Why Do the Gospels Contain Differences?

[Soyeong]

I've found a video of the lecture with better audio:

[Doug Shaver]

The label [fiction] is modern. The literary practice is ancient.

But the nature of the genre is very different. The concept of deliberately writing fiction is very recent.

I told you how I was defining fiction. If you are defining it differently, you have not yet said so.

By my definition, there is no such thing as unintentional fiction. The writer does not think he is writing a factual account and does not intend his readers to think so, either. If you are claiming that no writer in ancient times ever did such a thing, you need to support it with some evidence. Your mere say-so doesn't prove anything.

It may be comparable to writing 'historical fiction' with a deliberate purpose of communicating a religious message. It may be comparable to writing 'historical fiction' with a deliberate purpose of communicating a religious message. Josephus was a great writer of 'Historical Fiction,' containing many facts from a personal perspective of much that was not historically true.

Josephus, so far as every Josephan scholar seems to think, believed that what he wrote was factually true. By my definition, that disqualifies his work from being fiction.

Historical fiction is no less fiction than any other kind, except to this extent: the narrative setting includes real events and, often though not always, real people. Perhaps the best modern example is Michener's novels. But, the only way we know that those events and people were real is that we have independent evidence for their reality. Absent such independent corroboration, we have no reason for thinking that a given fictional work should be regarded as historical fiction.

[Carrikature]

The parables I do not consider the beginnings of fiction, but you are correct Greek plays are probably the earliest versions of deliberate fiction.

...

How on earth do Aesop's fables not constitute fiction? The parables are the same thing only without animal actors.