This chapter summarizes Paul’s gospel of divine self-sacrifice, giving special attention to the character of the righteous God responsible for his gospel. It identifies how divine righteousness figures in a solution to the human predicament of the corrosive powers of sin and death by offering a remedy in reparative self-sacrifice. The needed reparative sacrifice begins with divine self-sacrifice that includes the sacrifice of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, but it does not end there. It calls for human reciprocity in self-sacrifice to God, as voluntary sharing in the life-giving obedience of Jesus Christ to God. The chapter identifies how God agitates in human history to attract the cooperation of humans in such reparative self-sacrifice. This divine effort is at the center of God’s righteous love for humans, regardless of their national, ethnic, or religious background. Paul focused his calling from God on the good news that God has intervened in human history, climactically in Jesus Christ, to attract humans to cooperation with this good news.

For the writers of the books of the New Testament, as well as for Christians thereafter, “gospel reading” included reading the books of the Jewish Scriptures, which were understood to bear witness to the coming of Christ (cf. e.g. Matt. 1:22–23 and Isa. 7:14) and thereby to the gospel (e.g. Gal. 3:8–13 and Gen. 15:6). Subsequently, “Christological readings” of what became the Christian Old Testament took a variety of forms, many of which moved beyond identifying prophetic predictions of the coming Messiah to attempts to identify the preincarnate Word as a distinct agent in the Old Testament books. Although such strategies have long been called into question on historical-critical grounds, this essay will argue that there are also specifically Trinitarian reasons for eschewing such approaches to the text, arguing instead that a more faithfully Christological reading of Israel’s Scriptures will focus not on the whereabouts of the preincarnate Word, but on the topic of YHWH’s presence in and to Israel, as that which assumes new and unpredictable but nevertheless consistent form in the incarnation. This chapter explores a form of theological “gospel reading” in which early Christian writers, steeped in the Jewish scriptural traditions, discerned in Jesus the activity and presence of Israel’s God.

Mark opens his account of Jesus with “the beginning of the gospel of Jesus the Christ” (Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ). Although modern readers often associate the term “gospel” here with the now long-established genre by the same name, Mark clearly elaborates what he means (at least in part) in what follows

Whereas Luke and Matthew are literary products of gospel reading, only the Johannine corpus demonstrates within the canon how a gospel was read by a specific network of early Christian communities. The Johannine Epistles (likely penned in a context later than that of the Fourth Gospel) affirm, clarify, expand, modify, and in some cases even omit key themes emphasized by the evangelist. This unique intra-canonical reception of John affords the earliest model of an early Christian community’s gospel reading. After analyzing the broad reading dynamics imposed by the Johannine literature’s placement in the sequence of the canon, this chapter explores the interpretive practices of the Elder in order to discern a Johannine theology of textuality, writing, and gospel reading.

In Luke and Acts, many quotations from Scripture are recontextualized to portray Jesus as a character within the discourse. He is the one who will bring good news to the poor (Isa. 61:1–2 in Luke 4:18–21), the Messiah who escapes death (Ps. 16:8–11 in Acts 2:25–32), the suffering servant (Isa. 53 in Acts 8), and more. Jesus and later his disciples attest to “what was said in all the Scriptures concerning [him]” (Luke 24:27). This essay will present these gospel readings, which employ the exegetical technique commonly referred to as prosopological exegesis, alongside the assumptions of the author. While many present Luke as a capricious reader, this essay will demonstrate that his introduction of the Christ is due to a careful engagement with the biblical text. This interpretive strategy produces two gospel readings: one for Luke of Scripture and one for Luke’s audience.

Perhaps the earliest canonical gospel reader was the Apostle Paul. As a Jewish interpreter of Scripture, his conception of “gospel” was informed by a Christological understanding of both “God” as the one who rescues and “Israel” as the community rescued. Understandably, one regular feature of contemporary scholarship on Paul, especially in the English-speaking world, is reference to God as the “God of Israel.” This phrase becomes a shorthand for the commendable conviction that Paul needs to be understood within his own Jewish identity and context – shaped by his engagement with Scripture. It comes as a surprise to recognize, however, that Paul himself never uses the phrase “God of Israel” (or any of its equivalents, such as “God of Abraham,” “God of our fathers”). In Romans 3:29, he comes close, only to reject the identification of God as “God of Jews alone.” Such nomenclature does appear in other early Jewish and Christian texts, but not in Paul. As Paul “reads” the gospel, the God who “sent his Son” and “raised Jesus our Lord from the dead” is also the God who made promises to Abraham and called Israel itself into being. Yet Paul’s “reading” does not include (intentionally or unintentionally) a naming of this figure as the “God of Israel.” That silence reflects the argument, especially in Romans, that God created Israel and sustains Israel: Israel is the “Israel of God” (a phrase Paul does use). In other words, Paul “reads” the gospel backward: it is the Christ event that reveals Israel’s history and significance.

This essay will examine readings of an influential gospel motif over the first two Christian centuries. Should Christian generosity be extended to all, without condition, and should that “all” include even those who are hostile? If so, why? The chapter starts with the materials that had reached written form by the end of the first century (in Matthew 5, Luke 6, and Didache 1), focusing on the malleability of this tradition, in its various forms and with its various rationales. As a second step, it examines the pragmatics of these instructions. Starting from these three texts, but pursuing their themes into later (second-century) materials, it notes the practical difficulties regarding (a) whether this generosity is too easily abused, and (b) whether, or for how long, such generosity can be sustained. The significance of this material for the outward momentum (mission) of the church will be highlighted. As a third step, it examines the theological interpretation of these instructions, and the various ways they are connected to the character of God, or the achievement of Christ, including the ways they become integral to the “gospel.” Finally, it indicates the value of crossing the canonical boundary, the importance of reception as an active and creative phenomenon, and the theological aspects of interpretation.

Focusing on recitation and manuscript culture, this chapter opens the book by looking at the manner in which homilies would have slowly unfolded in meaning and comprehension in the minds of listeners during the church service. Studying the syntax and grammar of a Byzantine homily, the point is made that oral texts such as homilies or the Gospel reading could be variably understood given the slow pace of chanting and recitation. With these lessons in mind, the chapter turns to the introduction of illustrated initials into Byzantine manuscripts, which occurred in the post-iconoclastic period during the ninth century, particularly in the contexts of books of homilies. The aim is to understand the oral and aural valences of illuminated initials and marginalia in manuscripts, which came to define how they operated: not as static pictures, but rather as images informed by the act of reading and the complex way in which meaning reveals itself with oral texts.

In considering the uses of the lectionary by readers, this chapter focuses on the effect that the sound and acoustics of the readings’ chanting had in the space of a church like Hagia Sophia. By looking not only at ritual but also the architecture and decoration of the church, the chapter argues that the decoration of churches and the uses of the Gospel lectionaries responded to one another. Focusing on the plaque above the Imperial Doorway, for example, we see a place where an abridged lectionary is depicted, citing Gospel readings and also omitting key words, which the manuscripts show us were to be given sonic emphasis by chanters. Therefore, the argument is that architectural decorations in the church played with the impact and delivery of the chanted Gospels in order to reflect on the salvation that the readings conveyed and guaranteed to the faithful.

After brief discussion of the manuscript evidence for the Epistula Apostolorum, the primary focus of the Introduction is on questions of genre and provenance. While the (modern) Latin title presents this text as a letter, its focus on revelation also links it to Christian apocalyptic texts. Yet the Epistula is most fundamentally a gospel, with close thematic connections to other early gospel literature, especially the Gospels of Matthew and John, of which the author makes selective use at a number of points. While a question-and-answer session between Jesus and his disciples on Easter morning occupies the bulk of the text, it also includes a collection of miracle stories and an account of the ascension, confirming its gospel-like character. To describe it as an ‘apocryphal’ gospel is, however, anachronistic given its early date. References to the apostle John and the heretic Cerinthus suggest an Asian provenance, and a date of around 170 CE would account both for Jesus’ announcement of his return after 150 years and for the emphasis on the worldwide plague expected to precede that return, identifiable as the ‘great plague’ spoken of by Galen and later writers.