Gospels or Biographies? The Gospels as Folk Literature

Ryder A. Wishart, PhD (2023), McMaster Divinity College, has edited and published on a number of subjects including Greek grammar, computational linguistics, New Testament studies, Pauline studies, and theology.

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Abbreviations



Introduction



1 From Form to Genre

 1 Genre Criticism before Form Criticism

 2 Form instead of Genre

 3 Redaction instead of Form

 4 Literature instead of Redaction

 5 Genre instead of Form or Redaction

 6 Summary



2 From Genre to Register

 1 The Consensus View’s Model of Genre

 2 Burridge’s Model of Genre

 3 Burridge’s Selection Bias

 4 Problems with Burridge’s Criteria for Genre Classification

 5 Register as the Confluence of Sociological and Genre Criticism

 6 Summary



3 A Proposal Regarding the Gospels as Folk-Literature Collections

 1 Can the Gospels Be Considered Folklore?

 2 Can Gospel Be Considered a Genre?

 3 Can Gospel Be Considered a Register?

 4 Folk Literature Collections

 5 Summary



4 A Methodology for Analyzing Situations to Describe What Texts Do

 1 Methodological Steps

 2 Situations as Contextual Configurations

 3 Situation Boundaries

 4 Dynamic Situations

 5 Methodological Tools

 6 Summary



5 Patterns of Situational Variation in the Gospels

 1 Variation in the Gospel Pericopes

 2 Summary



6 Types of Situations in the Gospels

 1 Situation Types

 2 Summary



7 What Does a Gospel Do?

 1 Logistics and Definitions Relating to Discourse Patterns

 2 Analyzing Language for Grammatical Register Probabilities

 3 The Likely Situational Contexts of the Gospels

 4 Summary



Conclusion



Appendix: Example Data

Bibliography

Index of Modern Authors

Index of Ancient Sources