Abstract
This sumptuous volume contains 30 chapters by an international array of specialists in gospel studies. The volume is divided into two parts. Part I has 12 chapters on ‘The problem and nature of the Synoptic Gospels’. Here, a commendably wide array of approaches to understanding the sources and inter-relations of the Synoptic Gospels is offered. It begins with John Kloppenborg’s well-informed history of the Synoptic problem from Origen to the present. James Barker considers the plausibility of theories about the evangelists’ use of sources by making a comparison with compositional practices in the wider culture, noting, among other things, the importance ascribed to visual contact with sources (over against exaggerated appeals by some scholars to practices of memorization). In an analogous appeal to practices in the wider culture, Alexander Damm draws out the implications of the study of ancient rhetoric (both Greco-Roman and biblical) for assessing the order of the Synoptics. As he says: ‘The more rhetorically motivated changes one can detect in an evangelist’s work, the more plausible his adaptation of his source will appear’ (p. 73).
Other chapters include Cameron Ferguson’s exploratory essay on possible Pauline influence on the Synoptics (especially Mark); Alan Kirk’s exposé of what he sees as a false polarization of the dual media of writing and orality in accounts of gospel agreement and variation, in favour of ‘approaches that position ancient orality and writing in close interface with each other’ (p. 116); Michal Beth Dinkler’s account of the potential of New Formalist principles for better appreciating the narrative design of the Synoptics, taking the notoriously open ending of Mark as a case study; Brent Nongbri on the ways in which study of gospel manuscripts and ancient manuscript culture complicates the notion of a stable gospel text and the determining of gospel inter-relationships; and Matthew Larsen’s significant essay critiquing as anachronistic ‘the ideas of author, book, and publication’ (p. 175) that provide the building blocks of modern Synoptic Gospel studies.
Part II of the volume is distinctive for a ‘handbook’. What we do not have here are separate essays on each of the Synoptics displaying their distinctive narrative styles and respective theologies concerning matters such as revelation, Christology, discipleship, and so on. Instead, there are 18 chapters on ‘Particular features in comparison’. Here, comparisons between the Synoptics are made within each essay by means of consideration of what they ‘say’ about a range of significant topics, many of which (though not all) reflect a shift in academic gospel research in the direction of the social sciences and cultural studies. The topics are as follows: suffering and sacrifice; violent imaginaries; kingdom, authority and power; wealth, poverty and economy; travel and itinerancy; food and meals; healing and exorcism; sacred space; history; apocalyptic eschatology; resurrection and the afterlife; gospel; Jewish sectarianism; Gentiles and their relations to Jews; Israel’s Scriptures; portraits of women; gender; and body.
Here, I can give a taste of just four. On ‘Suffering and sacrifice’, Candida Moss observes that ‘each of the Synoptic writers envisions the world as a place in which suffering is powerful, predictable, and meaningful’ (p. 256), and offers a comparison of the respective gospel Passion narratives by way of example. Michael Peppard writes brilliantly on ‘Kingdom, authority, and power’, showing not only the all-pervasive ‘nexus of earthly and heavenly rule’ in the Synoptics, but also how recent interpretation draws effectively on empire-critical approaches inspired by postcolonial criticism. John Kampen writes on the application of sociological theory to the gospels in his essay on ‘Jewish sectarianism’. Drawing especially on the sociology of sectarianism, he argues that elements of Matthew’s Gospel reflect the sectarian tensions of a community still within Judaism. The final chapter is Stephen Moore’s demanding essay on ‘Body’. With nods in the direction of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and Gilles Deleuze, as well as masculinity studies, Moore argues that what we have in the Synoptics is, paradoxically, ‘incorporeal bodies’ (p. 573), bodies knowable only by their representation in discourse and performance.
Overall, this is a sophisticated collection of essays representative of some of the best in current Synoptic Gospels research. Bibliographies at the end of each chapter provide the basis for further reading. Readers at graduate level and above will find the volume a valuable resource and a stimulus to research.