‘Gospel Media’ by Nicholas Elder: A Review

INTRODUCTION

The apologetic and counter-apologetic world is often obsessed with questions about who wrote the Gospels but rarely about the how of their composition or the subject of their publication and circulation. In fact, about those subjects many myths persist, clouding our judgment and misleading us. New Testament scholar Nicholas Elder has written a book to deal with those myths. Entitled Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2024), the volume covers issues surrounding ancient reading, writing, publication, and circulation practices and the bearing they have on the canonical Gospels. 

SUMMARY

Gospel Media is divided into three major sections: Reading (chs. 1-3), Writing (chs. 4-6), and Circulating (chs. 7-8). In the volume’s introduction, Elder lays bare the main thesis of his work about which each of these sections is designed to illuminate: “The gospels were not all read, written, or circulated the same way. They are characterized by media diversity” (p.1). To drive this point home, each chapter begins first with a statement that is a “media myth” followed by another that is a “media reality.” Such programmatic previews offer readers a chance to sit with the proposed thesis of each chapter at the outset as well as guide them as the author organizes his writing around it.

To open part one on reading, Elder begins with a fact so obvious that it is easily overlooked: “Reading is a social act” (p. 5). It isn’t difficult to come up with scenarios in which this is self evident – a weary parent reading The Pigeon Has to Go to School to their hopelessly energetic toddler before bedtime,¹ a seasoned writer offering to a small crowd at a local bookstore a reading of selected portions of their recently published novel, a minister delivering from the pulpit a reading from the lectionary. But private readings – done alone, silently to oneself – are no less social in nature because, as Elder observes, “the reader is engaging another person’s or persons’ thoughts” (p. 5).

But is that which is true about the modern period also true of antiquity? In every way, Elder demonstrates in ch. 1. While there is a commonplace in New Testament studies that reading was ordinarily (if not exclusively) done aloud, our author makes clear that this not only was not the case but could not have been. In discussing the neuropsychology of reading, Elder notes that in order to read a text publicly one must have already read the text privately, attributable to the eye-voice span. The idea is rather quite simple: when reading a text aloud, readers ordinarily preview the word or words ahead in preparation for vocal delivery.² This silent reading, then, is a prerequisite to vocal reading. And given the many examples of vocal performances that can be mined from ancient literature, a subject covered at the end of the chapter (pp. 25-36), it can be said with confidence that such oral readings involved silent ones. Elder, in fact, provides example after example from the corpus of Greco-Roman writings that show persons reading silently. The practice, he writes, “was well known” (p. 25).

Chapter 2 covers a related topic: solitary and communal readings. Though scholars have often claimed communal reading was the norm, Elder dissents, writing that “[t]he textual evidence suggests otherwise” (p. 39). Our author surveys Greco-Roman texts as well as Jewish and Christian ones to show that solitary reading was no rarity. Additionally, material evidence points to texts created seemingly for the purpose of personal consumption. We have codices, dated to the third century CE, that were quite small. P⁷⁸, for example, contains a portion of the epistle of Jude but measures only 5.3 x 2.9 cm (2 x 1.1 inches). About this and other diminutive texts, the late Larry Hurtado wrote that their “miniature size and unusual dimensions…must indicate copies of texts for personal reading.”³ Elder concurs. And as for communal reading, our author uncovers a wealth of data that shows communal reading did not take one particular form. It could be done in large groups, small groups, and in-between groups. Whatever the case may have been, Elder opines, reading in private or public settings “was a way to establish one’s literary network and to promote oneself socially” (p. 76).

Having dispelled myths surrounding the ways in which texts were engaged in antiquity, our author turns his attention in ch. 3 to the canonical Gospels. Contending that “each gospel is self-conscious about its textuality and its textual medium” (p. 79), he introduces readers to the idea of “paratexts,” features that accompany a text that we often take for granted (e.g., a cover, a table of contents, etc.). With regard to the Gospels, their paratexts are expressed either at the beginning or the end of each narrative. Mark is a gospel (Mark 1:1), a medium that “textualizes antecedent oral Jesus traditions” (p. 85); Matthew is a biblos (Matthew 1:1), a book; Luke is an “account” (Luke 1:4) written initially for private readership; John, “paratextually self-conscious at its end” (p. 114), is a biblion (John 20:30; 21:25), a document. Paying attention to these self-designations “attunes us to the development of early Christian reading culture, which consisted of different kinds of texts that made for different kinds of reading events” (p. 120). 

Following a brief preface offering an overview of part 2 on writing, ch. 4 looks at the nature of composition as it pertains to writing by hand. While it is no doubt true that letters could be dictated, there is ample evidence pointing to personal composition whether they be letters from important persons in antiquity (e.g., the letters of Cicero), letters recorded in ancient novels (e.g., Chaereas and Callirhoe), or letters uncovered by researchers in treasure troves of papyri. Having presented and examined this data, Elder concludes the chapter by noting the premium placed on personally written letters, a symbol of sentimentality. But composing a work by hand was not only for letters but included a variety of other media. Moreover, not every author valued writing by hand in the same way: some preferred to employ it at the initial stages of writing while others used it throughout the entire process. 

Chapter 5 considers writing by mouth, analyzing literary letters, papyri letters, and other literary compositions. At the outset, Elder makes it clear that not only did dictation affect the words written down but “dictation” may not even be the appropriate term to refer to all writing by mouth in antiquity. For one thing, to write by mouth did not entail not writing by hand; both modes of composition could be employed by any given author. For another, even when material was dictated, this in no way guaranteed that what was transcribed was the exact representation of the source’s words: “Writing by mouth introduces another person’s thoughts, words, and style into a discourse” (p. 171). Detecting the mode of composition for any given text is no simple task as authors, including those who stand behind the canonical Gospels, did not often indicate their process.

Nevertheless, some “compositional influences” can be detected, Elder argues in ch. 6. He spends considerable time in the Gospel of Mark, pointing readers to oral features that suggest it was a written text under the influence of orality: “I consider two people to have been involved in the composition of the gospel [of Mark], one as speaker and one as writer,” our author says (p. 175). The signs are everywhere: the presence of idea units, the use of parataxis, various discourse markers, and the employment of the historical present. The other Synoptics, however, are more textual in nature and they often redact oral markers that their authors found in the Gospel of Mark. As for John, something else is going on as, in Elder’s view, it exhibits both literary and oral characteristics.

Ch. 7, prefaced by a page giving a glimpse of the next section on publication and circulation of texts in antiquity, opens part 3 of Gospel Media. Here Elder begins with Raymond Starr’s model of circulating texts, a series of concentric circles emanating from textualization all the way to the making of copies. As helpful as this model is, our author notes that “it is too tidy” (p. 214) and in the subsequent pages offers a more complex take on publication and circulation of an author’s work. He offers examples of accidental publication, revisions, uncontrolled textualizations, and more. “Once a discourse is textualized,” Elder says, “the possibility enters that the author might lose control of it” (p. 228). In the case of the Roman philosopher Galen, some of his notes (hypomnēmata), decidedly not intended for publication, ended up circulating and attributed to sources other than Galen.

In ch. 8, Elder looks at how the Gospels circulated, beginning with the Synoptics and especially the Gospel of Mark: “Mark was composed as notes for limited circulation. Matthew and Luke wrote compositions for publication” (p. 238). Early church tradition has it that Mark was in some form or fashion rooted in an oral event, namely the teaching of Peter, and was intended not as something literary but as something approximating notes that would be shared with a select few. Corroborating this, Elder argues that Mark’s style, lack of precision, abrupt ending, and more point to an unfinished text, one that was easily revised and reshaped by subsequent Evangelists. This includes the author of the Fourth Gospel who, Elder contends, knew the Synoptic Gospels but chose to write his own distinctive take on the Jesus tradition.

To conclude Gospel Media, our author spends three pages giving a succinct overview of the preceding 270 or so pages. Following this, there are a pair of appendices. The first covers Papyri Letters, complete with Greek text and English translation, that illuminate some of the points made in the volume’s earlier chapters. The second is a companion to ch. 6 and looks at conjunctions, parataxis, the use of the adverb euthys, and the historical present in the Synoptics. Next is a glossary of terms followed by a bibliography (arguably my favorite part of any volume) and indexes.

ANALYSIS

Though Gospel Media managed to answer many questions I had about writing and publication in antiquity, it raised others. For example, if it is the case that the Gospel of Mark resembles notes written down from an oral event, does this mean that the Evangelist did not write in the vein of ancient biography? Matthew Larsen, a scholar to whom Elder looks to for support throughout the volume, contends that categorizing the Gospel of Mark as a bios flies in the face of the evidence. Observing that missing from Mark are things like Jesus’s family lineage or stories about his birth and upbringing, he opines, “Thus, if Mark were a biography, it would lack many of the features characteristic of ancient biography.”⁴ For his part, Elder does not seem to address directly the subject of the genre of Mark or that of the other Gospels. His interest lies primarily in how these texts understand themselves in terms of their textuality. Nevertheless, it is hard to shake the idea that for Mark’s Gospel to be notes – unrefined, incomplete, and non-literary – that this entails that it cannot be considered a member of the bioi genre.

Another related issue has to do with the literariness of the Markan narrative. Elder does a convincing job of showing that Mark’s Gospel originated in an oral event and that it betrays its origins with a host of oral features. Our author “affirm[s] that Mark is a written text and that it is influenced by the oral mode of communication” (p. 175). Yet it is clear that the Evangelist intended for his Gospel to be read. As Jesus speaks of “the desolating sacrilege” in the Olivet Discourse, the Evangelist interjects with the words “let the reader understand” (Mark 13:14). This “surprising stress on ‘writtenness,’” as Helen Bond refers to it, shows up in other ways in the Gospel, for example, in appeals to what was written (Mark 1:2; 7:6; 9:12, 13; 11:17; 14:21, 27) or Jesus’s challenge of how his opponents read Holy Writ (Mark 2:25).⁵ Chris Keith, another scholar to whom Elder appeals, writes of Mark 13:14 that with the authorial aside “Mark’s Gospel self-consciously reflects its cultural status as a material artifact, a book that requires a reader to vocalize its script.”⁶ But if the Markan Gospel was intended primarily to be notes and not a published literary document, this reference to “the reader” seems out of place.

Elder, of course, anticipates this by noting that “the textualization of Mark opens it to various types of reception” such that one way it was received was by the reader envisioned in Mark 13:14 (p. 90). He also points to ecclesiastical tradition in which the Gospel of Mark was created so that the teachings of Peter, written down by Mark, could be reused in Christian gatherings.⁷ Additionally, there existed a tradition that claimed Mark subsequently travelled to Egypt and “proclaimed the gospel there which he had written and first established the churches at the city of Alexandria.”⁸

But again, for the Evangelist to have considered a reader at all suggests that his work must have had some measure of literary quality. Indeed, many commentators find narrative artistry in the pages of the Markan Gospel as evidenced by the presence of intercalation (e.g., Mark 5:21-43), recurring themes (e.g., the secrecy motif), the use of foreshadowing (e.g., Judas’s betrayal), and more.⁹ It would appear that Mark intended for his Gospel to be read by someone.

Astute consumers of this review have perhaps themselves noted that this poses no problem for Elder’s thesis. As noted earlier, it seems that early tradition envisioned the Gospel as fit for a limited audience. That is, it seems the Gospel of Mark was originally intended for the use of a few. But as Elder notes in ch. 7, publication was not always a clean business; many texts that had been intended for a few could end up in the hands of many. Such “accidental publication” perhaps explains how subsequent authors (e.g., Matthew and Luke) were able to get their hands on a copy of Mark with which they produced their own accounts of Jesus’s life.

But what about the genre of Mark? If it is not itself an example of biography, it could nevertheless be notes anticipating one. The historian Plutarch in all likelihood used notes when preparing to write his Lives¹⁰ and Josephus too seems to have written what amounts to hypomnēmata for his Jewish War while a captive of Rome.¹¹ Thus, the Gospel of Mark could have been the pre-literary stage of what was supposed to become a more polished literary document but never would be, at least not until the Matthean and Lukan Evangelists arrived on the scene. 

We have come full circle.

CONCLUSION

My hope for this review is that it shows just how much there is to chew on in Gospel Media. Elder is neither the first word nor the last on the subject, but in this moment he is perhaps the best. While I have highlighted so little of what makes this volume remarkable, my aim was to whet your appetite. Buy the book, consume it, wrestle with it, contemplate it. My more skeptical audience would benefit from having a more robust understanding of how ancient texts were written, published, and circulated. There are many persistent myths about the Gospels and Elder’s Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions manages to deal with them in a concise and readable manner. 

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1. The Pigeon Has to Go to School was a favorite of my son when he was in kindergarten.  ↩︎
2. See Jochen Laubrock and Reinhold Kliegl, “The eye-voice span during reading aloud,” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (September, 2015). ↩︎
3. Larry W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006), 160.  ↩︎
4. Matthew D.C. Larsen, Gospels before the Book (Oxford University Press, 2018), 81. ↩︎
5. Helen K. Bond, The First Biography of Jesus: Genre and Meaning in Mark’s Gospel (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020), 80. ↩︎
6. Chris Keith, The Gospel as Manuscript: An Early History of the Jesus Tradition as Material Artifact (Oxford University Press, 2020), 98. ↩︎
7. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 2.15.2. ↩︎
8. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 2.16.1. Translation taken from Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, translated by C.F. Cruse (Hendrickson Publishers, 1998). Elder makes use of the edition from the Loeb Classical Library. ↩︎
9. On the literary features of the Gospel of Mark, see Mary Ann Beavis, Mark, Paideia Commentaries on the New Testament (Baker Academic, 20111), 17-22; Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Fortress Press, 2007), 89-93; Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, The Anchor Yale Bible 27 (Yale University Press, 2000), 62-64. ↩︎
10. See the discussion in Aristotle Georgiadou and Michele A. Lucchesi, “Plutarch’s Parallel Lives,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Biography (Oxford University Press, 2020), 175. ↩︎
11. See the discussion in Larsen, Gospels before the Book, 52-54. Larsen also notes that “provisional versions of Jewish War circulated to a limited circle in Rome while still a work in progress” (p. 54). ↩︎