Chance E. Bonar, "The Author in Early Christian Literature" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Mar 17, 2025

Chance E. Bonar, a postdoctoral researcher at Tufts University, dives into the intriguing world of authorship in early Christian literature. He discusses the shift from anonymous to orthonymous writing, exploring how early Christian authors used their names to assert authority and shape narratives. The conversation highlights the collaborative authorship in Paul's letters and the impact of Jewish thought on early Christian texts. Bonar also tackles the challenges of recovering ancient works and how citation practices reflect the complexities of identity and authority.

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Episode notes

Intro

00:00 • 2min

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Authorship in Early Christian Literature

01:36 • 14min

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Exploring Authorship in Paul's Letters and Its Complexities

15:43 • 4min

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Unpacking Pauline Authorship

20:10 • 15min

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Engaging Jewish and Christian Thought through Early Citations

34:55 • 5min

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Recovering Ancient Texts

39:59 • 7min

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While scholars of ancient Mediterranean literature have focused their efforts heavily on explaining why authors would write pseudonymously or anonymously, less time has been spent exploring why an author would write orthonymously (that is, under their own name).

The Author in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge UP, 2025) explores how early Christian writers began to care deeply about 'correct' attribution of both Christian and non-Christian literature for their own apologetic purposes, as well as how scholars have overlooked the function that orthonymity plays in some early Christian texts. Orthonymity was not only a decision made by a writer regarding how to attribute one's own writings, but also how to classify other writers' texts based on proper or improper attribution. This Element urges us to examine forms of authorship that are often treated as an unexamined default, as well as to more robustly consider when, how, for whom, and for what purposes an instance of authorial attribution is deemed 'correct.

New Books in Late Antiquity is Presented by Ancient Jew Review

Chance Bonar is a postdoc at Tufts University.

Michael Motia teaches in the classics and religious studies department at UMass Boston

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