Ordering Gospel textuality in the second century

This article interrogates how varied second-century figures ordered a pluriform Gospel corpus. Focusing on approaches to Gospel plurality visible in the Epistula apostolorum, Tatian the Syrian, Irenaeus of Lyons, and Ammonius of Alexandria, we argue that a number of Christian readers—across the Roman Mediterranean, from Alexandria to Gaul and from Syria to Rome—employed similar approaches. Drawing on evidence for second-century reading practices, we demonstrate that continuities in both textual practices and conceptual frameworks illuminate Gospel reading and writing. These figures engaged Gospels in multiple dimensions—horizontal juxtaposition of integrate parallel material and vertical coordination of narrative sequence—in order to map relationships between imperfectly parallel texts. These spatial textual practices enabled synthetic reading of an emergent pluriform Gospel corpus