The crews of both ships believe that they are going to have fair weather (despite Paul’s prophecy) and Odysseus sails straight on while Paul’s ship hugs the coastline as a defensive measure against foul weather.
Both accounts use the generic Greek word for a storm, but The Odyssey attributes the storm to the clashing of the East and South winds (5.296-298) while Acts calls the turbulence a result of the East and North winds (Interestingly enough, the biblical Greek (v. 14) uses a combined form of the Greek for “East” and the Latin god, Aquilo, associated with the “North” wind (usually Boreas in Greek).) Boreas does make a late entrance in the lines from The Odyssey, however.
Both narratives incorporate the Greek word for “carried” as in “carried along by the wind” or “carried by the sea” in various tenses (5.327, 330-332, Acts 27:15-17). Odysseus believes his destruction is certain (5.305), as does the narrator of Acts and those he was writing about (v. 20). And in both accounts, a supernatural visitor appears just when hope is nearly lost (pp. 172-173). In The Odyssey, it is Ino the daughter of Cadmus (5.333) who promises that if Odysseus will follow her instructions and abandon his ship (5.343-347), it is his fate to escape. In Acts, after Paul has upbraided the crew for not listening to his warning, he states that a supernatural being, an angel, appeared to him (v. 23) and told him not to fear because he was “fated” (without using that term) to stand before Caesar (v.24). Finally, both ships finally find relative safety by seeing the land at the dawn (p. 173). MacDonald furthers his case by noting that Luke’s account uses nautical terminology which is rare in the New Testament, but frequent in The Odyssey (p. 173).
Okay, color me skeptical. It only seems natural to me that common nautical terminology would appear more often in an epic poem about a sea voyage than in a description of events in the New Testament. And, while MacDonald’s argument on these parallels has more substance, it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. It is safe to say that none of the parallels in The Gospels and Homer have me completely convinced, but the discussion forced me to go back to The Odyssey, The Iliad, and The Aeneid for the first time in many years (other than to check the usage of one Greek word or another in different contexts than the New Testament).
Of course, I am even more skeptical of comparisons between Circe’s bountiful feeding of Odysseus (10.476-560) with Mark 14’s narrative of the Last Supper. Did Odysseus’ seduction of Circe while his crew slept inspire the scene in the garden where Jesus’ disciples slept while He struggled with the necessity of death? Or did Odysseus waking up his crew as he needed to go to Hades form a solid parallel with Jesus waking his disciples? (p. 225). It is much easier to agree that the mysterious third-person narratives at this point in Acts were influenced by classical Greek rhetoric (p. 228).
Whereas it is easy to see parallels between Odysseus’ transformation at the hands of Athena in The Odyssey (16.264-265) and the scene of Jesus’ Transfiguration in Mark 9, at least in structure, see Telemachus’ exclamation that his father was a god as parallel to many people thinking that Paul and Barnabas were gods in Acts 14 (pp. 268-269) doesn’t click at all with me. In short, The Gospels and Homer: Imitations of Greek Epic in Mark and Luke-Acts is a thorough work of scholarship It was well worth reading, considering my interest in rhetoric and literary style in the Bible. It was provocative, but not convincing.
July 8, 2019
A very thorough argument for evidence of mimesis in the New Testament; interesting discussion of the writings of Josephus.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews