Eastern Church Fathers Understanding of Hellenistic Biography

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Neil_Anthony

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I’ve been reading scholarly opinions that the gospels or parts of them are a genre of writing called ‘Hellenistic Biography’. Apparently in this genre of writing the author and his audience had a mutual understanding that the events in the stories were not to be taken as literal history. For example some events of Jesus’ infancy narratives.

Since the Eastern Church’s early language was Greek, I’m hoping that their tradition must have a better understanding of all things Hellenistic than the western church. Because unfortunately I can’t find anything about non-literal hellenistic biography among the western church fathers. Since this genre was apparently well-known in the hellenistic world, could you point me to the writings of any Eastern church fathers who interpret the gospels as hellenistic biography?

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide, and God Bless.

Neil
 
If nothing specific comes to mind, could someone name a Early Church Father from the hellenistic/greek culture who wrote a commentary on Luke or Matthew? That would be something to start with.
 
If I were you, I would also look into the Syriac Fathers as well, considering Christianity sprang up from the Semitic world. Technically speaking, the Syriac Christians came before the Greek speaking Christians. Some aspects of their spiritualities differ, while some are the same.

In my opinion, Syriac Christianity is the closest thing to a “Hebrew-Rite” of the Catholic Church because it’s so semitic. So, my suggestion would be to look into them as well.

Pace e Bene
Andrew
 
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