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Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective
Gospel Writing Francis Watson argues that differences and tensions between canonical gospels represent opportunities for theological reflection, not problems for apologetics.
Watson presents the formation of the fourfold gospel as the defining moment in the reception of early gospel literature -- and also of Jesus himself as the subject matter of that literature. As the canonical division sets four gospel texts alongside one another, the canon also creates a new, complex, textual entity more than the sum of its parts. A canonical gospel can no longer be regarded as a definitive, self-sufficient account of its subject matter. It must play its part within an intricate fourfold polyphony, and its meaning and significance are thereby transformed.
In elaborating these claims, Watson proposes nothing less than a new paradigm for gospel studies — one that engages fully with the available noncanonical material so as to illuminate the historical and theological significance of the canonical.]]>
Watson presents the formation of the fourfold gospel as the defining moment in the reception of early gospel literature -- and also of Jesus himself as the subject matter of that literature. As the canonical division sets four gospel texts alongside one another, the canon also creates a new, complex, textual entity more than the sum of its parts. A canonical gospel can no longer be regarded as a definitive, self-sufficient account of its subject matter. It must play its part within an intricate fourfold polyphony, and its meaning and significance are thereby transformed.
In elaborating these claims, Watson proposes nothing less than a new paradigm for gospel studies — one that engages fully with the available noncanonical material so as to illuminate the historical and theological significance of the canonical.]]>
681 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 31, 2013
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February 23, 2016
Maybe it is that I do not work nearly hard enough at it, but it is not often that I've stumbled upon something that is bold, solid, provocative, and readable in the course of developing an academic library collection. This may be no where more true than in the area of biblical studies, where what is solid feels well worn or tentative, or what is innovative seems unconvincingly speculative and shaky. While I am not the first to express such sentiments, it is gratifying to know find that after forming this opinion, true biblical scholars have concluded that Francis Collin's Gospel Writing, does combine these virtues. So Watson's tome (and it runs over 600 pages), would be worthwhile not only for the any New Testament scholar, but the interested layperson. Scholars, feel free to skip this review and go straight to your journals to pick through any the many insightful analyses of Watson's book. This review is for the rest of us.
Beyond the usual publisher blurb, what caught my attention was the subtitle “A Canonical Perspective.” I was first introduced to canonical criticism back in the mid 1980's with Brevard Child's An Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (itself a seminal work), by a skeptical faculty still working though form, redaction, and tradition criticism. The basic idea of canonical criticism is to analyze how what has come to be scripture was received or adopted as primary means of understanding how it should be understood. Back in the day, the criticism of this approach was rather building on these other methods, it simply served to dismiss them and to subsume biblical criticism into systematic theology. Among the things I learned about myself in seminary was that understood systematic theology far better than biblical criticism, and philosophy more than theology. As such, I never really delved into the minutia within canonical criticism, and so left the controversy behind me. Still, the title intrigued me. Canonical criticism has survived, so I was interested in how it has progressed. I am happy to report that the skeptics fears were unfounded.
Watson tackles a very basic problem in New Testament studies. There are four Gospel accounts that—apart from some pretty major themes—do not seem to fit into a single coherent narrative. So the questions arise, why four, why not one, can they be harmonized into one narrative, if not is one of the Evangelists more authentic—more true to Jesus—than the others, is there a source behind the extant Gospels that is more accurate and would give a clearer picture of Jesus, his teachings, and the circumstances of his life and death? That Watson, as a Pauline scholar, should address these issues is interesting enough, that he does it so well and so clearly is astonishing.
Laying aside the question of why there should be four Gospel accounts rather than one, Watson starts with the question of harmonizing the accounts. Watson argues later that the church was not much concerned with harmonizing the Gospels, as witnessed by lukewarm reception of the first such harmony in the second century, the Diatessaron. While one sees the occasional impulse to find a single underlying narrative in Origen, such a project does not come into force until Augustine of Hippo. As Watons outlines it, Augustine does a few things that presage more recent attempts to get behind the accounts of the Evangelists. First, Augustine sets critical insight ahead of tradition. Tradition held that Matthew, Mark, Luke were written independently and in that order. Augustine proposed Mark abbreviated Matthew, and later on he proposed that he used both Matthew and Luke as a sort of shorter synthesis. What is striking is that the proposal is based almost completely on an analysis of the text. Next, Augustine formulated certain rules that were employed when the account in one Gospel appeared to be in conflict with another. This resulted in the third innovation, and implied reconstructed narrative that ran under the extant texts.
Things remained quiescent on that mark until the Enlightenment and Lessing (though perhaps Watson could have brought in the role of the Renaissance humanism and the Reformation in to sharper focus here). In the general push and pull between somehow universalizing Christianity within reason, the need to assert orthodoxy, and pull to always go back to the sources as authoritative, Watson argues that the various harmonization rules that started with Augustine and were further developed during this particular intellectual conflict became increasingly ad hoc. The assumption was that must be a single consistent narrative that the Evangelists drew from, therefore rules must be made to establish such a narrative, even when that hypothetical narrative looked less and less like the actual accounts that were at hand. The need for an authoritative source, however. Watson narrates one of the clearest lines that runs from Lessing to Schleiermacher to Harnack regarding that source, namely Q. In its broad outline, Q is an elegant reconstruction of how the Gospels came about. One starts with Mark as the earliest Gospel. Matthew and Luke both employ Mark as a source (which explains those parts all three have in common), material known only them (which explains where Matthew and Luke disagree with each other and Mark) and share a common source, Q (which explains material common to Matthew and Luke, but not found in Mark). If that was there was to Q, then it would amount to little more than an elegant solution to a knotty problem. What Watson brings out forcefully is that this is not the driving force behind Q. Q would be a source, and—given the metanarative that Watson has drawn out since Augustine—if it exists, it would be a more primitive and thus more authoritative source than anything that currently exists. The reconstruction of Q would then, under this assumption, provide a more accurate presentation who Jesus was, apart from all the mythology that presumably accumulated starting with Mark, and perhaps even Paul. It is perhaps, my general skepticism that any definite reconstruction of Q (along with any other hypothetical source) could ever be made that I was really so unaware of this consequence. Once it is pointed out, however, a great deal of New Testament scholarship starts to make sense.
It is this superstructure that Watson aims to dismantle. That Q as a reconstructed narrative would seem obvious enough, though in the end it would seem that Watson could take or leave Q. His main target is the need for a reconstructed narrative and the idea that there are four Gospels is somehow a problem.
Among the many alternatives to Q, Watson defends the view that Mark came first, Matthew used Mark as his main source, and Luke used Mark and Matthew has his main sources. Q as is often reconstructed drops out. “Mostly” is important here because there appears to be something common to Luke and Matthew that develops between the time of Matthew and Luke, namely a sayings source that Watson dubs as “S.” To put it another way, Q reconstructed as a narrative becomes a reconstructed collection of sayings. British scholars have generally been skeptical of Q—not wanting to multiply sources beyond necessity—while German and American scholars have generally embraced it as internally elegant. Watson's solution appears to be neither.
Watson's solution does not seem as internally elegant because he must explain why Luke would break up what Matthew has placed together. A prime example of this would be Sermon on the Mount. Luke moves most of that until later (the so-called Sermon on the Plain), scatters most of the rest, leaves out parts, and adds sayings. Watson's basic answer comes in three parts. First, at the time Luke was writing Matthew was not for him THE Gospel According to Matthew, it was simply one of a number of sources. As such the Sermon on the Mount was not THE Sermon on the Mount, but a collection of sayings that Luke could use as he saw fit. By extension, Luke does have his own structure and is interpreting Matthew (and Mark) as he saw fit. Finally, Watson argues that Luke tends to prefer Mark's narrative structure to Matthew's and so alters those portions unique to Matthew to fit Mark's narrative. Using tools such as these, most of Q starts to drop out.
But not all of Q drops out. One may ask then, whether Watson's S is really any better off than Q. However, S does have a purpose beyond puzzling out the Synoptic Problem. It also serves to explain the Gospel of Thomas. Thomas is often seen as a Gnostic Gospel, in part because of the company it keeps and in part because some of the sayings sound gnostic. However, most of Thomas' sayings cannot really be classed with the Gnostic Gospels and more importantly the Gnostic Gospels have something Thomas lacks, a strong narrative structure with dialogs. To look at them, it is far easier to think that the Gnostic Gospels cribbed off of the Canonical Gospels than that they used Thomas or Thomas used either them or the Canonical Gospels. What S provides is an explanation for the development of Thomas.
What Watson is after is not simply a new answer to the Synoptic Problem (or the Synoptic-plus-Thomas problem) but to overthrow the entire notion of reconstructing an historical Jesus from a reconstructed prior source. Instead, he want to insist on a history of interpretation. The first Christians interpreted Jesus in their proclamation. The proclamation was interpreted in writings (epistles, sayings, narratives), these writings were collected and interpreted as the Gospels we have today, and these in turn have been interpreted and reinterpreted in commentaries, sermons, and other writings. The reasoning can be a tad question begging at times. For instance, part of Watson's defense of Luke incorporating Matthew and Mark as he does is on the basis that Luke is not trying so much to harmonize the two but to interpret the message of the Gospel through these sources. It is not obvious from the text, however, that Luke is doing anything of the sort. To be fair, there is nothing in text to support the idea sayings or actions that were foreign to Jesus were simply imported and imposed upon the text by the early Christian community. One is left with the somewhat spongy idea of which dynamic fits best.
I have left out John so far, but Watson has not. His focus in on Egerton Fragment, which has passages that are similar to John and Mark. Against most current scholarship (which would have the fragment dependent on John), Watson argues that the Egerton Fragment came first and may be one of John's sources. He does so on the basis of the parallel with John 5:37-47 where Jesus seems to distance himself from his Jewish interlocutors but where the Fragment seems to include Jesus among their numbers (compare “For if [you] be[lieved Moses] you would believe [me.] For [abou]t me he [wrot]e to our fathers.” with John 5:46,47 “For if you believed Moses you would believe me. For about me he wrote. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words.1 The christology in John is also more fully expressed. One can find in the Fragment a Jesus who is a much more observant Jew than the one portrayed in Mark in the story of the healing of the leper. For instance, Mark has Jesus touching the leper, while the Fragment omits this. It would be hard to say whether the Fragment was dependent on one of the Synoptics and interpreting Jesus as a more conventional rabbi or whether the Synoptics were interpreting their more conventional sources to bring out Jesus' more radical message. In the case of John, Watson does try to argue (and here he admittedly has less to work with) John was dependent on the Egerton Fragment or something much like it. It is again a story of interpretation and re-appropriation.
So far we have gone just gone through just over half of Watson's Gospel Writing. The rest will not take as long. What we've seen so far in Watson's hands is the canonical move of interpretation and formation. The next is reception and interpretation. Watson starts by arguing early on there was still a living distinction between the Gospel and the written accounts, whether it was with Papias and his preference for drawing on the memories of those of the first century over written accounts or Clement of Alexandria, who while recognizing the canonical Gospels, would quote from others (e.g., the Gospel of the Hebrews) as if they contained authentic teaching. What is interesting here is that unlike Ehrmann, Watson does not see this as a process of excluding rival Christianities but of building a consensus. So that the dynamic that is in play does begin to weed out certain documents, but it does so within a single community. It is only later that books such as Gospel of Peter or the Gospel of the Hebrews are seen as heretical. A distinction can also be made between these books and the so-called Gnostic Gospels. Unlike the group from which Watson would argue that the canonical Gospels arose, the Gnostics are reactions to and derivative of this process of canonical formation.
So to the question, why four Gospels, Watson seems to answer “why not?”. On his reading, any external criteria—such as age, historicity, originality, and so on—that one might bring to bear will not be sufficient to place the four Gospels on one side of the cutting board and the rest on the other. One could read Watson as saying that the four were simply arbitrary because had things been different there could have been three or five or some other number. My reading is somewhat different here. Watson seems to argue that even as late as the early second century, the church had a pretty good idea of what the gospel was, quite apart from its literary form (and indeed, the literary production was informed and reinterpreted by this understanding). As such, these four best represented the church's understanding of what the gospel as proclaimed.
We are again brought back to John, which while one can find points of continuity with the other three, is strikingly different and (as best as we can piece together its history) had a separate development. Watson notes that John was accepted in the East before being included in the West, and its acceptance in the West owes much to the advocacy of Irenaeus. The point here is that John's inclusion marks both the division of East and West and its reconciliation.
In time, Watson points out that we can find the four as the four came to be seen as bearing witness to the gospel has a whole. This can be seen in the iconography of the Church, where each Gospel is associated with one of seraphim depicted in the book of Revelation, though which Gospel is matched with which Seraph shifts over time. While one would now doubt that John the Divine had the Gospels in mind (and perhaps the early church theologian would agree), what is noteworthy is that they saw the limit of four as appropriate, just as the limit of seraphim and that while each seraph had a unique appearance, they spoke in unison, so each Gospel, while unique bears witness to the whole in concert.
Beyond the usual publisher blurb, what caught my attention was the subtitle “A Canonical Perspective.” I was first introduced to canonical criticism back in the mid 1980's with Brevard Child's An Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (itself a seminal work), by a skeptical faculty still working though form, redaction, and tradition criticism. The basic idea of canonical criticism is to analyze how what has come to be scripture was received or adopted as primary means of understanding how it should be understood. Back in the day, the criticism of this approach was rather building on these other methods, it simply served to dismiss them and to subsume biblical criticism into systematic theology. Among the things I learned about myself in seminary was that understood systematic theology far better than biblical criticism, and philosophy more than theology. As such, I never really delved into the minutia within canonical criticism, and so left the controversy behind me. Still, the title intrigued me. Canonical criticism has survived, so I was interested in how it has progressed. I am happy to report that the skeptics fears were unfounded.
Watson tackles a very basic problem in New Testament studies. There are four Gospel accounts that—apart from some pretty major themes—do not seem to fit into a single coherent narrative. So the questions arise, why four, why not one, can they be harmonized into one narrative, if not is one of the Evangelists more authentic—more true to Jesus—than the others, is there a source behind the extant Gospels that is more accurate and would give a clearer picture of Jesus, his teachings, and the circumstances of his life and death? That Watson, as a Pauline scholar, should address these issues is interesting enough, that he does it so well and so clearly is astonishing.
Laying aside the question of why there should be four Gospel accounts rather than one, Watson starts with the question of harmonizing the accounts. Watson argues later that the church was not much concerned with harmonizing the Gospels, as witnessed by lukewarm reception of the first such harmony in the second century, the Diatessaron. While one sees the occasional impulse to find a single underlying narrative in Origen, such a project does not come into force until Augustine of Hippo. As Watons outlines it, Augustine does a few things that presage more recent attempts to get behind the accounts of the Evangelists. First, Augustine sets critical insight ahead of tradition. Tradition held that Matthew, Mark, Luke were written independently and in that order. Augustine proposed Mark abbreviated Matthew, and later on he proposed that he used both Matthew and Luke as a sort of shorter synthesis. What is striking is that the proposal is based almost completely on an analysis of the text. Next, Augustine formulated certain rules that were employed when the account in one Gospel appeared to be in conflict with another. This resulted in the third innovation, and implied reconstructed narrative that ran under the extant texts.
Things remained quiescent on that mark until the Enlightenment and Lessing (though perhaps Watson could have brought in the role of the Renaissance humanism and the Reformation in to sharper focus here). In the general push and pull between somehow universalizing Christianity within reason, the need to assert orthodoxy, and pull to always go back to the sources as authoritative, Watson argues that the various harmonization rules that started with Augustine and were further developed during this particular intellectual conflict became increasingly ad hoc. The assumption was that must be a single consistent narrative that the Evangelists drew from, therefore rules must be made to establish such a narrative, even when that hypothetical narrative looked less and less like the actual accounts that were at hand. The need for an authoritative source, however. Watson narrates one of the clearest lines that runs from Lessing to Schleiermacher to Harnack regarding that source, namely Q. In its broad outline, Q is an elegant reconstruction of how the Gospels came about. One starts with Mark as the earliest Gospel. Matthew and Luke both employ Mark as a source (which explains those parts all three have in common), material known only them (which explains where Matthew and Luke disagree with each other and Mark) and share a common source, Q (which explains material common to Matthew and Luke, but not found in Mark). If that was there was to Q, then it would amount to little more than an elegant solution to a knotty problem. What Watson brings out forcefully is that this is not the driving force behind Q. Q would be a source, and—given the metanarative that Watson has drawn out since Augustine—if it exists, it would be a more primitive and thus more authoritative source than anything that currently exists. The reconstruction of Q would then, under this assumption, provide a more accurate presentation who Jesus was, apart from all the mythology that presumably accumulated starting with Mark, and perhaps even Paul. It is perhaps, my general skepticism that any definite reconstruction of Q (along with any other hypothetical source) could ever be made that I was really so unaware of this consequence. Once it is pointed out, however, a great deal of New Testament scholarship starts to make sense.
It is this superstructure that Watson aims to dismantle. That Q as a reconstructed narrative would seem obvious enough, though in the end it would seem that Watson could take or leave Q. His main target is the need for a reconstructed narrative and the idea that there are four Gospels is somehow a problem.
Among the many alternatives to Q, Watson defends the view that Mark came first, Matthew used Mark as his main source, and Luke used Mark and Matthew has his main sources. Q as is often reconstructed drops out. “Mostly” is important here because there appears to be something common to Luke and Matthew that develops between the time of Matthew and Luke, namely a sayings source that Watson dubs as “S.” To put it another way, Q reconstructed as a narrative becomes a reconstructed collection of sayings. British scholars have generally been skeptical of Q—not wanting to multiply sources beyond necessity—while German and American scholars have generally embraced it as internally elegant. Watson's solution appears to be neither.
Watson's solution does not seem as internally elegant because he must explain why Luke would break up what Matthew has placed together. A prime example of this would be Sermon on the Mount. Luke moves most of that until later (the so-called Sermon on the Plain), scatters most of the rest, leaves out parts, and adds sayings. Watson's basic answer comes in three parts. First, at the time Luke was writing Matthew was not for him THE Gospel According to Matthew, it was simply one of a number of sources. As such the Sermon on the Mount was not THE Sermon on the Mount, but a collection of sayings that Luke could use as he saw fit. By extension, Luke does have his own structure and is interpreting Matthew (and Mark) as he saw fit. Finally, Watson argues that Luke tends to prefer Mark's narrative structure to Matthew's and so alters those portions unique to Matthew to fit Mark's narrative. Using tools such as these, most of Q starts to drop out.
But not all of Q drops out. One may ask then, whether Watson's S is really any better off than Q. However, S does have a purpose beyond puzzling out the Synoptic Problem. It also serves to explain the Gospel of Thomas. Thomas is often seen as a Gnostic Gospel, in part because of the company it keeps and in part because some of the sayings sound gnostic. However, most of Thomas' sayings cannot really be classed with the Gnostic Gospels and more importantly the Gnostic Gospels have something Thomas lacks, a strong narrative structure with dialogs. To look at them, it is far easier to think that the Gnostic Gospels cribbed off of the Canonical Gospels than that they used Thomas or Thomas used either them or the Canonical Gospels. What S provides is an explanation for the development of Thomas.
What Watson is after is not simply a new answer to the Synoptic Problem (or the Synoptic-plus-Thomas problem) but to overthrow the entire notion of reconstructing an historical Jesus from a reconstructed prior source. Instead, he want to insist on a history of interpretation. The first Christians interpreted Jesus in their proclamation. The proclamation was interpreted in writings (epistles, sayings, narratives), these writings were collected and interpreted as the Gospels we have today, and these in turn have been interpreted and reinterpreted in commentaries, sermons, and other writings. The reasoning can be a tad question begging at times. For instance, part of Watson's defense of Luke incorporating Matthew and Mark as he does is on the basis that Luke is not trying so much to harmonize the two but to interpret the message of the Gospel through these sources. It is not obvious from the text, however, that Luke is doing anything of the sort. To be fair, there is nothing in text to support the idea sayings or actions that were foreign to Jesus were simply imported and imposed upon the text by the early Christian community. One is left with the somewhat spongy idea of which dynamic fits best.
I have left out John so far, but Watson has not. His focus in on Egerton Fragment, which has passages that are similar to John and Mark. Against most current scholarship (which would have the fragment dependent on John), Watson argues that the Egerton Fragment came first and may be one of John's sources. He does so on the basis of the parallel with John 5:37-47 where Jesus seems to distance himself from his Jewish interlocutors but where the Fragment seems to include Jesus among their numbers (compare “For if [you] be[lieved Moses] you would believe [me.] For [abou]t me he [wrot]e to our fathers.” with John 5:46,47 “For if you believed Moses you would believe me. For about me he wrote. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words.1 The christology in John is also more fully expressed. One can find in the Fragment a Jesus who is a much more observant Jew than the one portrayed in Mark in the story of the healing of the leper. For instance, Mark has Jesus touching the leper, while the Fragment omits this. It would be hard to say whether the Fragment was dependent on one of the Synoptics and interpreting Jesus as a more conventional rabbi or whether the Synoptics were interpreting their more conventional sources to bring out Jesus' more radical message. In the case of John, Watson does try to argue (and here he admittedly has less to work with) John was dependent on the Egerton Fragment or something much like it. It is again a story of interpretation and re-appropriation.
So far we have gone just gone through just over half of Watson's Gospel Writing. The rest will not take as long. What we've seen so far in Watson's hands is the canonical move of interpretation and formation. The next is reception and interpretation. Watson starts by arguing early on there was still a living distinction between the Gospel and the written accounts, whether it was with Papias and his preference for drawing on the memories of those of the first century over written accounts or Clement of Alexandria, who while recognizing the canonical Gospels, would quote from others (e.g., the Gospel of the Hebrews) as if they contained authentic teaching. What is interesting here is that unlike Ehrmann, Watson does not see this as a process of excluding rival Christianities but of building a consensus. So that the dynamic that is in play does begin to weed out certain documents, but it does so within a single community. It is only later that books such as Gospel of Peter or the Gospel of the Hebrews are seen as heretical. A distinction can also be made between these books and the so-called Gnostic Gospels. Unlike the group from which Watson would argue that the canonical Gospels arose, the Gnostics are reactions to and derivative of this process of canonical formation.
So to the question, why four Gospels, Watson seems to answer “why not?”. On his reading, any external criteria—such as age, historicity, originality, and so on—that one might bring to bear will not be sufficient to place the four Gospels on one side of the cutting board and the rest on the other. One could read Watson as saying that the four were simply arbitrary because had things been different there could have been three or five or some other number. My reading is somewhat different here. Watson seems to argue that even as late as the early second century, the church had a pretty good idea of what the gospel was, quite apart from its literary form (and indeed, the literary production was informed and reinterpreted by this understanding). As such, these four best represented the church's understanding of what the gospel as proclaimed.
We are again brought back to John, which while one can find points of continuity with the other three, is strikingly different and (as best as we can piece together its history) had a separate development. Watson notes that John was accepted in the East before being included in the West, and its acceptance in the West owes much to the advocacy of Irenaeus. The point here is that John's inclusion marks both the division of East and West and its reconciliation.
In time, Watson points out that we can find the four as the four came to be seen as bearing witness to the gospel has a whole. This can be seen in the iconography of the Church, where each Gospel is associated with one of seraphim depicted in the book of Revelation, though which Gospel is matched with which Seraph shifts over time. While one would now doubt that John the Divine had the Gospels in mind (and perhaps the early church theologian would agree), what is noteworthy is that they saw the limit of four as appropriate, just as the limit of seraphim and that while each seraph had a unique appearance, they spoke in unison, so each Gospel, while unique bears witness to the whole in concert.
October 30, 2019
I enjoyed this book a lot. I found it compulsive reading. I liked the large scope. I found Watson's tone generous and kind. The early church, right from the get-go, had to solve the problem of why the various Gospels do not agree with each other. Wats0n's book is the nuanced story of how the early church sifted and winnowed. Watson's history spans 40AD to 300AD in his explanation of how Matthew-Mark-Luke-and-John came to be.
Prerequisite: A curiosity about the Q Book, the Council at Nicea, the early church fathers: Irenaeus, Origen, Augustine, the "Gospels" of Thomas and Peter. If you don't know a tiny bit of those things, Gospel Writing will be too much too soon. You will likely miss the pleasure of his argument.
Level: Half academic but still readable, like a sophomore-level in college. This is slower and more carefully example-laden than a Bart Ehrman book. No illustrations at all. Several great tables summarizing at what order the main plot points of the Gospels occur.
My level of pleasure based on my interests was four stars, so pretty good, but this book 100% succeeds in its goal so I think to be true to the purpose of a star rating, I have given it five stars.
Prerequisite: A curiosity about the Q Book, the Council at Nicea, the early church fathers: Irenaeus, Origen, Augustine, the "Gospels" of Thomas and Peter. If you don't know a tiny bit of those things, Gospel Writing will be too much too soon. You will likely miss the pleasure of his argument.
Level: Half academic but still readable, like a sophomore-level in college. This is slower and more carefully example-laden than a Bart Ehrman book. No illustrations at all. Several great tables summarizing at what order the main plot points of the Gospels occur.
My level of pleasure based on my interests was four stars, so pretty good, but this book 100% succeeds in its goal so I think to be true to the purpose of a star rating, I have given it five stars.
November 2, 2014
I purchased this for my church library because I thought it had an interesting premise. Unfortunately, as I began reading, I found the prose to be dense and incomprehensible. This is not going to appeal to your average Protestant churchgoer who would like to understand better where the Gospels came from.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews