Historiography and Self-Definition: Josephos, Luke-Acts and Apologetic Historiography.

Variegated studies of the genres of earlv Christian literature are now increasingly on offer. These two revised doctoral theses share some common ground. All literarv production and all reading depend, they aver, on at least a tacit awareness of genres, which are flexible and adaptable forms, shaped in practice and discerned bv investigation, rather than subject to prescriptive rules. Burridge in particular commends the model of |family resemblances'. Yet despite this common ground our authors move to rather different conclusions.

Sterling proposes a flexible kind of |oriental apologetic historiography' developing through Berossos, Apion, and others, on to Eupolemos and so to Josephus' Antiquitates Judaicae; but also to Luke-Acts. Luke-Acts is here a work planned as a two-part whole, the early life-story of the Christians, albeit with some years separating the publication of the two parts. It was written …