Word-Processing in the Ancient World: the Social Production and Performance of Q

Downing, F. Gerald

doi:10.1177/0142064x9701906403

Cited by 7 publications

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“…221-247. 2 G.F. Downing, 1997. "Word Processing in the Ancient World: Social Production and Performance of Q", JSNT 19/64, p. 30.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identity and Socio-Economic Relations in Luke’s Gospel : The Sermon on the Plain (Lk 6:20-49) and Greco-Roman Panegyrics

Ndekha

2023

Bible in Africa Studies

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This volume is a product of Nedekha's revised PhD thesis from the University of Gloucestershire in Cheltenham, United Kingdom, completed and successfully defended before Prof. Louise Lawrence (University of Exeter) and Prof. Edward Adams (King's College London) on 16 June 2020 in the School of Education and Humanities. Professor Philip Esler, Chair of New Testament in the Department of Religion, Philosophy and Ethics, supervised the thesis. The original thesis title was Luke's Gospel and Greco-Roman Panegyrics: The Sermon on the Plain (Lk 6:20-49) in its Social Context. The present book combines the original thesis's revision and new materials and insights that have risen from my further research in Luke's Gospel. Revising the significant aspects of the thesis and the additional chapter was meant to make the study accessible to a broader audience. The book presents a new reading of the Sermon on the Plain from the perspective of Greco-Roman panegyrics. This reading is against the background of the synoptic approach to Luke 6: 20-49 that has historically relegated it to an appendix to Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. The book's central argument is that the best way to interpret the Sermon is to read it as a Greco-Roman panegyric, whose function was the integration of new members and the inculcation of commonly held values. The early Christian communities comprised individuals from diverse social backgrounds. Sustaining such fictive communities required a new conception of social relations beyond the conventional Greco-Roman Romans based on kinship and reciprocity. The book demonstrates how underneath the Sermon's makarisms and woes and their juxtaposition of poverty and riches (vv. 20-26) and exhortation (vv. 27-49) is Luke's attempt to construct a new social-economic identity of Christ-followers. The Sermon achieves this aim by supplanting those values deemed honourable and shameful by the dominant culture with a new set of values adopted from the status of destitution. The adoption of the values associated with destitution for both the rich and poor would result in their common dependence, not on material wealth but on the Lord for their daily provisions. In turn, common reliance on the Lord would allow for the camaraderie and koinonia between the rich and the poor among the first-century Christ-followers. This socio-economic motif is replicated throughout the Third Gospel and typifies Luke's representation of salvation as a holistic phenomenon. The author is a lecturer in Biblical Studies at the University of Malawi. He has a PhD in New Testament Studies from the University of Gloucestershire in England and an MTh in Biblical Studies from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He currently holds Alexander von Humboldt's George Forster Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Bamberg, Germany. He is also a Research Associate at the University of Pretoria Department of New Testament and Other Related Literature. Beyond that, Louis is also an ordained minister in the Africa Evangelical Church in Malawi.

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“…221-247. 2 G.F. Downing, 1997. "Word Processing in the Ancient World: Social Production and Performance of Q", JSNT 19/64, p. 30.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identity and Socio-Economic Relations in Luke’s Gospel : The Sermon on the Plain (Lk 6:20-49) and Greco-Roman Panegyrics

Ndekha

2023

Bible in Africa Studies

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“…Unfortunately, this interaction is still largely unexplored in the field of the Synoptic Problem (cf. the critique in Downing 1996).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Questioning the Feasibility of the Major Synoptic Hypotheses: Scribal Memory as the Key to the Oral–Written Interface

Chang

2019

Journal for the Study of the New Testament

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Instead of blurring the oral and the literary media in antiquity (R. Bultmann and B. Gerhardsson) or dividing them with unsatisfying principles (J.D.G. Dunn), this article follows recent scholarship on orality to explore the mechanical operation of ancient scribal memory as the oral-written interface. In so doing, I argue that the agreement of order between the Synoptic Gospels is characteristic of memory-based utilizations of written texts and does not necessarily indicate the scribes’ visual contact with those texts. It is, rather, the very high degree of verbal agreement that indicates Matthew’s frequent visual contact with Q 10–11 and 12–13 throughout the gospel, even when following Mark’s narrative sequence by memory. This approach explains the infrequent micro-conflations on the Two Document Hypothesis (2DH) with a more mechanically probable procedure, and so strengthens the argument that the 2DH is more feasible than the Two Gospel Hypothesis and the Farrer-Goulder Hypothesis.

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“… 28. If the gospel authors’ social lives were to be understood throughout time rather than ﬁxed in time when they composed Jesus narratives, their occasion to be lecturing in temples and other public buildings would be ongoing. The publication process for any other historical text that they composed would have involved public performance (Downing 1996: 29-48), and thus enquiries into the lecturing activity of historiographers are signiﬁcant if the objective is to understand gospel writers’ social situation as professional writers. …”

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The Social Relationships of Gospel Writers: New Insights from Inscriptions Commending Greek Historiographers

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2015

Journal for the Study of the New Testament

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Scholarship traditionally situates the social lives of NT gospel writers exclusively within the Jesus movement and local Christ groups, showing inadequate consideration for how the literary abilities of gospel writers might have provided the basis for social interaction and group formation with Greeks, Romans and Judeans of common occupations and/or cultural interests. In order to provide a fuller portrait of the social and historical setting of gospel literature, this article explores the ranges of social activities practiced, and networks developed, by comparable writers—broadly, Greek historiographers. Data from the epigraphy about the social practices of historiographers help to provide controls for speculations about the setting of NT gospel composition, and raise new questions about this literature possibly emerging from networks and guilds forged between people of similar scribal professions and/or cultural interests that cut through ancient Christianity rather than originating from within the Jesus movement exclusively. Scholarship on the social setting of the Q Gospel (i.e., scribal networks) and the Gospel of Thomas (i.e., philosophical formations) has made arguments in this direction on the basis of other evidence, and that model appears most historically plausible for the narrative gospels, as well.

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Word-Processing in the Ancient World: the Social Production and Performance of Q

Cited by 7 publications

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Identity and Socio-Economic Relations in Luke’s Gospel : The Sermon on the Plain (Lk 6:20-49) and Greco-Roman Panegyrics

Identity and Socio-Economic Relations in Luke’s Gospel : The Sermon on the Plain (Lk 6:20-49) and Greco-Roman Panegyrics

Questioning the Feasibility of the Major Synoptic Hypotheses: Scribal Memory as the Key to the Oral–Written Interface

The Social Relationships of Gospel Writers: New Insights from Inscriptions Commending Greek Historiographers

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