Product Description
The different schools of thought around the Synoptic Gospels, which rely on analysis of the source, are increasingly being called upon to defend their arguments in relation to ancient media practices. This has developed as new insights into ancient media and memory practices have become known. Thus, new criticisms of established hypotheses have required an appraisal of whether the traditional source-documentary approach of understanding the relationship between the synoptic gospels is still valid at all. But the new school of thought which relies on insights from scholarship in ancient media and memory practices has been hampered, to date, by the patchy reception of research on ancient media in synoptic scholarship. Alan Kirk here rectifies this issue as he mounts a defense, grounded in the practices of memory and manuscript transmission, of the Two Document Hypothesis. He shows how ancient media/memory approaches give new leverage on classic research problems in scholarship of the Gospels. The result of his efforts opens up new vistas to the reception of the Jesus tradition, its early scribal transmission and casts new light on long-conflicted questions in Christian origins.