New Testament scholars have often relied on outdated assumptions for understanding the composition and circulation of the gospels. This scholarship has spread myths or misconceptions about how the ancients read, wrote, and published texts.

Nicholas Elder updates our knowledge of the gospels’ media contexts in this myth-busting academic study. Carefully combing through Greco-Roman primary sources, he exposes what we take for granted about ancient reading cultures and offers new and better ways to understand the gospels. These myths include claims that ancients never read silently and that the canonical gospels were all the same type of text. Elder then sheds light on how early Christian communities used the gospels in diverse ways. Scholars of the gospels and classics alike will find Gospel Media an essential companion in understanding ancient media cultures.

Dr. Nick Elder (PhD, Marquette University) is Associate Professor of New Testament at the University of Dubuque, where he teaches undergraduate Bible and Theology courses and New Testament, exegesis, and Greek courses in the theological seminary. He is the author of Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions (Eerdmans, 2024) and The Media Matrix of Early Jewish and Christian Narrative (Bloomsbury, 2019). He is a father of four, a spouse of one, a home renovator, and a distance runner.

https://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Media-Reading-Circulating-Traditions/dp/0802879217

https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Narrative-Library-Testament-Studies/dp/0567688100

Music: Ethereal Vistas by Denis Brodovskyi

Gospel Media: Reading, Writing, and Circulating Jesus Traditions With Dr. Nicholas A. Elder