Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon
Among the blossoms, a single jar of wine.
No one else here, I ladle it out myself.
Raising my cup, I toast the bright moon, and facing my shadow makes friends three, though moon has never understood wine, and shadow only trails along behind me.
Kindred a moment with moon and shadow, I’ve found a joy that must infuse spring:
I sing, and moon rocks back and forth;
I dance, and shadow tumbles into pieces.
Sober, we’re together and happy. Drunk, we scatter away into our own directions: intimates forever, we’ll wander carefree and meet again in Star River distances.
Li Po
701-762
‘Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon’
China
Translated by David Hinton
Preamble
I have devoted my life to classical literature, with a special focus on Gilgamesh and Homer and their long-reaching influence on the Western canon. From the existential probing of mortality, friendship, and the search for meaning in the Epic of Gilgamesh to the foundational heroic narratives of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, these texts have shaped storytelling for millennia. Their echoes reverberate through Virgil’s Aeneid, medieval epics, Renaissance revivals, and modern novels. This enduring legacy prompts me to ask how such foundational texts may surface in unexpected places, including early Christian narratives. In this integrated essay I combine an assessment of Dennis R. MacDonald’s provocative work – The Gospels and Homer: Imitations of Greek Epic in Mark and Luke-Acts (and its precursor, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark) – with a comparative reading of Virgil’s Aeneid. My aim is to examine literary mimesis, interrogate claims of plagiarism, and reassess the authenticity of Gospel narratives. Drawing on a lifetime’s familiarity with classical motifs – from Gilgamesh through Homer and Virgil – I evaluate whether New Testament accounts are original historical records or sophisticated rewordings of ancient literary traditions, analogous to Virgil’s Roman adaptation of Homer.
Introduction: Unveiling the Homeric Shadow in the Gospels and Its Virgilian Echoes
Dennis R. MacDonald’s The Gospels and Homer (2015), building on The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (2000), represents a bold interdisciplinary intervention in New Testament studies. MacDonald, professor emeritus of New Testament and Christian Origins at Claremont School of Theology, argues that the Gospel authors – most notably Mark and the author of Luke-Acts – did not only draw upon Jewish scriptures but deliberately imitated Homeric epic. In the Greco-Roman educational world, mimesis – modelled imitation of esteemed texts – was a recognised compositional strategy. MacDonald’s “mimesis criticism” sets out six criteria (accessibility, analogy, density, order, distinctive traits, and interpretability) to reveal such allusions and to demonstrate that recognizing Homeric influence reshapes our understanding of the Gospels’ claims to historicity.
At its core, his thesis challenges the longstanding presumption that the Gospels function primarily as straightforward biographical or historical accounts of Jesus. Instead, MacDonald proposes they are literarily crafted narratives intended to present Jesus as a hero who surpasses Homeric figures – outshining Odysseus in compassion and cunning, or Achilles in sacrifice and valour. While noting that scholars have long observed classical echoes in biblical texts, MacDonald’s systematic deployment of mimesis criticism supplies a formal method for identifying and weighing those parallels.
A useful analogue is Virgil’s Aeneid (c. 29–19 BCE), a paradigmatic ancient instance of Homeric emulation. Virgil reworks Homeric material to fashion a Roman national epic: Books 1–6 echo the Odyssey’s wanderings, Books 7–12 parallel The Iliad’s warfare, and Virgil transvalues Homeric virtues – Odyssean cunning becomes Aeneas’s pietas; Achilles’s individuation is reshaped into Roman duty. MacDonald argues that the evangelists enact a comparable procedure. In his view, Mark imitates Homer not merely to embellish but to compete – directly, in his account, with Virgil – presenting Jesus as the superior founding hero in a distinctive Christian epic.
This comparison illuminates how mimesis could serve cultural and ideological rivalry in antiquity. Both Virgil’s Aeneid and, MacDonald contends, the Gospels adapt Homeric motifs for contemporary aims: Virgil to legitimise Augustan Rome, the Gospel writers to address mixed Jewish and Hellenistic audiences and to establish a Christian identity. Yet there is a critical difference: Virgil’s indebtedness to Homer was overt and part of his artistic program; the proposed Gospel imitations, if they exist, are more subtle and thus more contentious. The stakes of MacDonald’s thesis are substantial. If Gospel stories were shaped by Homeric or Virgilian templates, what remains of their claim to historical reportage? Is this mimesis a form of artistic homage or, in a modern sense, plagiarism? I will summarise MacDonald’s principal claims, juxtapose them with Virgil’s approach in the Aeneid, assess the charge of plagiarism, and probe the authenticity of the Gospel narratives through a classical lens.
Summary of MacDonald’s Arguments: Mimesis in Action and Virgilian Parallels
MacDonald begins with the first-century Mediterranean educational context, where canonical Greek texts, above all Homer, formed the core of schooling and rhetorical training. Homeric poems were memorised, cited, and emulated; authors engaged with these texts as models to be honoured and transformed. Jewish intellectuals – Philo, Josephus among them – did not stand apart from this cultural ecology; they, too, incorporated Greek literary resources. MacDonald argues that Gospel writers, who operated in this milieu and likely possessed Greco-Roman rhetorical training, used mimesis to render their narratives intelligible and persuasive to audiences conversant in Hellenic literary forms.
In The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, he catalogues upwards of two hundred parallels between Mark and Homer. A striking example is the story of Jesus calming the storm (Mark 4:35–41), which resonates with Odyssean episodes of sea peril. Both protagonists sleep amid a storm, are roused, rebuke the forces of nature, and impress their companions. But in Mark the hero’s control over nature is immediate and authoritative – Jesus commands the wind and sea – thereby transvaluing the Homeric model and underscoring a claim to divine authority. Likewise, the feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6:30–44) conjures Homeric imagery of abundant feasting; Jesus’s miraculous multiplication of loaves recasts the Homeric motif of communal provision as a distinctly Christian demonstration of bounty and care.
MacDonald extends his analysis to Luke-Acts in The Gospels and Homer, arguing that Luke not only echoes Homer but engages Virgil and Euripides as well. The shipwreck in Acts 27, for example, mirrors Odyssean ordeals and Aeneas’s maritime hardships. Paul emerges in Acts as a steadfast leader and prophetic figure, comparable to epic heroes, but his authority increasingly derives from faith and divine guidance rather than Homeric martial prowess. MacDonald applies his six mimesis criteria to these episodes: Homer’s accessibility in the culture, analogous ancient mimicry (most notably Virgil’s), the density and clustering of parallels, shared narrative order, distinctive traits that seem too particular to be accidental, and interpretability – what the imitation accomplishes rhetorically, theologically, or culturally.
The Virgilian comparison clarifies the dynamics of transvaluation. Virgil deliberately remoulds Homeric episodes – Aeneas’s underworld descent (Aeneid 6) inverts Odysseus’s Nekyia to prioritise prophetic destiny and civic mission over personal curiosity. Similarly, MacDonald reads the Gospels as transforming Homeric values: Homeric cunning and individual honour give way to Christian humility, compassion, and sacrificial love. Where Odysseus uses guile to survive and Achilles embodies personal glory, Jesus embodies service and self-giving, thereby outstripping Homeric standards in a Christian moral register.
MacDonald’s case emphasises sequence and structure. Just as Virgil sequences events to acknowledge Homer – Troy’s fall then wanderings then war – so too Mark’s narrative trajectory can be read through Homeric lenses: calling scenes, miraculous exploits, escalating conflicts, and a culminating passion narrative that transvalues Achilles’ wrath into redemptive suffering. Luke-Acts, according to MacDonald and corroborating scholars like Marianne Palmer Bonz (who views Luke-Acts as a “prose epic” shaped by the Aeneid), frames Christian expansion in a manner analogous to Aeneas’s foundational journey: a movement from a localized origin to a universal mission, with Rome as the narrative terminus.
Distinctive trait analysis reinforces these parallels. Virgil adapts Homeric divine agency (e.g., Juno’s enmity) to service Roman theological-political aims; similarly, MacDonald traces Gospel motifs that seem to echo Homeric imagery – “one-eyed” figures, dramatic sea perils, particular patterns of recognition and reversal – reworked to assert Christian distinctiveness. He argues that the evangelists expected educated readers to detect such allusions, much as Roman audiences detected Virgil’s Homeric echoes. They were not disguising dependence so much as deploying shared cultural capital to craft a new founding narrative.
MacDonald insists that this is not coincidence. He marshals rhetorical treatises from antiquity – Theon, Hermogenes, and others – that prescribe imitation as an accepted compositional strategy. The Gospels, on his reading, are hybrid productions: part Jewish midrashic reinterpretation, part Greco-Roman epic emulation, suffused with Virgilian undertones. This synthesis, MacDonald contends, can account for textual seams and narrative oddities: the patchwork result of weaving diverse sources and literary paradigms into a single narrative design. Both Virgil and the evangelists employ mimesis to craft foundation myths: Virgil fashions Rome’s Trojan origins and Augustan destiny; the evangelists, MacDonald suggests, fashion Christianity’s founding trajectory by recasting Homeric models for Christian purposes.
Critical Analysis: Is It Plagiarism? Insights from Virgilian Mimesis
The accusation of plagiarism inevitably arises in discussions of MacDonald’s thesis, particularly among those who view the Gospels as divinely inspired or historically literal. “Plagiarism” carries modern ethical connotations – deceptive copying presented as one’s own work – that do not map neatly onto ancient compositional practices. In the Greco-Roman literary environment, imitation was not theft but a sign of learning and an honourable technique; Virgil’s engagement with Homer was publicly celebrated as homage and innovation rather than condemned as fraud.
MacDonald distances himself from identifying Gospel mimesis as plagiarism. He frames their technique as emulation or transvaluation: the evangelists appropriated Homeric models to critique pagan myth and to showcase Christ as superior. Consider the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1–20) and the Cyclops episode. Both present a wild, marginal figure whose encounter with the hero culminates in a dramatic reversal. But Mark’s story dramatises healing and reintegration; it transforms Homeric violence into mercy. In this light the evangelists’ work looks like moral and theological reworking rather than surreptitious copying.
Virgil’s relationship with Homer furnishes an apt analogue for this defence. Virgil’s rewriting was intentional and acknowledged by him and his contemporaries: he retooled Homeric themes toward Roman ends. The evangelists’ allusions – if intended – are consistent with that older, accepted form of literary borrowing. MacDonald’s point is that the evangelists, like Virgil, expected an attentive readership to notice and appreciate the literary artistry, not to mistake it for naïve reportage.
Nevertheless, the comparison complicates matters – Virgil did not claim strict historiography, while the Gospels present themselves as accounts of historical events. If the evangelists used Homeric templates to shape accounts that were presented as historical, then modern readers must confront a tension between ancient compositional norms and contemporary standards for historical truthfulness. MacDonald acknowledges that mimesis does not necessarily entail fabrication of a historical core, but he suggests that many Gospel episodes may be literary constructions superimposed upon whatever historical memory existed.
Detractors charge MacDonald with “parallelomania” – an overzealous pattern-recognition that stretches common motifs into exclusive dependence. Sceptics observe that motifs such as storms, shipwrecks, and rescues recur across many cultures (from Gilgamesh’s flood to Jonah’s tempest), and thus their presence in Mark does not uniquely indicate Homeric dependence. Critics claim the mimesis criteria are elastic and susceptible to subjective selection bias. The burden of proof, they argue, requires more discriminating demonstration that specific narrative configurations, not merely generic motifs, were consciously borrowed.
From my classical perspective, MacDonald’s argument is compelling in its demonstration of Homer’s pervasive cultural influence, and the Virgilian analogy is illuminating. Homeric patterns percolated through ancient literary consciousness; to find them in the Gospels is plausible. Whether that constitutes borrowing that undermines originality depends on one’s expectations. If originality is understood as strict independence from prior texts, then few ancient works can meet that standard. If originality allows for creative transformation within established conventions, then the evangelists remain original in purpose and message, even while echoing older genres.
The difference between emulation and dependency is real but gradational. If Gospel narratives depend heavily on Homeric templates via Virgilian mediation, they would exhibit structural and thematic dependence. That dependence does not amount to modern plagiarism but does raise questions about the Gospels’ claims to transparent historical reportage. Were the evangelists shaping traditions to suit literary and apologetic aims? MacDonald implies they were. Defenders can reply that ancient historiographers routinely used literary tropes while still preserving factual cores; imitation need not falsify history.
Genre and intent are salient distinctions. Virgil’s Aeneid is epic poetry, openly stylised and intended as literature; the Gospels are prose narratives that engage historiographic and theological aims. MacDonald’s labelling of the Gospels as “anti-epics” or prose epics complicates expectations: they adopt epic patterns only to subvert heroic values – transforming imperial virtues into Christian humility. That subversion, if deliberate, suggests artistic integrity rather than deceit. Yet the covert nature of the evangelists’ references – less ostentatious than Virgil’s – makes their strategy harder to detect and therefore more controversial.
Questioning Authenticity: Are the Gospel Stories Genuine? A Virgilian Perspective
The most contentious implication of MacDonald’s thesis concerns authenticity: to what extent do Gospel narratives reflect actual events? MacDonald allows for the possibility of a historical nucleus beneath literary embellishment but suggests that many Gospel accounts are shaped by epic templates sufficiently to warrant scepticism about their factual details. If Mark’s empty tomb or resurrection narratives, for example, show recognizable echoes of Homeric recognition scenes, then these episodes might be symbolic reworkings rather than literal reportage.
Parallel cases in classical literature provide a framework: Virgil creatively fused Trojan legends, Roman mythmaking, and Augustan ideology into an epic that reads as culturally foundational without claiming empirical historiography. If the Gospels were likewise literary constructions – founding narratives fashioned from memory, oral traditions, and literary models – then their historicity must be disentangled from their rhetorical aims. This does not necessarily deny the historical existence of Jesus, but it problematises how the evangelists shaped and conveyed memories about him.
Critics insist that literary parallels do not prove fabrication. Historians like Josephus used Homeric diction and imagery in persuasive histories without inventing their subject matter wholesale. Oral tradition complicates the picture, too: stylised narrative shapes are common in oral cultures and can arise independently of direct textual borrowing. Moreover, some Gospel episodes have independent attestation or plausible roots in Palestinian Jewish contexts (e.g., agrarian parables, prophetic patterns) that predate or run parallel to Hellenic influences.
Yet certain Gospel motifs align so neatly with Homeric and Virgilian narrative structures that the possibility of deliberate rhetorical shaping is persuasive. The passion narrative’s thematic affinities to Iliadic conflict – especially motifs of shame, honour, and reversal – suggest literary framing. The empty tomb and resurrection narratives’ analogues in recognition scenes and underworld visions raise the possibility that the evangelists adapted familiar epic devices to articulate a theological point: that Jesus represents a new, superior form of heroism, inaugurating a new covenant and transcending pagan models.
If Gospel narratives are significantly crafted through mimesis, they should be read primarily as theological and literary acts, not as straightforward historical accounts. That reorientation is not necessarily catastrophic: epics like Gilgamesh and Homer preserve cultural truths and existential insights even when their factual historicity is indeterminate. The Gospels, whether historically accurate in every detail or not, convey theological truth claims and shaped communal identity in ways comparable to Virgil’s political mythmaking for Rome.
Conclusion: Reimagining the Canon Through Mimesis
Dennis R. MacDonald’s The Gospels and Homer compels us to reconsider the New Testament through the lens of literary history. His mimesis criticism illuminates plausible Homeric imprints that enhance our reading of the Gospels as artful, culturally engaged compositions. Read alongside Virgil’s Aeneid, MacDonald’s thesis demonstrates how imitation served as a vehicle for both cultural continuity and innovation in antiquity: authors remoulded venerable models to assert new identities.
This mimesis is not modern plagiarism; it aligns with an ancient practice of emulation and transvaluation. Yet it does raise serious questions about the expectations we bring to these texts. If the evangelists used Homeric and Virgilian forms to fashion narrations of Jesus’s life, then the Gospels are best appreciated as hybrid creations – midrashic, rhetorical, and epic-inflected – rather than as pristine, unmediated histories. That recognition may unsettle those who require documentary literalism, but it also enriches appreciation of the Gospels’ artistry and rhetorical power.
Viewed in the broad arc of Western literature – from Gilgamesh through Homer to Virgil and beyond – the Gospels appear as further nodes in a tradition of mythmaking and cultural synthesis. MacDonald’s work helps us see them not in isolation but as part of a continuum in which authors adapt inherited forms to meet new theological, political, and social needs. Whether one accepts all of his specific parallels, the methodological insight remains valuable: ancient texts are intertextual artefacts embedded in shared cultural repertoires, and appreciating those intertexts clarifies both their origins and their aims.
For students of classics and biblical studies alike, the implication is modest but profound: approach the Gospels as literary works shaped by the same artistic conventions that governed other ancient authors. That approach neither nullifies the religious or historical claims of the texts nor licenses facile scepticism; it simply reorients interpretation toward a more historically informed literary appreciation. Like Gilgamesh’s flood or Homer’s heroic elegies, the Gospels convey truths that operate at multiple levels – historical, theological, and literary. MacDonald invites us to read them with the attentive eye of a classicist: sensitive to echoes, alert to artistry, and willing to accept complexity in place of tidy certainties.
In the end, the Gospels’ value need not be diminished by recognition of literary mimesis. If anything, such recognition may deepen our admiration for their capacity to synthesise inherited materials into narratives that have shaped religious imagination for two millennia. Whether one reads them as scripture, as history, or as masterful literature, recognising Homeric and Virgilian resonances adds a crucial dimension to our understanding of how ancient authors – and communities – constructed meaning.
