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)

9781108793131, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 February 2023

246 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.38 kg

'… an essential addition to libraries supporting research on the New Testament and early Christianity.' Michael Kochenash, Religious Studies Review

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]