Orality and Literacy in Early Christianity (EABS)

Call For Papers: After exploring orality and literacy in the Pauline correspondence (Berlin, 2017), focus will shift once more to the Gospels as a different Gattung of Early Christian communication. Building on the outcomes of the previous sessions, the Gospel of Mark as the earliest macro-narrative of emerging Christianity will be explored with special attention to the question of the oral and textual transmission(s) of Jesus memories. This includes the fields orality/literacy, social memory theory and performance criticism. Presenters will deal with questions of how and why Jesus traditions might have been transported in a certain medium and what reasons might lay at the heart of medial shifts. Taking the Gospel of Mark as the study object means looking in two directions: How did the Gospel of Mark come about and how did it influence the emergence of later texts like Matthew and Luke. Thus, it implies both the transition from orality to writing as a response to an experience of crisis or a Traditionsbruch (cf. Assmann) as well as performances of Mark and their influence on the later Gospel tradition. As in the previous years, the research group will have sessions with invited speakers and open sessions. For the open session we encourage proposals from the areas: 1) Orality Studies, Form Criticism and Memory Approach of Mark’s Gospel: Old Questions and New Insights, 2) Mark’s Gospel as a Response to a Traditionsbruch, 3) Performance Criticism of Mark’s Gospel and 4) Aural/Oral Style and Patterns in Mark’s Gospel.

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