Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus: A Window into Early Christian Reading Practices

Description

Much of the contemporary discussion of the Jesus tradition has focused on aspects of oral performance, storytelling, and social memory, on the premise that the practice of communal reading of written texts was a phenomenon documented no earlier than the second century CE. Brian J. Wright overturns that premise by examining evidence that demonstrates communal reading events in the first century. Wright disproves the simplistic notion that only a small segment of society in certain urban areas could have been involved in such communal reading events during the first century; rather, communal reading permeated a complex, multifaceted cultural field in which early Christians, Philo, and many others participated. His study thus pushes the academic conversation back by at least a century and raises important new questions regarding the formation of the Jesus tradition, the contours of book culture in early Christianity, and factors shaping the transmission of the text of the New Testament. These fresh insights have the potential to inform historical reconstructions of the nature of the earliest churches as well as the story of canon formation and textual transmission. Foreword xvii Preface xxi Abbreviations xxv 1. Introducing a New Control Category Introduction 1 A New Control Category: Communal Reading Events 8 1 2. Finding Communal Reading Events in the Time of Jesus Registering a Few Cautions 12 Some Key Terminology 16 Summary 21 11 3. Economic and Political Factors Economic Realities 23 Political Climate 31 Summary 37 4. Social Context Surveying the Dynamic Environment in Which Jesus and His First Followers Operated 39 Background in Judaism 54 Summary 59 39 5. Communal Reading Events in the First Century: Selected Authors and Texts Greek and Roman Authors 63 Jewish Sources 100 Summary 111 61 6. Communal Reading Events in the First Century: The New Testament Corpus The Gospels and Acts 121 The Pauline Corpus 153 Hebrews 184 James 185 The Petrine Epistles 188 The Johannine Epistles 191 Jude 194 Revelation 195 Summary 201 117 7. Concluding Remarks 207 Appendix: Some Additional Evidence Ancient Rabbinic Writings 211 Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha 213 Early Christian Writings 215 Greco–Roman Associations 217 Greek and Roman Authors 217 Other Ancient Writings 230 211 Bibliography 233 Subject Index 271 Author Index 277 Scripture Index 285