Combining Gospels in Early Christianity: The One, the Many, and the Fourfold

In this study, Jacob A. Rodriguez investigates which gospels tended to keep company with one another in early Christian reading practices. By engaging the dynamics of gospel combinations in the Gospel of Thomas, the Epistula Apostolorum, the Diatessaron, second-century Christian authors ranging from Papias to Clement of Alexandria, and early gospel manuscripts, Rodriguez identifies a center of gravity in early Christian gospel reading consisting of the Synoptics and John. While second-century Christians do not use the terms canonical or noncanonical, the gospels we now know as canonical captivated their literary imagination in a manner unparalleled by any other Jesus books. The author offers a rigorous philological, literary-critical, text-critical, artifactual, and theological reconstruction of early Christian gospel-reading culture.