Gospels before the Book

Reviews / Votes

This book is an important dialogue partner for pressing scholarly inquiry into the nature of early Christian writing. * Daniel M. Gurtner, Religious Studies Review * ...this book is an important dialogue partner for pressing scholarly inquiry into the nature of early Christian writing. * Daniel M. Gurtner, Crestwood, Kentucky, Religious Studies Reviews * Without question, this is an excellent book. Larsen's writing is crisp, succinct, and evocative. His analysis is fresh and direct. I often find myself wondering, "How'd this guy find all these case studies?"-and every answer I can imagine requires exceptional diligence and ingenuity. * Greg Carey, Lancaster Theo-logical Seminary, The Christian Century * This book exemplifies and is itself facilitating a paradigm shift in gospel studies.No longer can interpreters approach the gospels without duly considering what kind of text it is that they are handling. * Review of Biblical Literature * [an] elegantly written volume ... An invaluable resource for those seeking a clearer understanding of ancient literature, including (but by no means limited to) religious texts ... Highly recommended. * L. J. Greenspoon, CHOICE * I commend this book to a wide reading audience, especially within the guild. All serious readers of Mark -- especially those of us who read it as story -- should engage this book. It invites fresh consideration of the emergence of the Gospel tradition in textual form. * Danny Yencich, Reading Religion * With Gospels before the Book, Matthew Larsen offers a crucial intervention in studies of the Christian Gospels. As he demonstrates, anachronistic assumptions about the closed character of books and a persistent investment in the "genius of the author" have led modern scholars to miss an important fact: the Gospels, and Mark in particular, were not regarded as closed texts by early Christian readers. Instead, they were received as unfinished instantiations of a continuous and fluid gospel tradition that remained open to expansion and revision by later writers interested in "publishing" (in an ancient sense) books of their own. Larsen's stunning investigation will forever change the ways that biblical scholars, historians, and textual critics approach texts we thought we knew. * Jennifer Knust, author of To Cast the First Stone: The Transmission of a Gospel Story with Tommy Wasserman * It is rare that one reads a work of scholarship that changes the terms of engagement for an entire field of study, but that is exactly what Matthew Larsen has done in his Gospels before the Book. In this deeply textured study, he dismantles a host of unhelpful assumptions operative in New Testament studies about ancient authors and the status of ancient books as published documents. You'll never view the Gospels the same way again. * Stephen J. Davis, author of Christ Child: Cultural Memories of a Young Jesus * How often does it happen that you read something new and convincing that solves a large and centuries old problem, especially on such an overpublished field as the New Testament Gospels? This book does that! It is probably the best book on the Gospel of Mark and the synoptic Gospels in general, since they were written. It is a truly groundbreaking book that offers a novel and fully convincing interpretation of the Gospel of Mark, namely as incomplete archival notes. The argument is well-crafted, based just as much in deep knowledge of a wide range of sources (Jewish, Greek, Roman, Christian) as in sophisticated critical scholarship. This work is a field changer and will be the foundation for future gospel studies. * AnneMarie Luijendijk, Professor of Religion, Head of Wilson College, Princeton University *