From Text to Performance

For the last two centuries, biblical interpretation has been guided by perspectives that have largely ignored the oral context in which the gospels took shape. Only recently have scholars begun to explore how ancient media inform the interpretive process and offer an understanding of the Bible. The contributors to From Text to Performance recognise that the Jesus tradition was a story heard and performed, and seek to re-evaluate the constituent elements of narrative, including characters, structure, narrator, time, and intertextuality, within this performative context. In dialogue with traditional literary approaches, these essays demonstrate that an appreciation of performance yields fresh insights distinguishable in many respects from results of literary or narrative readings of the gospels.



Kelly R. Iverson received his PhD from the Catholic University of America (Washington DC) and is Associate Professor of New Testament at Baylor University in Texas. He is the author of Gentiles in the Gospel of Mark (2007), and co-editor of Mark as Story (2011) and Unity and Diversity in the Gospels and Paul (2012).



Preface Abbreviations Contributors 1. Performance Criticism: A Paradigm Shift in New Testament Studies David Rhoads and Joanna Dewey 2. Those Sitting around Jesus: Situating the Storyteller within Mark's Gospel Philip Ruge-Jones 3. Characters in Text and Performance: The Gospel of John Holly E. Hearon 4. Audience Asides and the Audiences of Mark: The Difference Performance Makes Thomas E. Boomershine 5. Sound and Structure in the Gospel of Matthew Margaret E. Lee 6. The Present Tense of Performance: Immediacy and Transformative Power in Luke's Passion Kelly R. Iverson 7. From Performance to Text to Performance: The New Testament's Use of the Hebrew Bible in a Rhetorical Culture Kathy Maxwell 8. "This Is My ": Toward a Thick Performance of the Gospel of Mark Richard W. Swanson Bibliography Author Index