This volume explores the reception history of John the Baptist in writings, relics, material culture, social and cultural contexts; focusing on both the impact of the received past in a given context and the procreative capability of a given context to remake tradition in the images, symbols, and interests of the present. It thus steps into the void created by attempts to configure the Baptist “behind the text”, instead using numerous sources to map the memory of the Baptist across time and space.
The contributors accordingly utilize insights from social memory theory—a theoretical discourse devoted to the complex relationship between the past and the present—to conceptualize their arguments. At the heart of each chapter are two interrelated questions: how do inherited traditions about John the Baptist shape or constrain the portrayal of John in the primary source, and how do the various social, cultural, and rhetorical contexts activate, stabilize, or redeploy received tradition of John the Baptist? Covering a range of source material up to the end of the fifth century, this volume prompts further interest and exploration of the early reception history of John the Baptist and the contexts that deployed him as a key resource.
