Larry Hurtado on the "Bookishness" of Early Christianity

Turns Out, We've Always Been Nerds

In Larry Hurtado’s fantastic survey of the early church, “Destroyer of the gods”, he seeks to unpack what made early Christianity unique. Part of his fascination, admittedly, is that early Christianity is one of two surviving religions from the Roman Empire (Judaism the other), and it began as a fledgling faith with a meager group of adherents into a rapidly growing global religion.

Each chapter is precise, offering unique observations of the early church. But chapter 4, “A Bookish Religion”, held special fascination for me. Hurtado begins:

Most people today probably presume that sacred books, “scriptures,” are central for any religion. That is not actually the case if we look at the longer and wider scope of religions through the ages. It is another notion that we have inherited, and largely from Christianity. In the context of the Roman-era religious setting, early Christianity was unusual as a “bookish” religion..By calling early Christianity “bookish,” I simply assert that reading, writing, copying, and dissemination of texts had a major place—indeed, a prominence—in early Christianity that, except for ancient Jewish circles, was unusual for religious groups of the Roman era. This is not a new observation on my part. Other scholars also have referred to early Christian circles as “constitutionally oriented to texts” and as “textual communities” and have described the early Christian movement collectively as one with “texts at its very heart and soul.

In other words, Christianity is a particularly nerdy religion. There’s no way around it. I found this somewhat encouraging, since I think one of the going (but tired) criticisms of evangelicalism today is its “bookishness”. But as Hurtado notes, this “bookishness” - its commitment specifically to a set of texts containing its chief teachings - has always been a unique feature of Christianity (and Judaism). We it both within the pages of scripture, and without.

We this straight from the early letters themselves.

Probably from still earlier, there is the explicit exhortation in 1 Timothy 4:13 to “give attention to the public reading of scripture” as important among the responsibilities to be fulfilled by the “Timothy” addressed in this text.

Hurtado uses this text to make another point, which he’ll expand a bit later: the “oral” tradition of the New Testament authors tends to be overstated. There certainly was an oral tradition, but near straight from the beginning, Christianity becomes textual:

But although it is likely that only a minority of Roman-era people, perhaps a small minority, could read well enough to handle texts such as those in the Old Testament or those that came to form the New Testament, all that was needed in any given circle of believers was one person able to serve as reader for the others…this corporate reading of texts in early churches, and in synagogues, also makes less crucial the widely agreed view that in the Roman era only a minority, perhaps a small minority, of people were sufficiently literate to be able to read such extended literary texts. All that was needed was one person in a given church or synagogue able to read out a text, all the others present thereby enabled to have knowledge of the text and be affected by it. That is, whether they were able to read for themselves or not, Christians were able to obtain an acquaintance with the texts read out in their corporate worship gatherings. Romantic notions of a pervasive early Christian “orality” that left little room or need for texts all rest on a body of ill-informed assumptions…To be sure, the Christian texts in view here were intended to be read out/aloud to a gathered Christian group, the text “performed” orally—that is, read aloud competently to promote the understanding of them. But the point to emphasize here is that what were thus “performed” were written texts read from manuscript copies.

Christians not only regularly read scripture aloud to one another, they also very early on created a unique systematic way for Christians to hear all of the scriptures throughout the year:

Indeed, the ancient practice of reading and discussing scripture texts became so much a regular part of early Christian corporate worship that it led in due course to the creation of manuscripts specifically prepared for liturgical usage, with readings arranged in the order of their intended usage, comprising an apparently new literary genre called the “lectionary.” Various conventions developed for the regularized reading of scriptures in churches across the early centuries. But, notwithstanding the differences in these schemes, they all indicate that a shared practice of scripture reading as part of Christian corporate worship was, or quickly became, widespread.

To reiterate Hurdato’s earlier point, this is incredibly odd, from a religious perspective. In fact, in a sense, the early Christian movement shows a deep commitment to a certain kind of philosophical living:

Indeed, the regular and prominent place of the reading of certain texts in synagogues and early Christian circles resembles more the ethos of Roman-era philosophical groups than the typical practice of “religion” of the time.17 The specific textual practices of the various schools of philosophy varied, but they were all “consumers of texts,” and, in their gatherings, texts were “part of the everyday business of teaching and learning.”

All of this reading, in fact, extended beyond the group gatherings into the lives of individuals. This in itself is radical, because it’s introducing the idea - utterly unique in the Roman world - that individuals could commune with God, and this was done through a specific text:

In summary, along with the scriptures inherited from the Jewish tradition, the “Old Testament,” early Christian writings as well were read, and read a lot, both in the setting of corporate worship and in private settings by individuals. In this, and especially in the regular reading of texts as part of corporate worship, early Christianity was different from almost any other kind of religious group of the Roman era, synagogue practice being the only close analogy.

Authority

Returning to the scriptures’ own evidence that Christianity was “textual”, Hurtado points out that it’s clear the New Testament authors intended their letter to be public, authoritative, and distributed. So the idea that in the New Testament that we’re “reading someone else’s mail”, or that Paul never intended his letters to be treated as authoritative is self-evidently false. We see this in the book of Revelation, clearly:

There are other examples of early Christian texts intended to be read translocally. The book of Revelation addresses churches in seven cities of the Roman province of Asia Minor (2:1–3:21), and so it too was either copied for each church or sent along to each in succession. The Epistle of James is addressed “to the twelve tribes of the Dispersion” (1:1),

Paul himself treats his letters as a proxy of his authority:

Note, for example, Paul’s strong statement in 1 Corinthians 14:37-38 that anyone who refuses to recognize the authoritative nature of his letter is “not to be recognized”!24 Indeed, even within his lifetime, Paul’s letters were intended and functioned as written surrogates for his personal presence.

Peter, also, treats Paul’s writings on par with the Old Testament scriptures:

Our earliest clear confirmation that Paul’s letters were being treated as authoritative texts—indeed, our earliest explicit reference to any Christian texts referred to as “scriptures”—is in 2 Peter 3:15-16. Note that this passage alludes to a collection of Pauline epistles, in the phrase “all his letters,” and also counts them among “the other scriptures.” That is, the author of 2 Peter includes Paul’s letters as having the status of scriptures along with “Old Testament” writings.

Amazingly, Hurtado notes, Peter gives away a little secret in these passages…even some of the troublemakers in the early church considered Paul’s writings authoritative!

Still further, it is striking that both the author of 2 Peter and those whom he regards as “ignorant and unstable” (v. 16) seem to share a high regard for Paul’s letters. That is, the author and those other Christians whom he denigrates here disagreed over how to interpret Paul’s letters, but they apparently agreed that they are authoritative texts whose interpretation matters. Clearly, the scriptural status of Paul’s letters was rather widely affirmed across various Christian groups already by the date of 2 Peter (ca. 70–140 AD?), even among Christians who strongly disagreed with one another over other matters of faith.

Innovation

All of this devotion to bookishness produced several innovations in media. The biographies of Jesus are one such genre-bending innovation:

Justin [Martyr’s] specific reference to Gospels (plural) written both by “the apostles and by those who followed them” (Dialogue with Trypho 103:8) is particularly intriguing…In short, the Gospels in their several ways appear to have appropriated the biographical genre but did so for quite distinctive purposes and with innovative results.

One of my GCTS professors referred to the scripture’s gospel genre as “theological biography”. They exist at the border of history and pedagogy, carefully curating each moment from Jesus’ life for their sweeping theological vision. These, too, were intended to be read aloud:

The Gospel of Luke, like its sequel, Acts, is formally dedicated to a “Theophilus,” but such dedications were often intended to secure the help of the person in publishing the work in question for others to read as well. So, whether Theophilus was a real or fictive figure, the author rather clearly aimed for a wider readership than him.

In addition, Christians themselves seemed to frenzily produce text after text for one another;

Early Christianity was distinctively “bookish,” not only in the place that the reading of certain texts held in their gatherings, but also in the sheer volume of production of new Christian texts….The number and substance of the writings produced is all the more remarkable when we remember that all through this early period Christians were still relatively few in number and small as a percentage of the total Roman-era population. In fact, to my knowledge, among the many other Roman-era religious groups, there is simply no analogy for this variety, vigor, and volume in Christian literary output.

This is all the more remarkable when we consider the incredible heft of some of Paul’s writings, almost unheard of in Greco-Roman times:

Ordinary ancient papyrus letters of the Greco-Roman era (and about 14,000 survive) averaged 87 words each, hardly ever exceeding 200 words. Essentially, these letters served basic and simple communication needs, such as assuring the recipient, “I am well and I trust you are too.” Even if we consider letters by learned figures, some of them more ambitious vehicles for extended discourses on certain subjects, Paul’s letters stand out in size. The 796 preserved letters of Cicero range from 22 to 2,530 words, and the 124 extant letters of Seneca range from 149 to 4,134 words. In comparison, Paul’s smallest letter, Philemon, is 395 words, extraordinarily large for what looks to be a simple personal letter and well beyond the average length of ancient Greek letters overall. If we consider Paul’s larger letters, which have more extended discussion

Hurtado notes that this was not particular to Paul’s social status or scholarly skills. These were, rather, labors of love, born of conviction about the nature of the Christian faith:

This is especially so for the earliest texts, such as those that make up the New Testament, given that Paul and other early Christian authors were neither professional writers nor of the wealthy and leisured classes with slaves to attend to their needs and with copious free time.

So, in a sense, verbosity is a Christian innovation. Yes, you can now use that one on your spouse.

Another such innovation was the use of portable “codex”, so that individuals could read privately and aloud, anywhere:

The codex was certainly also known but was in limited usage, and mainly for work-a-day texts, such as tables of astronomical data or lists of medical remedies. From some comments by the Roman writer Martial, however, we know that by the late first century AD there were also a few experiments with producing copies of his poems and perhaps a few other literary texts by others as well, in the form of small codices intended for informal usage and portability….Furthermore, to underscore the point, Christian preference for the codex was not uniformly strong for all texts but, instead, particularly strong precisely for texts that they most highly valued, those that they treated as scriptures.

The final innovation Hurtado notes is the “nomina sacra”, the practice of using abbreviations for God’s name, and Christ’s name. These are remarkable in that they demonstrate an early understanding of Christ’s divinity. But they are also remarkable in that they communicate another unique aspect of Christianity: God was both transcendent (his name wasn’t written down), and imminent (Christians, unlike Jews, still read the names of God, including Christ, aloud in public hearing):

There is no instance of nomina sacra forms in pre-Christian Jewish manuscripts…But, so far as we know, when early Christian readers came to the nomina sacra forms in their texts, they simply pronounced the words as if they were written in full and in ordinary form….as purely a visual phenomenon, the nomina sacra comprise what are probably our earliest extant attempts by Christians to register their faith/piety visually in an early symbolic manner.

Community

One final feature we can note about the “bookishness” of early Christianity is also how deeply communal and networked this reading of scripture tended to be:

Certainly, by all indications, early Christians were very much involved in what we would call a committed “networking” with one another and across considerable distances….In view of how much time and resources early churches devoted to communicating with one another, in the process developing their own system for doing so, we may ask what it tells us about how early Christian groups regarded one another. Well, I think that it certainly shows that Christians thought of themselves as connected with other believers translocally and that they thought it crucial to share texts with one another as constitutive of their faith. There was, for example, “a busy, almost hectic traffic of messengers and letters between the churches” of Asia Minor.

This feverish production of early Christian texts isn’t just about intellectual curiosity. There is a certain obligation to share with all what God has granted to one.

In conclusion:

Any adequate analysis of early Christianity must reckon with its “bookish” nature.

NERD!