Gossip in the New Testament

Ethnographies and Gossip

Although much has been written for popular consumption about the perils of gossip further inscribing such speech negatively (e.g., Meng, Sedler, and Williams), socio-linguistic research over the past forty or so years has yielded much about gossip that both re-enforces and deconstructs naive notions of the talk. The combination of modern socio-linguistic and ethnographic research on gossip extends a better chance of constructing a lens that avoids ethnocentric and anachronistic miscues that might result from looking at gossip in antiquity through modern socio-linguistics alone. Since ethnographies are the careful study of existing traditional cultures, it stands to reason that by observing the social processes of cultures that share world views and values similar to Jesus' world, one has a better chance of striking a plausible portrait of the phenomenon as it might have been experienced in the ancient Mediterranean.

Eric Foster and Ralph Rosnow provide a summary glimpse of gossip research over the past sixty years or so (E. Foster; Rosnow & Foster). While formative works on gossip began to appear after the second world war (e.g., Allport & Postman; Back, et al.), it was the 1960s and 1970s that saw a rise in rumor and gossip research focusing on sociological and psychological aspects of such speech (e.g., Shibutani; Milgram & Toch; Morin; Knopf; Rosnow & Fine). This was followed in the last three decades by a noticeable increase in gossip research that now provides many opportunities for New Testament scholars to appropriate for their own work (cf. Fine & Turner; Ben-Ze'ev; Kapferer; Koenig; Kimmel).

Many consider Max Gluckman to be a formative pioneer in gossip research, disclosing functionalist characteristics of the talk for maintaining group unity and identity, social morality, and marking off community boundaries (Gluckman: 308–09, 311). Gossip is community-regulated speech, holding important positive virtues that inscribe and reify social values (Gluckman: 308). Far from dangerous, gossip is seen here as a fundamental component of a healthy society. Like Gluckman, Robert Paine has shed additional important light on gossip, although emphasizing different aspects. Paine's study of a traditional Greek mountain shepherd community—the Sarakatsani—reveals how much gossip is a part of the social fabric of traditional cultures for whom competition for honor is common (281). Unlike Gluckman's functionalist perspective on gossip, for Paine, gossip is about information control serving the specific interests of those engaged in the discourse. This transactionalist perspective on the phenomenon concentrates on how such talk is deployed by persons in an attempt to control the construction of reality or identity in a particular way. To be precise, gossip seeks to evince a particular construal of the subject (or event) and to get others engaging in the talk to agree, and so co-construct the subject or event (Paine: 283). Thus, gossip may help one attain high social status at least in terms of possessing information (Paine: 279). Gluckman and Paine together are representative of the pioneering efforts in gossip research in the 20^th Century, each emphasizing different variables of the social process. It is not necessary, nor advisable to opt for a single functional variable over the others since, as Jorg Bergmann has shown, all three functional variables of gossip—group preservation, social control, information control—can occur simultaneously (148–49).

Like Paine, Eric Foster sees a connection between reputation, gossip, and the possession of information noting that a gossiper's status increases upon his/her demonstration of vital information and/or understanding of persons, social rules and structures (2004: 84; cf. Paine: 283). By recognizing the over-arching concern for protecting information about one's self, or other members of one's group from a public construal that is not praiseworthy, Foster underscores the reality of the social construction of identity by means of speech and talk. This is significant since in Jesus' first century collectivist world, one's identity was embedded in one's primary group(s). The collectivist self was thus, a dyadic self that required one's identity to be construed by one's group (Malina 1996: 80–81). Subsequently, identity and reputation came together when one ventured into the public arena, where in-group self-identity and reputation management was a paramount concern and often involved guarding information about, and protecting the honor of one's self and one's primary group.

Other important studies of gossip in extant traditional Mediterranean societies have been conducted by Juliet du Boulay, Don Handelman, and David Gilmore (1978, 1987). These and other ethnographies bear out at least four essential aspects of gossip in Mediterranean cultures:

gossip flourishes in collectivistic, agonistic societies that operate with an idea of “limited good”;

The Form and Function of Gossip

Gossip is face-to-face, evaluative talk between two individuals or groups about an absent third-party subject, generated by unexpected, unscripted words and/or deeds that cut against the grain of managed impressions of the way things ought to be. Because speech and talk occur within particular cultural contexts, gossip is generated by words and/or deeds that go against the grain of social and cultural scripts that inform discussants when an event demands the sense-making activity of gossip. Thus, gossip is a social process that evaluates events—words and/or actions—by socially (re)constructing the event(s) and the person(s) involved, either positively or negatively. A positive evaluation often results in positive labeling or honoring of the subject, while a negative appraisal results in social sanctioning, challenges, dis-honoring, and even shaming. Since a social script reflects the shared values of the community that construes and affirms it, it is understandable why gossip is at times quite vitriolic in character seeing that an event generating the talk is essentially challenging the script.

Absence of the subject is an important component of gossip. This implies that the person talked about is not in full control of the construction of his/her identity, as is understood to be the case in modern Euro-American cultures, let alone his/her words or actions. Instead, both events and identity are at least in part socially constructed. This aspect of gossip makes perfect sense in the collectivist culture of the first century Mediterranean world wherein a person's identity is embedded in his/her primary group and so not determined by a bounded self-identity as it is in modern Western individualistic cultures (Malina 1996: 67–96).

In the process of a gossip event, the subject's absence nurtures and/or creates the social space for the construction of the subject by those who either experienced the “generative event” initially, or have already experienced, or even actively participated in gossip about the event(s) and the person(s) involved. Interestingly, one can find narrative clues in the Gospels indicating ways persons engaging in gossip actually create private space to talk about a subject, even though the subject is actually present in the story. Indeed, there are instances where the subject of negative gossip is rendered absent by narrative descriptions of physical positioning of the discussants, that is, when gossipers “turn toward one another,” murmur “among themselves,” or even speak of a subject in the third person when the subject is right there (examples follow below).

New Testament Scholars and Gossip

Pieter J. J. Botha pioneered looking at the New Testament through the lens of gossip nearly twenty years ago with a provisional investigation into the power of gossip and rumor in the first-century Mediterranean oral culture wherein there was uncritical embrace of the spoken word over the written word (Botha 1993: 273; cf. Botha 1998; Witherington: 28; Graham). Botha asserts the importance of situational factors for determining not only the character of a gossip event, but the motivation for the event in the first place, namely, unexpected/unscripted behavior and/or speech (1998: 279). Once a crisis situation emerges due to events “incomprehensible in terms of established assumptions,” the social and, indeed, subjective (re)construction of reality commences by means of social discourse (Botha 1993: 213–14, 220). In other words, it takes unscripted/unexpected actions, events, or speech—what is referred to here as a “generative event” (cf. Daniels: 17–18)—for gossip and rumor to emerge in an attempt to (re)construct the event itself, and either re-enforce or re-script the social reality in light of the event, given the new information gained from the multiple subjective experiences of it. The multiple experiences and retellings of events are what constitute the “generative event,” and in such a way that the event is only fully constituted and knowable as such “in its collective experiencing, telling, and retelling” (Craffert: 104). Put another way, there are no single “primordial” events, but only events experienced by persons, and then socially constructed by speech and talk. Such multiple subjective experiences of events are constitutive of what Werner Kelber describes as the equiprimordiality of events (139).

Richard Rohrbaugh's work on gossip underscores the ancient Mediterranean concern for group formation/maintenance, and the hyper-concern for reputation and status. Rohrbaugh (138–44) identifies four functions of gossip:

clarification and enforcement of group values;

All of these emphasize both functionalist (Gluckman) and transactionalist (Paine) aspects of gossip but more importantly situate the phenomenon deeply in the context of the collectivist culture characterized by agonistic competition for honor in a world of limited good. Rohrbaugh also constructs a lexicon of gossip identifying words often associated with such speech (134–38). The lexicon has its limits however, since although there are a number of words in antiquity conveying speech of some kind including gossip, it is both the social context and communicative dynamics of the information exchange that characterize speech as gossip, or not, much more so than any word such as “they said,” “they asked,” or “he replied.” Nevertheless, the lexicon offers an extremely helpful heuristic tool to see speech and talk in the Bible differently. Lastly, Rohrbaugh sees in the New Testament, texts about gossip (e.g., 1 Tim 5:13), texts reporting gossip (e.g., Mark 1:28; 2:16; 5:14 et al.), and texts “that are themselves gossip” (e.g., Mark 2:18-144-46). A recent examination of Luke 14:18–20 by Ernest van Eck suggests another type of gossip text is to be found in the New Testament, that is, one which implies that gossip has indeed occurred.

Marianne Kartzow's research on gossip in the Pastoral Epistles (2009; cf. also 2005; 2010) is significant since it discloses how the Pastoralist's negative characterization of female speech as “gossip” may have served to silence women in early second century Christian communities. This opinion is reasoned in light of the rather universal negative appraisal of gossip as dangerous, subversive, even deviant discourse, and notices how it is used in the literature to “other” those engaging in such talk. This makes sense given the Pastoralist's concern to offer the typical, and thus patriarchal, Greco-Roman household as the template for the communities of faith he was writing to. Thus, the Pastoralist's characterization of young widows as “gossips and busybodies” who say “what they should not say” (1 Tim 5:13b; this and all translations from NRSV). Like the labeling of the young widows in the text, the labeling of the author's “opponents” is often related to their speech that is only “meaningless talk” (1 Tim 1:6), “profane myths” and “old wives tales” (1 Tim 4:7), and “profane chatter” (1 Tim 6:20). They are after all “rebellious,” “idle talkers and deceivers” (Titus 1:10; cf. Kartzow 2005: 258).

Finally, the role gossip plays in constituting social identity in the New Testament, specifically Jesus' identity in John's Gospel, has been carefully considered (Daniels 2008). Unlike other probes by New Testament scholars concentrating primarily on gossip as a topic of discussion in ancient literature and the bible (Botha; Kartzow; Rohrbaugh), the focus here is on gossip “in action,” that is, talk actually occurring in the narrative. The result is a lucid portrayal of gossip colluding with other social values and processes of antiquity (honor, shame, challenge-riposte, limited good, deviant labeling, titular honoring, et al.) to construct Jesus' identity in John. Gossip is thus, envisaged as intricately woven into the socio-cultural fabric of antiquity, both constructing events and identities, as well as catalyzing the social game of challenge-riposte. Interestingly, Jesus' identity in John's story-world is seen to be rather ambiguous for both insiders and outsiders who engage in gossip yielding an unsettled portrait of him (Daniels: 194). Moreover, from the broader perspective of historical Jesus research, this work suggests the viability of linking literary features in the Gospels about oral phenomena to a historically and thus, culturally plausible historical figure thoroughly embedded in his first century Mediterranean world (Daniels: 195–96).

Greco-Roman and Israelite Appraisal of Gossip

Gossip is discussed often in Greco-Roman and Israelite literature wherein it is nearly universally understood to be a peculiarly dangerous and subversive mode of speech. Examples of the negative evaluation of gossip are plentiful in the literature, and have been cited before by scholars of the New Testament (e.g., Rohrbaugh: 130–31). I offer here only a few examples to get the point across.

Reflecting on gossip's deleterious effect on families and close relations, second century rhetorician Lucian sees gossip as “slanderous lying” that drives a wedge between acquaintances and friends, parents and children, brothers, and often results in the very destruction of cities (Cal. 1). Plutarch imagines nature as privy to the perils of “garrulous” speech since it constructs the teeth as a “stockade” to guard against unrestrained talk, even to the point of biting the tongue until it bleeds (Mor. 6.503C). Indeed, to Plutarch's mind, the speech of “babblers” is “ineffectual” and “fruitless” (Mor. 6.503B). He further compares gossips to cooks and fishermen who are always busily searching for a “good crop of calamities” or a good “haul of difficulties” that can be fished out or butchered (Mor. 6.519B). To be sure, gossips are busybodies, possessed by “an affliction called malignancy,” driven by envy to root out another's evils (Mor. 6.518C). Interestingly, Plutarch connects gossip with the concern for maintaining family/group secrecy by describing gossips as “gluing their ears to their neighbor's wall” and attending to the “whisperings” of slaves and women (Mor. 6.519F).

Aware of the adverse effects of gossip, the Israelite literature of Deuteronomy offers self-critical commentary on the “grumbling” against Moses and Yhwh that runs through the Exodus narrative (e.g. Deut 1:26–27). Israelite awareness of the danger gossip posed to the survival of the community was acute, and reflected in warnings against “slandering among your people,” slandering a neighbor, speaking against kin or even one's own mother's child (Lev 19:16; Pss 101:5; 50:19–20). Sensitivity to slander about the community by outsiders is manifest in the texts as well (e.g., Ps 35:15–16). To the Israelite mind, on target was the sage who uttered “The wise heart will heed commandments, but the babbling fool will come to ruin” (Prov 10:8).

The New Testament's Evaluation of Gossip

Gossip and rumor are phenomena seen in the New Testament, like the prevailing literature of the time, as particularly dangerous. A few texts offer reflective comment on such speech and thus paint the familiar portrait. In Matthew's Gospel, for example, Jesus is giving instructions to his disciples before sending them out to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel” when he exhorts his disciples to “proclaim from housetops” what is “whispered” in secret—even what Jesus himself says to them “in the dark” (Matt 10:27–28a). Earlier in Matthew, after healing two men of their blindness, Jesus tells them both to keep it a secret, with the result that they talk about it “throughout the district” (Matt 9:31). This is of course, reflective of the Messianic Secret in Mark's Gospel where Jesus tells nearly everyone he encounters not to say a word about the things he is saying or doing in their behalf. This implies a negative appraisal of gossip and rumor since it is against Jesus' wishes that the information about him be discussed and so spread publicly. Nevertheless, a number of times in Mark the narrator makes a point that the things Jesus was saying and doing were vigorously reported by the gossip and rumor network (e.g. Mark 1:28). Indeed, Jesus himself eventually inquires among his disciples how his identity is being construed by the talk among outsiders: “Who do people say that I am?” (Mark 8:27).

The apostle Paul recalls in the Corinthian correspondence how he and others (“we”) endured while being persecuted, and spoke “kindly” when slandered, as if to offer speaking kindly as a proper response to slanderous talk (1 Cor 4:12b—13a). This is ironic since in his later correspondence to the churches in Galatia, the apostle resorts to rather defamatory discourse about Peter in the incident at Antioch (Gal 2:11–14). Epistolary correspondence like this, from the point of view of the first century Mediterranean world, can be seen as gossip since, as Holly Hearon has noticed, the distinction between the written and spoken word was so porous that written words were seen to embody the voice of the author, and thus were an extension of words actually uttered (58).

In John's Gospel one reads that Jesus would not “entrust himself” to persons that believed in him because of his “signs” (2:23–24), thus implying faith based on Jesus' signs is in John inadequate faith. These verses prepare the reader for Jesus' encounter with Nicodemus (John 3), who greets Jesus with information about who he and the rest of the Judeans think Jesus is based apparently on the information used to construct Jesus' identity via the gossip and rumor networks: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do the signs that you do apart from the presence of God” (3:2). Thus, although this is not a decisively negative appraisal of gossip, the link between “signs faith” and the gossip and rumor networks that carry the information generating such faith, suggests a negative appraisal of information about Jesus carried by the gossip network.

While negative assessment of gossip is suggested in John 2–3, it is explicit in the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman. After an extended and vigorous exchange with Jesus, the woman returns to the city of Sychar and speaks to “the people”: “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” (4:29a). John indicates that many of the people of Sychar—most plausibly, men—believed in Jesus because of the woman's “testimony” (logon; 4:39). After two days with Jesus, many more of the people believed in Jesus because of his “word” (logon; 4:41). Then, turning to the woman, the people tell her they no longer believe because of “what you said,” that is, lalian in Greek, since they have now heard for themselves (4:42). This is significant since the word used at 4:42 (lalian) translated in the NRSV as “what you said,” was one often used to indicate “meaningless talk,” or “chatter,” that is, “gossip” (Rohrbaugh: 136; Moloney: 147; contra Barrett: 243). While it is clear in John's story-world that the men of Sychar consider the woman's speech to be “chatter” (lalia) compared with Jesus' “word” (logon), this doesn't necessarily mean the Fourth Evangelist thinks the same since it is in the narrative world that the negative appraisal of the woman's lalian is diminished, and not by explicit comment on the author's part. Nevertheless, it is strikingly ironic that although gossip is both disparaged and negatively gendered in the story-world of John 4, it is the Samaritan woman's lalian that brings the people of Sychar to faith in the first place.

Because the text of the New Testament reflects the relatively universal negative appraisal of gossip, it is somewhat ironic that the heroes of the text, including Jesus and Paul, engage in the discourse, and in extraordinarily vituperative ways, as will be demonstrated below. Thus, the appraisal of gossip in the New Testament can be described as somewhat ambivalent, or at least, honest in its portrayal of ancient modes of speech.

Gossip in the New Testament

What follows are only a few examples of texts from the New Testament associated with gossip. It's possible to find texts in the New Testament that describe the healthy gossip and rumor network (e.g., Mark 1:28; 5:20; Luke 4:37; 7:17; et al.), offer comment—usually negative—on gossip (e.g., 1 Tim 3:11; 5:13; 2 Tim 2:16; Titus 3:2), report information resulting from gossip (e.g., John 3:2; 9:24; Luke 14:18–20; et al. See van Eck), and describe gossip happening in the narrative (see below). It may be surprising that gossip also occurs between the author of either a biblical narrative or letter/epistle, and the reader. Thus, a narrator can offer an “aside” that gives the reader evaluative information about characters (e.g., John 12:6), or a letter writer can talk about someone to his intended audience (Gal 2:11–14), again, since the distinction between the written word and the spoken word in antiquity was so porous. It will also become evident that gossip is closely tied to other socio-cultural processes usually associated with identity construction as talk carries some of the building-blocks of social identity. Again, the aim is for the reader to be able to go to the text with a keen awareness of speech and talk happening, and with some idea of the social dynamics both generating the speech and being reified by it.

In Mark's Gospel, Jesus exorcises an unclean spirit from a man in the Capernaum synagogue (1:21–26). The exorcism is briefly described in some detail, and followed by a description of the reaction(s) of those who witness the event. The depiction of the people as “amazed” is immediately followed with a report of their talk about what just occurred. Jesus' action of exorcising the unclean spirit generates discourse about his character, that is, he is a teacher teaching something new and authoritative, and someone whom “even unclean spirits” obey (1:27). Thus, the entire gossip event can be seen as comprising a generative event (the exorcism) that elicits third-person speech about Jesus that is evaluative in nature—in this case, quite positive—constructing Jesus as a holy man able to interact with the spirit world, and a teacher of new and authoritative knowledge. The very next verse in Mark reports how this information about Jesus is then spread by gossip and rumor “throughout the surrounding region of Galilee” (1:28; cf. Mark 1:45; 2:1; 3:8, 21; Matt 4:24; 9:26; Luke 8:34, 39b; et al.).

In John's Gospel, after telling his brothers that he didn't intend to go to Jerusalem for the festival of Booths, Jesus in fact, does go in secret (John 7:2–10). John then reports that the Judeans were looking for him there (7:11) and gossiping about his character (7:12). Interestingly, the gossip is deliberative in nature with the discussants divided over whether Jesus is a “good man” or somehow deceptive: “No, he is deceiving the crowd” (7:12b). Again, the elements of the gossip event are rather straightforward. Jesus' apparent absence from Jerusalem during the festival is the generative event that catalyzes the talk. The discourse is evaluative, having to do with Jesus' character, either “good” or deceptive. Unlike the gossip at Mark 1:27 where there is apparent agreement on the character of the subject, here at John 7:12 we have disagreement among the gossipers. Bolstering the case that this indeed, constitutes a gossip event is the fact that the narrator describes the Judean crowds' talk as “complaining” (gongudzō) which is one of the words in Rohrbaugh's gossip lexicon (136). Consequently, the evaluative nature of speech involved in gossip may be straight-forward with all participants affirming a shared evaluation of the subject, or more nuanced, even ambivalent, with participants disagreeing about how to evaluate the subject. Such ambivalence in the narrative world of course, quite explicitly invites the reader into the discussion as a participant in the evaluation of the subject, and so, the construction of the identity of Jesus.

Several gossip events in the New Testament provide a clear look at the close relationship between speech/talk and other social processes and values, including both the process of challenge-riposte and the value of honor. Honor is the pivotal social value of antiquity recognized by all, from Aristotle to Xenophon to Philo, as the most precious external good of the ancient Mediterranean world, and is associated with happiness, success, and fame. Briefly stated, honor is the publicly recognized reputation, status, and standing in one's community so that every public social interaction was scripted by honor status. In Jesus' world, honor, like other “goods,” was in limited supply so there was only so much to go around. Since, the supply of honor was fully distributed, the acquisition of such goods was realized only at the expense of another's loss of that good (G. M. Foster). Honor gained resulted in honor lost for someone, somewhere.

Honor was (re)distributed by “the public court of reputation” (Crook) usually after someone lost honor in a social interaction called “challenge-riposte.” The phrase “challenge-riposte” describes the public hassling of someone by another in an attempt to gain honor and status. Challenges often came in the form of questions uttered at someone in public in an attempt to stump, or expose the person's public honor status/claim as foolishness. Such public challenges were just the sort of thing to generate gossip as observers would witness the challenge-riposte, recognize the winner of the exchange, (re)construct the event through speech and talk, and then either (re)distribute honor to the challenger, or reaffirm the honor of the one challenged, either way by speech and talk about the event and the persons involved.

The gossip event at John 6:52 is striking since gossip's typical role of describing and reporting the transaction of honor and shame, is expanded to include actually operating as a challenge in the form of evaluative speech intended to be overheard by the subject, and thus demanding a public response. At John 6:52 the Judeans are described as disputing “among themselves” and saying “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Sometimes a reader is tipped off about gossip by a narrative description of the talkers physically moving, or positioning themselves in order to effectively create the “private space” for gossip to occur even when the subject is actually present, as is the case here (Handelman: 213). So, after effectively rendering the subject absent by talking “among themselves,” the Judeans ask a question that implies a negative evaluation of Jesus and his words. This can be seen as not only negative gossip generated by Jesus' strange words, but gossip of a peculiarly aggressive kind since it appears that Jesus is intended to overhear the talk. In such cases, the gossip is operative as a challenge, that is, a very public challenge in response to Jesus' words that cut against the grain of common expectations. In other words, the Judeans' question at 6:52 is an attempt to expose Jesus' words as foolish. Such a challenge demands a response, which Jesus offers (6:53–58).

Another example of aggressive gossip intended to be overheard by the subject is found early in Luke's Gospel (4:16–30). After reading from the Torah and offering comment in the Nazareth synagogue, the author reports that those in attendance spoke well of Jesus and then, rather suddenly commenced challenging his honor by questioning his lineage: “Is not this Joseph's son?” (4:22). While this interesting mix of positive and negative evaluation of Jesus in this third-person discourse may represent Luke's attempt to soften the congregation's response as described in the Markan original (Mark 6:1–6), it is possible to see Luke's scenario as a plausible description of gossip among persons that is ambivalent, or that devolves from positive to negative appraisal resulting in Jesus' insulting riposte (4:23–27). Jesus' insult is indicative of the congregation's intent to cut Jesus down to size with their question about his lineage and so illustrates Luke's emendation of Mark to be somewhat awkward. In any event, seeing the story through the lens of gossip helps underscore the virulent character of what is otherwise seen typically as a strange exchange.

In Matthew's Gospel, the public hassling for honor via challenge-riposte reaches a climax in chapters 21–23, after Jesus disrupts the normal operation of the Temple (21:12— 17). From 21:23 through 22:39, Jesus is on the receiving end of a number of challenges from chief priests, elders of the people, Pharisees, and Sadducees. Finally, at 22:41 Jesus becomes the aggressor, asking the Pharisees a question to which, according to the text, they have no adequate response (22:46). Jesus wins and thus publicly shames the Pharisees. But he is not finished with them. Apparently with the Pharisees still there, at 23:1 Jesus directs his speech to the crowds and his disciples (the “public court of reputation”) and launches into a particularly negative gossip discourse about the character of the Pharisees (23:1–7). The narrative implies the gossip is intended by Jesus to be overheard by the Pharisees, and thus is used as an effective weapon in this counter-challenge. Moreover, in terms of performance, Jesus' turning away from the Pharisees to address the crowds operates as a physical affront, and thus an explicit public challenge to their honor status (Malina 2001: 38–39). Almost immediately afterwards, Jesus directs his speech back at the Pharisees and proceeds with a spate of name-calling with the crowds still there to hear: “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” (23:13).

Matthew portrays Jesus as being quite intentional in his performance of gossip as a counter-challenge to the initial sustained challenge of the Pharisees. Jesus' gossip not only draws the public court of reputation into the discourse—and not just as casual observers/listeners, but as co-creators in his construal of the Pharisees—but masterfully prepares the ground for his own sustained, public attack on their reputation. Thus, the author of Matthew is apparently aware that context matters insofar as it both heightens the tension, and provides a complex social matrix that fortifies Jesus' direct address to the Pharisees with even more potency. The entire scenario offers a quite plausible, intricate portrait of an agonistic public exchange between Jesus and his opponents that has a gossiping Jesus clearly coming out of the fray as the victor.

In Paul's letter to the churches in Galatia, the Apostle actually gossips about an “incident” in the Antioch church involving himself and Cephas in order to gain advantage over his “opponents” in the Galatian congregations. The tone of Paul's speech is quite negative and aims at dishonoring Cephas because of his apparent (to Paul) inconsistency. As Paul relates it, despite the decision of the Jerusalem Council to allow two separate ministries—one to the uncircumcised, the other to the circumcised—to proceed naturally, Cephas apparently decided that, although he was an apostle to the circumcised, while visiting the Gentile congregation in Antioch he would go ahead and relax his Torah observance with respect to food, and eat with the Gentile believers in Jesus. Presumably after sharing meals on a regular basis with Gentiles, Cephas withdrew from such table fellowship upon the arrival of a delegation from James (the Jerusalem church) to see what was going on.

What is striking about Galatians 2:11–14 is that it is gossip embedded in the text of a letter, and thus may be called “epistolary gossip.” Elements of gossip are quite clear in this text. The generative event is the influence of Paul's “opponents” in Galatia that are encouraging circumcision among the believers in Jesus Messiah. Paul decides to relate a story of a fantastic challenge-riposte scenario, but one-sidedly so, since he only describes his challenge to Cephas' actions at Antioch and says nothing about any riposte on Cephas' part. On the one hand, the information Paul relates about Cephas is evaluative and quite negative. The cowardly Cephas is afraid of displeasing the people from James with his behavior (2:12). Even worse, he leads others in Antioch to do the same, including Paul's companion, Barnabas (2:13). On the other hand, Paul's evaluative construal of himself is honorable. He opposed Cephas “to his face” and said what he said to Cephas “before them all” (2:11, 14). Paul's (re) construction of the incident is an act of self-identity construction on his part, at Cephas' expense of course, and aimed at evincing “the truth of the Gospel” over-against his Galatian opponents. Paul demonstrates his honor, standing alone for the gospel in a losing cause.

As mentioned earlier, an important aspect of gossip is its role in constructing events and the social identities of the personal subjects of the speech. Two things are particularly interesting about Paul's “epistolary gossip” in the Galatian letter. To begin with, Paul is not present with the group of people he is gossiping to about the incident. Moreover, the letter was most likely read aloud, that is “performed,” by someone to an audience. The point is that in his attempt to construct the incident at Antioch, as well as both his and Cephas' identities, Paul is not in control. To be precise, Paul has no control over how the content of his gossip is going to be performed by a reader, no control over how the incident is going to be co-created between himself, the reader, and the Galatians, and no control over how either his or Cephas' identities are going to ultimately be constructed. This is important to Paul since intentionality in communal discourse is involved in the construction of identity, in this case, Paul's identity vis-à-vis Peter's and, by implication, the identity of Paul's “opponents” advocating circumcision in the Galatian congregations. This is indeed, a singularly interesting gossip text.

Conclusion

Gossip is evaluative speech among persons generated by unexpected words or deeds. The personal subject of such talk is either actually absent or rendered absent to the conversation that attempts to (re)assert managed impressions, and/or (re)construct reality and social identity. As the examination of the texts above suggests, by paying attention to talk about persons in the biblical text, rather than focusing primarily on words uttered by characters (like Jesus, Peter, or Paul), one can get a sense of the pervasiveness and power of public discourse, along with numerous other social processes, to construct, maintain, and sometimes re-imagine the world.