The Gospel as Manuscript : An Early History of the Jesus Tradition as Material Artifact / Chris Keith.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction. The elixir of life and death -- The book as artifact -- Sociologies of the book in the study of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity -- The textualization of Mark's Gospel -- The competitive textualization of the synoptic tradition -- The competitive textualization of Johannine and Thomasine tradition -- The public reading of the Jesus tradition in the first three centuries -- The public reading of the Jesus tradition and the emergence of Christian identity -- Conclusion. The gospel as manuscript.

"This book offers a new material history of the Jesus tradition. Keith shows that the introduction of manuscripts to the transmission of the Jesus tradition played an underappreciated, but crucial, role in the reception history of the tradition that eventuated. He focuses particularly on the competitive textualization of the Jesus tradition, whereby Gospel authors drew attention to the written nature of their tradition, sometimes in attempts to assert superiority to predecessors, and the public reading of the Jesus tradition. Both these processes reveal efforts on the part of early followers of Jesus to place the gospel-as-manuscript on display, whether in the literary tradition or in the assembly. Building upon interdisciplinary work on ancient book cultures, Keith traces an early history of the gospel as artifact from the textualization of Mark in the first century until the eventual usage of liturgical reading as a marker of authoritative status in the second and third centuries, and beyond. Overall, he reveals a vibrant period of the development of the Jesus tradition, wherein the material status of the tradition frequently played as important a role as the ideas about Jesus that it contained"-- Provided by publisher.