Combining Gospels in Early Christianity

Jacob Rodriguez's book about Gospels and Paratexts in the Early Church

Years ago when I wrote The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus, I briefly touched on the company that one or more of the Gospels circulated within. What we might call “paratexts” for texts found besides the Gospels.

In effect, Rodriguez asks why the four Gospels of the canonical collection (the tetraevangelium) ended up together and whether it was inevitable. The fragments of Papias, the longer-ending of Mark, and the Epistula Apostolorum convinced me that the tetraevangelium was early, but its inevitability is harder to prove, if it can be proved at all.

To that end, Rodriguez explores how the four Gospels interacted among themselves and also with other Jesus books, literature, and writings. His aim is to “identify the patterns, habits, and strategies of gospel combinations from the late first century to the late second century, as Christianity gradually moved toward distinguishing a fourfold gospel canon.” He follows Francis Watson’s view that all Jesus literature, canonical and non-canonical in hindsight, is simply an interpretive act within a broader milieu of social memory. The Gospels could be drawn together in various ways from placing them together in a codex (P45), creating a Gospel harmony (Tatian’s Diatessaron), rewriting a story by drawing on different Gospels (longer ending of Mark and P. Oxy 5.840), or scribal harmonization between Gospel stories, etc. I’d add that one could write a whole new Gospel designed to supplement or correct an existing Gospel (Gospel of Luke, Marcion’s evangelium, perhaps the Gospel of Peter, and Gospel of Thomas).

Here’s the TOC

Chapter 1: The Gospel according to Thomas: Combining Gospels through Interpretive Rewriting
Chapter 2: The Epistula Apostolorum: Combining Gospels through Interpretive Rewriting
Chapter 3: Orchestrating the Gospel: Tatian's Diatessaron as a Gospel Combination
Chapter 4: Second-Order Discourse on Gospel Authors and Their Texts, Part 1: GMark to Justin Martyr
Chapter 5: Second-Order Discourse on Gospel Authors and Their Texts, Part 2: Irenaeus, Clement, Heretics, and Celsus
Chapter 6: Gospel Combinations in Early Christian Artifacts: Gregory Aland 0171 and P4+P64+67
Chapter 7: Gospel Combinations in Early Christian Artifacts: P45 and P75

In his conclusion, Rodriguez points out how: “Gospel writing and gospel reading of the first two centuries CE testify to the broad diversity of the remembered Jesus. Yet within this diversity, a centre of gravity emerged as particular gospels began to keep regular company with one another.” In sum, the fourfold Gospel of Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria was not a novelty, but was building upon a prior literary tradition and material culture which had already associated these four Gospels together.

This is a good book that analyzes the Gospels and Jesus literature without a canonical prejudice, it draws on material evidence, literary cultures, textual criticism, and the phenomenon of early Christianity in all its diversities. In sum, you can tell a lot about a book not just by its cover or contents, but by the company it keeps; or at least the company that readers/collectors kept the book in.

Might not be one to purchase, but definitely one to read in your local university or college library. An outstanding standing of the Gospels in early Christianity.