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.Whenever a person attempts to read or interpret any writing, the first step must always be to determine the kind or genre of writing—what it was intended to do and how it was meant to be used. The decision regarding genre has profound implication on hermeneutics, in that it is an important step for the audience's perception of authorial intent and meaning. Genre must be understood as a system of expectations that allows sentences of a language to become signs of difference kinds in a second order literary system. Genre is a dynamic notion understood, analyzed and described from within the perspective of a given historical time frame. The author uses not only outer features to communicate how the text is composed but also inner features to reveal the text's function within its social setting and the author's intention. he second half of the article examines that the author of the Gospel creatively adapted and developed generic features of Greek tragedy into a Christian biographical tragedy. The author not only adapted the structure from Greek tragedy, but also borrowed literary conventions from ancient biographical literature and eclectically selected content from the Old Testament to create a genuine and unique composition and to meet the exigencies of his own community. This article suggests four criteria to determine the genre of the Gospel; plot, subject matter, size and authorial purpose.

Whenever a person attempts to read or interpret any writing, the first step must always be to determine the kind or genre of writing—what it was intended to do and how it was meant to be used. The decision regarding genre has profound implication on hermeneutics, in that it is an important step for the audience's perception of authorial intent and meaning. Genre must be understood as a system of expectations that allows sentences of a language to become signs of difference kinds in a second order literary system. Genre is a dynamic notion understood, analyzed and described from within the perspective of a given historical time frame. The author uses not only outer features to communicate how the text is composed but also inner features to reveal the text's function within its social setting and the author's intention. he second half of the article examines that the author of the Gospel creatively adapted and developed generic features of Greek tragedy into a Christian biographical tragedy. The author not only adapted the structure from Greek tragedy, but also borrowed literary conventions from ancient biographical literature and eclectically selected content from the Old Testament to create a genuine and unique composition and to meet the exigencies of his own community. This article suggests four criteria to determine the genre of the Gospel; plot, subject matter, size and authorial purpose.