A review of Kelly Iverson's
Performing Early Christian Literature
by Pieter J. J. Botha
From the review:
Iverson differentiates the hearing and seeing of a performance (an ancient oral reading of the gospels to a community of listeners) from a modern, private reading experience of the gospels (5), and to this end he examines the role of the audience and the factors that influence audiences in the communal event of the performance. A particular strong point of the study is the informed multidisciplinary examination, drawing “from a host of disciplines, including theatre, film studies, performance, communication, as well as the cognitive sciences (e.g., psychology and neuroscience)” (14). Iverson is not inflexible in his multifaceted approach; he works heuristically, employing procedures as “conversation partners” to consider “how audiences, situated in an oral context, interact and engage in the context of performance” (15).