
Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus
A Window into Early Christian Reading Practices
Brian J. Wright(Author)
Fortress Press,U.S.
Published on 1. December 2017
Book
Hardback
310 pages
978-1-5064-3250-2 (ISBN)
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.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Augsburg Fortress Publishers
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
678 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5064-3250-2 (9781506432502)
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Brian J. Wright
Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus
A Window into Early Christian Reading Practices
E-Book
12/2017
Fortress Press
€31.99
Available for download
Person
Brian J. Wright is adjunct professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University and has published a number of academic studies in the Journal of Theological Studies, Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Bulletin for Biblical Research, Trinity Journal, and Tyndale Bulletin. He is also coauthor of Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence (2011).