From Jesus to the Internet: A History of Christianity and Media

337 Pages·2015·10.195 MB·English

by  Peter Horsfield

F R O M J E S U S TO
T H E I N T E R N E T
A History of Christianity and Media
P E T E R H O R S F I E L D

From Jesus to the Internet

From Jesus to the Internet
A History of Christianity and Media
Peter Horsfi eld
This edition fi rst published 2015
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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Set in 10/12 of Sabon LT Std by Aptara
1 2015
For Noah and Audrey

Contents
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
What’s this book about? 1
What do we mean by Christianity? 2
What do we mean by media? 4
Media and the historical development
of Christianity 7
1 In the Beginning 10
The social and media context 11
Jesus in his media context 14
Remaking Jesus in speech and performance 22
2 Making Jesus Gentile 28
Context: the media world of the Roman Empire 28
Early Christian writing 30
Paul and letter writing 32
The end of the beginning 39
3 The Gentile Christian C ommunities 42
The appeal of Christianity 42
Multimedia communities 43
Christian writings 45
vii
viii Contents
The reception and circulation of Christian writings 56
Resistance to writing 58
4 Men of Letters and Creation of “The Church” 62
The Catholic‐Orthodox brand 63
Tertullian 68
Cyprian 70
Origen – the media magnate of Alexandria 72
Writing out women 74
5 Christianity and Empire 80
Imperial patronage and imperial Christianity 80
Councils, creeds, and canons 84
Constructing time – Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History 90
The scriptures as text and artifact 93
6 The Latin Translation 99
Latin roots 99
After the fall 106
Monasteries and manuscripts 110
Written Latin and the consolidation
of medieval Christendom 117
7 Christianity in the East 125
The Church of the East 125
Islam 130
Writing the voice 132
Regulating the eyes 134
8 Senses of the Middle Ages 141
The medieval context 142
Making time 143
Seeing space 145