Overview

Contextualizing the gospels in ancient Greco-Roman media practices New Testament scholars have often relied on outdated assumptions for understanding the composition and circulation of the gospels. This scholarship has spread myths or misconceptions about how the ancients read, wrote, and published texts.     Nicholas Elder updates our knowledge of the gospels' media contexts in this myth-busting academic study. Carefully combing through Greco-Roman primary sources, he exposes what we take for granted about ancient reading cultures and offers new and better ways to understand the gospels. These myths include claims that ancients never read silently and that the canonical gospels were all the same type of text. Elder then sheds light on how early Christian communities used the gospels in diverse ways. Scholars of the gospels and classics alike will find Gospel Media an essential companion in understanding ancient media cultures.

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Reviews

Review of Biblical Literature ""With its deep foundation in ancient writing practices and its debunking of a number of the operative media myths, Elder's account permanently alters our approach to the question of Synoptic origins and relations, and it will be an essential part of the ongoing discussion."" ""New Testament scholars regularly repeat sweeping generalizations about ancient reading and writing practices. Few in our field have read widely enough in ancient Greek and Roman literature to be acquainted firsthand with the many descriptions that ancient authors provide of their own diverse activities. Elder's book brings together an incredible array of primary sources and couples it with detailed scholarly analysis, to help us learn what we don't know. You won't read the New Testament writings (or any ancient texts, for that matter) in the same way again after reading this book. This will be the definitive work to refer to on the process of Gospel composition and dissemination for a long time to come."" --James McGrath Butler University  ""Drawing upon the best recent scholarship, modern literary and critical theory, a wide array of ancient textual sources, and both common sense and statistical analysis, Elder 'colorizes' our sense of ancient gospel tradition within the world of ancient Mediterranean media, ably navigating its rich diversity. Gospel Media is an excellent book that builds on a cresting wave of scholarship on ancient media--reading, writing, textuality, and publication--in relation to gospel tradition and looks to synthesize a new paradigm that is to be taken seriously by future generations of scholars of the gospels and of ancient media more generally."" --Matthew D. C. Larsen University of Copenhagen ""Nicholas Elder gathers together a wealth of primary evidence and argues persuasively for the diversity and complexity of reading, writing, and circulation practices in Greco-Roman antiquity, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christianity. The study, as a result, sheds significant light on the composition, transmission, and interrelationship of the four canonical gospels when they are set against the rich backdrop of ancient media culture."" --Catrin H. Williams University of Wales Trinity Saint David

"""New Testament scholars regularly repeat sweeping generalizations about ancient reading and writing practices. Few in our field have read widely enough in ancient Greek and Roman literature to be acquainted firsthand with the many descriptions that ancient authors provide of their own diverse activities. Elder's book brings together an incredible array of primary sources and couples it with detailed scholarly analysis, to help us learn what we don't know. You won't read the New Testament writings (or any ancient texts, for that matter) in the same way again after reading this book. This will be the definitive work to refer to on the process of Gospel composition and dissemination for a long time to come."" --James McGrath Butler University  ""Drawing upon the best recent scholarship, modern literary and critical theory, a wide array of ancient textual sources, and both common sense and statistical analysis, Elder 'colorizes' our sense of ancient gospel tradition within the world of ancient Mediterranean media, ably navigating its rich diversity. Gospel Media is an excellent book that builds on a cresting wave of scholarship on ancient media--reading, writing, textuality, and publication--in relation to gospel tradition and looks to synthesize a new paradigm that is to be taken seriously by future generations of scholars of the gospels and of ancient media more generally."" --Matthew D. C. Larsen University of Copenhagen ""Nicholas Elder gathers together a wealth of primary evidence and argues persuasively for the diversity and complexity of reading, writing, and circulation practices in Greco-Roman antiquity, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christianity. The study, as a result, sheds significant light on the composition, transmission, and interrelationship of the four canonical gospels when they are set against the rich backdrop of ancient media culture."" --Catrin H. Williams University of Wales Trinity Saint David"

Author Information

Nicholas Elder is assistant professor of New Testament at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. He is also the author of The Media Matrix of Early Jewish and Christian Narrative.

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