The Origins of Christianity Between Orality, Writing, and Images: A Mediological Analysis

Abstract

This article investigates the period of the origin of Christianity, namely that of the first century, the phase in which the emerging “Christianity” was being formed. It is a phase that has been much studied from many angles. The angle adopted in this article approaches the topic from a mediological framework. It relates to the Toronto School and the theses of Marshall McLuhan, for whom a medium is not only a communication channel but constructs the message and determines a way of reasoning. In this sense, the question arises as to how much, in the period of the birth of the new religion, the “media”, here understood as “environments”, had an influence: orality, writing, images, and spectacular performances cooperated in the construction of a multimedia religion that also drew from this richness a specific strength with which to impose itself over time. In particular, the following will be examined: the oral message of the “Rabbi” of Nazareth; the invention of the epistles of Paul of Tarsus; the conception of the Gospels as a written narration of the salvific event, capable of transforming the figure of Jesus into Christ; and the Apocalypse of John as the Christianization of a traditional genre.

1. Sociology, Sociology of Communication and Mediology

The theoretical basis of this article is mediological in nature. That is, it presupposes that in order to study society it is necessary to turn to media, which are understood to be active engines of social construction. In other words, here, we understand the concept of a medium not as a simple channel of communication, according to the old ideas of communication sociologists (Wolf 1985)—a conceptualization that in its original brand (and with many adjustments and adaptations) still characterizes that disciplinary field (Bentivegna and Boccia Artieri 2019)—but as an “environment”, aligning with the perspective of Marshall McLuhan and the Toronto school (McLuhan 1964). According to this approach, the medium consists of an environment that constructs the message, which modifies it in its variety. Most importantly, it affects the way of thinking, culture, and organization of the world (McLuhan 1962).

This concept was understood very well by Milman Parry, a famous American–Greek scholar, who in the 1930s, studying Yugoslavian oral aedi, explained that the specific Homeric style was not typical of a world of poets, as in Giambattista Vico’s beautiful conceptualization, but that it was the result of an already partly literate civilization refunctionalizing an exclusively oral, i.e., formulaic, way of composing (M. Parry 1928). In short, in the Homeric poems, there is a real clash of media. The invention of the flashback in the Odyssey, for example, is nothing more than the disposition of the creative act within a written environment that, by fixing the text in a fixed medium and being able to look at it from the other side in a strategic sense, allows for the reworking, selection, and re-assembly of poetic portions that in the oral environment would have had a simple course of logical and tactical connection, dictated by the constraints of memorization. Parry passed away prematurely in 1935. His writings were published in 1971 by his son Adam (A. Parry 1971), but, as early as 1960, his student, Albert Lord, had brought out a work, The Singer of Tales, in which he developed these principles (Lord 1960).

In the same years (between 1931 and 1957), Jesuit Father Marcell Jousse undertook in-depth studies on the Aramaic targum and the oral compositional pattern of what he called the “Rabbi” of Nazareth, linking precisely the characteristic features of his message to that particular medial environment. Even in his case, the results of the research would mostly be published after his death, particularly in the 1970s (Jousse 1974, 1975).

Furthermore, in the mid-1950s, some of Walter Benjamin’s famous essays were posthumously published (Benjamin 1955), including “Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit”, a decisive example of an analysis of the relationship between media, metropolis, art, spectacle, and the construction of space.

We do not know whether McLuhan (whose earliest writings date from the 1950s, almost immediately following the release of the capital essay by his master, Harold Innis, namely Empire and Communications (1950)), was familiar with these more or less coeval attempts. The fact remains that these writings connote explicit attempts to study the medium and not simply communication. McLuhan’s importance lies in having systematized (albeit in his very parceled and chaotic style and treatise) the discourse that was emerging from many quarters and, above all, in having arrived at a radical idea: medial environments not only construct the message, as we have already mentioned (an insight that is already fundamental in itself), but also help change and transform the mind. According to him, between oral, alphabetic, Gutenbergian, and electric man there is a precise and substantial difference in the brain setting and, consequently, a cultural difference: the medium helps determine thinking, and the “how” one thinks is as important as the “what” one thinks; indeed, the two terms are closely related to each other.

In short, mediology. Although McLuhan never uses this term (which is of French coinage, proposed by Régis Debray), therein lies the major gap between the discipline of the sociology of communication and/or the so-called communication sciences and “mediology”. Different theoretical assumptions and different methodological tools result, as we shall see.

We thus come to the central point. In very recent years, this mediological approach has been applied to various fields, including art, film (Morin 1962; Abruzzese 1973), and literature (Ragone 2019). Is it also possible to relate it to studies on religions and, in this case, the sociology of religions? If it is true that in order to study and understand society better, one must study and understand media better, then, given that the sociology of religions works on the relationship between religions and society (and vice versa), the idea of imagining a mediology of religions probably makes sense.

A mediology of religions, so connoted, would have to move spuriously within a network of different disciplinary approaches in a way that has already been tested, especially in the study of early Christianity: beyond the anthropology of religions (Destro and Pesce 2008, 2021), the sociology of religions is understood to be an approach that keeps history and theology in mind (Pace 2016) but also incorporates the interest shown by scholars of the Gospel text in literary analyses (Burridge 1995), as well, of course, as historical observation tending to trace precisely the historical Jesus (Meier 1991, 1994; Sanders 1993), and that which reconstructs the cultural environments of the first centuries (Sanders 1985).

A final clarification is necessary. This article will not consider studies on literary genre, and thus on the relations of the Gospels in particular with classical and contemporary genres. In fact, McLuhan’s and Debray’s approach, that is to say, the mediological approach, relates to a theory of the imaginary (and in turn of an imaginary constructed through the media: Morin 1962; Durand 1963; Abruzzese 1973). The concept of the imaginary works on a metaphorical, narrative, and deep level, effectively transcending genres.

It would be futile to attempt to describe a specific state of the art of such a possible discipline, since there is no systematic practice of it. However, we could mention some texts from the field of mediology that have focused on the study of religions. Let us attempt a quick and essential excursus.

First, let us discuss the aforementioned “Toronto School”, involving Harold Innis, in Empire and communications (1950), his analysis of the use of the codex in the Pauline Epistles; Marshall McLuhan, in The medium and the light. Reflections on Religion (1999), especially where he reasons around the question of the birth and then the fate of Christianity in the new electric environment; Derrick De Kerckhove, in La civilisation vidéo-chrétienne (1990), especially on the alphabetic question of origins and TV as an electronic aura; and in Les Églises chrétiennes et la numérisation (2022), where he reflects again on the alphabetic foundation of Christianity. We could also not disregard Elizabeth Eisenstein’s (1983) essay, The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, particularly the chapter on the relationship between printing and Protestantism; and Gabriele Frasca’s essay, in Literature in the Medial Grid. The Dying Letter (2015), with particular reference to the chapter on the Epistles of Paul of Tarsus.

At the opposite end should then be noted the “French mediological school”, especially in the person of Régis Debray. This is exemplified in Vie et mort de l’image (1992), a fundamental text largely focused on the relationship between Christianity and the image, which is also considered in relation to other monotheistic religions, and in Introduction à la médiologie (2000).

Finally, one could identify an “American School”, which is totally devoted to the study of the relationship between religions and new media, and which works on the process of “re-enchantment”, resulting from new technologies. Particular mention should be made here of Heidi Campbell (2009) in When Religion Meets New Media.

2. To the Media Origins of Christianity

Let us now begin to focus on the focus of our article: the origins of Christianity. It might be a useful exercise in fact to observe precisely in this context the two main mediological approaches at work: the McLuhanian and the French.

Régis Debray in Vie et mort de l’image (1992), one of the most successful (perhaps the best) examples of mediology of religions, argues the thesis that Christianity has in the image its privileged medium, as a religion based on worldly mediation. The Christian God, unlike the Jewish and Islamic Gods, is not distant and detached from the world but has become flesh, and so he is imaginable and representable: he is image precisely.

Of course, Debray is not naïve enough not to discern the internal conflict within such a layered and complex religion. He dwells at length on Christianity’s struggle with its Jewish matrix, whose detached God can only be abstract. Mosaic religion is anti-visual and scripture-based; indeed, in the Bible, sight, understood as looking, turns out to be coupled with sin, as the organ of deception and false truth (Debray 1992). From this, it is possible for him to decline a long and convoluted line of counter-visuals, from Tertullian to the iconoclastic Byzantines to the Calvinists, whose idea of God and the world opposes representation. This conflict, however, appears to him to be resolved once and for all at a certain point in the Christian diachrony, that is, with the Second Council of Nicaea, convened, as is well known, in 787 to deliberate precisely around the question of images, which from that moment on were theologically cleared (Bettetini 2006).

In contrast to Debray, Marshall McLuhan places the written alphabetic medium at the center of the Christian media system:

(…) the Church came into being when the Greek phonetic alphabet was still in its first stages. Greco-Roman culture was still in its infancy when the Church came into being (…) That’s how, paradoxically, the Church found itself embodied from its very beginnings in the only culture that preferred fixed and solid positions. The Church, which offers to man and demands of him a constant change of heart, wrapped itself in a visual culture that placed tatic permanence above all other values. This Greco-Roman culture, which seems to have been imposed on the Church like a shell on a turtle, doesn’t allow for any possibility for a supple theory of change and of communication. It is this hard shell that stands between the Church and the other cultures of the world, all of which have accommodating, flexible, evolving forms.

(McLuhan 1999, pp. 48–49)

According to McLuhan, in a recovery of the ideas expressed by Innis about the relationship between empires and written communication (Innis 1950), alphabetical writing immediately becomes the organizational medium of the nascent Church, which precisely because of this fact becomes bureaucratized, centrally organized. Additionally, writing would also underlie the profound sense of internalization typical of the new faith:

I don’t think it was accidental that Christianity began in the Greco-Roman culture. I don’t think that Christ would have suffered under Ghengis Khan with the same meaning as under Pontius Pilate. The Greeks had invented a medium, the phonetic alphabet, which, as Eric Havelock explains in his book Preface to Plato, made it possible for men to have for the first time in human history a sense of private identity.

(McLuhan 1999, p. 80)

As can be seen, these are two opposing views: how are we to resolve this contrast? In fact, looking at things calmly, one could raise several doubts with respect to both interpretations. One could, for example, object to Debray that Jesus’ original preaching takes place in a world, the Jewish world, that is refractory to imagery. And to McLuhan, one could object that alphabetical writing was in the Greek and Hellenistic world imbued with orality, in an inextricable weave. How can we to attribute to alphabetical writing alone the “responsibility” of birth? Also, why consider a millennia-old, layered religion like Christianity indebted to a single birth? Is not Christianity born many times, or rather born through a progressive accumulation of factors that make it as it is today? Is it not possible, then, to hypothesize different media contributions depending on the historical junctures?

As one can well understand, McLuhan and Debray do not only have two different views on the thorny issue of birth: they evidently demonstrate a different theoretical approach. According to McLuhan, it is the medium that determines a worldview, and it is no coincidence that the Canadian scholar has often been accused of technological determinism, although in reality his outlook, even in the radicality of the thesis, proves on closer inspection to be far more nuanced. On the other hand, Debray also appears to us somewhat extreme. According to him, it is the theological framework of the incarnation that makes the adoption of the image possible, that is, it is the “ideological” level that “determines” the medium. But is it really permissible to identify a recurrent and opposite “direction”? Simplifying greatly, is meaning conveyed from the medium to the message or from the message to the medium?

Gabriele Frasca, in an essay devoted to the Epistles of St. Paul, rightly notes how in them writing actually re-mediates orality and gives it new force (Frasca 2015, pp. 37–48). The epistles were written in a “readable” way, entrusted to the support no longer of the papyrus but of the codex, which by its very nature is predisposed to anthologize short passages that close at each turn of the page (thus short readings, from time to time selectable for different hearers). Above all they are organized as a text to be read aloud to listening centers, in a sort of primordial and ante litteram collective “radio” fruition. That is, Frasca observes the moment in which the two media (oral and written) interact, effectively constructing a new system, particularly suited to that specific historical situation, according to the thesis expressed a few years ago by Bolter and Grusin (1999).

Perhaps the key to it all lies in abandoning the old idea of an exclusive medium and imagining diversely batching media combinations that succeed each other in history, reacting to it and at the same time accompanying it, and often helping to construct it.

In other words, Debray and McLuhan are both simultaneously right and wrong as they carry out a totalizing discourse. The fact is that from the very beginning the image is embedded in the Greek and worldly “spirit” of Christianity, just as writing operated after the end of the first century to stabilize it. On the other hand, orality and spectacle do not vanish, but appear in a manner that is continually recomposed, reconstructed, refunctionalized, and re-mediated. It may be true that the alphabet constructs an internalized religion, but orality and image are the media that make it at once collective, universal, shareable. Additionally, does the preponderance of the image in the Hellenistic-Roman world not prepare the ground for “imagining” precisely a God who is incarnated, one who takes the form of man? Internalization and building the new people of God are two concepts that cannot but be traced back to multiple media environments.

Simplifying greatly, the emergence of Christianity, both in its original eschatological–apocalyptic Palestinian forge and in its foundational first–second-century crystallization, owes much to the complexity of the media system present at that time and in that area of the world. Scripture, that is, the alphabetic mentality, first and foremost governs the internalization process that makes the nascent religion personal, individual, and consciousness-centered (McLuhan 1999; De Kerckhove 2022). At the same time, the image fosters the idea of divine incarnation, which was not present in the original catechesis of the “Rabbi” of Nazareth. Also, in this auroral phase, it is the power of a still strongly oral world that protects the sacredness of the word, and thus makes him alive and present among men.

Again, in the first two or three centuries, the alphabetical foundation accompanied the trend toward centralization, bureaucratization, and institutional organization (Innis 1950), while the image, guaranteeing psychic enchantments, animated the great missionary thrust. At the same time, the oral dialogic–rhetorical medium was used to debate dogma in the various early councils, until an acceptable point of mediation was reached and it was crystallized precisely and then confirmed again through the action of writing.

A determining factor appears from the outset, namely, the extraordinary ability of the new religion to synthesize and invent complex media (the Gospels for example, or the Epistles themselves) that would later be continuous in its history. From this dual point of view, that of the foundation and that of the first centuries of consolidation, Christianity is the multimedia religion par excellence, unlike the other monotheistic faiths that will in fact develop a quite different relationship with media (Laurenzi 2022; Ilardi 2022). It is the richness of environments that allows for the synthesis of different cultural roots and ensures a repository of solutions to be used later, at every turn in the events of history, but it is also the original cultural richness, the extraordinary anthropological concentration of the Eastern Roman Empire, Jewish civilization, and the Hellenistic Greek Empire, that facilitates the adoption of diverse media.

3. Three Stages, Many Media

It is widely agreed among scholars that the construction of the euanghélion was derived from a “three-stage path”: (1) that of the “historical” Jesus and his public magisterium; (2) that of the Jesus filtered through preaching and dissemination by his first- and second-generation disciples; and (3) that of the protagonist Jesus codified and represented in the Gospels (Brown 1997; 2016, pp. 171–76). It is also widely accepted that different “lines of development” of the new faith would emerge between the mid-1940s and the end of the first century. According to Ferdinand Prostmeier (2006), Christianity would not have a single “beginning”, but many “beginnings”, related to different social, cultural, economic, and geographical factors, but also to different ways of conceiving the initial normative whole (Prostmeier 2007, p. 63).

In short, we are dealing with progressive, multiple, and parallel beginnings. It seemed interesting and stimulating to us to try to insert within this complex and liquid framework a mediological reasoning aimed at shedding light on the communicative aspects of the beginnings of the emerging “Christianity”.

The questions we intend to ask in these pages are as follows: What is the winning and foundational medial arrangement of early Christianity? How much does it contribute to building and stabilizing it? How much does this fiery medial crucible condition subsequent historical development?

3.1. The “Rabbi” of Nazareth: The Voice in Motion

Who was Jesus of Nazareth really? Historical studies in recent decades have illuminated the big picture very well (Anderson 1969; Sanders 1985, 1993; Crossan 1991; Meier 2001, pp. 25–43; Destro and Pesce 2008), but they have only partially clarified the “how”: How did Jesus teach? How did he reach the crowds? In what relationship are his message and the medium of his preaching? How does his communicative modus relate to that of his direct and indirect disciples? It is, we have already mentioned, a “how” that is not simply formal, but mediological. It is that, precisely, of Marshall McLuhan and Régis Debray (McLuhan 1962, 1964; Debray 1992, 2000), who consider the medium not simply a neutral communicative channel but an environment capable of “constructing” the message. So, how the message is constructed becomes a central issue in understanding the message itself.

According to Marcell Jousse (Jousse 1974, 1975), the experience of Iéshoua, the “Rabbi” of Nazareth who coincides with the original Aramaic core of Christianity, presupposes a fundamental ‘engine’: this is the Aramaic targumic procedure (i.e., the oral translation into Aramaic of the written Torah, which, let us remember, was itself oral before being put in writing), from which Iéshoua deduces the language, theological principles, pedagogy, terms, and, above all, traditional formulas (Jousse 1974).

Although studies have now clarified the specificity of this “foundational” moment, placing it firmly in the most recent histories of Christianity (Mayeur et al. 1995–2000; Filoramo et al. 1997; Armogathe and Mountaubin 2010; Prinzivalli 2015), Jousse’s name continues to be marginalized. Instead, it seems to us that the relevance of his approach lies precisely in explicating the features of a mediological reading contained beneath the more clearly anthropological approach.

In fact, Jousse’s approach is based on a frontal opposition between Iéshoua’s orality and the “deadly” writing of the scribes, Pharisees, and Essenes, who are considered the destroyers of the tradition of the spoken and mimed word. If one reads beyond the polemical setting, it will not be difficult to enhance the sense of Jousse’s reasoning, namely, the importance given to oral creativity in Iéshoua’s mission, but especially its Aramaic–Palestinian specificity, involving a preaching of memory and of tradition. Such preaching puts together, threads within organized recitations, crystallized structures, “pearls”, originally only gestural and then oral, built on three basic mechanisms: rhythmic (mimic, energetic, and melodic), bilateral (creator, reciter, and regulator), and formulaic.

Based on these assumptions, Jousse can define Iéshoua as a master formulaic “rhythm-mimicker”, who uses the targum in his speeches and “re-plays” it skillfully, as, for example, in the conception of the Pater, where he takes elements of the tradition already known and used, recombining them in original and surprising ways (Jousse 1979, p. 368).

With these assumptions in mind, we can try to go a little further and ask how much such an “oral” choice can be related to the nature of the message propagated by the “Rabbi” of Nazareth.

To better understand the question, we must start with the religious landscape within which Iéshoua moves, that of Second Temple Palestine, a landscape in which a number of figures and “movements” of a prophetic and eschatological nature surface—Banno, the Essenes, and John the Baptist, to name the most important ones. How are they related to each other, and to the “Rabbi” of Nazareth? According to John Meier, who supports his thesis on the studies of Joseph Thomas (1935), such figures would have been but autonomous expressions of a larger phenomenon of baptism-based penitential renewal active in the first century CE in the Jordan region (Meier 2002, pp. 49–50). Yet, it seems difficult not to imagine connections, albeit often nuanced and indirect, between experiences so close in both a geographical and ideological sense (Destro and Pesce 2021). First, although scholars disagree, it seems very plausible that Iéshoua had been a “disciple” of John the Baptist for some time (Becker 1972, pp. 12–15; Hollenbach 1982, pp. 203–4). In second place, there is a real possibility that the latter had some kind of relationship with the Qumran community or had even been part of it as an adopted orphan, thus fulfilling his studies there (Geyser 1956, pp. 70–75; Winter 1956, p. 196; Robinson 1962, pp. 11–27; Brownlee 1975, pp. 33–53). John’s experience could thus be read as a personal interpretation of Qumran Essenism. From that experience he would have deduced the connection between the practice of purification from sin (through ritual ablutions) and the approach of the End Times, but at the same time he would have detached himself from it by refusing to shut himself up in a fortress in the desert awaiting the end (like the Essenes), and deciding to go out and settle along the banks of the Jordan to baptize, that is, mark and prepare penitents for the “harvest” of the last day. Going out, meeting sinners, seems to conceal a certain apocalyptic haste, imbued with a strong sense of “immediate expectation”, thus closer than at Qumran (Gnilka 1990, p. 79). This would explain John the Baptizer’s surpassing the written medium of the Essenes. The latter, in fact, imagining a “closure” deferred in time, are inclined to fix through writing all the signs of the Parousia in order to be able to recognize it, even at a distance of generations. In contrast, the Baptist, pressed by imminence, chooses the oral medium, the Voice that “cries out in the wilderness”, based on the model of Israel’s ancient prophets (Elijah). It is not by chance that he proclaims and baptizes once, and once for all. The Voice comes directly from God, the charismatic prophet is its medium, and all can hear it because it rises in the silence of empty space: its voice is like a call to salvation.

As his “disciple” Iéshoua adheres to this program, he shares its ideal. Baptized with water, he will baptize with the Spirit, saving all those who repent and prepare themselves for his action. But what are the times for Jesus? With the exception of a few passages, especially in Mark that refer to the time of a generation (and which perhaps follow the historical preaching), Iéshoua, while maintaining a certain vagueness, seems to place himself in a position, so to speak, intermediate between the Essenes (time not near) and the Baptist (instantaneous time). All of his preaching seems to employ this period to go out to the Gentiles, in a more capillary and extensive course. If John’s Voice is centripetal, presupposing movement toward himself, as a cry that is heard even from afar, a call to the penitents, Iéshoua’s is centrifugal, entailing movement toward others, in an attempt to take advantage of the time still available to go as far as possible, going from the desert to population centers, villages above all, and then to Jerusalem (Destro and Pesce 2008). It should not be forgotten that Jesus compared to the Baptist preaches diffusely, as well as “heals”, that is, provides norms, directions to orient oneself on the path to the Kingdom, thus envisioning some future scope for expansion of the Voice. And so, the orality, set in motion, can in turn redistribute itself to the disciples and multiply by twelve (Mark, 6: 7–13; Matt. 10: 1–40; Luke 9: 1–6), and by seventy-two (Luke, 10: 1–20), in a kind of contagion-like spread.

Some further clarification comes to us by looking at how this spread took place in practice. It is Matthew, above all, who gives us a glimpse of the answer when he succinctly describes the “Rabbi’s” path as it winds its way throughout Galilee (Matt. 4: 23).

From this passage, the dynamic becomes clear. That is, Iéshoua preaches orally, adapting and selecting his Aramaic targum from time to time according to well-constructible memorization techniques, but he does so through different medial environments. Matthew’s syntactic coordination based on conjunction does indeed seem to refer back to three basic practices: (1) teaching in the synagogal space (Sachot 1998); (2) the preaching of the Kingdom in the extra-synagogal public space; and (3) the spectacularly miraculous practice (exorcisms and curing the sick). If one reflects on it, no one of his era acted as he did: the Essenes wrote and interpreted written texts, preparing for the distant or very distant last day; John “shouted” in the desert as if he were already inside that day; and the Pharisees simply proclaimed in the synagogues, after reading and interpreting texts, and none of them performed “miracles” along with preaching, neither they nor the many thaumaturges who also crowded the streets of first-century Palestine and who limited themselves precisely to practicing their art of healing.

Emphasis is placed on this point because the preaching–“miracle” pairing presents profound reasons. Indeed, Iéshoua’s “limited” time could also be called “coming to pass”, and it concerns the essential focus of its message, namely, the coming of the “Kingdom of God”, a theme scarcely present in either the Old Testament or coeval apocryphal and apocalyptic texts, including Qumran (Meier 2002, pp. 285–344). Such an eschatological kingdom is linked to an imminent future and represents the culmination of God’s saving action. The thaumaturgical and miraculous actions that distinguish the Rebbe from the beginning (especially exorcism and the curing of physical illnesses), therefore, are not single and sporadic acts, but belong to and define the beginning of a phase marked by God’s lordship over the world, the Kingdom of God (Meier 2002, p. 589).

Summarizing such a complex picture, Iéshoua could be defined in these terms: a charismatic, eschatological–apocalyptic, thaumaturgical, and itinerant prophet using a varied media mix, but whose style hinged on targumic orality, practiced both in absolute form (public preaching) and in synagogical form (reading + proclamation) and leaning on a spectacular–miraculous medium perfectly responsive to the eschatological–apocalyptic project of the Kingdom of God, considered to be in the process of being realized.

3.2. Disciples After the Master: Between Orality and Writing

What happens between Jesus’ death and the writing of the earliest known Gospel, i.e., Mark (c. 70), appears to this day to be very foggy, and it remains difficult to obtain a clear idea of the “Rabbi’s” convoluted stage of memorization and the re-composition of the message (Ehrman 2016).

From the media perspective, it is worth attempting an initial cursory classification of some of the most likely communicative modes that emerged during this period.

(a) The first is charismatic orality, characterized by itinerant preachers. Related to apostle–preachers who feel pervaded by the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, as described in Acts (The Pentecost, 2), is manifested in tongues of fire, attributing to them the faculty to speak directly and in all languages. In the literary representation, the Holy Spirit is medium connecting the divinity with the expressive faculty of the speaker–preacher, a kind of word mediated by the body whereby the disciple becomes the medium of the medium. Beyond such a figuration, one cannot deny a priori the existence of orators who by their innate abilities could be considered true “oracles”, that is, instruments of the Holy Spirit, nor reject a priori the possibility that the apostles closest to Jesus had mastered his preaching techniques (Jousse 1979, p. 171).

Certainly, this phase is characteristic of the years just after Christ’s death, and although we should not imagine its ultimate extinction (oral preaching continued throughout the century and beyond), we can imagine its gradual incorporation into the written environment.

(b) The second is synagogal proclamation. This refers to settled communities but is also open to itinerant preachers. The previous mode can undoubtedly be juxtaposed with that of the synagogal homily, which was practiced by Jesus himself and which Acts also attributes to the disciples.

(c) The third is supported orality, which in turn can be traced back to the practice of itinerant preachers. Not all disciples could boast the targum-controlling potentialities that had been the Rebbe’s. Moreover, it soon became necessary to “stabilize” Jesus’ message in order to distinguish it from the mass of preachers who walked the streets of Palestine at that time. Itinerant oral preaching, especially when practiced by different narrators and traveling to far-flung places, needs a written medium intended for memorization as evidenced by the study of the earliest stages of the construction of Homeric texts (Havelock 1963; Havelock and Hershbell 1978). As in the Homerides of Chios, when there is a need to move in space and thus for tales to proliferate, there is also a need for an essential canvas that allows for preaching contained within a homogeneous and closed framework of “sayings”, selectable from time to time depending on the hearers (Sbardella 2012; Tarzia 2020). We must therefore imagine short lists of sayings, facts, and parables, as well as some narrative format of quick summary of the overall story, perhaps used as a first approach upon entering a new village or community. Peter’s Discourse to Cornelius (Acts, 10, 36–43), which, it has been noted, nicely traces the pattern that would later be Mark’s own (Rossano 1984, pp. 10–11), has, for example, all the air of such a summary rubric.

(d) The fourth is the context of Document Q, namely the written list of Loghia, a text that can be matched to the experience of settled communities. For nearly two centuries, the Q document has been at the center of Gospel studies, both as a source added in the writing of Mark’s Gospel (and thus indirectly reused by Matthew and Luke) and as a true proto-Gospel text, collecting material related to sayings, memorable facts and parables placed along an essential chronological axis. It is likely that in its first oral phase it served as a reminder for itinerant prophets (c), but that it soon became a written list of theological cornerstones referable to a probably Galilean group, independent of the Hellenistic Pietrino-Pauline group (Guijarro 2014). The Q document is, in short, the set of rules of an eschatological–apocalyptic community that, ignoring the passion–resurrection pairing, deferred the Parousia in time. Jesus’ sayings and actions are thus a fortress of wisdom to be preserved in preparation for his second coming. This group no longer considers mission–propagation the focus of its existence, does not compose texts for the purpose of proselytizing (such as the Epistles and the Gospels), and adopts writing as a medium of the defense and delimitation of the community until the return of Christ.

3.3. The Conception of the Epistle

Then, there is a further mode, so important and enduring that it deserves a specific discussion, especially since it enables us to observe in depth the interweaving of medium and theological organization. We are referring to the epistle sent to distant places and read to an audience. The earliest example is seen, as is well known, in Paul (which predates Acts by almost thirty years, in which it is also referred to other apostles, e.g., in Acts 15: 22–35), who is thus likely its originator.

This invention of course has much to do with his particular vision of mission. This is this, we have already mentioned, the thesis of Gabriele Frasca (2015, pp. 43–48), who considers the Epistle a true new medium. It has neither a private nor a philosophical character, but takes on the appearance of a letter between friends and confreres dedicated to questions concerning the new faith. It also represents a perfect interpenetration of two media (oral and written), being composed in a form prepared for reading aloud. When the letter arrives at the community for which it is intended, discerned from its title, real “listening centers” are organized around it, almost as with the radio almost two millennia later. The final effect is that of the word/logos descending from God to his disciple and from him to the new believers, within a practice of sacralization of the word that McLuhan, talking about radio itself, calls the “tribal drum” (McLuhan 1964).

The choice of the traveling Epistle also allows for the maximum amplification of the individual apostle’s ability to transmit his message to as many people as possible. In short, it is a medium that brings together writing and orality and thus pursues rapid dissemination. It is not made for slow reflective and doctrinal meditation (with the exception, perhaps, of the Epistle to the Romans), but for a kind of immediate “contagion” by the word.

This practice is directly assisted by the adoption of the codex in place of the papyrus, which is more manageable and transportable, and at the same time particularly suited to contain writing that, unlike that held by the papyrus (continuous, not very readable and monographic), is able to syllogize selected passages and indeed accumulate more and more of them, especially letters (as in commercial use) (Cavallo and Chartier 1995, pp. 61–69). In short, it creates a kind of anthological environment of short passages that can from time to time be chosen and read aloud to different auditors with different needs. Through the Roman street network, a single preacher equipped with such an instrument could “infect” a previously unimaginable number of hearers.

Such a solution, however, cannot be fully explained unless it is combined with the Pauline theological “system”. It is, in fact, a kind of enhancement of the medium we have called “Voice in Motion”. If Jesus had Palestine in mind, Paul has a different spatial vision: the dimension of propagation has become ideally coincident with that of the territory of the empire, homogeneous, dotted with urban and maritime centers, and furrowed by a perfectly functioning and functional road network. At the same time, however, Paul, despite what is often said, also feels that he does not have unlimited time ahead of him. In order to bring the Voice to move in such an “open” space in the shortest possible time, there is a need for written support to hold it up, traveling in place of the body of Christ and increasing its expansive potential out of all proportion. Paul’s inexhaustible haste, which so impresses today’s reader, is probably due to this situation.

Indeed, Pauline theology is not based on a universal evangelizing openness, as is normally believed. It, while looking beyond the narrow confines of Palestine and the Jewish world, itself appears to be “selective” and, as it were, “time-limited”. Indeed, by staking everything on faith and grace, Paul wants to remove the new religion from the limitation of Jewish Law, but at the same time he does not yet conceive of it as a religion for the whole world and certainly not for the whole empire. According to Eric Leed (1995; 1996, pp. 75–76), Paul actually intends to bring in Romans who want to adhere to the new faith, not to go in search of them, reconnecting here with the opening already opened by the historical Jesus (Lupieri 1997, pp. 60–61; Meier 2002, p. 441). The city listening groups will ensure that a kind of secondary spread is rapid: a part of them, after absorbing the Voice of the apostle, will return home through the ways of land and sea, and intrigue other people, telling them about a “Rabbi” who promises to achieve salvation by a mere act of faith. It is, in short, an epidemic propagation, but not widespread and extensive.

Such an attitude appears, moreover, connectable to the apocalyptic climate of his times. It is true that Paul seems to move the Parousia forward, but at the same time he declares himself aware that it may arrive at any moment. His openness of geographic horizon does not eliminate the haste typical of those who, while wanting to reach the greatest number of people, are well aware that the time available is not yet the long and horizontal time of history.

3.4. The Gospels: A New Medium Underlying Emerging Religion

Let us now return to the mysterious Q document. It represents the extreme tip of the codification of Jesus’ message before the Gospels, as a written fixation of sayings (and some facts) along a logical and chronological axis. What it still lacks is narrative organization—a decisive innovation. This innovation appears around the year 70 (or perhaps shortly after) with a text traditionally attributed to Mark, a follower of Peter, although in fact the true identity of its author remains unknown. What sources did Mark draw on? Did he work on a pre-existing work or did he construct a new genre himself using material at his disposal? The latter is the most accepted thesis today (Brown 2016, pp. 225–29). Mark probably had at his disposal a variety of oral and written material of an “episodic” nature (actions, miracles, exorcisms, individual moments in Jesus’ life, as well as two definitely written “pieces”, the so-called “apocalyptic pamphlet” related to the destruction of the Temple, and, most likely, a passion narrative—Prostmeier 2007, pp. 77–78), but he was able to turn this “deposit” into a narrative. A few years later (roughly between 80 and 95), Matthew and Luke, themselves conventional figures, used Mark by inferring much of the report and supplementing it in different ways with material (especially Loghia) drawn from the Q document (which here goes to fulfill the function of a source), and drawing in turn on other unidentified personal sources (written and oral) (Prostmeier 2007, pp. 51–52). Finally, the later Gospel of John, which represents a largely autonomous work of highly complex doctrinal and theological elaboration (Brown 2003), is written.

While from the first decades after Jesus’ death, writing entered in various capacities into the process of the communication and construction of the emerging “Christianity” (not yet a religion), it nevertheless remained strictly functional in relation to the oral message, as the Pauline example clearly shows. In contrast, with respect to these experiences, the Gospels presuppose a completely different approach, in the sense that in them the written medium has become a true and active pivot of the communicative system, capable of using the other available media to achieve the fundamental purpose of inserting the eu-angelion within the historical process.

The first effect of this medial repositioning is the possibility of retrieving the most varied sources and arranging them strategically within a compositional framework. This is a well-known and abundantly studied practice with regard to Homeric texts, for example. In the Odyssey, the stories of Odysseus from various traditions are all placed in a context of spatial and temporal unity (in the court of Alcinous and over the course of one night) and narrated in the first person and in flashbacks, according to an approach that only scripture allows. In the Gospels, the polymorphic recombinable matter needs even more careful organization. In this case, the writing reorders it, divides it into genres and categories, and at the same time constructs a narrative parable that alternates and connects the saying to the action (as its consequence), enacting a construction of a character that is not simply factual (as in Homer) but also and above all ideological.

In mediological, terms such reordering always leads to re-mediation (Bolter and Grusin 1999). In the Gospels, writing incorporates and re-mediates the spectacularized orality of the Aramaic phase, that of Jesus’ preaching, to the point of constructing an entirely new medial environment. Here, too, the purpose of such an operation proves very different when compared with the Homeric case. We know that the present Iliad and Odyssey were part of a very long Trojan cycle that the Homeric school of Chios put together by literally weaving together individual “chapters” that were previously autonomous, and narrating the entire cycle in five different Panathenaic agons, four years apart, spanning a period from 530 to 510 BCE (Sbardella 2012). The use of writing in that case is primarily motivated by the need to hold up such a narrative bulk, to break it up over the years, and to reconnect it after the breaks in a coherent way: it turns out to be in essence entirely functional to the performance, which remains oral.

Compared to the Homeric model, evangelical re-mediation, which we recall moves in a world in which orality and writing are now practically “equal” to their status in the Greek one, appears much more complex and advanced. Indeed, nascent Christianity needs to “stabilize” its identity, but without losing the primordial multimedia to which we have already referred and which in turn, we have said, can be explained by the constitutive heterogeneity of the emerging “Christianity” (not yet a religion), resulting from the Greek–Hellenistic/Jewish–apocalyptic bipolar set-up (Tarzia 2022). Thus, scripture, which conquers the center of the system, redeems both the original spectacular aspect, understood as evidence and the epiphany of the Kingdom (miracles, healings, and exorcisms), and the oral aspect of the preceding decades, understood as consequent emanation of the word. These are the famous Loghia, i.e., reported direct speeches that are of different and varied types: threat, exhortation, parable, controversy, didactic dialog, catechetical and missionary instruction, beatitudes, and prayers (Prostmeier 2007, p. 60).

In short, the writing undertaken to support the new media system rescues such complexity and simultaneously gives the whole a new meaning. To do so, it cannot merely list a set of norms or memorable sayings and facts but must tell a story. The purpose of the story is to place the figure of Jesus in a before and after, to give it a spatial and temporal determination, and above all to direct it toward an epilog, to endow it with a “happy ending”.

In fact, until the memorable sayings and facts of Jesus are organized into a strategically thought out narrative, there can be no real Christology. The overall value of the story of Jesus takes on a clear aspect only through a narrative that makes sense of his actions and shows his birth, life, works, atoning sacrifice, death, and resurrection in a coherent, connected, and teleological whole: it is through the insertion into written narrative that Jesus becomes Christ.

3.5. The Gospel Corpus: Reasons for a Selection, Between Apocalyptic Stillness and Worldly Tension

Any discourse that considers the four canonical Gospels as a whole, including the discourse on the medium, sooner or later runs up against a simple fact of textual history: the absolute uniqueness of each of them and thus the apparent heterogeneity of the collection.

Why are works that arose for different purposes, with a specific theological foundation, in and for culturally individual settings, included in a corpus that around the end of the second century (Gamble 1985) became the written reference of a nascent religion? The answer is that this choice stems precisely from the variety of these four Gospels. In any cultural, mental, and religious structure, the multiplicity of its components proves to be the best means of ensuring that structure’s longevity. Since the dawn of sociology, and albeit with continual revision, the idea that a social entity has as its essential purpose to survive stably over time is fairly accepted (Comte 1851–1854; Parsons 1949; Habermas 1962; Luhmann 1984). In this context, religion has always been considered the strongest glue, that which gives that society the strongest sense of unity (Durkheim 1895; Weber 1922). The broader, more varied such an arrangement will be, the more it will have the capacity to stand in the face of the changes of history, adopting from time to time solutions and reactions that it already holds in its cultural storehouse and that it can possibly readjust with modifications and transformations, in a continuous evolution that cannot, however, be considered as teleological (Elias 1969).

From its origins, Christianity shows that it holds two fundamental roots: one Jewish and the other Greco-Hellenistic. The thesis has been advanced since the earliest modern studies. It was already advocated by Friedrich Engels, in the wake of the Hegelian Left, and by Bruno Bauer in particular, who rejected the idea of a Christianity born from the single voice of a Jewish prophet (Bauer 1841, 1843), tracing the centrality of a Latin and Hellenistic matrix of Christianity as we know it (Engels 1894). Engels was opposed to the Tübingen school of theology, and in particular to the current of biblical hermeneutics active at the University of Tübingen in the mid-19th century, directed by the biblical exegete Ferdinand Christian Baur, and based on the positions of Hegelian idealism and dialectics. According to Baur, the emerging “Christianity” (not yet a religion) would have been the result of a historical situation of mediation between two different cultural and “ideological” souls, one dating back to a “Jewish Church”, which would have Peter as its main reference, and one referable to a “Hellenistic or Gentile Church”, headed by Paul. The texts contained in the New Testament would constitute a synthesis–mediation between an “Aramaic”, i.e., archaic, Pietrine theology and a more complex and refined one relatable to the Pauline world (Baur 1831). Baur’s thesis, while questionable in many of its conclusions, appears interesting precisely because it traces, in the conflict–synthesis between two seemingly irreducible positions, the foundation of the new religion.

This is confirmed by a socio-institutional angle, so to speak, which puts under the lens of historical reconstruction a series of diatribes and actual conflicts, referable to particular environments of the early Christian spread, between Antioch, Ephesus and Rome. In particular, according to Raymond Brown and John Meier, the origins of the new faith would be relatable to an articulated mapping of primordial Christian “groups”, divided internally around the crucial question of the relationship to Old Testament norms, namely, on whether or not to follow Judaism or open the emerging “Christianity” (not yet a religion) to broader horizons.

Precisely this variety of approaches within the early community churches is reflected in the specific connotations of the texts of what would come to be codified as the New Testament. Thus, we find on the one hand Paul and then Luke, convinced of the need for openness, on the other hand a series of components insisting instead on the Jewish and ecosystemic character of Christianity. In between is a line of mediation, foreshadowing the birth of the institution of synthesis and mediation that was to be the Church of Rome, referable to the preaching of James and Peter, not insisting on circumcision but favoring the retention of certain Jewish customs and rituals (Brown and Meier 1983).

In short, two tendencies are intertwined in the founding period, one Jewish–Veterotestamentary and apocalyptic, convinced of the imminence of the End Times, the other more worldly and historical, attentive instead to the potential of entering the world, of spreading the word of Jesus to many, since the times would not be so close to closing.

The New Testament corpus reflects this complexity, seeks to include both trends as a basis for future reference, and also tries to mediate between them. Thus, Mark and John, and Revelation itself, refer back to the apocalyptic source, precisely, while Paul and Luke refer to the worldly and Hellenistic, with Matthew mediating between the two.

It follows from what we have said so far at the theoretical level that each of these trends is to be constructed within different media environments. To better understand this assumption, we must now examine from our perspective each of the four texts, looking for similarities and differences, attempting pairings and subdivisions.

3.5.1. Mark: The End Times Are near

The Gospel of Mark, according to a now firmly established critical understanding, is the first to have been composed, being written roughly forty years after Jesus’ death in around 70 (Brown 2016, p. 244; Prostmeier 2007, pp. 100–1; Lupieri 1997, p. 115). It represents a true foundational archetype, being innovatively constructed using, as we have already pointed out, pre-existing material (Brown 2016, pp. 225–29).

Regardless of the geographic and cultural milieu in which the text is composed and to whom it is addressed (Brown 2016, pp. 197, 240–41), what interests us is that it nonetheless refers back to an audience that felt destined to participate in the closing of History and to witness the Parousia; the essential and terse lines drawn by Mark refer back to the certainty of a time now drawing to a close.

In a chronotopic sense, even the world as a space pervaded by evil appears as a dimension to be abandoned, no longer fixable. Christ’s eye as he travels through Galilee and toward Jerusalem seldom rests on the bright details of creation, which appears to him rather as a troubled horizon occupied by the sick, plague-ridden, and possessed. IIn relation to such an atmosphere, according to Sergius Quinzio, the Messiah of Mark turns out to be harsh and surrounded by a dark mystery (Quinzio 1995, p. 512). This is also confirmed from the narrative point of view, particularly in the construction of the vector-journey of Christ, which, through an essential but skillful use of reorganizational writing from above, appears exclusively aimed at the passion, the empty tomb, and the resurrection. The references to it are frequent and continuous: the Pharisees contemplating killing him, Jesus himself announcing it three times (twice in Galilee, once in Jerusalem), while there are no hints of his childhood, of his earthly being—he is an individual destined for the “beyond” because he comes from it, and his death coincides with the end of the Temple and the end of times.

Related to this latter-day characterization is the prevalence of “acts” over “words”. That is, if one performs an examination of the material used, one not only realizes how little quantitative importance is attached to the speeches and parables, and how fragmentary their placement in the economy of the text is, but also how preponderant are the works of intervention on the impure, which are expressed in healings and exorcisms (as well as miracles).

As we noted earlier about the “Rabbi” of Nazareth, the historical one, the “spectacle” of the healed evil is interpretable as a sign of the beginning of the Kingdom. The imminent advent of the New Time thus needs neither much discourse nor many parables: there is little to subject to exegesis; there is little to explain. To construct and interpret complex and layered texts requires time, but this time is not there. In fact, the accumulation of preceptual, dogmatic, and theological discourses would imply the foundation of a theoretical basis for dealing with the future and history. Mark on the contrary has one, single purpose, which is to show the practical and obvious example of the advancing Kingdom through miracles, and to preach the essential and useful information needed to prepare for it. There is only to hurry to announce the message of salvation, without there being any need to unveil it more: it will be the incipient final “show” that will make everything clear, reveal every prophecy.

It is precisely in this context that the wholly Markan feature (although in some cases and with different tones it is also found in the other two synoptics) of the so-called “messianic secret” (Blevins 1981; Tuckett 1983; Räisänen 1990) arises. God’s preventive action takes on the appearance of mysterious, inescapable practice, incomprehensible to man, who will see it fully revealed only on the last day (Quinzio 1995, p. 514).

But how many will have the privilege of seeing the Light? In fact, the saved would seem to be very few (Quinzio 1995, p. 520). But who are these few? In Mark, the halo of mystery surrounding Christ’s message would seem to guarantee its impact only on those who, hearing the eu-angelion, will understand it, that is, a small circle of the elect, while the majority of listeners would be destined to be excluded, as unable to perceive the truth. Perhaps Frank Kermode’s contention that the Marcian obscurity is intended to programmatically exclude the “readers” (Kermode 1979), as if there were a split between them and those who had the privilege of listening directly to the Rebbe, is excessive. If this were so, after all, what would be the point of composing a written Gospel prepared for reading aloud? The point is not the distinction between listeners and readers, between Voice (directly divine) and scripture (an extinguished reflection of that Voice). If anything, the point is that the times are indeed very narrow, and therefore to be saved will be both some of those who have heard the word directly and those who will hear it mediated by scripture in the few remaining dark and gloomy days, the days of the “empty tomb” and the absence of God (Quinzio 1995, p. 520).

If Voice and Revelation are so closely linked, it also explains why the style of Mark’s Gospel is steeped in orality (Dewey 1989; Hurtado 1990) and marked by direct speeches, redundant formulas, and above all a dominant, pressing parataxis (Prostmeier 2007, pp. 80–83), so different from the refined hypotaxis that will be seen in Matthew and especially Luke. More recent criticism has been divided on the hypothesis that Mark’s Gospel stems from an attempt to control the oral tradition of Jesus’ message, which would thus be incorporated into the text (Kelber 1983; Gerhardsson 1986; Henaut 1993). It is undeniable that to some extent this function of stabilizing the word, and thus avoiding digressions and alterations, is there. But likely the point is another and concerns precisely the relationship between this medial contamination and Mark’s theological edifice. The orality diffused in the text is explained by the profound operation of re-mediation that preserves the immediate expression of the Voice understood as a call of the people, as a “shout in the night”, that brief and gloomy night that, having succeeded the “empty tomb”, will soon unfold into the triumphant day. Scripture, which “fixes” the message, ferries the chosen “few” to salvation in the short time left. It is no coincidence that it is prepared for reading aloud (according to some Mark, would have originated in the liturgy, as a set of passages to be read during worship—Carrington 1960), needs no special exegesis, and is made to accompany small communities who trace in the Gospel the confirmation of the imminence of the end and who, thanks to the narrative structure (the real great innovation of Mark, who understands that to represent a process it is necessary to metaphor it in a story), feel themselves to be an integral part, according to the beautiful reading of Eric Auerbach in his masterpiece, Mimesis. Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur (Auerbach 1946), of a great story that is transforming history (Auerbach 1956, I, p. 50).

3.5.2. Matthew: The Choice of Mission Between “Wheat” and “Darnel”

The Gospel of Matthew appears to us as one of the most complex and “scandalous” documents of the New Testament. Its powerful internal contradictions have been variously interpreted. According to Sergius Quinzio, the optimistic thrust and the gloomy, apocalyptic thrust coexist in the text in that the author would have blended in his synthesis two diachronic phases of Christ’s apostleship: the phase of everything possible and the phase of the end (Quinzio 1995, p. 426). On the contrary, according to a cultural–historical–textual reading, the layered character of Matthew would be the result of a precise project of its author, who sought to include in the text two contrasting currents of second-generation Christianity, the pro-Judaic one of James and the pro-Popagan one of Paul. The Gospel, likely written in Antioch between 80 and 95 (Prostmeier 2007, pp. 116–19), would lead to a synthesis between the two positions under the aegis of the mediating figure represented by Peter, who not coincidentally assumes a dominant position in these very pages (Mt. 16: 18–19), having practically won the argument against Paul on the question of purifying meals with respect to pagans (Brown and Meier 1983).

From our point of view, Matthew represents an explicit attempt to synthesize and incorporate the two souls of the nascent religion, the Jewish apocalyptic and the Hellenistic “earthly”. But certainly, with respect to Mark and his conception of spatial emptiness and temporal nothingness, what emerges as an entirely new fact is the shift of the Parousia forward and consequently the transformation of the world into a dimension to be experienced and traversed. But what world is this about? Actually, the space that Matthew opens before him appears in turn contradictory, and it could not be otherwise given the premises we have reported. It can suggest the famous images of light in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5: 14–16), a true metaphorical handbook of the new Christian, which contrasts so much with the darkness that envelops Mark’s version. But it can also plunge into the dark whirlpool of the eschatological discourse (Mt 24–25), which was, it is true, already in Mark (13: 33–37), but is here greatly expanded and articulated, in keeping with Matthew’s practice of bringing together and organizing scattered passages into large discourses.

Nonetheless, it seems to us that we can say that the apocalyptic “zones” are shrinking in Matthew and that now the chosen direction is definitely that of mission through the world. This is a world which is no longer only darkness or only light, but a space where “wheat” and “darnel” coexist, where light and dark mix: this will be from now on (and with different gradations) the new dimension of the Christian.

Precisely because movement in space and time was freed, Matthew’s style was thus freed from the heavy oral encrustations of Mark and especially its paratactic proceeding (Prostmeier 2007, pp. 104–5). According to Eric Auerbach, in fact, description in closed portions, that is, parataxis precisely, implies a conception of the real that is not continuous but instead parceled out and therefore not traversable (Auerbach 1956, I, pp. 107–35). A more decidedly hypothetic style, on the contrary, suggests a different vision, one that connects the individual parts in a complex way and thus makes one imagine a continuum, a horizon, in short, that is livable and traversable (Auerbach 1956, I, pp. 136–56).

But if the mission to the world is now decided, having been opened by Christ and left now to his Ecclesia (led by Peter), the complex medial character of that world nevertheless compels a “braking” course, so to speak, controlled, that is, by the watchful eye of the nascent (and still immature) institution. This operation of control is carried out through the incorporation of orality by writing: the hypothetic narrative is punctuated, and interrupted, by real doctrinal windows expressed in the great discourses of Jesus, the real chief characteristic of Matthew. The writing re-mediates the word and the Voice, transforming the scattered statements into broad, complex Loghia defined by subject and purpose, true “chapters” of an encyclopedia of the Rebbe’s thought.

The great discourses are thus cleverly distributed functionally throughout the work. The famous “Sermon on the Mount”, for example, a veritable summation of Jesus’ message likely preached historically in a fragmented manner adapted to individual circumstances and hearers, precedes the series of ten miracle narratives, intended as a demonstration of the coming of the Kingdom. The pressing of events, the proceeding of the story toward its extreme conclusion, necessitates a periodic pause, a pause within which the word re-mediated by scripture can return to expression and direction. No longer just action, as in Mark, but doctrine within action. But to whom does Matthew address himself?

In narratological terms, when Jesus speaks and explains, for example, the parables to the disciples, he is addressing a “narrator”, a true representative of the reader within the text: through it, Matthew is speaking directly to those who will read the Gospel. And this is the crucial point: the Gospels are the codification of a message that, no longer being constrained by an apocalyptic urgency (as in Mark), must equip itself to enter the world and history, to traverse it for a time that is not determinable but that begins to prospect as long. The message of salvation is thus bound to dilate chronologically and expand in social space, but to achieve this there is a need for a more suitable medium, better equipped for long durations, which can only be scripture. Christ reveals the secret to the disciples, that is, to his Church, and through the revelation it reaches the multitudes of readers, or those who will listen to the reading. In this context, exegesis must be fixed; it cannot be left to free interpretation.

One of the most significant examples of such re-mediation is offered to us by the parable of the sower, which, although reported by all three synoptics, appears particularly extensive and developed precisely in Matthew. As is obvious, such a parable, and especially in Matthew’s specific construction, reveals an obvious metalinguistic organization, whereby the allegory of the grain seed refers precisely to the ways in which the prophetic word of the Kingdom is received. The allegorical tone of the parable appears at first harsh and presents us with an almost disorienting picture. What does the crowd listening to the Rebbe really understand about his message, given that even his disciples do not immediately grasp the meaning of his words? If in Mark such obscurity remained linked to the atmosphere of “messianic secrecy” that permeates his entire Gospel, Matthew’s version seems to go in quite different directions. In fact, it is Jesus himself who provides an interpretive possibility. In fact, his famous phrase “he who has ears may hear”, alludes to the circumstance that among the crowd there are those who are willing to receive the “word”, that is, precisely “the good land” of the parable, but also conversely those who are not “fit”.

In a rare Gospel reflection, Marshall McLuhan explains that the term “intending” is very different in the Gospels from the term “hearing.” The ability to intend is a “gift” from God, as if those who intend have been “programmed” to truly and deeply understand Christ (De Kerckhove 1995, pp. 113–14). When Jesus speaks to the crowds, in short, he makes an initial demarcation between listeners and “intenders”, that is, between the “unprogrammed” and the “programmed”, in other words, between the unprepared and the predestined, the condemned and the pardoned.

But this instantaneous salvation cannot be enough for Matthew: it must extend in time and space. Christ explaining the meaning of the parable to the disciples makes precisely such expansion possible. This is why the various categories are punctiliously listed: the seed on the road and the ravens represent the wicked, that is, the scribes and Pharisees and others with whom Jesus continually polemicizes; the seed on the stones refers to those who welcome the seed but do not have roots, that is, are not truly predisposed; the thorns understood as representing dedication to material goods.

Matthew’s entire parabolic session is an extraordinary play of mirrors whereby the obscure orality of the deepest message, that of the Kingdom, originally intended for the few of the Narrow Times, dissolves into an “explained”, codified, written and “closed” discourse, entrusted to the nascent Church, which will become a mediating institution, and prepared for the “world” of the future, in an effort to open itself as much as possible to all nations.

3.5.3. Luke: In the Open-Ended World

The Gospel of Luke cannot be read except within a larger textuality that includes the Acts of the Apostles. It is actually a single work, written between 80 and 100 in an unspecified place in the eastern Mediterranean area, perhaps in Macedonia (Prostmeier 2007, p. 147), probably at different times within the above-mentioned 20-year period. The attribution to Luke, Paul’s companion, is traditional but without foundation. Certainly, between the author of the Third Gospel and the “apostle of the Gentiles”, theological convergence does not seem obvious, and indeed Luke, whoever he is, does not demonstrate a precise knowledge of Pauline theology. Nevertheless, his work fits quite easily into a conception of missionary openness to the world that in some ways recalls that of the apostle of Tarsus, while surpassing it in breadth and purpose.

Whatever the origin, author or authors of the two texts, for the times in which they were written, Luke, as we will henceforth conventionally call the author, and his work as a whole represent the highest expression of that open and missionary tendency we have mentioned. Luke is a writer who is very familiar with Greek language and culture, and especially with the great historiographical tradition (Brown 2016, pp. 375–76) and the genre of Hellenistic biography. The most significant textual site in this regard is the famous prolog (Luke 1: 1–4). Here, he immediately places himself among the “many” who have “drafted” but also put together the written account of Jesus’ story, drawn from the ministers of the word, that is, from the oral ground. Although Luke places himself along with others, the particularity of the next verse does not escape notice, which firstly emphasizes the “careful research into every circumstance”, immediately lowering the work within a historiographical method that recalls Thucydides’ indications, and secondly claims to provide a narrative “from the very beginning”, thus not limiting discussion simply to facts worthy of interest from a theological point of view. The aim is for an “orderly account”, that is, one built on a logical–causal sequentiality that proceeds from beginning to dissolution. It is, however, perhaps the last verse of the Prologue that holds the most importance: the function of this scripture is to make solid, that is, historically grounded, the set of “teachings” that every Christian adept receives as the incipit of his or her journey, through oral and written precepts. If Mark accompanied the Apocalypse, and Matthew founded the doctrine of the emerging “Christianity” (not yet a religion), Luke has the ultimate goal of writing a book of witness and proof that makes the word of Christ a “fact” of the world and for the world to come. It is the historical truth of what happened that makes the teachings “sure”, though not for that reason any more true, since truth pertains to faith. Luke uses the Greek term ἀσφάλεια, i.e., firmness, solidity, security, not ἀλήθεια, i.e., truth, intentionally: the truth has already been revealed and does not need further investigation, but in a missionary perspective, providing this truth with a solid “documentary” basis is decisive.

As is evident, this requires the use of a firm and mature writing style, capable of dosing the sources, selecting them, using, and developing them, and also of organizing the material within a very broad story (Gospel + Acts), making it coherent in a narrative sense but also, and above all, theological. Luke’s effort is thus to remove all remnants of orality from the scripture, but not for reasons related to the pursuit of a lofty, less popular style, so much as to make the narrative more continuous, more worldly. If Matthew inserted the speeches within large windows organized and controlled by the proceeding of the writing, Luke in fact hinges the speeches within the proceeding of the historically narrated event, so that although large moments of preaching remain (such as the “plain” speech), they appear more contained. In general, direct speech is less used in the text and is often, in fact, eliminated and rendered indirectly; the hypotaxis becomes more secure and the proceeding of the narrative is shown to be broad and fluid (Prostmeier 2007, pp. 125–30).

In parallel, the whole spectacular media set-up connected to the miracles undergoes redefinition. It is not that Luke’s Jesus does not perform healings of the sick and the possessed, but rather that implicitly, if all this is placed in a historical context, it takes on a different sign value. If in Mark it was the manifestation of the Kingdom “coming”, and if in Matthew it represented the demonstration of Jesus’ word, in Luke it becomes the prodrome to the new Time of the Church in the world. Christ has come and left the Holy Spirit to his disciples. It is no accident that Acts opens with the double performance of the Ascension and Pentecost, the day precisely when the Holy Spirit reaches the apostles. From then on, there will be no need to insist on the miracles, which in fact thin out considerably, and above all are only hinted at, but not described.

Such an irreversible entry of the Church into history implies the idea that by now the Parousia is far away, perhaps very far away.

In Acts 1: 6–8, the disciples are perplexed: How and how long will they have to act? When will the End Times come? Christ does not answer. He only explains that the time available must remain unknown to them, but certainly long. For preaching will have to be conducted as expansively as possible, far beyond Judea and Samaria, and to “the ends of the earth”. In fact, the idea of the birth of a mediating institution that we saw in Matthew coincides here with the birth of a real Church Time (the apostles) that makes sense only as an expansion into the world. Thus, the account of Jesus and his death and resurrection acquire meaning through the collective propagation that the disciples develop until they reach Rome, in the heart of the Empire, thus within a chronotope that is now “worldwide” and “historical”.

What is immediately striking in the reading of Luke is a continuous, tireless, almost obsessive preaching drive that goes even beyond Jesus’ usual itinerant propensity (Destro and Pesce 2008, pp. 42–58). This drive unravels between Galilee, the journey to Jerusalem, and finally the Holy City. The central segment, that of almost nonstop pure movement, occupies almost a third of the total document. In it, the sayings, the dialogs, and the speeches are fragmented and broken up, as if to follow the contingent course of the journey. The long pauses that housed Matthew’s great discourses are distant, just as a Christian vision that balances stillness with motion is distant. Luke’s Jesus, and then the apostles who sprang from his pen, preach in motion. That bucolic and serene atmosphere that permeates the first part of the Gospel concerning childhood is transformed into a restless and nervous phase that forces Jesus and the disciples into constant motion. The “Rabbi” is placed “outside” from the start. First, he is literally expelled from Nazareth; then, at the beginning of the journey to Jerusalem, he is barred from entering at the Samaritan village where he would like to stop for the night. From then on, he seems to renounce any form of settlement (Lk 9: 57–62). As already in Matthew, Luke mentions sending the twelve on mission, but this seems not to be enough for his Christ, who will later feel all the urgency to increase and strengthen efforts and speed up the mission in the world, multiplying the number of disciples to be sent out to all directions (Lk 10: 1–2).

The obsession with movement and the pressing haste are reminiscent of Paul, but by now the choice is made. In Luke, there is no longer Matthew’s limitation to the houses of the Jews or even the limited openings of the apostle from Tarsus. The mission is now three hundred and sixty degrees, whatever it takes.

If Paul had in front of him an immense space, but the certainty of a limited time, and thus acted within a medium suited to this purpose (the Epistle read aloud), Luke not only casts his gaze as far as the “ends of the world” but also manages to imagine a now dilated time. His writing in this way, complex, articulate, architectural, securely follows the space–time continuum, feels fit to penetrate into the world, lives it, feels it his own, and moves there as in his real environment.

3.5.4. John: Writing and Internalization

Closing out the canonicals is the complexity of the Gospel attributed to John, a complexity that is the result of a long phase of layering (Brown 2007, pp. 77–102), of which only the final outcome is of interest here.

According to Raymond Brown, one of the greatest interpreters of this text, John brings out the timelessness of the divine. God is the light that comes into a world of darkness by dividing human beings into two camps: that of light, indeed, and that of darkness, that of truth, and that of lies (Brown 2007, p. 131)

This is, as we can see, a far cry from that of Matthew and especially Luke. Where does such a powerful and personal vision, one so important for the development of later Christianity, come from? Proposals are diverse and refer to a diverse and layered cultural landscape that brings into play different influences from time to time: Gnosticism (Brown 2007, pp. 132–43), both understood in the sense of source and understood as derivation from John (Logan 1996); Hellenistic and extrabiblical thought (Brown 2007, p. 144); Platonism and Greek philosophy (Brown 2007, pp. 144–49); and the vast panorama of the Jewish world, from the Old Testament to rabbinic Judaism (Brown 2007, pp. 149–56).

Within this almost inextricable tangle, the contribution that appears most interesting, however, seems to us to be the one concerning the possible relationships between the Fourth Gospel and the experience of Qumran and the Essenes. According to Brown, although John does not quote directly from the Qumran writings, he certainly has a contiguity with respect to the thinking of the Dead Sea Scrolls. According to his interpretation, it is the disciples of John the Baptist (who, it turns out, was certainly in contact with Qumran) who bring this particular theological aspect to John the evangelist, or to the school to which he belonged (Brown 2016, p. 508). After all, that there was a certain closeness between ideas traced in the Qumran library and those of Jesus is now accepted (Ibba 2018).

In what does this familiarity consist? Luigi Moraldi has well explained that the Qumran writings are dominated by the concepts of predestination and dualism (Moraldi 1971, p. 343). It is a “modified dualism”, that is, one assuming the supremacy of good over evil and not a kind of equality between two equal principles as in Zoroastrianism (Braun 1955; Kuhn 1962; Bocher 1965). Such an approach, even in formal rendering (light/darkness), is very present in John, beginning with the Prologue (1: 1–18) and the Dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus (3: 1–21). Moreover, just as at Qumran, in John, only those who adhere to the covenant will be saved. They are bound to love only the members of their own community, that is, the brethren, and not everyone (Brown 2007, pp. 84–93; 2016, pp. 508–14).

In its radical approach that denies any entry into the world, conceived as an impassable battleground between good and evil, John comes across as an apocalyptic Gospel and as such, paradoxically, it is more similar to the example of Mark’s simple and essential text than to those of Matthew and Luke. The convergence ends there, however. Mark and John are, yes, both imbued with an apocalyptic sense, but while the former, as we have seen, is perceived within the last days, the latter projects those days into an indefinite and distant future.

It is precisely in this regard that the whole medial arrangement changes. If in Mark orality, i.e., the Voice, is predominant as the immediate announcement of the pressing judgment, in John writing. is the decisive medium, the “cornerstone”. But in what sense? Was it not also so in Matthew and Luke? How does it differ from the two synoptic Gospels?

Let us try to take a closer look at the organization of the subject matter by John (Brown 2016, pp. 460–61, 497–98). First, it lacks the historical–geographical setting of Matthew and Luke: in John the world fades, goes into the background, while what matters is the presence of the incarnate word, beginning with the powerful Prologue that immediately places theological emphasis on his preexistence. What really matters is the message of the word, not so much his actions in reality. Thus, for example, the Johannine Jesus works very few miracles, healings, and exorcisms. This parallels the lack of the theme of the Kingdom of God, of which miracles, as we have seen, were the first manifestation. In John, the center of everything is the word, projected into the future and not the present. This lack of focus on the world is in fact expressed by the thinning of the purely diegetic, narrative element and the growth of that of discourse. Although he moves much more than in the other Gospels, and transits in an almost commuter fashion between Galilee, Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem, the features of these journeys are completely ignored and all attention is focused on the stops that host the great dialogs and discourses, which nevertheless present a particular “setting”. John’s Jesus, in fact, unlike the synoptics, speaks very little to the masses and in open spaces: he prefers synagogues and especially the Temple in Jerusalem. He chooses the great ritual occasions (Feast of Tables, Feast of Dedication), but also secluded places as in the nighttime dialog with Nicodemus or in the very long cenacle discourse. Scripture is, in short, a restricted locus for a few learned men who seem to defer to the scholars of the future, who will practice at length in the centuries to come to derive the right meaning to extend in different ways to the crowds.

So, it is dialogic–philosophical writing that is the medial focus of John. It is immersion writing, a form that is vertical rather than horizontal and narrative-based as in Matthew and Luke. Of course, as in the other Gospels, here too the practice of the medium is closely linked to theological presuppositions that in John’s case are truly unique, but which are destined to have a most powerful impact in late antique and early medieval Christianity, beginning with the system constructed by Augustine, who not surprisingly will write a ponderous commentary on the last Gospel.

Going into even more detail, what kind of writing is it? Scholars have first noted a poetic structure. John’s Jesus has solemn modes of communication, higher than those of the everyday human, just as in the Old Testament God expressed himself through the mouths of the prophets (Brown 2016, p. 460). The Johannine Messiah is “evidently” the word incarnate, and so he uses appropriate language. This communicative elevation produces a very strange alienating effect. Jesus’ interlocutors, even the learned ones, often misrepresent his message, which in order to fit the human without lowering itself uses the metaphorical medium (Lee 1994; Koester 1995). Misunderstanding generates the interpretation that Jesus himself initiates, inaugurating a real method. This aspect was also present, we have seen, in the other Gospels and was expressed mainly through parables. There, too, misrepresentation or misunderstanding produced Jesus’ exegesis and thus the meaning to be passed on to the crowds, who in later years would gather to hear the collective reading of the book. But in the synoptics, the metaphorical and allegorical meaning was immeasurably simpler, sometimes involving common sense. In John, in fact, the great philosophical–allegorical discourses replace the primordial parables altogether. From here on, Christian scripture reading (even indirectly through the contribution of the Fathers) will have to be metaphorical and especially polysemantic: each phrase and each metaphor can be understood on different planes. Historians of the text explain this element by the layered tradition of the Fourth Gospel, as we have seen. However, to simply look at the outcomes, what one notices is the foundation of a medial environment of extraordinary complexity, forcing in some cases the adoption of parenthetical notes on the meaning of terms and passages. God speaks to humans with his language, and interpreting it requires codified disciplinary instrumentation.

John’s media environment grounds a profound idea, namely, that Christianity has become a religion of the distant future and therefore must equip itself to traverse the centuries: the richer its semantic potential, the greater its possibility of survival, adaptation, and responding to the unimaginable transformations of history. As the surrounding world will set out to become an unmanageable and obscure dimension, it will be the power of an “internalizing” scripture, which dialogs directly with God through its ministers, who alone know how to decode its metaphorical and allegorical set-up, that will enable the “fortress of faith” to withstand the siege of the shadows, waiting once again for the dawn to come to divide the good from the wicked. Between John and Augustine of Hippo, the early medieval Christianity of the West is founded.

4. Revelation: Scripture Synthesizes and Contains All Media

The figuration of the book is certainly the most recurrent one in John’s Revelation. In fact, the image of the book, understood as a scroll—that is, in its function as a long and not “anthological” narrative, as was the case with the codex of the itinerant preaching of the disciples of the first and second generation—recurs 20 times in Revelation out of the total of 30 times throughout the entire New Testament (Stefani 2008, pp. 60–61).

This is in many ways innovative with respect to both the Old Testament prophetic tradition and the apocryphal apocalyptic tradition (Russell 1964; Rowland 1982; Collins 1987). In Daniel, 2 Nebuchadnezzar is visited by terrible dreams and Daniel interprets them; in Isaiah, 24–27 the prophet speaks directly about the future; in Ezekiel 38–39, the Lord speaks to the prophet and suggests to him what to say. As can be seen, the predominant medium here is the Voice, while the communicative circuit is organized in a typically bicameral system (Jaynes 1977), in which consciousness is divided into two zones, one of which becomes the channel of contact with God. In other words, God “says” and the prophet becomes his Voice. This is also the case in the actual apocalyptic texts of the apocryphal experience, such as in The Syriac Revelation of Baruch (late 1st century CE) in which God speaks to Baruch, and in the Fourth Book of Ezra (c. 100 CE), in which in fact the same thing takes place. Only in Enoch (4th–1st cent. BCE) do things change somewhat. Here, too, the central figure similarly receives messages from above. He may witness visions that the Angels show him (Revelation I, 1–2), he may receive dispositions or prayers to be handed down directly from the mouths of the “watchers” (Revelation XII, 4; XIII, 4–5), or he may receive said dispositions in dreams (Revelation XIII, 8). The difference, however, lies in the fact that Enoch is a scribe, and has the specific task of putting God’s messages in writing. The scribe is contrasted with the prophetic Voice in communicating God’s word, which is no longer simply reported but handed down, i.e., addressed to the future, set up to pass through the Long Times.

In Johannine Revelation, things change from the tradition radically. If, in the latter, at most the writing was a means of serving the Voice, in John, it is the opposite: everything flows from the book.

In fact, at first it seems to be in an already practiced setting: the author hears a Voice as if it were a “trumpet”, as if to testify that the word nonetheless initiates everything, and that Voice intimates to John that he must write down what he sees and will see, just as in Enoch. What happens immediately afterwards, however, is unparalleled in the previous apocalyptic. First, the Voice of God dictates to John seven epistles addressed to the seven Churches of Asia. Although these letters do not exactly coincide with the Pauline experience, and they move in a strongly allegorical context, the choice of this genre nevertheless appears innovative and capable of connoting a typically Christian type of apocalyptic from the outset (William 1904; Meinardus 1979; Sacchi 1990). On the other hand, the value of scripture for the emerging “Christianity”, a scripture capable of guiding, coordinating, reorganizing, and encompassing every possible medium, including the newly invented medium of the Christian Epistle, is already clear from here. So, Voice, writing, and vision are intertwined with each other. What breaks with the whole tradition, however, is the subsequent textual dynamic. After the Seven Churches segment, in fact, a new vision leads to further innovation. Christ opens the seals of the scroll that God, seated on the throne, holds in his right hand. Each time a seal is opened, and thus a section of the papyrus is unrolled, a veritable moving-picture image emanates from it, with spectacular features that had rarely been seen in the other parts of the New Testament, except perhaps for Jesus’ ascension to Heaven (Acts I, 9–11) and Pentecost (Acts II, 1–5), which today we would not hesitate to call almost cinematic sequences. The opening of the seventh seal the last, introduces us to another medial side, namely, the sequence of trumpet blasts, surrounded by the smoke of the aromas released. Added to this is the spectacular singing and movements of the masses, saints, martyrs, elect, angels, etc., which unmistakably refers to a liturgical dimension with which the whole of Revelation is pervaded (Shepherd 1960; Vanni 1980, 2003). This coincides with the birth of a true Christian liturgy that from its origins appears spectacular and multimedia (Filoramo 1997, pp. 237–43). It is no coincidence that from the seventh trumpet blast the longest sequence of apocalyptic visions begins, from the catastrophe, to the final battle, to the millennium, to the chained and unleashed Satan, and the descent of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Never before has such multimedia and multisensory power been seen in Christian scripture. This is not surprising. Aside from its Palestinian genesis, the nascent religion moved in a Hellenistic cultural context accustomed to the coexistence of scripture and image. The great cities of the Roman Empire, urban realities that are the real engine of the expansion of the good news (Rubens Urciuoli 2021), prove to be spectacular visual machines, full of colors and figures within which writing, from electoral to advertising inscriptions, finds its most natural place (Cavallo 2019). It is precisely this Hellenistic and Roman context that serves as the perfect humus for the early emergence of early Christian iconography, as early as the late first century early second century (Pellizzari 2013, pp. 33–46).

Indeed, already in the Gospels, especially the synoptic ones, imagery emanates from the word itself. The Gospel style is profoundly imaginative because it speaks of a worldly, tellable and representable God who is always center stage, unlike the Old Testament God who is never seen. Consider the Gospel parables, for example, which not surprisingly probably derive in large part from the conception of the early disciples and not from the Rebbe (Meier 2016). They are nothing more than descriptive pictures, illustrative windows, which, however, are not organized within the rhetorical figure of similitude (as in Homer, for example), but shift to another plane, the more properly allegorical one. That is, the parabolic scene does not refer to a physical situation so much as to a theological one. The Kingdom of God is such an abstract concept that only an allegorical translation of meaning can render it. For it to be understood, however, such an allegorical procedure must be based on “images” that are well understood at the surface level, so that one can then descend to the deeper level. The scenes are therefore taken from everyday life, referring back to the experiences of fishing, of the fields, of lived and family life: they are micro-narratives, real pictures that the believer first sees (recognizing them in his or her own experience) and then interprets (or hears interpreted).

In Revelation, this original element takes a leap forward. Strong, powerful writing allows it to move from an allegorical plane based on the everyday to a highly formalized, codified, and complex one.

There has been much debate about the authorship of the work. Recent studies lead us to consider Revelation as related to the Johannine circle, which was also responsible for writing the Fourth Gospel and the letters of John. Inconsistencies in the text would therefore be explainable by drafting by several hands over time (Brown 2007, pp. 205–35; 2016, pp. 1047–49). What is most interesting to us with respect to this Johannine ascription is precisely the use of scripture, that is, the idea of a function of such allegorical writing that unites the last New Testament text with the last Gospel.

According to the most accredited interpretative currents, Revelation could be read in three ways: a work prophesying a distant future; a work outlining an imminent future; and an essentially liturgical work capable of guiding us into the present of its writers and creators (Stefani 2008, pp. 61–65). It seems to us, also on the basis of what we have said about John and according to the model of Qumran (which we have seen somewhat reconnected to this experience, albeit through indirect channels), that the strong, sure, and solidly allegorical writing has a decidedly strategic function, that is, one leaning toward the future: it is from the interpretation according to rhetorically certain structures that there arises the possibility of surely recognizing the signs of the End Times at the time they will occur, even if they are to manifest themselves a thousand years later. Although at the beginning of the text reference is made to a “near time”, it is probable that it must have been well in the minds of the generations at the turn of the first and second centuries that the possibility of an ad libitum expansion of time was possible, or at least that the absolute inscrutability of the timing of the event was certain. Thus, in Johannine Revelation, the treatment of the image also becomes particularly rich, paralleling the growth in complexity of the scripture. It must be armored to traverse long times and at the same time endowed with polysemantic potential, so that everything proves to be possibly readaptable, whether for the immediate or for the near or distant future. This is why all kinds of media environments are inhabited and proposed. Such a scripture in fact, so solid and regulated, owes much of its effectiveness to its ability to harness as many media as possible, to guide them, to evoke them, arousing all kinds of emotions and sensations, thoughts and reflections: that is, it aims to speak to the learned, to those who will read in liturgical assemblies the text, and to those who will listen to it. Here, the multimedia typical of Christianity is born. It is a differentiating factor from the other two monotheisms and was essential in the foundation, growth and durability of the emerging “Christianity”.

5. Conclusions: A Multimedia Religion

Christianity was born as a multimedia religion. The attention to communicative multiplicity is linked to a double factor: the multicultural reality in which the new religion takes its first steps and its substantial foundational bipolarity. In fact, it is built on two cultural matrices, the Greek–Hellenistic one, open to the world, historical time, and universalism, and the Aramaic–Jewish one, closed to the world, apocalyptic and awaiting the End. The articulated forms of communication that we observed in the first century were directly linked to the co-presence of a dual identity strategy.

This complexity of identity, which represented one of the most thorny initial problems of the nascent religion, soon became a strong point. Indeed, in the course of centuries and millennia, bipolarity turned into an extraordinary instrument of survival and vitality. When the space of the world closes (as, for example, in the early Middle Ages), preventing expansion, the apocalyptic matrix will assume a guiding role; when the world re-opens (between the 13th and 17th centuries), the universalist profile will be recovered and re-functionalized for the Counter-Reformation and Jesuitist conquest of the open spaces of the new continents (Tarzia 2022).

In what sense can the media set-up be said to be related to this specific trait of Christian identity? There is no specific Christian medium, a matter on which Régis Debray (1992) (for the image) and Marshall McLuhan (1999) and Derrick De Kerckhove (1990) (for writing) disagree, but a media spectrum from which a pivotal medium emerges from time to time according to historical conditions, controlling, managing and directing the other media, entrusting each with a specific function.

With regard to the chosen focus, that of the century of foundation, although there is a certain media diversification within a tangle in which orality, spectacle and writing alternate, clash, and continually support each other, we have nevertheless observed how this dialectical coexistence is destined at the end of the century to leave the central place to writing, which becomes the pivotal medium, within a process that corresponds to the control, incorporation, and re-mediation of the original Aramaic oral–spectacle media environment practiced by Jesus. This importance of scripture has never diminished in the history of Christianity and in the bureaucratic construction of the centralized institution of the Church.

It is also true, however, that this function had a different calibration in the various historical phases. Thus, for example, during the Counter-Reformation and Jesuit expansion of the 16th and 17th centuries, the importance of image, spectacularization, and multi-sensory multimedia grew considerably in relation to the need to disseminate doctrine to predominantly non-literate cultures.

It is clear that this concept implies many issues and questions that certainly cannot be introduced or resolved here. Let us mention just one. At a time when writing loses its centrality in today’s world and the structure of communication from one to many (massmedial) therefore falls, in favor of a networked (social) communication from many to many, how can a millenary institution based on bureaucratic centrality resist?

Here, it will suffice to note that a methodology conceived in this way, i.e., one that investigates the complex tangle that weaves together the media structure, imaginaries, mentalities and cultural scenarios, cannot only illuminate the junction points, in this case the moment of genesis, but can say a great deal about long-term processes and help shed light on them, on their social resilience, on their ability to adapt to the times and continue to build strong and lasting collective identities.