Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Matthew (Expanding the Gospel according to Matthew: Continuity and Change in Early Gospel Literature)
Berichtszeitraum: 2020-10-26 bis 2022-10-25
The project, “Expanding the Gospel according to Matthew: Continuity and Change in Early Gospel Literature,” takes an integrative approach to early Christian literature that intervenes in ongoing debates about textual continuity and change. Recent scholarship has challenged conventional conceptions of Gospels as stable texts, pointing to porous constellations of Gospel material in the first centuries of the Common Era. This renewed critical attention disrupts reductive analytical frames and invites fresh questions. Nonetheless, emphasis on fluidity risks concomitant fragmentation, obscuring connections between diverse instances of Gospel tradition. Both continuity and change characterized early Gospel literature.
This project has addressed the tension between continuity and change in two ways. First, through a series of soundings in the reception history of the Gospel according to Matthew, the project illuminates how early Christian readers responded to Gospel similarity and difference. As the project has demonstrates through a range of examples, Matthew is a fruitful locus of investigation because of its centrality to Gospel scholarship and because it is richly attested in early expansions and reconfigurations. These early receptions and reconfigurations of Matthew illuminate its possibilities and tensions as a text. Second, the project locates the reception of Matthew in a broader landscape, the series of debates through which early readers conceptualized “Gospel literature” as a category. By interrogating how Roman intellectuals , Christian and otherwise, categorized bibliographic difference — between texts, between artifacts, between distinct works — the project makes visible the invention of “Gospel literature” as a category, uncovering how early Christian literary scholarship participated in the vibrant intellectual culture of the Roman Mediterranean. The method and results of this project thus enrich broader conversations about the production and reception of early Christian literature.
This project has addressed the tension between continuity and change in two ways. First, through a series of soundings in the reception history of the Gospel according to Matthew, the project illuminates how early Christian readers responded to Gospel similarity and difference. As the project has demonstrates through a range of examples, Matthew is a fruitful locus of investigation because of its centrality to Gospel scholarship and because it is richly attested in early expansions and reconfigurations. These early receptions and reconfigurations of Matthew illuminate its possibilities and tensions as a text. Second, the project locates the reception of Matthew in a broader landscape, the series of debates through which early readers conceptualized “Gospel literature” as a category. By interrogating how Roman intellectuals , Christian and otherwise, categorized bibliographic difference — between texts, between artifacts, between distinct works — the project makes visible the invention of “Gospel literature” as a category, uncovering how early Christian literary scholarship participated in the vibrant intellectual culture of the Roman Mediterranean. The method and results of this project thus enrich broader conversations about the production and reception of early Christian literature.
The project resulted in eight articles or chapters published or accepted for publication in leading peer-reviewed international journals, as well as thirty-eight seminar papers, conference presentations, and invited lectures that communicated the results of the project to a wide range of scholarly and public audiences. Further publication of research results is anticipated, including further peer-reviewed articles and chapters as well as a completed monograph. Over the course of the project, numerous public-facing contributions, three international workshops, and an active social media presence contributed to the scholarly impact of the project and to the public communication of research results.
The project offers a new account of the early reception of Gospel literature that (1) maps the conceptual resources that thinkers in the Roman Mediterranean deployed to make sense of related texts; (2) contextualizes early Christian literary criticism of the Gospels within this broader intellectual and cultural milieu, as well as within longer histories of philology; and (3) locates these ancient literary critical concepts—and the invention of Gospel literature itself—in a larger politics of reading, the negotiation of elite education and cultural status.
By rethinking early Christian negotiations of Gospel literature within broader contexts of socio-political power and literary praxis, the project reconfigures established histories of Gospel production and reception. Pivotal textual and canonical constructs emerged not in sequestered intramural debates, but rather mobilized the shared intellectual resources of the Roman Mediterranean in a vibrant form of public reasoning. This novel account of literary category-making in the Roman Mediterranean thus advances capacious historical scholarship in the fields of religion and classics and, moreover, informs ongoing conversations about public reason, the nature of theological discourse, and the construction and deconstruction of literary and scriptural canons today.
By rethinking early Christian negotiations of Gospel literature within broader contexts of socio-political power and literary praxis, the project reconfigures established histories of Gospel production and reception. Pivotal textual and canonical constructs emerged not in sequestered intramural debates, but rather mobilized the shared intellectual resources of the Roman Mediterranean in a vibrant form of public reasoning. This novel account of literary category-making in the Roman Mediterranean thus advances capacious historical scholarship in the fields of religion and classics and, moreover, informs ongoing conversations about public reason, the nature of theological discourse, and the construction and deconstruction of literary and scriptural canons today.