Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus..., Brian J. Wright
Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus..., Brian J. Wright
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Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus
A Window into Early Christian Reading Practices

Author: Brian J. Wright

Narrator: William Sarris

Unabridged: 8 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/22/2021

Synopsis

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.

About The Author

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).

Reviews

Goodreads review by David on July 12, 2019

In Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus, Wright argues communal reading was widespread and functioned as another control category of the Jesus traditions. Wright earned a ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary and a PhD from Ridley College, Melbourne. He is an adjunct professor at Palm Beach Atlantic......more

Goodreads review by Michael on December 01, 2017

Brian Wright has given us a look into first century—and by implication NT—cultural literary practices. The geographic and sociological diversity of communal reading events, Wright argues, provided a sort of quality control for certain texts that were read and heard in those communal reading events:......more

Goodreads review by Nathan on October 14, 2022

The New Testament originated as fragments of oral tradition and scraps of written letters, passed around through a few generations of illiterate and poverty-stricken Christians, until sometime in the Second Century CE, when a handful of elites distilled unreliable and conflicting hand-me-downs into......more

Goodreads review by Mitchell on January 09, 2020

Brian Wright presents an extensive study over the communal reading practices of the 1st century CE in the Greco-Roman world. His scholarship is vitally important for the Christian academic world in that it will inform what we think of ancient literacy and availability or writing materials. Personall......more

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