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Dialogue and Drama: Elements of Greek Tragedy in the Fourth Gospel, by Jo-Ann Brant. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004. Pp. 320. $19.95 (paper). ISBN 1565639073.
The purpose of this book is to explore the relationship of the Fourth Gospel (FG) to Greek tragedy (GT). It is not intertextual analysis that Brant undertakes, but rather the more generic study of the influences that the Greek tragedians may have exerted on the Gospel of John. Brant's overarching perspective is that in many ways the form of the FG is a performance text. Theatrical criticism, particularly of the structuralist variety, provides the perspective and tools with which the text is studied. Four chapters examine how Greek tragedy can enlighten the FG's dramatic structure (ch. 1), speeches (ch. 2), characterization (ch. 3), and distinctive portrayal of Jesus's death (ch. 4). As for how the FG could have knowledge of these tragedies when they appear to no longer have been performed publicly in the first century C.E., Brant notes that educational training in Greek was heavily influenced by past classics. Quintilian ranked the great tragedians with Homer as models to be studied, claims Brant. Quintilian appears to place, however, the comédie poets of Aristophanes, Eupolis, and Cratinus as second to Homer in Attic style (lnst. 10.1.65). But there is no need to cavil because Quintilian also holds up the three great tragedians as exemplars (10.1.67). Moreover, I note that another justification for this type of investigation comes from Dio Chrysostom, who placed the works of Euripides on par with those of Homer and Menander for the training of public speakers (Die. exercit. 6-8).
Under the rubric of "Dramatic Structure," Brant proposes nine areas of similarity between the FG and the GT. The first two of them concern prologues and epilogues. Although not formally similar, the prologues in each are distinct from the start of the narrative and provide perspective, not shared by the characters, that allows the audience to jump into the story in medias res. Brant also argues that both Euripides and the fourth evangelist (FE) have contrapuntal imagery in their prologues, which sets up the tension in the body of their works, and that the first person plural pronouns in John...