The Origins of Early Christian Literature
Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture

The Synoptic gospels were written by elites educated in Greco-Roman literature, not exclusively by and for early Christian communities.

Robyn Faith Walsh (Author)

9781108835305, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 January 2021

325 pages
24 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.55 kg

'Scholars of New Testament and early Christianity usually assume unidirectional influence: the writers of the New Testament borrow from their cultural context, but do not really impact it. Walsh's analysis instead opens up the question of whether stories about Jesus were productive in a competitive market of story-telling, inspiring others to interlard resurrections and miracles into their own writing. She brings an impressively broad bibliography of ancient materials and contemporary conversations to her project. The book is interesting, rich with details from the texts of antiquity, and rich with knowledge of scholarship on them.' Laura Nasrallah, Yale University

Conventional approaches to the Synoptic gospels argue that the gospel authors acted as literate spokespersons for their religious communities. Whether described as documenting intra-group 'oral traditions' or preserving the collective perspectives of their fellow Christ-followers, these writers are treated as something akin to the Romantic poet speaking for their Volk - a questionable framework inherited from nineteenth-century German Romanticism. In this book, Robyn Faith Walsh argues that the Synoptic gospels were written by elite cultural producers working within a dynamic cadre of literate specialists, including persons who may or may not have been professed Christians. Comparing a range of ancient literature, her ground-breaking study demonstrates that the gospels are creative works produced by educated elites interested in Judean teachings, practices, and paradoxographical subjects in the aftermath of the Jewish War and in dialogue with the literature of their age. Walsh's study thus bridges the artificial divide between research on the Synoptic gospels and Classics.

1. The myth of Christian origins
2. The Romantic 'big bang': German Romanticism and inherited methodology
3. Authorship in antiquity: specialization and social formations
4. Redescribing early Christian literature: the gospels, the Satyrica, and anonymous sources
5. The gospels as subversive biography.

Subject Areas: New Testaments [HRCF2], Church history [HRCC2], Christianity [HRC], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]