The Gospels and Galen (the medical guy)

One of the more interesting books I have read in the last few years is a new book by Nicholas A. Elder, Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions. It's an academic book designed to crush simplistic stereotypes, especially about how people read in the ancient world (was it always aloud?) and about how people wrote.

He makes much use of the self-conscious reflections about writing and reading by the ancient medical expert, Galen. Who knew?! Each chapter canvasses ancient texts about writing and reading. Quite a collection of evidence.

When I wrote my dissertation, I had come upon a study of how it was thought some ancient authors or scribes used other book roles. And one of the ideas was that a canister, with a scroll inside and a stake at the bottom, could be stuck into the ground, and the scroll could be removed out of the top, consulted, rolled back up, and put back in the canister.

I used that set of images for explaining how Matthew used Mark at times. In other words, that Matthew had read a passage in Mark, had put the scroll back into the canister, and was writing more or less from memory. I never followed up that theory of how some writing occurred, but I discover in this new book by Elder massive developments with extensive nuance and much clarification. It was really a joy to read.

Elder’s intent is to dispel familiar myths about reading and writing in the ancient world, and therefore shed light on the four Gospels. For each he presents a media myth and then presents the media reality. In today's post I want to go through each one of these, and in what follows, other than the numbers to begin the sections, I am quoting from Elder’s own summary, thesis statements.

First, Media myth: reading was always or usually aloud. Media reality: literate persons read both silently and aloud.

Second, Media myth: Texts were always usually engaged in communal events. Media reality: reading was both a communal and solitary affair. Individuals read text to themselves, both aloud and silently. Communal reading events were diverse. Small groups read and engaged texts together. Texts were publicly read to large gatherings of people. Antiquity was characterized by a variety of reading events, constituted by different numbers of persons in participation of the event. A given text could be read in different ways and in different social contexts.

Third, Media myth: Each gospel was written to be experienced the same way. Media reality: each gospel expresses its textuality differently, indicating that the gospels are different kinds of texts that made for different kinds of reading events.

That is, Mark is proclamation and notes from Peter to Mark;
Matthew is a “book” that sets it up as Scripture;
Luke was a book for an individual reader;
and John, sorting through John 20:30, was a “document,” supplementing the Synoptic Gospels.

Fourth, media myth: persons in antiquity did not often compose texts in their own hands. Media reality: handwriting played an important role in the composition process of various texts, though how and why it was used varied on the basis of a texts genre and the authors social context, literacy, and compositional preferences.

Fifth, media myth: composition always involved dictation, which was an act of freezing and oral discourse in written form. Media reality: composition was an interplay between writing by hand and by mouth. Even when a text was dictated, the act of inscribing affected the spoken words. Not all forms of writing by mouth were equal and not all should be considered dictation.

Sixth, media myth: the gospels were all written using the same compositional practices. Media reality: the gospels were composed using a variety of compositional practices.

Seventh, media myth: texts were distributed following a “concentric circles” model in which the discourse gained more influence and readers as it went systematically through these different social circles. Media reality: texts were distributed in a variety of different ways.

Eighth, media myth: the gospels were all circulated the same way and in the same physical format, whether it be a codex or a roll. Media reality: the gospels, like other texts in their media context, were circulated textually in a variety of socially constructed ways and physical forms.