The Gospels as Diverse Reading Events
by Nick Elder
2022 International Meeting of the SBL, Salzburg, Austria
Antique reading modes, events, technologies, and cultures were as diverse as our own. Persons in Greco-Roman antiquity read privately and silently. They read privately and aloud. Those who were illiterate participated in reading events by having texts read to them in small-, medium- and large-sized groups. Literate individuals likewise had texts read to them, sometimes by slaves, sometimes by colleagues and in groups of varying size. Persons were read to out of medical necessity, for the purpose of entertainment or education, or because they simply did not want to read themselves. As physical objects with permanence, texts were used in differing ways. And, as William A. Johnson has put it, “The reading of different types of texts makes for different types of reading events.”
In this presentation I aim to briefly counter two myths about reading operative in some New Testament scholarship. In my estimation, these two myths hinder us from appreciating the diversity of reading practices and events in the first-century world. After briefly addressing these two myths, we shall turn to the Synoptic Gospels themselves to suggest that they are all different kinds of texts that made for different kinds of reading events. There was no singular way that the gospels were engaged, whether it be performance, public reading, private reading, or some other such.