Luke And Vergil

Download or read book Luke and Vergil written by Dennis R. MacDonald and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-11-05 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 Luke and Vergil MacDonald proposes that the author of Luke-Acts followed Mark’s lead in imitating Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but greatly expanded his project, especially in the Acts, but adding imitations not only of the epics but also of Euripides’ Bacchae and Plato’s Socratic dialogues. The potential imitations include spectacular miracles, official resistance, epiphanies, prison breaks, and more. The book applies mimesis criticism and uses side-by-side comparisons to show how early Christian authors portrayed the origins of Christianity as more compelling than the Augustan Golden Age.

Download or read book Luke and the Politics of Homeric Imitation written by Dennis R. MacDonald and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-10-25 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Luke and the Politics of Homeric Imitation: Luke–Acts as Rival to the Aeneid argues that the author of Luke–Acts composed not a history but a foundation mythology to rival Vergil’s Aeneid by adopting and ethically emulating the cultural capital of classical Greek poetry, especially Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Euripides's Bacchae. For example, Vergil and, more than a century later, Luke both imitated Homer’s account of Zeus’s lying dream to Agamemnon, Priam’s escape from Achilles, and Odysseus’s shipwreck and visit to the netherworld. Both Vergil and Luke, as well as many other intellectuals in the Roman Empire, engaged the great poetry of the Greeks to root new social or political realities in the soil of ancient Hellas, but they also rivaled Homer’s gods and heroes to create new ones that were more moral, powerful, or compassionate. One might say that the genre of Luke–Acts is an oxymoron: a prose epic. If this assessment is correct, it holds enormous importance for understanding Christian origins, in part because one may no longer appeal to the Acts of the Apostles for reliable historical information. Luke was not a historian any more than Vergil was, and, as the Latin bard had done for the Augustine age, he wrote a fictional portrayal of the kingdom of God and its heroes, especially Jesus and Paul, who were more powerful, more ethical, and more compassionate than the gods and heroes of Homer and Euripides or those of Vergil’s Aeneid.

Download or read book Does the New Testament Imitate Homer? written by Dennis R. MacDonald and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: div In this provocative challenge to prevailing views of New Testament sources, Dennis R. MacDonald argues that the origins of passages in the book of Acts are to be found not in early Christian legends but in the epics of Homer. MacDonald focuses on four passages in the book of Acts, examines their potential parallels in the Iliad, and concludes that the author of Acts composed them using famous scenes in Homer’s work as a model. Tracing the influence of passages from the Iliad on subsequent ancient literature, MacDonald shows how the story generated a vibrant, mimetic literary tradition long before Luke composed the Acts. Luke could have expected educated readers to recognize his transformation of these tales and to see that the Christian God and heroes were superior to Homeric gods and heroes. Building upon and extending the analytic methods of his earlier book, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, MacDonald opens an original and promising appreciation not only of Acts but also of the composition of early Christian narrative in general. /DIV

Download or read book The Gospels and Homer written by Dennis R. MacDonald and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-11-05 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Luke/Acts and the End of History written by Kylie Crabbe and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-11-18 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Luke/Acts and the End of History investigates how understandings of history in diverse texts of the Graeco-Roman period illuminate Lukan eschatology. In addition to Luke/Acts, it considers ten comparison texts as detailed case studies throughout the monograph: Polybius's Histories, Diodorus Siculus's Library of History, Virgil's Aeneid, Valerius Maximus's Memorable Doings and Sayings, Tacitus’s Histories, 2 Maccabees, the Qumran War Scroll, Josephus's Jewish War, 4 Ezra, and 2 Baruch. The study makes a contribution both in its method and in the questions it asks. By placing Luke/Acts alongside a broad range of texts from Luke's wider cultural setting, it overcomes two methodological shortfalls frequently evident in recent research: limiting comparisons of key themes to texts of similar genre, and separating non-Jewish from Jewish parallels. Further, by posing fresh questions designed to reveal writers' underlying conceptions of history—such as beliefs about the shape and end of history or divine and human agency in history—this monograph challenges the enduring tendency to underestimate the centrality of eschatology for Luke's account. Influential post-war scholarship reflected powerful concerns about "salvation history" arising from its particular historical setting, and criticised Luke for focusing on history instead of eschatology due to the parousia’s delay. Though some elements of this thesis have been challenged, Luke continues to be associated with concerns about the delayed parousia, affecting contemporary interpretation. By contrast, this study suggests that viewing Luke/Acts within a broader range of texts from Luke's literary context highlights his underlying teleological conception of history. It demonstrates not only that Luke retains a sense of eschatological urgency seen in other New Testament texts, but a structuring of history more akin to the literature of late Second Temple Judaism than the non-Jewish Graeco-Roman historiographies with which Luke/Acts is more commonly compared. The results clarify not only Lukan eschatology, but related concerns or effects of his eschatology, such as Luke’s politics and approach to suffering. This monograph thereby offers an important corrective to readings of Luke/Acts based on established exegetical habits, and will help to inform interpretation for scholars and students of Luke/Acts as well as classicists and theologians interested in these key questions.

Download or read book Luke and Vergil written by Dennis Ronald MacDonald and published by New Testament and Greek Literature. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These two volumes 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.

Download or read book Vergil’s Eclogues written by George C. Paraskeviotis and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2019-11-04 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 42 and 39 BC, Vergil composed the first Latin pastoral collection, entitled Eclogues, and consisting of ten poems in the form in which it has come down to us. Vergil’s Eclogues represent the introduction of a new genre, the pastoral, to Latin literature, and recall the Hellenistic poet Theocritus who invented this genre. The fact that the Roman author inserts into the text elements from other Greek and Latin texts modifying them through innovations and changes (constitutes an attractive field of research. This book shows that Vergil’s dialogue with the earlier Greek and Latin tradition is not only typical of the way in which Latin literature was written in the 1st century BC; rather, it is also a dynamic literary method used to affect and define the character of each Eclogue.