The Origins of Christian Literature (CUP 2021) by Robyn Walsh
The Origins of Early Christian Literature , 2021
Conventional approaches to the Synoptic gospels argue that the gospel authors acted as literate s... more Conventional approaches to the Synoptic gospels argue that the gospel authors acted as literate spokespersons for their religious communities. Whether described as documenting intragroup "oral traditions" or preserving the collective perspectives of their fellow Christ-followers, these writers are treated as something akin to the Romantic Poets speaking for their Volk-a questionable framework inherited from nineteenth-century German Romanticism. In this book, Robyn Walsh argues that the Synoptic gospels were written by elite cultural producers working within a dynamic cadre of literate specialists, including persons who may or may not have been professed Christians. Comparing a range of ancient literature, her groundbreaking study demonstrates that the gospels are creative works produced by educated elites interested in Judean teachings, practices, and paradoxographical subjects in the aftermath of the Jewish War and in dialogue with the literature of their age. Walsh's study thus bridges the artificial divide between research on the Synoptic gospels and classics.
Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses
I started reading this book while teaching an undergraduate course on the historical Jesus. Befor... more I started reading this book while teaching an undergraduate course on the historical Jesus. Beforehand, I would ascribe certain gospel ideas, sources, or trajectories to a gospel writer's "community" unthinkingly. It made intuitive sense to me, and it was how I was trained to think. The gospel writers did not write in isolation; they wrote within a community. And while some of what makes each gospel unique can be ascribed to authorial, that is independent, creativity and proclivities, some things must be ascribable to the community from which each gospel writer hails. I spent the rest of the course trying to avoid the use of the word "community" in these conversations, and cringed every time I failed. Walsh begins (chap. 1) by problematizing what she calls the Big Bang "myth" of Christian origins, which stems from Acts: that the Jesus movement grew quickly, that its institutions were established firmly and early, and that the communities were deeply cohesive. This narrative is enabled by the use of many terms without theoretical nuance, foremost among which is the term religion. The ubiquitous assumption that religion in antiquity was a stand-alone institution (as it is thought to be in the modern world) leads scholars to presume that only well-formed, discrete religious communities could possibly have given rise to writings as obviously religious as the gospels. But if religion was not a discrete social institution in Mediterranean antiquity, then there likely could not have been communities whose primary source of identity was their distinct religious commitments (as opposed to their ethnic commitments or social locations). Further, the scholarly interest in and reliance on the "community" behind early Christian writings is unique to Christian origins scholarship. Classicists commonly assume that written works naturally emanate from elite cultural producers working within elite circles and networks. One of many strengths to this book is Walsh's insistence that the distinction between early Christian and Greco-Roman writings needs to be abandoned. Early Christian writings are Greco-Roman writings in every conceivable way. Walsh traces the idiosyncratic tendency to treat early Christian writings differently from Greco-Roman writings to the influence of nineteenth-century German Romantic Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses 1-3 ª The Author(s) / Le(s) auteur(s), 2021 Article reuse guidelines/ Directives de réutilisation des articles: sagepub.com/journals-permissions
Despite its broad title, this book is primarily about the so-called synoptic gospels-the gospels ... more Despite its broad title, this book is primarily about the so-called synoptic gospels-the gospels according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Walsh seeks to recontextualize these works by setting aside the common ("myopic" and "idiosyncratic") interpretive model that views them chiefly as products of early Christian communities and as potential sources of information about such communities. Walsh attempts instead to "understand the gospels as 'normal' ancient literature produced by educated, elite members of Greco-Roman society" (13). The project is framed as "an approach to these writings and history that foregrounds concrete data without appealing to inherited assumptions" (15).
Articles and Book Chapters by Robyn Walsh
Harvard Theological Review , 2024
This article asks what Paul’s claims about cosmology signify in terms of his competitive position... more This article asks what Paul’s claims about cosmology signify in terms of his competitive position on the nature and purpose of the moon. Specifically, in an age in which discourses and demonstrations involving the moon were rife, I argue that Paul is invoking principals shared by writers like Plutarch on the “double death” of the human being (first as soma on the earth, then as psyche/nous in orbit around and on the moon) and that he envisions an afterlife among the stars in pneumatic form that, to the degree it is anthropomorphic, is ideally male. I also posit that this aspect of Paul’s thought has been overlooked, in part due to the idiosyncratic-yet-pervasive translation of doxa in Paul as “glory” rather than in terms related to typologies and judgment, as it is elsewhere in Greek philosophical literature.
Religion and Theology, 2024
This essay engages the theme "Manufacturing Religion: From Christian Origins to Classical Islam" ... more This essay engages the theme "Manufacturing Religion: From Christian Origins to Classical Islam" by challenging scholarly assumptions about the rapid reception and cohesion of new or developing philosophical and religious movements in Greek and Roman antiquity. To illustrate this issue, I present two interrelated case studies: late Republic/early imperial Stoicism and its possible intersections with the later Christ movement of the first century. At a time when engagement with literate culture conferred a great deal of social capital, I suggest that the relative flexibility and "openness" of these two movements allowed for those seeking prestige, social mobility, or distinction-or those who were otherwise excluded from the top tiers of society-to participate in intellectual practices that emulated the standards of the elite. This model for understanding early Christianity counters traditional approaches within the study of religion that tend to foreground notions like belief, conversion and so forth as an explanatory model for membership over sociological and material motivations. This discussion also troubles understandings of Stoicism that tend to link it anachronistically with its later and more exalted imperial associations.
Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 2024
This article presents an imaginative exercise in which a fictional author from the year 4025 deta... more This article presents an imaginative exercise in which a fictional author from the year 4025 details results from excavations of archaeological sites dating to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Based on analyses of small domestic finds, as well as the discovery of a monumental complex utilizing similar imagery, the author concludes that people must have worshipped an anthropomorphic mouse god – the Historical Mouse – in the Mechano-Digital Age, keeping devotional votives in their homes and traveling at least once a year to a primary space of worship centered around the experience of various ritual mysteries. This article calls upon students to perform a self-evaluation about their own assumptions and approaches to the ancient world
as they witness a hypothetical historian make outrageous, yet plausible, errors in the course of trying to describe an ‘ancient’ religion.
Authorial Fictions and Attributions in the Ancient Mediterranean, 2024
To date, scholarly discussions about the pseudepigraphic Pauline letter to the Laodiceans have fo... more To date, scholarly discussions about the pseudepigraphic Pauline letter to the Laodiceans have focused on its poor aesthetic value as a forgery. Missing in these conversations is an in-depth consideration of its form and function both in terms of craft and how its very existence (for a short time) within the canon authorized visions of Paul as a founding figure of Christianity. From Paul to Andy Warhol, this piece considers these lacunae and revisits the question of the “author function” when it comes to impersonating a “name.” It also asks what bad art can tell us about doing good history, suggesting that Laodiceans may have been written in order to claim a certain prestige for early Christianity in a notoriously competitive region of the eastern Mediterranean.
“Syriac Dialogue Hymns and New Comedy,” Worth More Than Many Sparrows: Essays in Honor of Willi B... more “Syriac Dialogue Hymns and New Comedy,” Worth More Than Many Sparrows: Essays in Honor of Willi Braun, eds. Sarah Rollens and Pat Hart (Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2023), 137-157.
Fieldnotes in the Critical Study of Religion, 2023
Uncorrected page proofs-- please only cite published version.
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Rob y n Faith Walsh Roman imperial campaigns offered ample opportunity for cultural elites to eng... more Rob y n Faith Walsh Roman imperial campaigns offered ample opportunity for cultural elites to engage in creative projects aimed at critiquing or propagandizing the Empire. Flavian material imagery famously championed the victories of the Jewish War (66-73 CE), while authors like Josephus offered companion commen tary on certain events. Other literary examples are legion, including Tacitus's Germania; Cassius Dio's Roman Histmy; Suetonius's Claudius, to name a few. In each case, the conflicts, trials, deaths and moral-psychological states of generals, soldiers, citizens, captives, so-called barbarians, and so on act as a convenient foil for writers to explore relevant interests in the gods ("religion"), locations at the margins of the Empire, and the state, while simultaneously providing an opportunity to showcase literary skill. This piece incorporates the canonical Gospels-writings about Judea and its inhabitants-into the ambit of what I have termed "Imperial Captive Literature": works that reflect on the places and persons in conflict with and subjugation to the Empire. Understanding the Gospels in this frame reinforces that these writers belong to a social context typical for those producing literature in this period: highly educated and actively engaged in the trends and tropes of writing culture. Of course, high education and lrnowledge of paideia did not necessarily corre spond to class in the ancient world; as demonstrated by the deipnosophists or the Sat y ricon's Trimalchio, participation in dominant litermy culture did not guarantee that one possessed the ability to read and write. Likewise, one did not necessarily require wealth and high class to be a literate cultural producer, as was the case with Epictetus, a fom,er slave. This historical and social land scape compels us to reconsider how we usually describe the production of the Gospels, focused on the interests of the Gospel writer qua writer, rather than presuming that religious affiliation or community was the primaiy concern of these authors, as is often the case in scholarship.
Paul was a well-educated (i.e. elite) Jewish Pharisee who understood the Galilean teacher Jesus o... more Paul was a well-educated (i.e. elite) Jewish Pharisee who understood the Galilean teacher Jesus of Nazareth to be the "Christ" or Messiah predicted in the Hebrew Bible. He traveled throughout the Mediterranean, primarily to urban hubs, offering his unique interpretation of the Jewish scriptures, what he called "pneumatic demonstrations," and details of his divinatory experiences to those with means to sponsor him as a religious specialist and self-styled "apostle." After leaving these urban areas, he would continue contact via formal letter writing. Some of these letters still survive and constitute our evidence for Paul's efforts. The degree to which the groups to whom he writes were bounded and cohesive is debated by scholars. These letters have also been preserved somewhat idiosyncratically and represent hundreds of years of editing and translation by various parties.
Considering the literary interests and conventions evident in their works, I propose that the can... more Considering the literary interests and conventions evident in their works, I propose that the canonical gospels, and even Q, demonstrate an engagement with first century political events that place these texts after the Jewish War. These writings chronicle the teachings and life of a notable Judean figure whose wonderworking and Deuteronomistic viewpoint had particular purchase after the destruction of the Temple. Among the options for why such a creative exercise may have been necessary is that it addressed the cultural, social, and religious uncertainties left in the wake of the War and Temple destruction. In Q, for example, both Jesus and John the Baptist offer an alternative to the dominant Temple system. That is, through their teachings, each arguably exemplify what Jonathan Z. Smith refers to as “heroes-that-succeeded”—figures who managed to recognize and remain outside of the confines of an ill-fated, dominant social order. In the face of a disrupted cosmic order, writers like Q overcame a perceived ritual and social ambiguity by searching for a new center for symbolic-social meaning.
By extending this line of analysis to Q and placing all of our Jesus writings after the War, we not only attend to the literary interests expressed by these authors, but we avoid the uncritical acceptance of the myth that the first-century experienced a spontaneous, cohesive, diverse and multiple Big Bang of Christian activity. This approach also respects the parameters set by available historical evidence—that is, we have no firm documentation of any material about Jesus’ life and teachings before the War, save Paul
This article discusses a late antique apsidal building in Elche, Spain, and the possibility that ... more This article discusses a late antique apsidal building in Elche, Spain, and the possibility that the site was, at some stage, a Jewish synagogue. While heralded as the oldest Christian basilica in Spain, the history of excavation for this site is fraught. Initial digs were conducted by amateur archaeologists and later investigations in the early-to-mid-twentieth century were funded by organizations with clear ideological interests. Over the years, literature on the building’s rectangular mosaic carpet has noted that its inscriptions resemble those found in a number of late antique diaspora synagogues around the Mediterranean; however, these parallels have been insufficient in swaying both scholarly and public support for the possibility this was a converted space.
On a recent visit to the site, I discovered a seven-armed, double-branched geometric feature in the mosaic that resembles a menorah, previously unmentioned in early site reports. I will review the history of this site, my findings, and attempts to situate this evidence in the broader scope of late antique Jewish diaspora studies. One possibility is that this space represents an act of forcible conversion, similar to events that took place on the nearby island of Minorca in the early 5th century C.E.
The notion that religion is a category of human behavior restricted to the private sphere of pers... more The notion that religion is a category of human behavior restricted to the private sphere of personal belief and activity is deeply problematic. The cliché itself is largely a product of Enlightenment-era thinking that viewed religious practices as separate from other kinds of social doings such as politics, law, and economic activity. Practices deemed to be religious, however, are not so easily distinguished as individual, private phenomena. Religion cannot be restricted to a state of mind, but is inextricably tied to social formations and processes.
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While some scholars maintain that the gospels were a literary anomaly without clear precedent, we... more While some scholars maintain that the gospels were a literary anomaly without clear precedent, we instead argue that they are an innovative play on the civic biographical tradition. We argue that the gospels were a kind of ‘subversive biography’— a type of ‘life’ that emphasizes the capabilities of a figure perceived to be outside of the dominant culture. Such lives alternatively emphasize wisdom, ready-wit and wonder working as strategies for demonstrating authority and gaining advantage when faced with challenges from more powerful figures.
This article proposes that critical scholarship of the New Testament has inherited from German Ro... more This article proposes that critical scholarship of the New Testament has inherited from German Romantic and Idealistic thought a number of presumptions about the role of the author that have contributed to idiosyncratic approaches to these texts when compared with allied studies of ancient literature. Namely, “critical” scholarship has continued to impose anachronistic, Romantic ideas of an implicit Volk (people, nation) or inspirational Geist (spirit) onto early literature about Jesus. I offer an alternative reading of the authorship of the gospels that reads them like other ancient literature, centered on concrete evidence for ancient literary practices.
A critical engagement with Matthew Bagger's work on Robert Brandom using a naturalistic epistemol... more A critical engagement with Matthew Bagger's work on Robert Brandom using a naturalistic epistemology.
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Online Contributions by Robyn Walsh
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The Origins of Christian Literature (CUP 2021) by Robyn Walsh
Articles and Book Chapters by Robyn Walsh
as they witness a hypothetical historian make outrageous, yet plausible, errors in the course of trying to describe an ‘ancient’ religion.
By extending this line of analysis to Q and placing all of our Jesus writings after the War, we not only attend to the literary interests expressed by these authors, but we avoid the uncritical acceptance of the myth that the first-century experienced a spontaneous, cohesive, diverse and multiple Big Bang of Christian activity. This approach also respects the parameters set by available historical evidence—that is, we have no firm documentation of any material about Jesus’ life and teachings before the War, save Paul
On a recent visit to the site, I discovered a seven-armed, double-branched geometric feature in the mosaic that resembles a menorah, previously unmentioned in early site reports. I will review the history of this site, my findings, and attempts to situate this evidence in the broader scope of late antique Jewish diaspora studies. One possibility is that this space represents an act of forcible conversion, similar to events that took place on the nearby island of Minorca in the early 5th century C.E.
Uncorrected page proofs-- please cite only published version.
Uncorrected page proofs-- please only cite published version.
Online Contributions by Robyn Walsh
as they witness a hypothetical historian make outrageous, yet plausible, errors in the course of trying to describe an ‘ancient’ religion.
By extending this line of analysis to Q and placing all of our Jesus writings after the War, we not only attend to the literary interests expressed by these authors, but we avoid the uncritical acceptance of the myth that the first-century experienced a spontaneous, cohesive, diverse and multiple Big Bang of Christian activity. This approach also respects the parameters set by available historical evidence—that is, we have no firm documentation of any material about Jesus’ life and teachings before the War, save Paul
On a recent visit to the site, I discovered a seven-armed, double-branched geometric feature in the mosaic that resembles a menorah, previously unmentioned in early site reports. I will review the history of this site, my findings, and attempts to situate this evidence in the broader scope of late antique Jewish diaspora studies. One possibility is that this space represents an act of forcible conversion, similar to events that took place on the nearby island of Minorca in the early 5th century C.E.
Uncorrected page proofs-- please cite only published version.
Uncorrected page proofs-- please only cite published version.