Brian Wright’s Article on the Roman Acta and its Relevance to Early Christianity

Brian Wright’s Article on the Roman Acta and its Relevance to Early Christianity July 20, 2016

My soon-to-be former PhD student Brian Wright has a great article on: “Ancient Rome’s Daily News Publication With Some Likely Implications For Early Christian Studies,” TynBul 67.1 (2016): 145-160.

He’s the blurb:

A detailed study on ancient Rome’s daily news publication is currently`absent in early Christian studies. This article seeks to begin filling this lacuna by surveying the history of this Roman news bulletin and highlighting the sorts of data that must be taken into account in order to determine the publication’s subject matter, scope of distribution, and possible relevance for early Christian studies.

He concludes:

The contents of this daily news bulletin were broad. Its distribution was far and wide. It was explicitly designed for the general population. Moreover, several likely implications for early Christian studies were noted throughout this examination, such as the expected diffusion of apostolic writings, the likely access to such gazettes by certain NT authors, and the pervasiveness of divorce as implied in 1 Corinthians 7. In light of these general observations, NT scholars may need to rethink certain connections between fields of study such as literacy, textuality, and orality, as well as reexamine certain biblical passages potentially affected by such evidence.
Relevant to anyone interested in ancient media, the genre of Acts, and historical sources available to Luke.

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