Jesus, the Tortoise and the Hare
Reading the Gospels with the Life of Aesop
Today, Aesop is best known as the genius behind the popular children’s fable, The Tortoise and the Hare. ‘Slow and steady will win the race.’ Yet in the classical world, Aesop was a huge deal in his own right. Often cast alongside a cluster of early Greek thinkers, the ‘Seven Sages’, Aesop was seen as a divine repository of wit and wisdom.1
When I was setting out on my PhD, my supervisor suggested I take a closer look at Aesop. Since I was interested in reading the gospels as ancient ‘lives’ (bíoi), and Aesop himself had attracted a popular biography from around the time of the gospels, I was intrigued to see what light Aesop’s story might shed on the figure of Jesus.
What I found took me by surprise. For all their clear differences, the Life of Aesop and the traditions about him bear a substantial likeness to the gospels. They betray a similar structure and employ some of the same literary techniques. They also bear a peculiar resemblance at certain plot-points, and even share some words verbatim.
In this piece, I unpack some of the key similarities between Jesus and Aesop.2 My intent is not to show that the gospels draw explicitly from Aesopic traditions (though sometimes they do). But rather that reading the gospels with Aesop in mind can help us to understand how the gospels were read and how Jesus was anciently perceived.
1. Both figures are the subjects of biographies
For a student of the Gospels, the most striking thing about Aesop is that he was the subject of an ancient biography, written around the time of the Gospels.
The Vita Aesopi (‘Life of Aesop’), composed sometime between the 1st century BC and the 2nd century AD, is a popular biography, which tells the life of the sage.3 Some gospel scholars ignore the Vita as a genuine ‘life’, since it is written in a popular style, closer to an ancient romantic novel than a historical biography.4 The humour is scatological, the dialogue novelistic, and the sources obscure.
These are important differences to keep in mind. As the biography of a figure of the distant past whose historicity is difficult to recover, the Vita Aesopia has a kind of literary freedom which is lacking in the gospels. While the gospels contain a degree of fictionalisation, they are wedded to their sources in a way that the Vita is not.
I think it is a mistake, however, to discount the Vita as a biography. Classicists routinely acknowledge that biography was a diverse genre, which ranged from the highly fictional to the more historical biographies of Plutarch and Suetonius.5 The common feature of all ancient life-writing is its focus on an individual, which the vita shares. It is therefore no surprise that the tradition named it a ‘life’ (vita).4
Moreover, when we set the Vita alongside the Gospels, particularly Mark, we find some striking similarities in their style. Both lives begin in media res (in the course of the narrative); have an anonymous narrator (less common in ‘historical’ biographies);6 and are are substantially episodic.7 They even share literary techniques such as sandwiching, where the placement of one narrative inside another gives it meaning.8
2. Both biographies share a similar ‘plot’
In addition to their similar literary style, Mark and the Aesopia share a similar plot. Both biographies begin in the course of the narrative with a figure on the periphery of society: Jesus in Galilee, Aesop in Phyrgia. Quickly, the figure encounters a ‘priest’ of sorts (John the Baptist/a Priestess), who imbues him with special powers. For Jesus, this is the Spirit’s power to perform miracles; for the mute Aesop, to speak.
Following this, both Jesus and Aesop attract large followings, tell fables, and challenge advocates of the status quo. For Jesus, these are the Pharisees and (eventually) the Jerusalem authorities; for Aesop, they are the educated philosophers.
Yet things turn south – quite literally – when both figures move from the periphery to the centre: Jerusalem and Delphi, the ‘Greek’ Jerusalem. Here both characters are embroiled in a conflict surrounding a Temple and are put to death for blasphemy. Both figures conform to the scapegoat archetype and their vindication is foretold.
There is, then, a very similar ‘movement’ to these plots. And that movement embodies a similar value structure: a figure on the margins of society criticises its institutions and is put to death as a result. There is, then, a topsy-turvy element to each of these stories; they both present a challenge to the existing conditions of society.9
